Dear reader,

Today we’ve published:

Letters. I’m glad that many of you are as thrilled as all of us at Jom about our first-ever regular column, Everyday Economics by Serene Koh. Rui Yin has written in with her appreciation. “I know my mum loves me dearly but I have always held the suspicion that a close second is discounted movie tickets for seniors.” Read her full letter.

This week, Singaporeans have been talking about Tommy Koh’s defence of Ong Beng Seng, “a good man and not a bad man”; a new scam tactic involving phishing through WhatsApp verification (take note!); and a Malaysian lecturer’s claim that Romans learned shipbuilding from Malays. Below are the issues we chose to explore in more depth.

“Singapore This Week”.

  • The expected gloating at the PAP Convention and Awards ceremony
  • Forget Oxley, KKH and Salmon’s Maternity Home are the real landmarks
  • Is Buy Now, Pay Later a good thing?
  • How can we cool sustainably in a world heating up?
  • The allure of autographs from our heroes, featuring RF Kuang

Read it now.

Join the over 2,000 paying members now to get access to all our content, starting from just S$10 a month.

Print issue No. 3. We sold our first batch of 160 copies. Today a new shipment arrives. Order it now. As with all our print issues, these are original essays, some of which will appear online sometime next year.

Commentary: “The bougainvilleas outside”, my (hopefully) last piece on 38 Oxley Road, outside the paywall at least for this weekend.

I’m as tired as you are. We should really stop talking about Lee Kuan Yew’s house. But given the news last week that it’s likely to become a national monument, I guess some response is needed. So today I’ve tried to think about what the entire saga says about us as a people. I had the privilege of visiting 38 Oxley Road once, and I begin with that experience. It’s under 900 words, my shortest-ever piece for Jom. (Dedicated to Mummy and the many others who say I’m long-winded.)

It’s been a whole eight years since this issue first captivated/annoyed us, when the two siblings published their explosive post about their brother. Lee family feud! I remember exactly where I was, on the tranquil Kerala backwaters with my extended family, when I first heard about it. An editor at Foreign Affairs reached out soon after, which led to my first piece on the issue. A couple of years later, given the one-sided reporting in the mainstream media, some in the opposition prodded me to investigate the issue more thoroughly. But what clinched it was when some senior members of the PAP also said the same. (Some others warned me against it.) In 2022, with the generous support of readers of my blog, and numerous contributors like Sonny Liew, who designed the cover art, I published “The battle over Lee Kuan Yew’s last will”.

And I do hope today’s commentary is my last on the issue. It’ll take four minutes of your time. Do reply if you have any thoughts! And if you enjoy it, please get a paid membership today. It’s the only way we can keep doing this work.

Jom fikir,
Sudhir Vadaketh, editor-in-chief
Jom

If you’ve enjoyed our newsletters, please scroll to the bottom of this page to sign up to receive them direct in your inbox.

Share this post