Singapore
Award-winning editor and journalist with 6+ years’ experience in digital and print media. Successfully managed publications, from finance newsletters to children’s comic books. Invested in democratising information.
Business, finance, tech
IF A tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? In the same vein, if a luxury good is worn by an individual and no one recognises it, does it still have value?
Everything in markets fell into place as perfectly as investors could have hoped for. Then the Apple fell from the tree, rather imperfectly.
In the span of a year, the Federal Reserve has turned, for stock markets, from a harbinger of doom to a beacon of hope.
A canary the Russell 2000 might not be, but a cautionary tale it definitely is.
Does Wall Street know something that ordinary U.S. consumers don’t? Or are consumers just more realistic than investors, who are still relishing the unexpected rally in stocks this year?
If Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell tires of tweaking interest rates, he has a promising career ahead as a modernist poet.
The Writers Guild of America may be on strike now, but we don’t lack gripping drama — in the form of the U.S. debt ceiling negotiations.
Profiles
Covid taught this teacher that the world can blow up at any moment. So he quit his job and started Serangoon Sourdough, a home-based sourdough bakery.
It's been 5 years since Sonny Liew's award-winning The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye was published and had its grant withdrawn by NAC. How has Sonny's life changed since then?
Paul Tambyah, Chairman of the Singapore Democratic Party and infectious diseases expert, tells us how he and his party propose to fix Singapore.
The good news: peers and superiors tend to be supportive and understanding. The bad news: operationally, the military's perspective of homosexuality seems to be stuck in the 1980s still.
From some nice Indian auntie who coos, “Thank you for delivering my food” in the smelly HDB with the pee smell in the corridor, to the Ardmore Park condo with the guard and the super cold lift lobby with the super high ceiling with the empty useless space that people are paying for.
With 3.87 million subscribers and views of over 30 million, JianHao Tan is Singapore's most successful YouTuber. But who is he behind his $3000 Gucci jacket, his $600,000 BMW i8, and his many, many videos about the lives of students?
TL;DR: Unless you are fine with staying awake for 40 hours consecutively, seeing your children an hour a day, and not receiving any financial returns in your lifetime, don't do it.
“[People] don’t understand a wild animal is supposed to be wild regardless of what you want. You don’t put your needs before the animals’ needs. Always the animals’ needs first. Not ours.”
Vincent Quek is an Yishun boy who grew up to start Anticipate Pictures, a one-man company that distributes independent movies. "Taste," he says, "can be developed. We have to remove the idea that art is for the upper class."
Features
“Beautex good. Cheap, but don’t need to wipe so many times. Not like the house brand.”
In a time when people step out of their home once a week, how are couples getting through each day without wanting to asphyxiate their partner (non-erotically)?
Singapore's schools have shut their doors because of Covid-19. Lessons are now conducted online. What happens to the families who can't afford a laptop?
Now's the time to slow down and take care of ourselves, not turn ourselves into multi-skilled machines capable of working even more.
“Making everyone a Buddhist will only create unhappiness. It totally contradicts the whole idea of loving kindness, which is the essential idea of Buddhism."
In 2019 alone, MPH, Times, and even Popular closed have closed their bookstores across the island. Is it a lack of interest in reading among Singaporeans, e-commerce, or something else entirely behind this string of closures?
Why are master's programmes so attractive among Singaporeans? What do they hope to achieve, and do these hopes bear fruit?
We talk to people in situationships and a psychology professor who studies love to find out: what is a situationship and why is it so prevalent in Singapore today?
Branded content
In 1900s Singapore, it was not uncommon to see people drop dead on the streets.
Rita Ahmad and Llewelyn Ridhwan Teng are two souls who had a chance encounter and overcame challenges to find love. Changing perceptions of what it means to be Singaporean, their story is one of love, compromise and commitment across time.
"Pasir Ris" means "white sand' in Malay. The etymology of its name is but a glimpse into the wild, dramatic history of what was once Singapore's playground for the rich, anchored by its prime tenant, Pasir Ris Hotel.
Before Singapore had modern flushing toilets, we had holes and buckets in the ground. And men to carry these buckets around.
Four African Singaporeans and PRs tell us where to get the best satay, how NS shaped their feelings towards Singapore, and why Africa is not a country.
Why would Eu Yan Sang, a 140-year-old traditional Chinese medicine company, appoint a CEO who has had no experience in the industry?
Lingering on an artwork seemed to dredge out buried memories from my grandma, and elicit from her pithy pronouncements on the pieces — proving that you don't need to be an Instagram-poet-lawyer to appreciate art.
When we go to restaurants, we don't just want food. We want an Experience. And that's fair, considering the money we spend on these meals. But when does expectation become entitlement? Five chefs tell us.
Outside the Indian subcontinent, just 1.55% of pilots in Asia are women. 3 female pilots from Scoot tell us what it's like working in a male-dominated environment, their encounters with surprised passengers, and why women are "a powerful group of people".
Heritage
377A was motivated by a scandal in which prominent white European men were discovered to have slept with Asian male prostitutes. This drove the Straits Settlement government into a panic because it saw the scandal—of the white man succumbing to the native boy—as a threat to its colonial rule.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who wants to receive his bride on their wedding day must overcome hellish obstacles designed by a sadistic gaggle of bridesmaids.
A research-heavy piece on the formation of Port of Singapore Authority (PSA).
A research-heavy piece of writing on the history of Paya Lebar Airport, Singapore's second commercial international airport.
Travel
If the only Vietnamese food you've tried is phở, you're really missing out on a plethora of delicious dishes defined by daring and distinct use of herbs, spices, and sauces.
The country is most famous for its notion of Gross National Happiness, which measures not only the country’s economic and development standards, but also the state of its cultural heritage, the condition of its environment, and the health of its population.
Alighting from the ferry that takes you to the island of Naoshima in Japan's Seto Sea, you are transported you to a parallel universe. The world you see around you is familiar, but, at the same time, discordantly different.
The Qingdao International Beer Festival in August is a raucous, carnivalesque festival to which all local and international beer companies across China flock to promote their beer.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an individual visiting Bangkok must be in want of shopping and eating. But it would be a shame to stop just there.
The station building showcases classical Chinese architectural vocabulary with a Japanese inflection, and is one of the few remaining stations on the West Coast line to be built with the valuable Formosan Cypress carted all the way from Alishan Mountain.
At Shifen, the train wanders through an idyllic village preserved in time, perhaps by the ethereal, other-worldly glow of the sky lanterns launched every night.
If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it, does it really make a sound? If you visit Taiwan and omit a stop at one of its many famed night markets, have you really visited Taiwan?
A special Singapore-focused issue of a current affairs magazine that examines how Singapore built up its physical, governmental and social and infrastructure in the span of decades.
A satirical, tongue-in-cheek look at the most significant social and geopolitical events of the past year.
A special Singapore-focused issue of a current affairs magazine that examines how Singapore's small geographical size affected its destiny.
A narrative-driven catalogue of an art exhibition held in 2021.
A children's comic book on the forgotten occupations of old Singapore -- now in its third edition and on MOE's list of supplementary readings for primary school children.
Lead Stories explores the past of Singapore’s publishing industry to map out its long-forgotten roots and its winding journey of progress in the past fifty years.
An academic monograph investigating the relationship between epistemology and travel writing in eighteenth-century literature.