So near... So AFAR

Last May, AFAR magazine sent us up the Straits of Malacca from Singapore to a sleeping-beauty of a city: Old Georgetown on the little island of Penang. A quick one-hour flight up into Malaysia, there we found the princely Joe Sidek, a businessman/cultural curator who seems to know just about every artist and performer in town.

Getting in late on Friday night, he strolled up to meet us at The Straights Collection Cafe just near midnight after some business dinner, apparent by his pin-stripe shirt and sleek shoes. The hotel owner swoops in and comments on his classy digs. Joe shrugs it off with something like, "Always working, my dear, always working." He then goes on about last years Prada, how he grew up here in Georgetown, spent a bit of the 70's in London, the early eighties in Chelsea, and by the late nineties had returned to Penang to handle the family business. Ten years later, it appears he's been doing things we love to see people do -- connecting people, artists, cultures, and looking for everything good in his hometown. In 2008, Georgetown was brought on by UNESCO as a world heritage site. And now we're here.


By Saturday morning, Joe (above) was in his casual best and ready to show us the town like he had built the place--though he would never claim it as such being as unassuming as he is generous. Meeting the likes is one true perk of this job. By the end of the shoot, as is often the case, we were hooked on Penang... and loving AFAR's idea of a travel narrative.


The good people of AFAR included us in their contrib's page, which clearly has us looking forward to the next great journey they send us on.


SIDE NOTE: On the Editor's Page for this one-year anniversary issue, he talks person-ably of the magazine's first 75,000 subscribers and speaks of the next 25-thousand readers he hopes to see in the coming months. So look for the logo on the newsstands. We see it here in Singapore, so it should be a breeze!
Happy reading.