Reflections on the human condition
Our Banana Pancake journey finally started from Malaga airport at 7:00 am on Tuesday 22nd September. Not to Bangkok via Doha, but Doha and Bangkok via Berlin. It’s a long story and yes, immigration issues are in there somewhere. Our easyJet flight was on time, as usual. I like easyJet. They feel professional for a so-called budget airline, and ethical too, offsetting every flight’s carbon footprint in the price of your ticket.
Last week, I explained why my journey to Southeast Asia began with a chance meeting in a smoky bar in Bali.
Before we set out from Bangkok and begin making our way back to Indonesia, I’d like to give some background to the area of the fascinating area of the world we will be visiting.
When I ask my friends and family what comes to mind when they hear the words Southeast Asia, they usually reply with a familiar collection of images: tropical beaches with turquoise water, temples draped in orange robes, bustling night markets and steaming bowls of noodles, backpackers, elephants and Bali. Maybe also the Vietnam War.
All of those images contain a grain of truth, but I have recently discovered that none of them explains why Southeast Asia exists in the form we know today or why countries separated by only a few hundred kilometres can feel so profoundly different.
The first mistake we make is to think of Southeast Asia merely as a destination, when actually it is the most significant crossroads.
Continue reading “Southeast Asia: The Crossroads of the World”
In December 2023, I travelled to Bali for the first time with my son George. One evening, back at our hotel, he gave in to jet-lag while I grew restless.
This is how I later described what happened next:
A pulse of energy insisted I go out, as though adventure were tapping me on the shoulder. I searched online and discovered Seminyak, a district with some nightlife forty-five minutes away. I wasn’t looking for romance, or so I told myself, but for connection. I simply wanted to live every moment to the full, having travelled to this captivating island on the other side of the world.
The bars were nearly empty at nine. It was too early. I circled them nervously, pretending disinterest, until I stepped inside one called The Banyan. A narrow aisle, high tables on either side, cigarette smoke hanging under the lights.
A young Indonesian man waved me over. His name was Buyung. He was thirty-three, from Sumatra. His English was light but fluent, his smile the kind that illuminated his whole being.
We spoke. His father had died when he was three, his mother bent over rice fields, sometimes with nothing to put on the table. Bullied at school, excluded from opportunity, he left to apprentice as a mechanic, but a hatred of automotive grease and conflict with his sister-in-law drove him away. In internet cafés, he met Europeans online; one paid for his first flight to Bali. Since then, he had returned home to Sumatra several times, during COVID, and to care for his dying mother. Now he was back, looking for work.
“What about the future?” I asked.
“I want to meet a bule,” he said—a white man who might take him to Europe.
I laughed, gently. “That won’t be me.”
He grinned, unfazed. “They all say that. We’ll see.”
He was right. I was wrong.
The man I called Buyung is the man I married in Berlin on 4 April 2025.
I had gone out that evening looking for company. I certainly had not gone looking for a husband, still less for a relationship that would carry me from Bali to Berlin, through marriage and the upheaval of building a new life together, and eventually towards another journey across Southeast Asia.
Yet that brief decision to leave the hotel changed the direction of both our lives.
Now, almost three years later, we are going back to Bali, but taking the long way around.
A great company always looks inevitable in retrospect.
Nvidia now sits at the centre of the artificial intelligence revolution. Its chips power data centres, scientific research, self-driving technology and many of the AI tools that are beginning to reshape our lives. As I write, the company is valued at roughly $5.3 trillion. In its latest quarter alone, it reported revenue of $96.2 billion.
But Nvidia did not begin in a gleaming Silicon Valley headquarters. It began with three engineers, one bottomless cup of coffee and a booth in Denny’s.
Continue reading “The $5 Trillion Company That Survived by Admitting It Was Wrong”