Alia Md Ali

When you find yourself thirsty and dehydrated on a hot sunny day in Penang all you have to do is stop by this little spot for a refreshing treat. It will put a spring back in your step and a smile on your face as you head off to do more exploring around the island.
The streets are hot. Blindingly hot. Your stomach is halfway distended from that enormous lunch of nasi beriyani ayam you just had at Hameediyah. But you're determined, determined to walk through Georgetown just a little more, to w...

It wasn’t easy writing this. There was prejudice all around, from those who balked at the idea of an anti-queer musical without knowing what it was really about, to prejudice exhibited by the folks responsible for staging this (when I actually went to watch it), to the prejudice of my fellow audience members chuckling at the most non-PC jokes I’ve heard in recent years. So I’ll forgo a proper “introduction” and dive right in.
Asmara Songsang, written and directed by Rahman Adam, is about the ...

When school's out, many kids go home... to more lessons. Alia Ali reports on the rise of private tuition in the Klang Valley, and asks why so many parents are hiring teachers like her.
My father is a smart man. He was sent to universities overseas, including an Ivy League institution. There are few things he can’t reason, few concepts he can’t grasp, few ideas he can’t debate. But here’s a little secret: my father may be a smart man, but he also received Cs for a few subjects in SPM. Granted,...

There’s a rite of passage in my family. It involves getting up at the crack of dawn every Thursday morning, stumbling to my mother’s Wira with a large plastic basket in hand, and rushing over to the pasar tani in Section 17 so my mother can get first dibs on all the best produce.
Ever since I was young, my brothers and I were expected to dutifully hold the basket full of groceries and observe how to choose the best onions, check for the freshness of the fish and how to charm the beef seller. ...

There are an estimated 400,000 foreign domestic workers in Malaysia. The majority of them are from Indonesia. Despite recent tensions between the Malaysian and Indonesian governments on the issue, Indonesian women continue to come to Malaysia each year – often taking the role of house maids for an average salary of RM700 – RM800 per month. They clean, cook and also care for children and elderly members of the family.
Some stay just a few days, but others stay for decades: living in the limbo ...

Dewakan. No fine dining restaurant has created this much buzz amongst my fellow food enthusiasts in recent memory. A full menu dedicated to celebrating local produce? Our forks have been ready for years.
Dewakan’s name is a portmanteau of “dewa” and “makan”, a fitting tribute to their philosophy of paying tribute to the bounty of the land, food from God. Run out of KDU’s new Utropolis campus in Glenmarie, even getting to its location feels like a mini-pilgrimage. Yet, many of the city’s foodi...

It’s 9am. Ma Thu, 32, and her husband Ko Cho, 41, have just arrived at Sun Huat Kee, a coffee shop in Bangsar. Together they begin setting up shop – setting chairs and tables, airing the upstairs stall and preparing the shop’s signature dish: pan mee.
The pan mee here is delicious, tender and pleasantly chewy, rolled and hand-cut fresh every day. But the recipe is not their own. Ma Thu and Ko Cho learned how to make pan mee from the owner of Sun Huat Kee, who employs the couple as managers. T...