JomFest arrives just weeks after the launch of Unease, the new book by sociologist Teo You Yenn. Unease asks why, in a society that is loudly “pro-family”, work-life balance remains so elusive and parents so anxious. You Yenn will be in conversation with Pooja Bhandari, founder of EveryChild.SG.

Singapore sells itself as a food paradise. But who gets to define and decide what counts as “Singapore food”? Which cuisines are elevated as national symbols, and which are left on the margins of our island story? We package our multicultural, culinary identity for local pride and global consumption. But what parts of our food traditions are being preserved, celebrated and claimed; and by whom? And just as importantly, what gets flattened, neglected or excluded? The familiar canon is well-established: bak chor mee, char kway teow, chilli crab, fishhead curry, Hainanese chicken rice, Hokkien prawn mee, laksa, mee siam, nasi lemak, roti prata…These dishes appear on every must-eat list, repeated by tourism campaigns, media round-ups and self-appointed food authorities alike. Do they truly reflect the tastes, traditions, and histories that shape Singapore’s culinary landscape? This cross-generational panel—moderated by Toffa, in conversation with speakers Min, Murni and Vasun—explores how Singapore’s gastronomic character is shaped: whether by markets and media; by state narratives and social aspiration; by chefs, hawkers, home cooks, diners and diasporas. Our panellists also examine the pressures bearing down on Singapore food today: trend cycles, homogenisation, the burden of expectation placed on “heritage foods”, and the tension between cultural and commercial value. They ask: what happens to memory, meaning and connection, as fewer people cook at home; as recipes get forgotten across generations, travelling further from the communities that created them; and as young Singaporeans inherit food traditions in increasingly fragmented, diluted forms? What do we lose when food becomes content, branding or lifestyle; yet what new forms of continuity might still emerge? This is a dialogue about change and evolution, distilled through the lenses of power, belonging, and inheritance. Food connects Singaporeans across race, generations and histories. It’s one of the clearest and loudest ways that our city-state imagines itself. Might it not then also reveal whose stories are amplified, whose labour is obscured, and whose flavours are treated as central—or peripheral—to the national imagination.

Why do we do it? For individual and group achievement? For national pride? To get into the school of our choice? The question about whether a sporting career is suitable for individuals in a highly–competitive, paper-obsessed, city state with a tiny domestic fanbase is at the fore again. A society that prizes speed, efficiency and relentless progress has never quite been able to embrace the long-termism needed to truly cultivate a sporting culture. Meanwhile, as inequality has grown over the decades, arguably so has the gap between well-resourced sports, like swimming, and less-resourced ones, like football. And it’s never quite clear what sportspeople are expected to do after they’re too old to compete. Post-career employability reveals a lot about whether our society values sportspeople as assets or liabilities. How can Singaporean society boost interest in local sports, support our sportspeople, and facilitate their long-term careers so as to become a genuine sporting nation? May, Ting and Shyam will be in conversation to help us unpack these issues.