☕️ Google pumps RM651 mil into water project in Negeri Sembilan for community, and its own DC

1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈

2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢

CNY100 mil (RM60.92 mil) – Chinese e-commerce giant Taobao is investing that amount in promoting its 11.11 Singles’ Day sale in Singapore. The sale, which will run from Oct 20 to Nov 13, is the company’s biggest sale of the year, with the investment being part of its efforts to expand its presence in Singapore. The invested sum will be used for free-shipping vouchers, physical advertising on public transport in Singapore, and shopping vouchers for customers. The physical advertisements include about 200 big screens in the Central Business District and residential areas, with spending double the amount of 2025, according to Taobao’s Singapore country head Cora Cai.

More than 223 mil – According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, that’s the number of people in China aged 65 and above, accounting for nearly 16% of the country’s total population. Meanwhile, the number of children aged 14 and under was recorded at 213 mil. This meant that families in China were supporting more elderly people than children for the first time, a significant threshold as China grapples with an ageing population, which could have implications for families, pensions, and healthcare spending. China’s ageing population also means a shrinking workforce, with many watching for signs of how this will impact both the world’s second-largest economy and global growth as a whole. This issue could be due to several factors, including the “size of past birth cohorts” and longer life expectancy.

USD14 bil (RM56.81 bil) – Projected revenue of the global short-drama industry by the end of 2026, up from USD11 bil in 2025. China is the largest market for this form of entertainment, with the industry experiencing a boom in China right now. Tech giant ByteDance is seen as a big winner, as its apps accounted for 41.8% of the time users spent on China’s 50 biggest mobile apps in Aug, up from 34.2% a year earlier. Much of that growth came from Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and Hongguo, a streaming platform focused on short dramas launched in 2023. Hongguo ranks fourth among the country’s biggest apps, behind Douyin, Douyin Lite, and WeChat, with nearly 370 mil users as of June.

Re: Notice of Temporary Service Interruption

Dear Valued Readers,

Please be informed that The Coffee Break team is currently on a short break. Normal publishing operations will resume on Wednesday, 11 November.

Previously, we communicated our absence at the beginning of the newsletter. Based on the subsequent “Where is my newsletter?” enquiries, we acknowledge that this communication strategy has not achieved its intended KPIs.

Accordingly, we have escalated the announcement to a standalone section.

During this period, coffee consumption may continue as usual. Commentary on current affairs will need to be sourced internally.

Thank you for your understanding. We look forward to returning rested and sufficiently opinionated.

Best regards,
The Coffee Break Team

3. IN MALAYSIA 🇲🇾

SekolahKu puts school info in one place
Parents can now check school vacancies, overcrowding, programme availability and other information for more than 10,000 schools nationwide through the new SekolahKu portal (visit site here).

Developed by GovTech Malaysia under the Digital Ministry together with the Education Ministry, the portal lets users search for schools by location and view school profiles, statistics and available places. Parents can also check whether a school offers the Dual Language Programme, while pupils can look up preferred schools before applying. The portal covers schools across the country, including rural areas in Sabah and Sarawak. It also includes information on teachers, former pupils and learning resources.

Previously, parents often had to check separate school websites or contact education departments to get the same information. SekolahKu brings these details into one centralised platform. The Education Ministry will now be responsible for keeping the information up to date. The government said the centralised system should also reduce duplication, as schools and agencies will no longer need to build separate platforms carrying similar information.

SekolahKu sounds like a good, practical initiative - not a solution in search of a problem.

As for Tuju, the joke keeps running:

Palm oil boycott over haze could hit 242k smallholders
Malaysia’s palm oil industry supports more than 242,000 independent smallholder families, who together manage over 866,000ha of oil palm land across the country. The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) said this is why a blanket boycott over the transboundary haze could affect many people who were not responsible for the fires. The board was responding to a social media post by local celebrity Sharifah Sakinah, who urged the public to boycott palm oil-based products in response to the haze issue.

Smallholders, workers and businesses across the supply chain could all be affected. Palm oil is also a major export industry for Malaysia. The country exported RM112 bil worth of palm oil and palm-based products in 2025, up 2.9% from RM109 bil the year before. Lower demand could affect smallholder incomes, fruit collection, processing, mill operations and related jobs.

The board said action on the haze should instead focus on finding the sources of the fires, enforcing environmental laws and taking action against those responsible. Malaysia’s palm oil sector is also covered by the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification scheme. The updated MSPO 2.0 standard, introduced on Jan 1, 2025, covers environmental management, legal compliance, workers’ welfare, traceability and responsible production. The European Union recognised MSPO in Sept 2025 as a credible sustainability standard supported by a digital traceability system, although Malaysian producers must still meet EU legal requirements.

Google funds RM651 mil water project in Negeri Sembilan
Google is investing RM651 mil in new water infrastructure in Negeri Sembilan to support local communities and its upcoming data centre at Springhill Industrial Park in Port Dickson. Sounds nice but what’s the proportion like between for the community vs DC. The project will include an off-river storage reservoir and a water treatment plant capable of producing 65 mil litres of drinking water a day. The reservoir, located along the Linggi River, will store excess river flow and rainfall during wetter periods. The stored water can then be treated and supplied for domestic and commercial use, while also helping reduce flood risks in nearby flood-prone areas. During drier periods, the treatment plant can draw from the reservoir without disrupting the river’s natural flow. Gamuda will carry out the project together with the Negeri Sembilan state government and Syarikat Air Negeri Sembilan. Once completed, the facilities will belong to Menteri Besar Negeri Sembilan Incorporated (MBINS).

Google will also cover the full cost of electricity used by the data centre and the infrastructure needed to connect it to the power grid. The company said the project supports its global goal of replenishing 120% of the freshwater it consumes. Google also plans education and workforce programmes alongside the data centre, linking the infrastructure investment with skills development in Negeri Sembilan.

Survey: Malaysians marry later, households shrink
Malaysians are getting married later and living in smaller households, according to the latest national population and family survey. The Sixth Malaysian Population and Family Survey (KPKM-6) found that 50.6% of unmarried people said they had not found a suitable partner, while 47.2% pointed to financial reasons. Even so, more than eight in 10 unmarried respondents said they still intended to marry. Household sizes have also become smaller. The average fell from 4.0 people in 2014 to 3.8 in 2024. Over the same period, the average age at first marriage rose to 27.1 years for men and 24 years for women.

The cost of getting married has also increased. Average minimum wedding spending has risen from RM20,047 a decade ago to RM27,332. Childcare remains another major part of family life. Grandparents look after 25.3% of children aged six and below, while 17.5% attend childcare centres.

The survey, conducted every 10 years by the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN), is used to help shape future family policies and support programmes.

Bonus Read

Since we will be gone for a bit, we are adding this bonus long read. This is a very interesting 3-part article series (here and here, part 3 out next week) from Tong Kooi Ong The Edge on the country’s education - the structural mismatch between skills and market demand, educational quality gap, the credential trap and lain lain.

Worse still, and what has always has been my concern - the lack of STEM talent and interest, and more people pursuing generalist studies instead. Not downplaying such studies, but for civilisation/nation to advance, STEM knowledge is the foundation, the prerequisite.

The simple way I like to put it - an engineer can learn to be a business person whilst being an engineer but a business person can never learn to be an engineer whilst being a business person.

If you’re offended in someways, just know that space is limited here for me to elaborate on the context. If you are not, feel free to support us here. On hindsight and been through the very limited experience of my life, I should have studied STEM. Mummy was right, hate to say it.

4. AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

Trump: No more funding to Israel after year-end
US President ⁠Donald ⁠Trump said yesterday that he has made a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that ⁠Washington would no longer be providing funding to Israel after the end of this ‌year (averages USD4 bil a year). It was not immediately clear what form of aid Trump was discussing. But for Bibi to agree to it, there must be a better deal he gets in return #tinfoilhat. US military aid to Israel and campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups and individuals have become flashpoints for both Democrats and Republicans this year. The US House of Representatives defeated an amendment to cut off aid to Israel in Jul, despite nearly half of Democrats supporting it, reflecting a growing rupture between US progressives and Israel over its genocidal war in Gaza.

UK, Europe
Round two of fridge attack in Europe heats up
A second wave of suspected cyberattacks on refrigeration systems has occurred in Europe, with dozens of grocery stores in several European countries, including Sweden, Belgium and Estonia, reporting rising temperatures in their refrigerators. Swedish supermarket chain Coop confirmed that seven out of its more than 800 stores were affected. Belgian news outlet reported that one Delhaize manager had to discard the contents of her fridges and freezers. Carrefour said 15 of its 700 Belgian stores were affected, while Ikea said that it detected an incident in one store in Belgium. The incidents are strikingly similar to a massive cyberattack that affected internet-connected refrigeration systems at hundreds of French supermarkets last month, resulting in thousands of dollars' worth of food being discarded.

UK will grant EU students discounts, if it can join Made in Europe scheme
The UK government is prepared to spend as much as GBP450 mil (RM2.46 bil) a year to give students from the EU discounted university fees, but only if the bloc allows the UK access to its Made in Europe industrial programme - a protectionist industrial scheme, which will impose trade restrictions on countries outside the bloc. UK ministers hope that if such an agreement is reached at a Brussels summit later this month, it will unlock millions of pounds’ worth of benefits for British companies looking to do business in the EU. It would also show that PM Andy Burnham’s attempts to forge much closer ties with the bloc are paying off. EU officials say they want their students to pay fees of just over GBP9,000 a year rather than international fees, which can rise above GBP60,000. The demand briefly brought negotiations to a standstill this year, with British officials saying they had been blindsided by its inclusion in talks.

AI
ChatGPT vs GemGPT
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has failed to stop Singapore start-up Porolis Technologies from registering the name “GemGPT”, after an intellectual property tribunal ruled that sharing the letters “GPT” was not enough to establish its case. Porolis Technologies, a company that uses artificial intelligence to assess gemstones, was also awarded SGD10,000 (RM31,758) in costs, including disbursements. According to the decision, Porolis said it chose “Gem” to refer to gemstones and “GPT” to describe its use of generative AI models. Its service is neither built on nor powered by OpenAI’s models. OpenAI argued that GemGPT conflicts with its earlier registered ChatGPT trademarks, and that the name increases the likelihood of public confusion, harm to its well-known logos and an allegation that Porolis had applied for the name in bad faith. If you are wondering, GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. This case is an interesting read.

AI tokens hot selling on Singles’ Day festival
Singles’ Day, China’s major shopping festival known for discounts on cosmetics and home appliances, now has a hot new product: computing credits used to access artificial intelligence tools. This is the first time AI token packages have been offered as a significant consumer product category during Singles’ Day, the world’s largest shopping festival originally held on Nov 11 each year.

Top live-streamer Austin Li sold 100,000 monthly memberships of Alibaba’s QwenWork office AI service within half an hour during a Taobao Live broadcast on Nov 2, which is equivalent to about two tril AI tokens, or units of text processed by AI models. Turns out that Chinese consumers have become accustomed to using AI productivity tools. Frequent users can run short of credits and may buy them in bulk during sales such as Singles’ Day.

Shorts:

1. Knocking on the zeptoverse door
   Scientists running research at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) on the Swiss-French border have discovered signals from the smallest scale of nature ever explored – 100 bil times smaller than an atom. The world is so small that some physicists have nicknamed it the zeptoverse. The discovery was obtained from an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a vast machine in CERN that smashes particles such as protons together to break them apart and discover what is inside them. The shrapnel from the collisions is studied, and one was a short-lived beauty particle containing a beauty quark. It exists for about 1.5 trillionths of a second before decaying into other particles. Despite its short lifetime, researchers detected signals associated with interactions at a scale of around a billion-trillionth of a metre.
   Scientists said that the results are important because they could help them develop a new, more complete theory of how the Universe works.

2. Fossilised red blood cells found in 115 mil-year-old dinosaur’s bone
   Researchers in Australia have claimed that they have discovered fossilised red blood cells of a dinosaur, after analysing the hind leg bones of a small, meat-eating dinosaur, Aratasaurus, that lived and died in what is now north-eastern Brazil 115 mil years ago. However, such a claim was debated by the scientific community and is considered controversial because biological tissues and molecules can break down fast, leaving little or no trace in ancient fossils. Nevertheless, if confirmed, this would open up entirely new avenues for scientists, allowing them to investigate dinosaur blood, metabolism and even their activity levels. And making Jurassic Park a reality.

   Read the full study here.

3. 'Mogging' is Collins' word of the year
   A fast-growing slang word “mogging”, widely used among members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, has been named as word of the year by the Collins English Dictionary. Mogging - not to be confused with mugging or mugging someone off - refers to outshining or dominating someone, most often in looks. You may even have mogged someone or been mogged yourself over the past 12 months. The word has gone mainstream in 2026 with a 210% increase in its usage and is used as a playful put-down or a compliment, depending on the context.

5. FOR YOUR EYES 📺

1. 118 Mall finally open. First look inside. Looks nice. On the ground, looks like a bit of a mess - collapsed hoarding, leaking water fountain, missing letters - watch here.

2. A good risk-reward investment chart by Mr Money. However, legendary investor Howard Marks (I’m a big fan on his thought process) has an interesting view on the concept of ‘high risk, high return’, “one of the wrongest”. Risk does not automatically produce higher returns. If riskier assets reliably produced high returns, they wouldn’t be risky. Some of Marks’ wisdom here.

3. The real psychological definition of trauma bonding explained - not the Gen Z definition where peers connect over common struggles. This is the tool of politicians to manipulate the wider population. Learn more here.

4. Last one before we sign out for the week. Have a good week and Happi Deepavali Malaysia!