Jom

09/06/2026

“Notes from a rental flat dweller” by Sakinah Safiee. Precarity, gossip, aspirations, and “Melayu makan Melayu”.

Illustrations by by Syafiqah Noorman for Jom and photographs from Canva

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05/06/2026

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟓𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔
𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹: 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗶-𝗟𝗮𝗽𝘀𝗲𝗱?
It’s a remarkable thing to pooh-pooh one of the world’s leading defence gabfests at said gabfest. But we live in remarkable times. At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Pete Hegseth, US secretary of war (gag) and former talk-show host, dismissed talking as a way out of international entanglements even as he talked about how recent talks between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have yielded a wobbly détente between the US and China. “Less Shangri-La, more ships, more subs” he tub-thumped while wishing “my counterpart was here”. Had D**g Jun, Chinese defence minister, been there, he would have been none too pleased at Hegseth’s reference to China’s “historic military build-up” and his demand for all allies to spend 3.5 percent of their GDP on defence—similar to what the US itself spends…

🇸🇬 Read read full blurb in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state, link in the comments section.

𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵:
🔨Pritam Singh
🔥 Charred foods
🏳️‍🌈 Pink Dot
🎥 Samarang, a 1933 movie
🎻 Lionel Tan, violist

Photograph from Wikimedia Commons

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

02/06/2026

How do we share space, culture, time, money, and other resources with each other?

Today’s column speaks to something that has probably annoyed every one of you at some point of your life. (And possibly on a weekly basis.) It’s a “fulfilment”, Serene told us, of something she said she’d do in her very first column: “to look at the norms, beliefs, and stories behind every day economic behaviours, and I mention bill-splitting explicitly.”

Jom belanja and read the piece now, link in the comments section.

Illustration by Lauren Cheung 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

29/05/2026

Singapore This Week: May 29th2026
Koh Poh Koon resigns; AI discourse needs caution, not just jubilation; better protection for individuals at risk of HIV exposure; legalising drugs in sport; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state, link in the comment section.

Photographs from Wikimedia Commons

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

26/05/2026

Yi Feng, an “intertidal explorer, climate activist, ecologist and fiction writer”, issues a clarion call for all who worry about our shrinking wild spaces, from the forests to the intertidal zones. His essay combines everything from descriptions of the pangolin’s habitat to screenshots of URA zoning maps that reveal imminent developments, and interviews with people with an intimate knowledge of the government’s method of environmental engagement and consultation.

Because of its urgency, we’ve put it outside the paywall—please read and share, link in the comments section.

Photographs by Choo Yi Feng, Francis Seow Choen, See Yong Feng, and from Wikimedia Commons and Shutterstock

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

22/05/2026

Singapore This Week: May 22nd 2026
Expectation and exhaustion in Singapore; the next mental health challenge; SQ321; pressing the button on nuclear energy; salvaging stories from shipwrecks; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state, link in comment section.

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

20/05/2026

What can 18th century Malay charms tell us about love, desire, and their erstwhile connections with the natural world?

Manuscripts from Special Collections, Leiden University Library, additional photographs and graphics from Canva, screenshots from Carousell, Fiverr, and Lazada

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

15/05/2026

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟏𝟓𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔
🎹 Why piano teacher is ranked the second best job in Singapore
🫱🏽‍🫲🏾 𝘗𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘪 𝘬𝘢𝘣𝘦𝘭, and the importance of social capital for Malay upward mobility
🌋 What the Mount Dukono tragedy says about the power of volcanoes, indigenous knowledge, and social media
🎸 Kira Peace, the busker on buses mining social conformity for social media engagement
💨 As we brace ourselves for a “Godzilla” El Niño, a look at its origins

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state, link in comment section.

Photograph 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

12/05/2026

From the Jews in Cochin to the Sindhis in Shanghai, one of the great characteristics, and triumphs, of port cities is as a safe harbour to microcommunities that migrate, congregate, propagate, and prosper. One of Jom’s values, meanwhile, is Diversity, which we interpret partly as a charge to “shine a light on issues and personalities typically under-represented in the media.”

Today’s piece, by Abhishek, Jom’s head of content and presumptive next editor, is a wonderful confluence of the two. Many of you might be familiar with Kadayanallur Street, along one end of Maxwell Food Centre, leading up to Ann Siang Road. But from where does it get its name?

Read on to learn the migratory history of a remarkable micro-community from south India, link is in the comments section.

Photographs courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore and from Wikimedia Commons

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

08/05/2026

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟖𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔
𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆: 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀’ 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗲, 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗪𝗠𝗣-𝗦𝗚𝗖𝗥
Tripartism may be working for the faithful, but not for many others. Dramatic demonstrations of resistance, like the “illegal strike” by bus drivers in 2012, capture the country’s attention. But away from the public’s eye, little perturbations by disparate groups of disgruntled employees have been steadily coalescing into a larger disturbance to the force. Awakened and energised by a new breed of youth activists, and spurred on by the success of 2022’s criticism of Watson’s alleged no-sitting policy, workers are fighting for their rights. Not just those enshrined yet unfulfilled by unscrupulous bosses—but also those that they believe they deserve in a caring, humane society.

Their defiant solidarity was on display at Hong Lim Park last week. Over 1,500 gathered for the fourth edition of the People’s Labour Day rally organised by Workers Make Possible (WMP), an activist group. In substance and form—worker booths festooned with petitions, protest stickers, and poetry; artworks strewn across the lawn; keffiyehs of varying colours and imaginative folds fluttering in the heart of the business district—it was a stark contrast to the predictable triumphalism of the PAP-NTUC bash.

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲:
💪🏼 Labour Day, top-down
🎖️State lotteries
😷Tuberculosis
🎧 1990s nostalgia
🖼️ Sense and sensuality in SG

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-080526/?utm_source=ifacebook&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=8may26

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

Two Labour Days in Singapore; winners and losers in state lotteries; the terrors of tuberculosis; historical nostalgia for tech-drenched Gen Zs; and more.