But Milan, like any honest city, doesn’t let you pretend. Brutalism has always been described as raw concrete and hard edges, but what it really stands for is truth. Structure exposed. Nothing hidden. And that is exactly what Milan revealed to me, not in its buildings, but in the reality of trying to build something there while running a business here.

You can’t stretch yourself across continents without the right foundation. You can’t build something lasting on something that isn’t stable. So I pulled back. Not because the dream changed, but because it needed to be built properly.

It has now been almost two years since I stopped travelling. A self-imposed pause. No constant movement, no romantic back-and-forth between cities. Just staying still long enough to face what actually needs to be done. Building a team that can stand on its own. Creating structure where there wasn’t enough. Putting in place what brutalism, in its truest sense, demands: a solid base. I underestimated that part.

Opening stores is visible. It feels like progress. Building a team is slower, quieter, and far less glamorous, but it is the only thing that makes everything else real. And so Milan shifted.

It is no longer a place I go to. It is a place that lives in how I see. I spent three months there over the course of a year, walking without urgency. Courtyards hidden behind heavy doors. Markets where form follows function without trying to impress. Tables, textures, small details that carry a certain weight because they are not overdesigned.

There is a kind of restraint in Milan. A confidence that doesn’t need decoration. And within that restraint, there is also imperfection, surfaces that age, materials that show use, edges that are not corrected. That same honesty that we see in batik, where nothing is ever exactly aligned, where the hand is always visible. That connection stayed with me.

It made its way into this collection, not as something literal, but as a way of working. Less correction, more acceptance. Less control, more trust in the process. Letting things be slightly off, slightly raw, because that is where character comes in.

The dream is still there.
To have a home there, not just a footprint.

But next time, it will stand on something stronger. A team that can carry the business without me needing to be everywhere at once. A structure that allows growth without collapse. Something that, like brutalism at its best, is honest in its construction and built to last.

Some dreams don’t disappear. They just wait until you are ready to build them properly.

Instead, we stare at Instagram, answer WhatsApp messages we could perfectly reply to after landing, and convince ourselves that being “reachable” at 35,000 feet somehow means we are winning at life. Always one step ahead. But perhaps, occasionally, it’s not such a bad thing to be one step behind.

Which is exactly why Going Places, the in-flight magazine by Malaysia Airlines, deserves a little more credit.

Because surprisingly, it’s actually a really nice magazine.

Not the kind you politely flip through during turbulence before returning to your phone. Properly nice. The design is beautiful, the photography is thoughtful, and the articles are genuinely interesting. Someone clearly cared while making it, which already makes it slightly revolutionary these days.

And yet hardly anyone opens it.
It just sits there quietly in the seat pocket while we continue watching strangers reorganise their kitchens on TikTok or typing messages that can almost certainly wait another two hours. Which is a shame, really. Because Going Places is full of the sort of things that make travel exciting in the first place. Beautiful resorts. Great restaurants. Places you suddenly want to visit. Small discoveries you probably would never have searched for yourself because the algorithm was too busy feeding you things you never asked for.

There is also something strangely comforting about reading a physical magazine on a flight. You slow down a little. You turn pages. You pause. You accidentally discover something interesting instead of being told what to look at next.

So the next time you fly, maybe look up from your phone for a moment.

You don’t necessarily have to talk to your neighbour. Let’s not get too ambitious.

But at least open the magazine.
It’s actually worth your time.

And as a small side note, we are especially proud this month, because Nala Designs happens to have an ad featured in this bi-monthly issue as well.

Each space carries its own mood and its own way of presenting the world, and while many people experience just one, we have always felt that the full picture only reveals itself when you begin to move between them.

This weekend, we are inviting you to do exactly that. With any purchase at any one of our three stores, you may receive a handmade passport. These passports are made in Malaysia, printed with our hand-drawn patterns, and no two are exactly the same. They are not designed as something transactional, but as something to carry, something that marks the beginning of a small journey.

The passport gives you access to the other two locations, but it only works if you bring it with you. As you move from one store to the next, it will be marked along the way, and at each stop something will be revealed. The first step simply begins the journey. The second offers something you will use. The third holds something you cannot buy. We prefer not to explain it further, as part of the experience is in discovering it for yourself.

There is something we have always believed, which is that inspiration does not suddenly appear when you arrive somewhere. It begins much earlier, in the moment you decide to go, to explore, to see more than what is immediately in front of you. This is a small way of bringing that idea to life, across three spaces that are connected, but rarely experienced together.

We have made only a limited number of these passports available, and they will be released across all three stores from Friday to Sunday. Once they are gone, the journey closes with them.

The landscape hasn’t changed, and that’s exactly the point. In front of the resort, there’s still that wide stretch of reclaimed land that feels almost untouched. It looks like a nature reserve, and the openness immediately slows everything down.

Then there are the houses.

Not replicas, but original kampung houses from across Malaysia, carefully dismantled, moved, and rebuilt. Every time we stay in one, we notice something new. The way the light comes in, the texture of the wood, the proportions. It all feels grounded and real.

This is the quiet vision of Narelle McMurtry. Preserving these houses and allowing people to actually live in them, rather than just admire them from a distance, is what makes this place so special.

We stayed for three nights this time, filming during the day and settling in properly in the evenings. The rooms are comfortable, the food is consistently excellent, and yes, the mashed potatoes are still some of the best. Add a really good wine selection, and it becomes very easy to stay exactly where you are.

What stands out most is the quiet. Not the kind you notice immediately, but the kind you feel after a while. You stop checking your phone. You stop planning what’s next. You just stay.

It’s one of those places that doesn’t change much, and that’s why you keep coming back.

And every time, the same thought returns: we should be here more often.

We packed up the team and drove to The Sticks in Kuala Kubu Bharu, and it turned out to be one of the most heartwarming company trips we have ever had.

Of course there was drama. There is always drama when I am involved. It would not be authentic otherwise. But somewhere between the river, the trees, the food, the laughter, and an unexpectedly competitive game of truth or dare, something shifted.

Truth or dare was not exactly in the official itinerary, but it might as well have been. There is nothing like a slightly dangerous question in front of your colleagues to accelerate bonding. Walls came down. Stories came out. People surprised each other. We laughed more than we expected to.

After doing the Forum, I made a new commitment to give the team more of a voice. A voice in who we hire. A voice in how we build team spirit. The idea is simple. We either win together or we lose together. There is no solo victory in a real team.

This trip felt like the cherry on the cake. We had new team members with us, and instead of easing them in slowly through meetings and briefings, we threw them into a river, a cabin, and a circle of truth or dare. It worked.

The Sticks is the perfect setting for something like this. Wooden houses tucked into forest, a river running through the property, trees everywhere you look. When you are surrounded by that much green, your nervous system changes.

Trees release phytoncides, which are natural compounds emitted by plants to protect themselves from insects and bacteria. When we breathe them in, they have been shown to reduce stress levels, lower blood pressure, and strengthen the immune system. It is one of the reasons “forest bathing” in Japan became such a phenomenon. Being in nature is not just poetic. It is biological.

We had a proper dose of it.

There was a flowering tree near where we gathered that stopped me in my tracks. It felt symbolic somehow. Beautiful, slightly wild, completely at ease in its environment. The food was comforting and generous. The river reset all of us. Phones were forgotten for longer than usual.

And most importantly, we became closer.

It is amazing how a shared weekend away can change the tone of a team. Conversations are softer. Trust is deeper. There is more understanding in the room.

Sahin was right.

Sometimes you just need to leave the office, step into the forest, breathe in the trees, and ask each other truth or dare.