Binge
It’s a whole new world where everything — food, drinks, shopping and entertainment — is on demand and at your fingertips. In Binge, we hold up a funhouse mirror to ourselves and reflect on the impact of today’s consumer culture on our lives in all its Dionysian glory.
Articles in Series
Binge
Before Service: At Pangium, Experience Isn’t Important. Compassion Is.
'Before Service' takes you behind the scenes to the hours before an F&B outlet opens for lunch or dinner service. For the inaugural series, we visit Pangium, the second restaurant of Chef Malcolm Lee with a titular focus on Straits cuisine. Here, paper credentials mean very little while heart and attitude mean everything.
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The World Can Be Kinder When There’s a Unifying Threat. So Says A Quiet Place Part II
Production stills courtesy of United International Pictures. A competitive society makes us selfish at the core. Agree? From wrestling for the last chicken drumstick to being first to grab a cab, Singaporeans are familiar with the inclination to be first in line. Doesn’t matter what’s at stake.
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With Dining Out Restricted During Phase 2HA, How Have Singaporeans Been Coping?
Photography by Zachary Tang unless otherwise stated. Outdoor Dining, But Where? With the introduction of measures in this heightened version of Phase 2, diners all across Singapore have found themselves stranded and uncertain on where to head for their weekly date fix, be it with a friend or s
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What Goes Into a $5 Hor Fun?: The Economics of Running An F&B Business In A Pandemic
Photos by Liang Jin Tey; annotations by RICE's photo department. If COVID-19 has rallied us around anything, it’s local F&B businesses. The pandemic has already claimed countless eateries, many of them beloved (RIP, Thaipan and your glorious butter squid). Since the start of the current ban on
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Finding Joy In Bars And Nightclubs A Year On Since The Pandemic
Photography by Zachary Tang and Ilyas Sholihyn. “As much as we’ve loved drinking in our undies while watching exotic Americans feud over exotic animals, there’s only so much a person can take before wanting to return to actual bars,” my editor recalled about boozy nights at home during the c
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Sadly, Farming Games Can Never Match Up To Real Life Farming
Photography by Marisse Caine. Disclaimer: The focus of this piece will be on crops. There will be no mention of farm animals, fishing, mining, and fighting lava crabs. For most of us, life often goes something like this: work, eat, sleep, repeat. In this game of life, unfortunately, much of ou
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As If Covid Never Happened: Witnessing The Loneliness Pandemic In A Nightclub
All images by Feline Lim unless otherwise stated. Loneliness is the new pandemic. Like the virus itself, social distancing has a plethora of disruptive symptoms. People that rely more heavily on robust social networks—namely the young and the elderly—are experiencing isolation mor
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Cross Cultural Cuisine: Cooking Food Outside One’s Ethnicity
Cross-cultural cuisine sounds like a fancy concept from upscale restaurants, but it exists in humble hawker settings too — take Chop Chop Biryani’s winning combo of spiced Indian basmati rice and Chinese roasted pork belly, for instance. In a multi-racial city where the love of food unites al
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Kuehs R Us: How Our Culinary Heritage Keeps Us Connected
Nothing unites us like our national hobby of eating, but the story of kueh is as diverse as it is delicious. With a little help from four chefs, each of them specialising in a different type of kueh, we learn about the love, effort, and history in every mouthful of this beloved snack.
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How Drugs Caused The Deaths of Club Culture And Bangkok’s 90s Rave Scenes
Photography by Phobthum Yingpaiboonsuk. Whenever I ask the teenagers who grew up in the 90s about parties on Thonglor Road and RCA, I’m always told that they used to be way more fun than they are today. When they tell me how they would rave at RCA till morning, I can only wonder what that was lik
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Food Review: Man Walks Into a Thai Disco and Chinese KTV
All photography by Zachary Tang. For some men, women are props. Ornaments used to signify status and desirability in society. Beautiful women, in this specific sense, are like expensive cars, watches, or fine bottles of wine. For the right price, you get to take it home with you.&nbs
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No Space for Silence: Finding Live Music’s Place in a Pandemic-Weary Singapore
Image credit: White Label Records It’s Friday night on Ann Siang Road. After dark, laughter erupts from tables of office workers with martinis in hand, lounging on the high stools decked along the street of bars aplenty. Past 10:30pm, the boisterous gossiping dwindles like a child sinking deep i
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Off Duty Food Haunts: Ubin Boatman | Changi Village Hawker – Nurul Power Mee Goreng
“Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Few of us are lucky enough to experience this, but for John, this is his daily reality as a boatman ferrying people to and from Pulau Ubin. And it all starts with a simple packet of mee goreng for breakfast.
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How Healthy Is the Cai Fan Diet?
Top image: Marisse Caine / RICE File Photo These days, it seems like everyone I know is a dietary expert: from the 19-year-old vegan on Instagram to my mom, who sends me daily Youtube videos in our family group chat. This rise in the number of global health experts corresponds with
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“It’s A Ghost Town”: At Lucky Plaza, Hollowed Out By Entry Curbs, A Community Goes Into Crisis
Photos by Zachary Tang and Chan Hui Wen unless otherwise stated. To a mall, there is no sound more terrifying than silence. Silence means a lack of bodies, which means a lack of business, which means danger. It means restaurants without customers and hair salons without clients; unsold goods on unto
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Is It Possible To Feed Our Nation with Just Caifan?
Caifan might not be our national dish, but it is certainly the one that feeds the most number of Singaporeans daily. But what if local favourites like sweet and sour fish are taken off the menu forever due to supply shortages overseas? In this explainer video, we learn about the important role
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How To Make Money Playing Video Games—For Other People
Illustrations and infographic by Ansh Sirohi Every day, ‘Number 7’, 21, wakes up at noon. He cooks and eats lunch with his family before heading off to work—at the World’s Edge. No travel is required. World’s Edge is a map in Apex Legends, and Number 7 is an account booster for heroboos
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Off Duty Food Haunts: Covid Doctor | Balestier Market Chicken Rice
What's the first place you think of when you’re hungry, tired, and looking to redeem a long day at work? In the pilot episode of our new food series, “Off Duty Food Haunts”, we meet Jackie, a doctor on the frontlines battling COVID-19. We follow her to Balestier Market for “the best chi
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How Can Theatre Evolve Amidst A Pandemic? Ask These Persons With Disabilities
Top image: The Fat Farmer. No Zoom meeting can begin proper until someone asks: “Can you see me? Can you hear me?” Persons with disabilities, however, have to navigate such audio and visual obstacles in their everyday life. In other words, the communication problems we encounter with Zoom are a
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Who is Hazel, and Why is Everyone On Her Guestlist?
All images by Zachary Tang It’s Friday night, maybe sometime in November. It’s 2019. Drunk on a potent mix of tequila and whisky, you finally reach the front of the endless line for Attica, only to find that you’ve forgotten your wallet. You despair, heartbroken, and turn to leave.&nbs
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A Better Take On Indian Matchmaking, By The Creators Of Indian Matchmaking
All images from Netflix. It is difficult to walk the thin line between representation and endorsement. This is my main takeaway from Indian Matchmaking—currently the fourth most popular show on Netflix Singapore. The creator—Indian, female, Oscar-nominated—says she is merely ‘t
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Shopee’s Data Science Approach In One Dramatic Monologue
“I love shopping for things online, because when they arrive, it’s like a present to me, from me.” -Someone on the Internet Good afternoon, Singapore. To shop, or not to shop? That is the question. Helping Singaporean humans find answers to this question is the primary function
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How Rock Culture Is Saving Cuscaden Patio From A Pandemic
“As my father opened our doors in 2002, we were hit by the SARS outbreak,” Aizan Sum tells me, the owner of Cuscaden Patio Cafe And Pub, and Chips, two popular establishments located in Ming Arcade. Fast forward 18 years, and another pandemic by the name of Covid-19 is threatening the sur
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Why Stardew Valley Is The Perfect Game For A Recession
In the game Stardew Valley, you are X, a disaffected employee of some nameless corporation. One day, you receive the news: Your grandfather has died and left you a small farm. This farm is located in the idyllic seaside town of Stardew Valley. The charming town by the sea Ins
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The Two Sides of Singapore, As Seen By A Food Delivery Rider
All images courtesy of Yusuf Abdol Hamid. Yusuf Abdol Hamid co-owns a production house, Vamos Photography, but had to put his business on hold because of the coronavirus. In the meantime, he is working as a food delivery rider, which, in his own words, has made him "see Singapore in a way he never
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One Man’s Quest To Find Peace In Baking During The CB
All images by author, who really hated touching his phone while his hands were slicked with butter. I’ve been to NTUC FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, but still I could find no plain flour, baking powder, or vanilla extract. Clearly, but also incomprehensibly to me, Singapore is still suffering fr
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What Westworld Teaches Us About Singapore’s Blind Spots
If you’ve heard anything about Westworld Season 3 at all, it’s probably that Westworld is shot in Singapore. Judging by the number of scenes, it must be the biggest local production since Crazy Rich Asians. Nearly every episode features some recognisable local landmark. Aaron Paul
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‘Too Hot To Handle’ Is The Show We All Need During The Circuit Breaker
All images from Too Hot To Handle / Netflix. For an indeterminate period, people are not allowed to have physical contact with each other. People adhere to the rules at first. But over time, their repressed sexual energy begins to bubble over. Kisses are exchanged on the sly; midnight liaiso
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Is Food Delivery in Singapore Too Cheap?
Image credit: Shutterstock For the past week or so, you’ve probably been reading about struggling F&B operators (aka “merchant-partners”) highlighting the “high” commission fees charged by food delivery app platforms like GrabFood, Foodpanda, and Deliveroo. In this pandemic, where di
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No More Coffee Shops, How? Elderly Singaporeans Tell Us
Many of the elderly in Singapore have been subject to criticism online, specifically for not observing the new social distancing measures. But the lockdown affects everyone differently, especially older folks who live alone in small, one-room flats. In this video, filmed two days before the Circuit
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A Review Of Netflix’s Tiger King: What. The. Actual. F***.
Watching Netflix’s Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem & Madness is like watching a dumpster fire; if the dumpster fire was inside a train wreck, which has been driven off the cliff, because Donald Trump and Kanye West are fighting each other for the wheel. Words like ‘batshit’ or ‘clusterfuck
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All The Things You Can Do Whilst Listening To An Audiobook
Some people enjoy mundane chores like vacuuming the floor or chopping root vegetables. They find the mindless mechanical tasks very ‘therapeutic’, or even ‘soothing’. It just helps to take your mind off things, you know. If you are one of them, good for you. If you’re not, and rese
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You Don’t Have to Be An Alcoholic to Struggle With Your Drinking
Image credit: Pexels.com, unless stated otherwise. Drinking is usually fun. You let loose and enjoy yourself, bonding with people over the most random of things from someone’s hopeless fashion sense to the number of shots you just downed in the past hour. It’s something many of us do regularly
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Invisible Stories Is The Best Singaporean TV Show You’ll Never Watch
Here is a show for those of you who complained that Singapore Social was ‘fake’ and ‘unrealistic’. Go. Prove yourself a patron of the arts. Pay for a subscription and watch HBO’s Invisible Stories. It is the most ‘realistic’ version of Singapore you’ll ever see. When you’re finis
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The Dancing Mak-Mak of The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival
All images by Jeremy Chua. To gain entry into this exclusive club, you have to fulfil three criteria. One, you need to be passionate about dance. Two, you need to be Malay-Muslim. Three, you need to be a mother. They are especially stringent on the last point. “Even if you are marri
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Downloading Movies Before a Flight is for Noobs. Listen to Audiobooks Instead.
Top image: Unsplash. The rest of images from Storytel. For all my empathy, I will never understand people who hate flying. Being on an airplane always brings me a hallucinatory sweetness. The MSG-laden food that suddenly tastes like a Michelin-starred dish because my tastebuds are impa
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Shit My Grandma Says About Shitting: The Singapore Biennale 2019 Through A Grandma’s Eyes
All images by Jeremy Chua. I am staring at a pudgy man, naked save for his skin of gold, taking a shit on a toilet bowl. The toilet bowl, too, is made of gold. I wonder if the shit coming out of him is similarly gilded, but I resist the urge to squat down and peer up his butt. Next to me, my
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In Defence of Eating Alone at Your Desk
All photos by author. A very long time ago, I partook in Singapore’s inescapable lunch culture. Every day around 12 noon, I traipsed into suffocating, humid eateries with a gaggle of colleagues, who proceeded to reserve our tables with tissue packets and lanyards. After hearing about some
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Describe Your 20s in a Single Soundtrack. No Wrong Answers.
Tone Deaf is a column where we discuss music. From personal stories to cultural analysis; from lyrics and instrumentation to music videos and live performances, we put it all under the microscope to understand how we experience music through our everyday lives. All images from Unsplash. I am thre
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There Are 2 Types Of People: Those Who Hate Turkey and Those Who Are Wrong
As an atheist, I love Christmas. It combines three of my favourite things in the world: family, not working, and an excuse to consume copious festive amounts of alcohol. But alas, celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is never the wholly joyous occasion depicted in movies, books, and anime
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“Passion is a Meaningless Word”: The Side of an F&B Owner’s Life We Don’t See
All images by Zachary Tang. 3 AM: Jurong Fishery Port. It’s 3 AM, the December rain is crashing down, and fish juice is seeping all the way into my socks. Wearing my Chucks to Jurong Fishery Port is one of the worst decisions I have made all year. The other is
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Spotify Wrapped: More Accurate Than Any Personality Test
Tone Deaf is a column where we discuss music. From personal stories to cultural analysis; from lyrics and instrumentation to music videos and live performances, we put it all under the microscope to understand how we experience music through our everyday lives. Top image credit: Composite image fro
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Syncing Dance Steps: Friendships In a Modern Playground
Pursuing perfection by yourself can be dull. But for Pump It Up enthusiasts Kessler and Jonathan, finding like-minded players made them realise that friendship is just as important as getting that high score. After all, it doesn’t always have to be lonely at the top.
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‘Watchmen’ Review: Finally, A Superhero Series With Balls
The irony of the superhero entertainment genre is that most of them are not very brave. For all their onscreen heroics, few are willing to tackle sensitive real-world problems like racism, politics, or LGBTQ issues. There are exceptions, of course, but many avoid politics because being ‘too polit
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Singapore Social Is Like Crispy Rendang All Over Again
One of the main complaints about Singapore Social is the complete absence of Singapore. The people in this reality show don’t speak Singlish or with a Singapore accent. They do not behave or dress like the average hawker centre patrons. Their lives of privileged intoxication bear no resemblance to
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How The Bacardi Breezer Took My Alcohol Virginity
For better or for worse, I still remember the first time I ‘drank’. It was in secondary school, at one of those Downtown East chalets that crop up after every exam like MPs before a general election. My friends and I were eating overcooked chicken wings and undercooked bee hoon when an ol
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Can We Love Both Jack Neo and Indie Films? For Singapore’s Arts Scene to Matter, We Must
Top image: Vincent at The Projector, a theatre in Singapore that screens independent, foreign movies. All images by Zachary Tang unless otherwise stated. If you’ve watched and loved films like Faces Places and Capernaum, you have Vincent Quek to thank. Vincent is the founder of Anticipate Picture
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If All Vegetarian Food Tasted Like This, Singaporeans Might Actually Give Up Meat
All images by Zachary Tang. It is 2:30 PM on a Monday afternoon. I am sitting at a coffee shop, stewing in the still afternoon heat. Around me rise grey buildings with equally drab names like Torieview Mansions. All in all, it’s a pretty languorous scene. Yet—even at this slow hour
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Debunking the Myth of ‘Malay’ and ‘Non-Malay’ Pricing
(Cover image: Zachary Tang ) Three men walk into a hawker centre. The first is a 25-year-old Kiwi who goes by the name Ben. Ben looks like your typical ang moh: blue-eyed, muscular, and fair-skinned. Next to him, is 28-year-old Fauzi. In direct contrast to Ben, Fauzi is a skinny Singaporean
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One Afternoon At The Most Touristy Zi Char In Chinatown
All photography by Cheryl Tang. Chinatown Seafood Restaurant (CSR) is a zi char eatery opposite Chinatown Heritage Centre. If you work in Chinatown or walk through Pagoda street on your way to the CBD, you’ve probably noticed the place. It’s one of the few zi char restaurants in Singapore popul
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Press ‘F’ To Disappoint Your Parents: A Video Game Review
Are your parents disappointed in your life choices? Did 20 years of mugging stunt your emotional development, leaving you socially inept? Did you internalise our education system’s cult of achievement, leading to unmanageable stress, feelings of inadequacy, and a fragile self-esteem unable
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KFC’s Dating Sim Is A Terrible Game. Here’s Why We Love It
Most people couldn’t believe it when KFC said they were creating a Colonel Sanders Dating Sim—a fact emphasised with, “Officially created by KFC. No, really” on their Steam store listing. The objective is simple enough: try to date Colonel Sanders. Cue publications jumping on the news
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Is Vegan Peranakan Food Really Peranakan Food?
All images by Zachary Tang. “The Peranakans are fussypots!” Chef Raymond Khoo, owner of The Peranakan and a Peranakan himself, laughs. “Most Peranakans, no matter how good your food is, they’ll say their mother’s food is better.” To serve Peranakan cuisine in the bruta
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Naybeats, Not Baybeats, is the Real Celebration of Singaporean Indie Rock
Top Image: Naybeats_Unofficial “NABEI CHIBAI, AI SIO GAN MAI!” The chorus starts and everyone instantly lifts off the ground, as if an electric current is running through the floor. “NABEI CHIBAI, AI SIO GAN MAI!” I’m body slammed into a wall, just barely avoiding the historic newspape
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My 3-minute Journey As A Competitive Tetris Player
All photography by Zachary Tang. Screenshots courtesy of Youtube. It’s a Saturday afternoon, but James Cook University’s (JCU) auditorium is packed with people. They lean forward on the edge of their seats, eyes glued to the screen, enraptured. The room is quiet, except for the occasional groa
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Laksa Burger Review: “Dear Burger King, We Love You But This Needs To Stop”
Dear Burger King, First, there was the Hainanese Tendergrill Chicken Burger and the Teh Tarik pie. Your mother and I were worried, but we figured it was just a phase and you would soon outgrow it. Then you made the Kopi Siew Dai Pie and the Mala Stacker Burger. Your mom was alarmed
Martell NCF Curious Sessions EP02: ASM-ARGH
First there was Watain. And now, with Rachel Chan's latest petition calling for a ban on even more metal bands, it seems like Singaporeans are still struggling to understand what the scene is really like. Can Glory, the quiet ASMR Doctor who has never heard of metal, learn to scream and p
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Shilin Night Market: Are You Even Singaporean If You Don’t Queue 2 Hours For Fried Chicken?
All photos by Zachary Tang You know that you’ve been creating ‘content’ for way too long when the prospect of a pop-up market fills you with dread instead of joy. This might sound like the most first-world of all first-world problems, but I assure you, the struggle is real. It’s not the
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Lights Out at Blujaz
For years, Blujaz Cafe has been a cornerstone of Singapore's jazz scene, being one of the only venues where young musicians can perform free of judgment. Unfortunately, its public entertainment license has been cancelled, marking the end of an era. In its final days as a live music venue, a young j
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Martell NCF Curious Sessions EP01: Stag to Drag
To many Singaporeans, drag queens are just men in skirts. Yet having always known that the truth is way more inspiring than that, we thought it only sensible to better understand it by actually doing drag—which is exactly what our writer Justin Vanderstraaten did. Courtesy of Martell NCF and Becca
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Admin Assistant by Day, Underground DJ by Night
With his backwards cap, Yankees jacket and silver chain, Akmal looks exactly like I imagine a professional DJ would. Except he isn’t. At 9:30 AM, Akmal swaps his t-shirt and kicks for a white shirt and dress shoes, combs his loose mop of hair to one side, and heads to Raffles Qu
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We Can’t Champion E-Sports Without Celebrating The LAN Shop
Photography By Maisurah Hamid Ask any S'porean gamer where they picked up gaming and chances are, there will be LAN involved. Because for a certain category of S'porean guys who grew up in the early 2000s, in the dying days of dial-up and Yahoo Mail, gaming is forever and will always be ass
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How To Eat Your Way Around South-East Asia Without Leaving Singapore
The end of 2018 is fast approaching and that means holiday season! Bali will help you unwind, there are lovely beaches in the Philippines, and Vietnam is great for foodies. Or so I've heard from friends who have actual money in their bank account instead of ghosts and cobwebs. However, being broke
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Why Do We Greet Each Other By Asking, ‘Have You Eaten?’
Every day, if I arrive home just one minute past the 8 o'clock line, my mother would emerge from the bedroom and ask: 'Have you eaten?' If I had, she would leave me to my own devices. If I had not, she would make a fuss in the kitchen, reheating dishes, boiling water for dumplings, and pulling th
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Masterchef Singapore Has to be Either Racist or Boring. Which Should It Be?
In recent years, Mediacorp has produced better drama IRL than on television. I am referring, of course, to the Masterchef Singapore controversy. If you’re out of the loop, here’s a quick summary: After buying the rights to Gordon Ramsay’s popular cooking contest ‘Masterchef’, Mediacorp d
