Dear Jomrade,
Today we’ve published:
- “Singapore This Week”, by Jom
- “Postcard from Helsinki: ‘How much do I need to know about you to trust you?’”, by Corrie Tan
- “Party games”, Episode 2 of “The Neighbourhood Boy” podcast
Psst. We’ve just soft-launched our metered paywall. What does that mean? All of you, who are on Free memberships to Jom, can now read one paid piece a month. Try it out! Let me know if you have any issues. Of course, we’re hoping the taster convinces you to convert to a paid membership.
As Singapore turned 61 last Sunday, I was drawn to two performances, both by women, celebrating our connection to the sea.
At the National Day Parade (NDP) in Kallang, Asnida Daud, an Orang Laut artist, sang Aok Diko (“Yes of course!”), alongside drummers and some 700 performers. It’s perhaps the culmination of years-long activism by the Orang Laut, our indigenous seafaring people who once inhabited and freely roamed the Southern Islands and coastal regions before—well, yes, before being turfed out by development in all its guises, from reclamation to refineries.
We should cherish both the performance and the necessary debates about whether an NDP appearance represents calculated co-option or genuine recognition of a once fringe group. (No pushing of indigenous rights, ok?) We’re certainly at a point, joyfully, where these deep interrogations can occur.
The same day, over 2000km away in Manado, Sulawesi, freediver Patricia Ong set a new national record of 85m in freediving’s constant-weight discipline, besting compatriot Michelle Ooi’s previous mark, and also the men’s national record, by 2m.
Freediving is an extreme sport that always blows my mind. How to hold your breath for so long??? Kudos, Patricia, who yesterday told Jom that she’s keen to see how short workshops in freediving, “using the breathing (or not breathing) we do”, can help people overcome corporate stress. We write about the sport, and Patricia, in “Singapore This Week”.
“The Neighbourhood Boy” podcast. Episode 2, “Party games”, is out today. Synopsis: ten years ago, many other men were ahead of Lawrence Wong in the race to become Singapore’s fourth prime minister. How did he pip them? Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Recall, “The Neighbourhood Boy” is a four-episode series on Lawrence Wong, Singapore’s fourth prime minister. It’s our first podcast, so reply and let me know what you think! We’re building Jom together.
- Escape from paradise, featuring Lim Tean
- How might transhumanism and “longevity capitalism” affect social cohesion?
- Are pets to blame for our low TFR?
- Freediving with Patricia Ong, who holds eight national records
- Nadagamic, the new international Tamil theatre festival
Above are the issues we chose to explore in more depth.
Other news this week included: Singapore Red Cross pledges S$50,000 in aid to quake-hit Colombia; Tommy Koh leaves MFA after 55 years; Lee Hsien Loong on SG’s unique approach to lawmaking and electoral schemes (and the rebuttals); WP chief Pritam Singh, a non-practising lawyer, struck off rolls over conviction for lying; cash handouts for over 2.4m citizens; AI boom boosts GDP growth forecast; AI courses compulsory for all NUS undergrads; ST investigation into Chen Zhi’s global scam syndicate; the Fun Coffee investment scam; Johor investigating firms for allegedly dumping waste from SG in Pontian; LawSoc under fire for lack of transparency over leadership failings; poly grads’ start-up makes it to Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator; more accessible healthcare—clinics within 2km—for migrant workers; Bhutanese nurses here; restaurant apologises for foraging from Changi’s inter-tidal zones; home-grown gelato Tom’s Palette shuts after 21 years; 72-year-old Singaporean kidnapped in Malaysia rescued; asteroid named after Singaporean astronomer; ST poll of young Singaporeans’ aspirations; ST commentary on autism in the workplace; CNA investigation on people who hurt their families—and then seek help; ST multimedia piece on “The designs that made Singapore”; SG’s ginger collection; and a Sunda slow loris released into the wild.
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“Postcard from Helsinki: ‘How much do I need to know about you to trust you?’”, by Corrie Tan
Last year, when Corrie, Jom’s arts editor, told us she’d been accepted for a one-year post-doc fellowship in the arts at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, we were jealous. As she writes today: “Our cohort of academics was largely left to our own devices, to pursue ‘curiosity-driven research’ and, as is the institution’s tagline, to have ‘the freedom to think’.”
Getting funded to think? Dream job. We also immediately said: ok, you gotta write us a postcard. Finland (and the other Nordics) occupy Singaporeans’ imagination for various reasons, including the quality of their early education, notions of happiness, and for leftists, ideals about redistribution.
Eschewing all the generalisations, this piece has Corrie at her literary best. We follow her as she forages for mushrooms and adapts to nudity in the (single-gender) saunas; as she chats with Finns mocking the inadequacies of their welfare state and Filipino migrants struggling for acceptance into the system; as her “demonstrative” self brushes up against the “inscrutable visage” of “Finnish emotion”; and as she interrogates notions of happiness, Finnish history, and, the delightful range of words and phrases they have for the human condition. The throughline, as the title suggests, is simply about trust.
Given Singaporeans’ current fascination with saunas and cold dips, I’ll leave you with this passage:
“The Finnish sauna isn’t a spa. It could be a moment to decompress from the week’s work. It could be a 10-minute post-gym comedown before you hop into the shower. It could be a date night. It could be a post-cook, pre-dinner quiet time. It could be a two-hour gabfest, your entire party shuttling between a terrace stocked with beers and various saunas promising different tiers of communality. You could sauna with neighbours in the basement of your apartment block, or on an uninhabited rock in the middle of the ocean where your ancestors happened to build a sauna for stranded kayakers. You could sauna in your university dorm or in a plush villa with an ocean view. The Finns were prepared for an aggressive environment: they built three million saunas. Finns won’t sit next to you on the bus, but they will certainly squeeze themselves into any available inch on a cramped sauna bench. Jos sauna, viina ja terva eivät auta, tauti on kuolemaksi, the saying goes: ‘if sauna, vodka and tar can’t help you, you’re pretty much dead’.”
Jom fikir,
Sudhir Vadaketh
Editor-in-chief, Jom
Jom’s Postcard series
Faris Joraimi
Liting Tan
See Yong Feng
Zafirah Mohamed Zein
Singapore This Week
Society: Smells Like Tean Spirit
The distance from Singapore to peninsular Malaysia, across the Johor Strait, is under a kilometre at its closest—the century-old causeway links two vastly different cities. Johor Bahru’s relationship to Singapore is akin to Tijuana’s to San Diego, or Poipet’s to Thailand. Lower costs and laxer policing foment the febrile atmosphere of the border town, at once liberating and edgy.
Fugitives fleeing Singapore have long headed north. The 1915 Sepoy Mutiny saw hundreds of Indian soldiers rebel against presumed British plans to pack them off—as they did millions from the subcontinent—to the dastardly, horrific first world war. The mutineers, having killed scores of civilians, were rounded up with the help of ragtag allies of the time—including the Japanese and Russians, as well as the Royal Johor Military Force plucking off the northward-bound. Some 15,000 people watched the public execution of 47 mutineers outside Outram Prison.
From the 1940s, the tightening grip first of the British, and then the newly-independent states of Malaysia and Singapore, saw scores of communists, real and alleged, seeking refuge to the north, many eventually being pushed all the way to Thailand. Tan Chay Wa, for instance, was a senior official at the Malayan National Liberation Army (whose roots were in the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army). Tan fled Singapore, was found with firearms on a vegetable farm in Johor in 1979, and executed by the Malaysians. Tan’s brother was himself later arrested by Singaporean authorities for allegedly inscribing a subversive message on Tan’s Chua Chu Kang tombstone—the plot for 2024’s “Small Hours Of The Night” (banned here).
Tan Pin Pin’s “To Singapore, With Love” (also banned), features interviews with other exiles, many spirited away to the UK in the 1970s, and for whom Johor Bahru has assumed a different geographic purpose: a sanctuary as close to home as they can get. The subaltern murmurs with excitement, and leftist luminaries amble across the causeway, when one draws near, such as Tan Wah Piow’s appearance in Johor Bahru this March.
Perhaps the marquee escapee of our times was Mas Selamat Kastari, an alleged Jemaah Islamiah militant who, unlike the aforementioned exiles, posed a clear security threat. In 2008 he jumped out of a toilet window in the Whitley Detention Centre—one of our most secure facilities—walked 5km along the highway, boarded a bus for Woodlands while wearing a pillowcase to disguise himself as a woman, and then swam across the Johor Strait using an improvised floatation device made from plastic bottles. He moved around different militant safehouses in Johor before being arrested over a year later.
Set against such mythologies, the story of Lim Tean’s abscondment this week is a damp squib. The lawyer and leader of People’s Voice was due to begin a 13-week jail term on August 3rd for practising law without a valid certificate. He didn’t show up. His own lawyer didn’t know where he was. Singapore issued an arrest warrant. And last Thursday, the Malaysians arrested him in Johor Bahru. Two others who allegedly helped him escape were charged.
Many questions might long remain unanswered. Did he not have the stomach for 13 weeks in jail? Tean has often projected the aura of a spiky, right-wing firebrand, given the way he lambasts civil servants and other politicians, and his willingness to stoke nativism and xenophobia for political gain (regularly railing against “CECA Indians”). Someone more likely to turn the jail into a pulpit than the sorry-looking, disheveled ‘unker’ filmed lumbering from a Malaysian cop car to a Singaporean one. And why did he hang around JB, teeming as it is with fellow Singaporeans, and whose state’s officialdom is so close to Singapore? Indeed, Johor Bahru today vies to be like Shenzhen, China, more up-and-coming sibling than border backwater. Perhaps this was simply the latest in a long line of misjudgements by a rather forgettable character.
Other stuff we like
Maju For The People rally, 330pm this Sunday, at Hong Lim Park. SG Climate Rally is organising a rally, building “on the momentum from advocacy efforts to save Maju and Gillman forests from redevelopment”. It’ll feature speakers from a variety of backgrounds, including ecology, journalism, and the literary arts. Read the campaign paper; and make your presence felt.
SQ21 - Singapore Queer Families in the 21st Century. Book launch at Studio Ong, August 22nd, 6-9pm.
“MULTIPLE BAD THINGS” (Aug 21st-22nd) by Australia’s Back To Back Theatre. Set in a placeless warehouse, three employees approach a possibly pointless task. As the employees struggle to work together, they grapple with questions of inclusion and identity. Part of The Studios by Esplanade.
Should we be rewarded for exercising, reading and doing good? Serene Koh, behavioural scientist and Jom’s Everyday Economics columnist, appears on a CNA podcast to discuss an issue that’s caught the public imagination.
A flavour of Jom. Occasionally, Jom publishes essays outside the paywall. These are on issues we think are in the public interest, and deserve a wider airing. In the past two years, we have published nearly 50 such pieces. Read some of these if you’d like to see samples of our work. We hope they’ll convince you to subscribe. And even if you’re here with no intention of doing so, we hope you’ll enjoy these offerings and consider it time well spent!
