Sports: Table topper
Readers of a certain vintage may remember snooker parlours or pool halls from the 1980s, 1990s and early aughties: seedy, seamy, heady dens that drew in many a student after, sometimes during, school. Dim lights, musty carpets, and vending machines that sputtered out Georgia coffee or milo in teeny paper cups. They cost less than fifty cents, and tasted like it. At a table, or a few, a menacing character(s) glaring balefully into the distance, chalking the business end of their cue with sinister twists of the blue cube. Betting. Liquor. Screamed Hokkien vulgarities after missed shots. Always, a whiff of violence, as if one were suspended in a Tarantino film in the seconds just before knives and bullets and people go flying. “Parents at the time would say ‘Huh, play billiards? No, no, no, no, no. Cannot, cannot, cannot. This is Ah Beng sports [sic],’” remembered Marvin Lim, a former national billiards player who started playing in 1989.
By 2006, when eight-year-old Aloysius Yapp picked up pool, it had shed some of its reputation as character shredder. Still, the path to becoming Singapore’s first professional pool player was marked with unusual choices. Not least his decision in 2010 to drop out of St Patrick’s School in Secondary Two with, astonishingly, support from his mom. It took a decade for the decision to be vindicated. In 2021, Yapp became the world’s best pool player—the first Singaporean, obviously, to do so, after consistent, deep runs in top tournaments. But he hadn’t won any. So a joyful occasion, yes, but also somewhat hollow. “I felt, and still feel, like I needed a major title,” he told ST. A king without a fief.
Until this year, that is. Yapp has been on a tear in 2025. He won his first major title, the tennis equivalent of a Grand Slam, on Mother’s Day, and followed it up with a second earlier this month. The back-to-back major wins were already unprecedented on the professional circuit. This past Sunday, he pocketed a third, the US Open, beating current world number one Fedor Gorst in a dramatic three-hour final. Later, Yapp, christened Majin Buu by fans for his likeness to the magical Dragon Ball character, celebrated by clambering onto the table. That was the only “raucous” thing about a match played under bright lights, between two natty gents who exchanged polite smiles and handshakes at the end. Pool once inspired dread in parents; it may now conjure dreams.
Politics: Pritam and Zhul
Pritam Singh of The Workers’ Party (WP) and Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) continued their public reemergence. Singh appeared on the “Yah Lah But” podcast, his third media interview in recent weeks. He said that before GE2025, he’d been conscious of the limelight attendant to the leader of the opposition (LO) role, and hence had preferred for his WP colleagues to garner air time. “Now that elections have passed, it has occurred to me that it may be helpful to go out there every once in a while to share my views and thoughts on certain issues.”
Singh added colour to long-standing philosophies about WP being a loyal opposition and not wanting to form the government: it’s the evolution of a “fledgling” democracy, in which the LO role is just five years old; the WP’s “priority is to institutionalise the idea of an opposition”; and “you can’t crawl and then straight away become Usain Bolt”. On democratic hurdles for the opposition—whether unequal access to grassroots facilities or gerrymandering—Singh offered grit, if not insouciance. “The incumbent will do as much as it can within the boundaries of the law to ensure that it stays in power…you can either sit down and keep moping about it, or you get on with the job. But at every intersection, every now and then, it's important to remind a younger generation of Singaporeans that we can be better.” Sweet manna for most of the PAP and a segment of opposition voters; but not for those who believe Singapore needs fundamental political change, like Ravi Philemon of Red Dot United.
“Zhul”, in an interview with The Straits Times, described his journey from lawyer to (soon-to-be) minister of state for foreign affairs and social and family development. Before GE2020, Lawrence Wong convinced him to enter politics, saying he could “make a deep impact” on the Malay-Muslim community. Similarly, after GE2025, he accepted the sacrifice of giving up legal practice (“the second love of my life after my wife”) to become a minister, so he can do a lot more “upstream” work, which “is really what will make a much more vast difference”.
Among his areas of concern are domestic violence and Palestine. Two weeks ago, the Monday of Palestine Solidarity group—the same one involved in the kerfuffle with K Shanmugam months ago—spoke fairly approvingly of its interaction with Zhul, documenting his comments in Parliament on the Israel-Palestine question. If he can earn the trust of both our Zionist-friendly establishment and pro-Palestinian activists it would bode well for his political career. Anybody who enters politics “must aim for the highest office...you’ve got to be prepared to take it”, Zhul had told Walid Abdullah months ago in “Teh Tarik with Walid”. In Singh’s worldview, of course, he may already be occupying it.
Society: Not just beds but belonging
The urgency is undeniable. By next year, over 21 percent of Singaporeans will be 65 or over—the threshold for “super-aged”—and by 2030, it’ll be 25 percent. An ageing population puts mounting pressure on healthcare and housing. With extended families in decline and more seniors living alone—whether by choice or circumstance—the need for diverse housing options is clear. More than shelter and meals, facilities must help elders age with dignity. Solidarity is central to that mission to make ageing alone less lonely.
One potential answer is Commune@Henderson, a new intergenerational co-living space. Opened last month, the Singapore Land Authority pilot houses seniors and nearly 200 foreign students from about 20 countries, creating a built-in community with possibilities for social interaction. It offers an alternative to assisted living flats, retirement kampungs, community care apartments, and future Age Well Neighbourhoods. Even as policies promote “ageing in place”, nursing homes will remain relevant, though they’ll have to evolve. But prices for this new housing model may be prohibitive, especially for low-income seniors. Monthly rents for one-room HDB flats range between S$26-S$205, for households earning less than S$1,500. At Commune@Henderson, a twin bed or studio apartment with an attached bathroom, meals and basic healthcare costs about S$4,800 a month. Students, meanwhile, pay S$1,028 for a shared room without meals and an en suite. The contrast raises the question: who exactly benefits from this vision of communal ageing?
Globally, intergenerational models show promise. In Sweden, Sällbo ensures a mix of residents—half over 70, half aged 18-25—through an extensive interview process. All sign a contract to spend at least two hours a week socialising with neighbours. Run by a non-profit backed by the city council, tenants pay US$478-US$602 (S$613-S$772) each month. In Spain, Alicante’s Municipal Housing Board offers low-income seniors over 65 and young adults under 35 intergenerational flats for just €200 (S$299) monthly. In France, Pari Solidaire pairs seniors living alone with young people seeking affordable housing, with rent sometimes waived in exchange for companionship or practical help.
Singapore, too, has traditions of multigenerational households, shaped by Confucian ideals of filial piety, which some argue have been embedded into state policies and discourse. But shifting dynamics—young adults seeking independence; the dominance of nuclear families; and falling marriage and birth rates—have frayed those ties. Initiatives like Commune@Henderson may ironically help renew them. By bringing together strangers of different generations, freed from kinship expectations, such spaces can remind us of the enduring value of family in broader, evolving forms. If the government is serious about active ageing with dignity, building community must go hand in hand with making it accessible. Otherwise, growing old in Singapore won’t just be lonely—it will be deeply unequal.
Society: Costly peace
Is peace achieved through carrots or sticks? It’s a question that has bedevilled humankind since the dawn of time. Religions, empires, and modern nation-states alike have evolved partly through the relentless tweaking of incentives and penalties for their stratified subjects, as they seek to maintain internal order, and avoid external conflict. Today, given our awareness of the ecological violence we inflict through our consumption, and our complicity in faraway genocides because of our diplomatic and trade links, it can seem insular, self-absorbed and even vulgar for any country to talk about its own, border-defined “peace”.
Still, maybe we can inch our way towards a more enlightened future by understanding societies that are deemed peaceful. The Global Peace Index (GPI) by the Institute for Economics & Peace measures “Negative peace”, or “the harmony achieved by the absence of violence or the fear of violence”, through 23 indicators on three domains: ongoing domestic and international conflict; societal safety and security; and militarisation. (A separate Positive Peace Index assesses the “attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.”) In this year’s GPI, Singapore ranked sixth overall, and first in Asia. We ranked highly for the conflict and safety domains but were pulled down by our militarisation score. (Among other things, we have one of the world’s highest per capita military expenditures.)
The celebratory article in The Straits Times (ST) cheered Singapore’s strict laws and surveillance for underpinning our peace. A piece in the BBC, which compared five of the world’s safest countries, offers space for more meaningful contemplation: in our efforts to foster peace, how can Singapore move from the use of sticks to carrots? Of the 10 most peaceful countries in the world, Singapore is by far the most autocratic and militarised. (Qatar is ranked 27.) The rest are liberal democracies, many more pacifist. No doubt, rules are important, such as third-placed New Zealand’s stringent gun laws.
But what’s striking elsewhere is the role of fellow citizens. “While harsh weather conditions, especially in winter, may not always create a sense of safety, community does,” Icelander Inga Rós Antoníusdóttir told the BBC. She also credits gender equality and “robust social systems” for the country’s over ten-year topping of the GPI. And so, even as we appreciate Singapore’s peace, it’s important to ask: can we achieve it without the personal intrusions, without the limits on civil society and the media, without the haranguing of critics, without the banning of speech, and without the harsh penalties (including death)? Can we nurture a peace founded less on the fear of Big Brother and our region; and more on plain civic consciousness, and the love and respect for one’s neighbour? Skeptics will sneer, but we’ll keep asking.
Culture: ‘Let me Wikipedia that for you.’
Did you look up something on the internet today? If you did, there’s a chance you were using Google to get to Wikipedia, “the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. Wikipedia—with its spare interface and sparer language—is your good ol’ human-authored CliffsNotes in an algorithmic age still being terraformed by AI; in fact, ChatGPT was trained on it. At once knowledge coffer and knowledge community, Wikipedia both gives you the resource starter-pack you need while also offering plenty of research rabbit holes to lose yourself in. (Fun fact, if you keep clicking the first hyperlink of every entry you arrive at, you’ll almost certainly end up in philosophy.)
And, earlier this month, Singaporean Robert Sim was crowned Wikimedian of the Year for his contributions to the crowdsourced platform. He received the award from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself, at a ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya. The 37-year-old digital analytics consultant, who’s singlehandedly made over 79,000 edits to Wikipedia, also has the diverse distinction of authoring pages both on the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and the 2024 South-east Asian heat wave. His article on the real estate behemoth City Developments Limited was honoured with “good article” status, essentially the Wikipedia gold standard for clarity, veracity and peer review. As a secondary school student, Sim cut his teeth fixing typos and broken links on the site, then graduated to fixing obsolete entries related to Singapore. In a ST interview, he encouraged users to sustain the “snapshot of what the world understands”, whether that’s drafting entries or flagging errors. “The more people that we have contributing on Wikipedia, the more complete the information that we have.”
Sim’s not the only one democratising knowledge about Singapore in the metaverse. In the same knowledge-pooling vein, the literary nonprofit Sing Lit Station (SLS) maintains two literary databases, poetry.sg and prose.sg, which feature biographies, bibliographies, selected work and critical introductions to Singaporean writers. In 2018, they also held an eight-hour “wikithon”, where volunteers, hunched over laptops and mainlining pizzas, put together at least 20 new Wikipedia pages for literary luminaries, from pioneering indie poetry press firstfruits publications to the Malayan poet-pedagogue Teo Poh Leng, a victim of the Sook Ching massacre. The tiny team, crammed elbow-to-elbow in an upstairs shophouse space, also edited and cleaned up existing entries. On a photograph of their meticulous spreadsheet of authors and publishers, literature professor Ann Ang quipped: “Only in Singapore does serious literary work look like multiplayer gaming.”
History weekly by Faris Joraimi
Spoilers ahead! If you haven’t watched CNA’s new two-part miniseries, Separation: Declassified, here are the highlights. We’ve known for some years now about the Albatross Files, revealing how Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in 1965, after an ill-fated two-year union, was a mutually-planned agreement. Gone is the belief that Singapore was unexpectedly kicked out by the Malaysian government. Separation: Declassified takes us through more detailed twists in the months before and after the historic split. For instance, Separation was planned without British approval or knowledge. Antony Head, high commissioner to Malaysia, found out just one night before it was announced, going on a wild hunt through Kuala Lumpur for Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s leader, in a final bid to stop it. He found the Tunku and his cabinet “obstinate, in the way of conscious sinners.”
You can read this as a successful act of disobedience to Britain, which masterminded the creation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 to contain the spread of communism. Few were happier than the Indonesians, under anti-imperialist Sukarno, at the failure of this neocolonial plot. But Singapore remained a British military base. And despite the agency of local politicians, let’s not forget how the British created the structural conditions for bad blood between Malay nationalists and multi-racialists in the first place. Not all of Lee Kuan Yew’s lieutenants were on board: Toh Chin Chye, deputy prime minister and S. Rajaratnam, then culture minister, who’d both grown up on the Peninsula, were kept out of the conspiracy. When presented the Separation Agreement as a fait accompli, they refused to sign; Rajaratnam chain-smoked late into the night before being the last to add his signature.
We learn about how human frailties drive historical change. Bedridden with painful shingles in a London ward, Tunku Abdul Rahman decided he had to cut Singapore out. The typist for Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysian deputy prime minister, was so bad that Eddie Barker, Singapore’s law minister had to find someone else to type the Separation documents. A few drinks later, a tipsy Barker signed them off without checking. The show mostly lets declassified papers speak for themselves, unlike documentaries with omnipresent narrators. Experts help us interpret the raw material, but can we believe them? Disclaimers before each episode describe all the views presented as “subjective”, as if pre-empting backlash from a public untrained to make up their own minds. The guests read out documents verbatim, performing the encounter between scholar and archive, but how were they chosen? The British documents—forming the bulk of the “declassified” files—are open to all, but the Singaporean ones are open to a trusted few, including Shashi Jayakumar (son of a former PAP minister, and author of a book on the PAP’s history) and Irene Ng (former PAP MP who wrote the “authorised” biography of S. Rajaratnam). Action hews closely to the sources: fiery speeches, pensive oral interviews, but mostly frantic cables between British men-on-the-spot and decision-makers at Whitehall. The show’s as much about high emotions as it is about information, access, and how to read documents.
In this showdown between KL and Singapore, we hear from those who arguably lost the most from Separation: Sabah and Sarawak. Both territories were brought in partly to balance Singapore’s Chinese majority; with Singapore gone, they were in a weaker position to challenge Malay nationalism on the Peninsula. The Borneo leaders were not consulted on the Separation plans. Faridah Stephens reads a heart-rending letter from her father Fuad, Sabah’s then-chief minister, to Lee: “Now I find that the friend, the idol, is made of cheap clay after all.” Perhaps those tears on screen were also shed over friends betrayed.
Faris Joraimi, Abhishek Mehrotra, Corrie Tan, Tsen-Waye Tay, and Sudhir Vadaketh wrote this week’s edition. Sakinah Safiee contributed.
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