Images like this are still captured for advertising purposes, but the ones who are driving the advertising industry nowadays are young ladies who document their spending sprees and share their indulgences on social media. Some have even been granted freebies to say good things about luxury goods and services. Apparently, this sort of hype does […]

The Mughals were originally Central Asians who migrated to northern India where they defeated the Delhi Sultanate in 1526. Once settled in India, they adopted Islam and Persian culture. The kingdom grew into a prosperous and powerful empire when Akbar the Great ascended the throne. India was an open society with inter-marriages occurring between the […]

I’m not sure what they call this in psychology, but if unmet expectations are the biggest cause of disappointment, then exceeded expectation must bring about something close to elation. I first had a taste of this phenomenon on the streets of Kathmandu some 20 years ago. My friend Jason and I were walking down the […]

As someone who doesn’t read newsPAPers, I’m often slow to react to what’s new, trendy and stupid, but thanks to all the sharing from my Facebook friends, some of the juiciest bits do eventually end up in my IN tray. Here’s a letter to the Straits Times written by one Kelvin Hong. While Professor Linda […]

20 December 1954. Chicago, USA. A group of devotees gathered at the home of their prophet, Dorothy Martin. They sang fervently and they waited for the arrival of aliens in a spacecraft that would take them away before 21 December 1954 – when a great flood would drown out everything on earth. Earlier that year, […]

With elitism and inequality being hot topics these days, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing cautioned that a distinction must be made between “elites who give back to society” and those with “elitist attitudes” who have closed themselves off from the rest of society. During a dialogue at a public policy conference on Oct […]

At the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS)’s 30th anniversary conference, Diversities: New and Old, Ambassador-at-large Prof Tommy Koh challenged the government’s idea that it has made strides in lifting the incomes of the lowest-earning Singaporean workers without the need for an absolute minimum wage policy. Prof Tommy Koh quoted Mr Lee Kuan Yew as saying: […]

A concerned mother (whose identity I won’t reveal as I don’t have her permission to quote this) wrote: 12-year-olds must sit for the PSLE which determines the track they are streamed to : N(A), N(T), Express, IP 16-year-olds on the IP track are deemed too clever to waste time sitting for the O level exams. […]

Retired author Ni Kuang was born in communist China, raised as a Shanghainese, recruited into the police force where his endless questioning of draconian, unreasonable procedures got him into trouble, forcing him to flee for his life. He settled down in Hongkong and became one of the most prolific Chinese writers in the world. He […]

Inequality is not something to be taken lightly. The following video shows a rather uncomfortable conversation going on between a diverse group of teenagers whose educational paths, streams or programmes if you will, are readily identified from the things they said and the way they said them. I wonder if Dr Janil was surprised to […]