Jom

17/10/2025

𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸: 𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟭𝟳𝘁𝗵 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱

🏥𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆: 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝙦𝙞 𝗯𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) thrived through self-organisation and community networks for more than a century before the Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Act 2000 and the creation of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners Board (TCMPB) in 2001 gave it official standing.

These moves institutionalised a hybrid legitimacy, acknowledging TCM’s cultural embeddedness while securing its place within the nation’s vision of modern, plural healthcare.

“The development of Chinese medicine in Singapore is a metaphor of Singapore,” wrote Yan Yang in “A brief history of Chinese medicine in Singapore”, describing it as a fusion of East and West that embodies “the interaction of Chinese influence and the British colonial legacy.”

The latest partnership between Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) takes this hybridity further. By integrating TCM into inpatient treatment, it explores how Eastern and Western systems can complement each other in pain management, rehabilitation, and palliative care.

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲:
🗣️ Shan v Pritam on identity politics and interference
✨ Michael Petraeus, establishment favourite
📖 Self-help with Chee Soon Juan
💼 SG Heritage Business Scheme
🧪 Elixir of youth at NUS
☀️ The history of coal v solar
🎨 Arts events for parents and kids

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-171025/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Shan clashes with Pritam in Parliament; Chee Soon Juan’s newest book; Old Chang Kee among those recognised as heritage businesses; TCM as part of holistic healthcare; the centuries long arcs of solar and coal power; events for pai kias and guai kias; and more.

14/10/2025

Some claim that tiny forests can bring relief from dangerous heat. Mere greenwashing? And even if not, can the concept grow roots in a city uncomfortable with wildness?

As Robin describes, this “urban reforestation technique” was popularised in 1970s Japan, which “was rapidly losing its native forests to urbanisation, and air and water pollution from heavy industry was so bad that illnesses were named after industrial cities—Yokkaichi asthma and Minamata disease, for instance. Greening solutions were urgently needed.”

In Singapore today, the impetus is different. We’re after the “organic air-conditioning” that microforests promise, in a city that is “heating at roughly twice the global average”. (Recently, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile issued a “heat hazard” regulation for the first time in an F1 race.)

But can microforests really proliferate across our built environment? What impact might they have? And what does it mean for us to relentlessly raze actual forests only to replace them with micro ones? Robin, in his first piece for Jom, interrogates these and many other important questions. Read it now: https://www.jom.media/can-microforests-cool-singapore/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Some claim that tiny forests can bring relief from dangerous heat. Mere greenwashing? And even if not, can the concept grow roots in a city uncomfortable with wildness?

10/10/2025

Migrant workers’ mental health; Tang Liang Hong passes on; what price a life in SG Inc; an exciting new local expedition to the depths of the Indian Ocean; our connections with Salem, the town known for 17th century witch hunts; and the arts community brainstorms ways to overcome costly rentals.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-101025/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Migrant workers’ mental health; Tang Liang Hong passes on; what price a life in SG Inc; an exciting new local expedition to the depths of the Indian Ocean; our connections with Salem, the town known for 17th century witch hunts; and the arts community brainstorms ways to overcome costly rentals.

07/10/2025

In her fourth essay for Jom, Ee Ming offers an incredible reportage on a micro-community of young Singaporean men, part of “this hustle-and-hype creator economy which can also feel like a bro-culture-dominated boys’ club”.

Her interviewees have all, in their own way, eschewed the traditional rat race for online entrepreneurial schemes (not scams) that have enabled them to grow rich. Many then seemingly share/sell their secret sauce to others through training courses. Their stories alone are worth your time.

But there’s much more. Ee Ming also interviews Singaporean sociologists and psychologists, contextualising the rise of this hustle culture against contemporary global trends, including shifting gender dynamics and roles as women’s participation in schools and workplaces has risen, and the influence of Western influencers and commentators, such as Andrew Tate, Ashton Hall and Hamza Ahmed, on young Singaporean men.

Read about the new Gen Z male hustle now: https://www.jom.media/the-new-gen-z-male-hustle/

Illustrations by Mirza Jaafar for Jom

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Young Singaporean men beset with economic anxiety, navigating changing gender norms, and fed on a social media diet of conspicuous consumption are charting new career paths both worrying and brave.

03/10/2025

What next for Gaza; SG treads a fine diplomatic line with HK activist; new scheme to support mums; Jane Goodall, primate extraordinaire; the first demo of human flight in Singapore; a death row poet; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-031025/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

What next for Gaza; SG treads a fine diplomatic line with HK activist; new scheme to support mums; Jane Goodall, primate extraordinaire; the first demo of human flight in Singapore; a death row poet; and more

30/09/2025

For a society that prides itself on deep thought and analytical rigour, our common base of knowledge on the death penalty is shockingly hollow. Many of us, socialised by decades of conservative views, just assume it’s necessary to keep Singapore “safe”—even though there’s no conclusive evidence, anywhere in the world, that it deters crime more than other punishments, such as life imprisonment.

This misconception is not just something to groan about over kopi, but one that has tragic consequences for our fellow humans and their families. When our team decided to begin work on this over a month ago, we had no idea it would be published a day after the state executed another person. This phrase is so overused that it risks becoming trite, but I plead with you to read it now afresh, slowly, and think about what it means: their blood is on our hands.

It’s a sensitive and taboo subject, not easy to discuss. Since the two parties in Parliament support it, contrarian views from abolitionists, including Jom, rarely get air time. Public discourse, if it even exists, is polarised. But we believe that’s all the more reason for us to lend our voice to the discussion.

Read our essay now. And please forward it to your friends. We’ve put it outside the paywall: https://www.jom.media/the-death-penalty-seeking-an-honest-conversation/

Photographs from Canva and screenshots from the 2016 film, “Apprentice”, courtesy of Boo Junfeng

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Deterrence and public opinion are used as justification for retaining the death penalty. We interrogate both notions, as we argue for abolition.

26/09/2025

The growing-up pains of a fifth-generation jet; Nepal’s uprising; still no recognition for Palestine; update from parliament; support schemes in a tumultuous job market; the great Boys’ Love craze; and more.

Photographs from Canva

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-260925/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

The growing-up pains of a fifth-generation jet; Nepal’s uprising; still no recognition for Palestine; update from parliament; support schemes in a tumultuous job market; the great Boys’ Love craze; and more.

23/09/2025

🗓️ September 16th, as Grace Fu, minister for sustainability and the environment, reminded us this week, is the birthday of both Lee Kuan Yew (in 1923) and the ministry she runs (in 1972). “53 years ago, Singapore was one of the first countries to form a Ministry of the Environment (or ENV) to tackle issues such as pollution control and environmental health,” she wrote.

🇸🇬🇲🇾 Less discussed here, let alone celebrated, is the fact that it’s also Malaysia Day, an important milestone in Singapore’s decolonisation journey. Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia on September 16th 1963, along with Sabah and Sarawak, after a highly contentious vote, thus loosening the yoke of the British Empire. (British forces mostly left only by 1971.)

💭 At Jom, we felt we could commemorate the day by sharing a story of a very Malayan family, one whose unique, cross-cultural, multi-layered identity could have been forged perhaps only in British Malaya. Sudarshana Chanda, a historian of empire, migration, and family in the Indian Ocean in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, unravels the ancestral roots of this family she interviewed and studied.

https://www.jom.media/tracing-ancestral-roots-adoption-belonging-and-identity-in-malaya/

Illustrations by Lou Shenna for Jom

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Despite colonialism’s incessant efforts to conjure and enforce new categories to better exploit vast populations, Malaya’s dizzying plurality could not be contained.

23/09/2025

Singapore yesterday reaffirmed its commitment to a two-state solution but said it will only recognise a Palestinian state “when there is an effective government that accepts Israel’s right to exist and categorically renounces terrorism”. A statement that ignores how Israeli occupation has long undermined effective Palestinian leadership and fostered conditions ripe for terrorism. Netanhayu’s government is perpetuating the malaise. In this chicken-and-egg situation, recognition must come first. Singapore also announced targeted sanctions on some settler groups. But none thus far for the cabinet’s settler extremists, such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir (who’ve been sanctioned by others).

Singapore’s moves will barely bother the Zionist establishment. Pragmatists will cheer the apparent skilled diplomacy: doing just enough to appease some Palestinian sympathisers here, while maintaining the vitality of the bilateral relationship. They’ll say it’s in our national interest to preserve military ties: Singapore buys weapons from Israel, and just 18 months ago Israeli defence manufacturers hawked their wares at the Singapore Airshow. Perhaps it’s also in our national interest to appease the Zionist business lobby, including Miriam Adelson of Las Vegas Sands, feted here two months ago as we broke ground on the extension of MBS.

Since the tragedy of Oct 7th 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza, now branded a genocide by genocide scholars, has revealed the theatricality and duplicity of global diplomacy on the Israel-Palestine question. Democratic leaders everywhere have relentlessly tweaked positions in response to events and domestic outrage, as we all sleepwalk towards a one-state solution. They take cover by blaming the veto-wielding US, which is eyeing its promised riviera in the promised land. What can each individual do in the face of such complex, gargantuan power? This moment demands, at the very least, that we are present, aware, awake to our condition, and not comforted by actions and words designed more to sedate us than to save starving, suffering Gazans.

We'll explore the issue more in "Singapore This Week" on Friday.

Photographs from Canva

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

19/09/2025

Most want NMPs to be elected; understanding our food better; Singapore’s red hot electric vehicle market; the role of submarines in SEA legends and myths; Ken Liu and RF Kuang at the Singapore Writers Festival; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-190925/

Photographs from Canva

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Most want NMPs to be elected; understanding our food better; Singapore’s red hot electric vehicle market; the role of submarines in SEA legends and myths; Ken Liu and RF Kuang at the Singapore Writers Festival; and more.

18/09/2025