Jom

15/07/2025

Why did Ho Ching, former boss of Temasek and member of Singapore’s first family, write that bizarre Facebook post belittling Singapore’s pre-1819 significance? We’re not quite sure. One theory has it that there’s a little extended family feud involved. Kwa Chong Guan, nephew of Kwa Geok Choo, Lee Kuan Yew’s wife, is one of the historians behind Singapore: A 700-Year History, whose thesis is one of several that debunk Ho’s preferred narrative.

Whatever her motivations for doing so, it’s offered us all an opportunity to meditate on important concepts about our history, including the notion that the contemporary, territorial nation-state lens is necessarily the one through which we should understand ourselves—and that enigma called “Singapore”.

As Faris Joraimi and Sudhir Vadaketh write in this week's essay,“...the more serious issue is the way we judge the past based on the standards of the present. These are standards laid down by modern, territorial nation-states that were never the default condition of human existence. Even the most thriving port-cities in old South-east Asia were tiny relative to today’s metropolises. Yet for over a thousand years, these little emporia played a vital role in international trade and politics…

But because we live in a time of territorial nation-states, history is often told as the story of how nation-states came to be. The past must always be backward and uneventful until the nation brought us into the bright dawn of history’s stage.”

This piece, then, is less a critique of Ho’s words than a call to reimagine historical concepts and approaches. With less than a month to go before SG60, it’s an appropriate time to read it.

https://www.jom.media/living-with-tumasik-and-temasek-meditations-on-our-national-history/

Photograph licensed by artists Mark Chua and Lam Li Shuen

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

Debates about Singapore’s pre-1819 significance, sparked by Ho Ching, offer us a chance to question the very notion of a national history

11/07/2025

Understanding South-east Asia; PSP renewal; challenges in a cashless society; teenagers target “paedophiles”; Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s “Nightingale Wards”; Singapore at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; tensions in the gig economy; and more.

Photographs from Canva and Wikimedia Commons

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-110725/

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

Understanding South-east Asia; PSP renewal; challenges in a cashless society; teenagers target “paedophiles”; Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s “Nightingale Wards”; Singapore at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; tensions in the gig economy; and more.

08/07/2025

A Singaporean transgender journalist describes how we can all use words that are more inclusive and empowering in our work—and our everyday lives.

https://www.jom.media/regardless-of-language-gender-and-worldview-the-road-to-trans-inclusive-reporting/

Illustrations by Lee Wan Xiang for Jom and 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

A Singaporean transgender journalist describes how we can all use words that are more inclusive and empowering in our work—and our everyday lives.

04/07/2025

Great Eastern insurance exclusion could hurt public healthcare, Certis’s failed attempt to surveil own security officers on MC, Ho Ching’s provocative take on SG history snubbed, Wild Rice refutes suggestion that ‘Homepar’ glamourises drug use, Alibaba joins SG AI race, and more.

Photographs from Canva and Wikimedia Commons

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-040725/

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

Great Eastern insurance exclusion could hurt public healthcare, Certis’s failed attempt to surveil own security officers on MC, Ho Ching’s provocative take on SG history snubbed, Wild Rice refutes suggestion that ‘Homepar’ glamourises drug use, Alibaba joins SG AI race, and more.

03/07/2025

Join Yale's Sunil Amrith in conversation with Faris Joraimi, Jom’s history editor, about The Burning Earth, which “twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs.”

We’re organising the event in collaboration with SG Climate Rally. For those of you who want an extended meditation on the topic, do join early for a casual Book Club session led by SGCR’s Isaac Neo and Choo Yi Feng. Tickets are free but you have to register (link in bio).

🗓️July 30th, Wednesday
📍Monk’s Brew Club, 57, East Coast Road, S(428773)
📖5:30-7pm: Book Club led by SGCR’s Isaac Neo and Choo Yi Feng
💬 7-9pm: Sunil Amrith in conversation with Faris Joraimi
✍🏼Register now at jomcakapsunilamrith.peatix.com (link in bio).

Photographs from Canva, Wikimedia Commons and by Mara Lavitt for Sunil Amrith

We strive to organise these “Jom cakap” sessions in a financially sustainable way, while keeping them as inclusive as possible.

01/07/2025

The unequal division of less visible forms of domestic and caregiving work among married couples may be preventing either partner from achieving the best experience of family life and individual fulfilment.

https://www.jom.media/seeing-the-unseen-distribution-of-domestic-thought-and-emotion-work/

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

The unequal division of less visible forms of domestic and caregiving work among married couples may be preventing either partner from achieving the best experience of family life and individual fulfilment.

30/06/2025

At last week’s sold-out Jom event, Sue-Lin Wong, Asia correspondent at The Economist and host of two long-form narrative podcasts, was in conversation with Corrie Tan, our arts editor, about “Scam Inc”.

𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬:
💊There are worrying parallels between the drug and scam industries, between the rise of narco states in Latin America in the 1990s and the rise of scam states in South-east Asia today.

SEA has become the industry’s epicentre. There are the vulnerable, English-speaking Filipinos aspiring to better jobs, who provide a ready supply of low-level (unwitting) scammers; the Chinese factory bosses operating in contested border zones; and the Singaporean money mules, lured to (unwittingly) launder money for the Chinese ganglords.

“You have to deal with every single part of this scam chain, as I’ve called it, and no government realistically has really done that, because everything is transnational.”

🧑‍💻 Trafficked humans are being replaced by willing scammers, including perhaps AI specialists.

👤 The loneliness epidemic is one of our contemporary conditions that makes us vulnerable to merciless, psychological exploitation.

These are extremely sophisticated criminals, Wong said, with “so much knowledge and professional scripts and literally textbooks on human psychology to manipulate all of us.”


🇭🇰 The role of the CCP: evidence of contact is not evidence of control.

On the one hand, the CCP has a “long and complicated relationship with Chinese organised crime”, going back decades. On the other hand, Wong said,

“I personally haven’t come across really hard evidence to show that that relationship has continued into Scam Inc.”

🇸🇬 Singaporeans apparent susceptibility to scams may be partly due to just better data, alongside a government that’s doing more than any other to combat it.

Our relative wealth and the “high levels of trust in authority”—and thus those who pretend to represent it—could be two reasons for our high recorded scam losses. But the other reason is the government’s determined efforts to track the crimes. “There’s actually data in Singapore showing how many people are losing money, whereas there are many other countries where the police aren't even collecting this…Singapore at least acknowledges there is this massive scam chain, and that's why it has this Anti-Scam Centre that puts a lot of these different players in the same room.”

🔑 Establishing a “code word” with your family, as Sue-Lin has done with hers, is one of several precautions we each can and must take to protect ourselves.

Since even your voice can be cloned by AI, establish a family “code word”. So if you get a call from a supposed relative requesting money, ask them for the family code word. If you or those you love fall for a scam, it’s important to be supportive of each other and not “victim blame”.

What else can you do? Read on: https://www.jom.media/jom-cakap-scam-inc-featuring-the-economists-sue-lin-wong/

24/06/2025

About 700 people showed up at Hong Lim Park for The People’s Labour Day Rally organised by Workers Make Possible. We spoke to Jaya Anil Kumar, the senior research and advocacy manager of HOME, to learn more about the organisation, and about how Singaporeans can advocate for migrant workers’ rights.

BTW, Jom will be on a partial break this week and will not be publishing our weekly essay or "Singapore This Week". Stay tuned for our usual newsletter as well as our next video.

Photographs and videos from Canva and 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

23/06/2025

𝘑𝘰𝘮 is hiring!

We're looking for a part-time community manager, who will be responsible for ensuring that 𝘑𝘰𝘮’s readers and followers are taken care of. In terms of comradeship and solidarity, this is a hugely important role, as we are all, from editors to readers, building this organisation together.

Please e-mail your CV to [email protected]. Cover letter is optional.

Applications close on July 11th, 2025. The full job description is up on our website: www.jom.media/join-us-as-community-manager (link in bio).

20/06/2025

NGO exposes horrible worker exploitation; the deplorable practices of Singtel-owned Optus; storied soup shop closes; Singapore swaps land with Johor regent; enabling arts access for all; Indonesia’s new sovereign wealth fund; and more.

Photographs from Canva and Moonrise Studio, courtesy of Arts House Limited

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-200625/

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

NGO exposes horrible worker exploitation; the deplorable practices of Singtel-owned Optus; storied soup shop closes; Singapore swaps land with Johor regent; enabling arts access for all; Indonesia’s new sovereign wealth fund; and more.

17/06/2025

A production of breathtaking ambition and riveting quality, “Secondary: The Musical” lifts the curtain on the toll our education system takes on teachers and students alike.

https://www.jom.media/triaging-the-singapore-education-system-the-primary-care-of-secondary-the-musical/

Photographs by Crispian Chan and Nicholas Yeo, courtesy of Checkpoint Theatre

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

A production of breathtaking ambition and riveting quality, “Secondary: The Musical” lifts the curtain on the toll our education system takes on teachers and students alike.

13/06/2025

Brave survivor, inspired by Gisèle Pelicot, speaks out; a new study into the stresses of girlhood; a rich, diverse public discourse on rents; Anthony Reid, South-east Asia historian passes on; a Singaporean imprint on an award-winning Thai film; Grab’s two-pronged strategy; and more.

🇸🇬 Read more in “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-130625/

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

Brave survivor, inspired by Gisèle Pelicot, speaks; a new study into the stresses of girlhood; a rich, diverse public discourse on rents; Anthony Reid, South-east Asia historian passes on; a Singaporean imprint on an award-winning Thai film; Grab’s two-pronged strategy; and more.