Conversations

After completing high school in Singapore as an ASEAN Scholarship awardee, Gary Evano Daniel headed home to Jakarta to continue his education. With a penchant for business and good food, he dived into Jakarta’s food scene with his friends. Gary is now the managing director of Puyo Group, an F&B brand aggregator with brands like Puyo Desserts and HAKA Dimsum Shop.

Gary put his experience in business operations and marketing to good use by quickly adapting to the use of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, which helped his businesses stay afloat and even grow. The 29-year-old entrepreneur is now keen on helping other businesses to seize the opportunities provided by digital technologies to similarly expand their business. Gary shares his experience with The ASEAN.

Rusda Salaeh, a 29-year-old mother of three, is a freelance translator based in Thailand. She has been working as a professional linguist-translator for eight years, since graduating with a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. Rusda uses the Thai-based digital freelance platform, Fastwork, and various social media channels to market her skills and services, which include translating Thai text into Indonesian, Malaysian, or English, and vice versa. She believes that freelance or gig work comes with many advantages, but also has a downside, and that the pandemic gave many people a taste of what it’s like to do freelance work.

The 2022 edition of the ASEAN Artists Residency Programme (AARP) brought two ASEAN artists to the global stage, offering a month-long residency programme at the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.

Children relate their experiences and feelings in the most fascinating and amusing ways. But their stories are often insightful and profound, giving us a glimpse of how they view the world.

During the pandemic, the view for Hannah and Callum Goh and Zach Bautista was from the confines of their homes. They wrote, illustrated, and published books that deal with the complex topics of death and loss, of not losing hope and chasing one’s dreams.

One hundred fifty-two million students in the region were forced to shift to remote and online learning when the COVID-19 pandemic led to prolonged school closures.

Eight children share how they coped with this abrupt transition and what they liked or disliked about their virtual classes.

Five children candidly share how the pandemic affected their daily lives, how it altered their views and attitudes, and what lessons they learned from the experience.