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Archives: Books

Building While Becoming

Building While Becoming is a personal and entrepreneurial narrative that traces Linda Anggrea’s journey from a small riverside village in Indonesia to building a modern fashion brand in one of the world’s largest Muslim markets.

Raised in an environment defined by scarcity, instability, and early responsibility, Linda learned discipline, independence, and resilience long before she understood business. From walking alone to school in a remote village to navigating academic gaps, financial limitations, and family disruption, her early life shaped a mindset centered on ownership and adaptability.

As she moved through larger cities and more competitive environments, she faced cultural gaps, economic pressure, and identity challenges. These experiences did not position her ahead; they forced her to catch up quickly and consistently.

Her career began in structured, high-performing institutions, including roles in corporate environments and the Central Bank of Indonesia. Despite stability and prestige, she chose to leave a secure path to pursue something uncertain: building a business from scratch.

The turning point came not from a formal strategy, but from observation—a simple realization that a massive, underserved market for modern modest fashion remained underdeveloped. With no prior experience in fashion, she began with a single product: a scarf made to her own standard.

What followed was a process of learning by doing—testing, selling, refining, and growing through direct customer interaction.

Building While Becoming is not a story of starting ahead. It is a story of catching up, adapting, and building from constraint. It offers a grounded perspective on entrepreneurship, emphasizing that meaningful progress does not require perfect conditions—only clarity, consistency, and the willingness to move forward.

Dancing with Wolves

Dancing with Wolves is a leadership guide for a new era, inviting readers —regardless of gender—to embrace the often-overlooked strengths of the feminine side. Drawing on Jessie Li’s transformative journey from engineering and investment banking into conscious leadership, it challenges the default masculine model of fear and competition, often the cause of burnout. Li’s turning point came when she shifted toward feminine leadership, prioritizing collaboration, emotional intelligence and authentic relationships, and witnessed powerful, positive change.

This guide introduces Li’s BALANCE framework, a practical path from building self-awareness to embodying authenticity. Discover the 11 Qualities of Feminine Power, such as leading with influence rather than dominance, trusting intuition, and embracing vulnerability as a source of strength. Practical strategies for navigating tough workplace dynamics— like handling disrespect or having your voice overlooked—equip you to respond with resilience and grace.

Dancing with Wolves doesn’t reject masculine leadership traits; instead, it offers a blueprint for combining ‘sage’ and ‘warrior’, leveraging decisiveness and structure when needed, while nurturing connection and creativity.

Through candid interviews with female leaders at all levels and across diverse industries, this guide explores how authentic, balanced leadership can reshape company culture and inspire teams. Ultimately, Dancing with Wolves empowers you to thrive at work and lead from your truest self—paving the way for workplaces where every voice matters and compassionate leadership is the norm.

Happy Break-Up Day

Aiah and Rina have always been the perfect pair. Dorm roommates. Best friends. College sweethearts. They’ve stuck with each other through thick and thin, for better and for worse, in happiness and in sadness—inseparable, unshakable, and set to face the world together.

But when Rina suddenly suggests they break up, Aiah agrees, though it’s a decision that cuts deeper than she’d like to admit. Still, loving someone means letting them go even if it hurts, and she’ll sacrifice anything for Rina’s happiness—even if it’s their four-year relationship. They even set a date for the breakup, because what better way to prepare for the inevitable heartbreak than by facing it head-on with a corporate-style plan? That’s what adults do, right?

Before the big day arrives, though, there’s still a couple’s bucket list for them to tick off. From studio photoshoots to road trips, Aiah and Rina still have a few more experiences to share, memories to be made, and painful truths to face.

The Black Cat Chronicles

When Jenphob Mahasiripan, a certified history geek with an incurable habit of following cats, chases a black feline through an old alley, he stumbles into 1930s Bangkok—and into the enigmatic Pawee Rattanatada.
The next morning, Jenphob wakes up back in his own timeline, almost convinced that his encounter with the charming Mr Pawee could only have been a dream. Until the mysterious gentleman appears in his time, cradling the cat that brought them together.

Through countless crossings of time, the two slowly forge a story for the ages. But can finders remain keepers when they are stealing moments from time itself?

Running out of Airtime

For more than thirty years, I was part of the legendary broadcast network, ABS-CBN, the first in Southeast Asia and long at the forefront of the region’s media landscape. In 1972, the network suffered its first tragedy. Ferdinand Marcos had declared Martial law and ABS-CBN was taken over by government forces. Thousands lost their jobs and the company’s owner was imprisoned. After the 1986 People Power revolution, it returned to air and went on to become the country’s most influential media conglomerate — only to fall again 34 years later to another tyrant bent on political vengeance.

From the moment he took office in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte regularly attacked journalists and singled out ABS-CBN, along with two other hard-hitting news organizations. His threats against the network would be implemented to their fullest promise in 2020 when its broadcast license expired, and the president moved heaven and earth to prevent its renewal.

Running Out of Airtime chronicles the events behind the shutdown of the Philippines’ biggest media company told by someone who lived through it, fought and lost, and survived. ABS-CBN is the only media company in Asia, and perhaps the world, to fall twice to two autocrats.

Apart from exploring its significant role in Philippine society and culture, and its enduring connection to its global audience, this book is the story of human beings who worked tirelessly to achieve greatness, stumbling along the way, rising again, undaunted and determined to push forward into a future where the only constant is uncertainty.

The Last Mango in Paris

What do we long for when home is no longer a place, but a memory?

In The Last Mango in Paris, Stephanie Zubiri weaves together personal essays, fictional stories, and lyrical reflections into a meditation on longing, identity, and belonging. Set between Paris and the Philippines, these interconnected pieces follow dreamers, lovers, exiles, and wanderers searching for meaning in the spaces between who they were and who they have become.

Threaded through every story is the mango—a symbol of sweetness, loss, memory, and transformation. As nostalgia collides with reinvention, Zubiri explores the bittersweet truth of migration, family, love, and self-discovery, revealing how life’s richest moments often emerge from what is bruised, broken, or left behind.

This is a love letter to places left behind, lives half-lived and fully felt, and the bittersweet beauty of savouring something before it slips away

I’m Sorry I Love You

Of all the boys Tammy Rin could fall for, her heart chooses the absolute worst one: her older sister’s boyfriend.

Cat is everything Tammy isn’t—popular, confident and effortlessly put together. And Connor Lu? Annoyingly handsome, impossible to ignore and completely off-limits. But after one too many days spent third-wheeling their dates, Tammy realises her harmless crush might not be so harmless after all.

Then Dylan arrives. The laid-back new transfer student is sweet, easy to talk to—and clearly falling for her. He should be exactly the distraction Tammy needs.

Except hearts rarely do what they’re told.

Now Tammy is caught between the boy she could choose and the boy she definitely shouldn’t, all while hiding a secret that could hurt the person she loves most.

Because following your heart is one thing. Breaking your sister’s is another.

Languishing Under Glass

What do you hold onto when the world keeps transforming around you?

Two years after her husband’s death, Leia Ooi is juggling parenthood, an ageing father, and a mother who has literally transformed into a two-toed sloth. Trapped between caregiving and abandoned ambitions, Leia feels herself slowly disappearing beneath the weight of grief and responsibility.

But as Singapore prepares to celebrate its ninetieth birthday, a mysterious new epidemic reignites old fears. When an impulsive action forces Leia and her mother to flee the authorities, an impossible journey compels her to confront the pain she has long buried. As reality begins to blur with the uncanny, Leia must decide what, and who, is still worth fighting for.

Warm, witty, and utterly unforgettable, Languishing Under Glass is a deeply human novel about grief, family, and finding hope in a world that refuses to stand still.

Women of POWERS

Women of POWERS journeys across the vast and varied landscapes of Asia, from the beaches of Singapore to the mountains of Nepal; from a daughter of a brewmaster in India to a daughter of a surgeon in Japan. These are the stories of women whose passion for science rose above gender roles, cultural expectations, and the constraints of limited resources, illuminating paths where none existed before.

This collection pays tribute to extraordinary women in STEM whose curiosity reshaped our understanding of nature, medicine, energy, and human resilience. They are molecular biologists who turned venom into healing compounds, physicians who stood on conflict borders to care for the displaced, chemists who decoded the secrets of disease, and engineers who reimagined the future of energy and sustainability. Their discoveries carry the power to heal bodies, restore dignity, and transform societies.

As Asia watched its first woman astronaut rise beyond the atmosphere, she carried with her a constellation of women whose eyes remain fixed on a star called, hope. These stories celebrate the quiet, unwavering spark, one that flickers in classrooms, laboratories, refugee camps, rural clinics, and research institutes across the continent.

Women of POWERS is a tribute to the past, present, and future women in STEM whose legacies continue to shape the scientific imagination of Asia. It is a reminder that brilliance does not emerge from privilege alone, but from courage, conviction, and the belief that science can build a better world for generations to come.

Single, Not Sorry

Over the course of a year, journalist Therese Reyes brunched and lunched with women across Asia, chewing on what it means to be single for women in their twenties and beyond. Blending these candid conversations with anecdotes of her chronically single existence and pop culture insights, Reyes undertakes a sincere exploration of the pressures surrounding marriage, the quiet joy of independence, and the friendships and family ties that sustain us. Wry, self-aware, and deeply honest, Single, Not Sorry is the reminder we need that life as the resident Loud Single Tita can be fulfilling—and damn fun.