day tripping
Hullo to readers old and new!
My next event is on Thursday, April 2, at Omnivore Books in San Francisco. I’ll be in conversation with the one and only Harold McGee, talking about learning to cook, starch science, and who knows what else!
If you don’t have a copy of Little Perfections yet, it’s available from Omnivore and should be in stock very soon. Little Perfections is also on GoodReads now, and if you’d like to tell me what you think, or god forbid enjoyed the book, a review there really does help!
In preparation for last week’s talk at Binding Agents in Philadelphia, Catie Gainor, the irrepressible founder/owner/head-everything asked:
“Do you have any material which will help me form a more complete picture of Singapore than Little Perfections already gives?”
Why yes, I do. Thanks for the inspiration, Catie! So this is an intermezzo issue, with a regular issue landing tomorrow – a frankly idiosyncratic mostly-not-reading list that I hope puts the food in context.
I’ve tried to be disciplined here, but if you want the unrestrained version of this list, just hit reply.
Reading, relatively entertaining
Hard at Work is my single favorite book about Singapore. A bunch of sociology students at the National University go and interview Singaporeans about their jobs. If this sounds familiar, you might have heard of Gig, the project I assume inspired this.
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is not a particularly original recommendation, but there’s a reason it’s on absolutely every list ever. It’s not just a brilliant graphic novel about Singapore’s history, it might be one of the great historical graphic novels, period.
A close runner-up to Charlie Chan Hock Chye is Work-life Balance by Benjamin Chee and Wayne Rée. More contemporary and more mythical, and a window into the aspects of what it’s like to be a working stiff in Singapore that Hard at Work can’t quite get at.
A couple of recent reddit threads about class and inequality, and the drivers behind rising hawker rents. In general, the Singapore subreddits are a good place to get a sense of contemporary Singaporeans’ concerns. Much of the political discourse happens there because the state has ensured that it can’t happen in Singapore.
Film
Maybe the best Singaporean film ever made is available online. Royston Tan’s 15 was controversial when it came out – but nearly everything is, in Singapore. It depicts one of Singapore’s many underclasses, the teenage malcontents that we supposedly don’t have, but I think the real reason it caused a stir was its silent assertion that the system didn’t work for everyone.
I haven’t watched Tan Siyou’s Amoeba but I can’t wait to do so. It looks more stylized than 15, but also more middle class. I recognize my school years in the trailer, in a way that I can’t claim about 15.
For another look at the Singaporean spirit, Money No Enough is a comedy that captures the relentless materialism of the Singapore in which I grew up (which largely persists today). Both of these, helpfully, give you a good sense of Singlish.
Photography
Darren Soh captures the urban landscape and writes about the urban history most Singaporeans don’t even know they have on Facebook. Ivan Polunin shot Singapore at a much earlier time. I feel like I grew up somewhere between these two (Darren is close to my age, and married one of my classmates).
Polunin’s mantle has been assumed by Ketan Shah and hdb_mrt (whose handle encapsulates much about the Singaporean outlook), my favorite Singaporean street photographers working today.
Other sources on food
This is hard to narrow down, of course, so I’m going to beg forgiveness from a lot of people and offer three somewhat off-the-wall suggestions precisely because they’re so different from this publication’s outlook.
KopiLau (a portmanteau of the Hokkien words for “coffee” and “old”) doesn’t post much, but I love their obsessive focus on the material culture of kopi in the archipelago.
Watching Our Grandfather Story is like taking a million biopsies of Singapore’s collective psyche – tiny, narrow, and deep. Their food coverage is probably the least obnoxious Singaporean food TV I can think of.
Channel NewsAsia’s dining section is basically Singapore’s equivalent of Eater. Worth looking at for a sense of the absolutely gonzo, anything goes nature of Singapore’s food scene today.
The deep, somewhat drier stuff
Jom is an independent media outlet that focuses on current events in Singapore – a challenging and often thankless vocation. Their Singapore This Week newsletter is a great 5 minute overview of what’s happening there.
New Naratif has a set of explainers on the political economy of Singapore. Well researched, deep, and consequently rather long, but well written and readable. They’ve done close coverage of previous elections, but recent changes in direction leave me unsure if they’ll cover the next one. I’m grateful that the archive is still online, and refer to it often.
This is What Inequality Looks Like and basically everything that Teo You Yenn does. The book was, and still is, a bestseller in Singapore, because it illuminates a face of the country we try to keep in the shadow.
OK, but where do I eat?
I maintain a travel guide to Singapore that I update every time I go. It’s neither comprehensive nor logical, and does not, for instance, tell you where to get the “best” roti prata on the island. But if you want recommendations for something specific, just drop me a line!
And some suggested reading for your weekend, decidedly not Singaporean: