KUALA LUMPUR (July 16): When the financial crisis bankrupted his wealthy family, Itthipat “Tob” Peeradechapan dropped out of college and took to the streets to sell chestnuts. Before long, he switched to seaweed, a snack he enjoys, and built up his brand from scratch. Taokaenoi – meaning "little boss" in Thai — is named such because Tob’s father joked that his son, then 18, would become one when he heard about his business plans. Taokaenoi turns 20 this year and Tob celebrated with a global fun fair in Bangkok recently. He talks about his plans for the company, developing new flavours, expanding within Thailand and the region, going global and the importance of the “secret sauce” behind his seaweed.  

Tunku Tan Sri Shahriman Tunku Sulaiman’s book, A Civil Life, focuses on his life in the Malaysian civil service and beyond. Shahriman, who turns 92 this year,  has served under three prime ministers — Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Hussein Onn — and kept diaries since the 1970s of his thoughts about the events happening in Malaysia and the people he encountered. His is the rare account of a civil servant who lived through the country’s major historic periods.

Can Mark Zuckerberg’s newly launched Threads dethrone Elon Musk’s Twitter, which has been plagued by controversy and technical problems? The microblogging app gathered more than 100 million sign-ups in less than a week since its launch on July 5. Zuckerberg’s “goal is to keep it friendly as it expands”. But is it as wholesome as it seems? Is it the Meta founder’s way of showing Musk, who challenged him to a physical cage fight, who has more clout, in the digital arena at least?

Read it all in the July 17 issue of The Edge Malaysia weekly.

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