22 Jul 24 Monday Briefing

Food systems, more walking, and lots of wine

News Roundup

Friends, again, I thought I could focus on other angles of the past week’s news cycles, but I seem cursed (or blessed?) with juicy drops exactly on Mondays. I’m not going to comment too much about Biden making way for Kamala; it’s a developing event as I write this, and no doubt there will be much more to summarise in next week’s briefing.

Last Friday, I bunked off work early as most of the world did too, thanks to CrowdStrike (very intern-pushing-update vibes) but sadly the lying-flat worker bees in China could not, thanks to them wanting to go their own way. How’s that for a self-sufficient hive? (h/t my lovely partner for that tipoff)

On Saturday morning, once again I woke up bright and early for a walk along West Coast Park, guided by Firdaus, a descendant of the indigenous seafaring Orang Laut of Singapore’s Southern Islands, who were displaced and resettled from their kampung (villages) into steel-and-concrete government apartment blocks in the 1970s. Firdaus’s grandfather grew increasingly unhappy and restless, never able to acclimatise on land, and in the 80s convinced his wife to move with him to live on Pulau Semakau until that island too was reclaimed for to become a landfill. We learned that a small, gated patch of beach next to the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club is leased to some Orang Laut fishermen who spend much of their days creating bubu traps, free diving to about 10-12m to set them, and harvesting their catch at least twice a week. We also learned that the cheek-by-jowl yacht club members have complained about their use of plastic, to which the rebuttal is that yacht owners should consider their own waste and pollution first.

Our group ended the walk with a small feast of Orang Laut food prepared that morning at 3am by Firdaus’s mother, and some dialogue about the state of indigenous recognition in Singapore, advocacy, awareness, and the perennial tension in Singapore between heritage and progress.

As for a juicy maritime drop this morning, China and the Philippines reached a temporary deal around the resupply missions to the deliberately-beached Sierra Madre. See? Conflict is not inevitable.

Watch/Scroll

The Double on Netflix – promising C-drama that also promises to distract me from the crazier and crazier timeline we find ourselves in.

Read

Why did the Chinese go whole hog on pigs as a food source, from as much of 95% of pork in China being supplied by smallholder farms up until 1985, to the ravenous consumption of the meat that pervades Chinese society?

Another h/t to my partner, also about the intersection of government policy and Southeast Asian food systems. Itinerant cooked-food hawkers are not unique to Singapore, Malaysia or indeed Southeast Asia, but what’s unique in Singapore is the role government policy plays in shaping affordability and access, probably because of the ancient political belief that to keep a restive labouring class in check, you provide enough affordable food sources to keep them going, but only just about. A recent op-ed in a local broadsheet highlights another tension in modern Singapore, that between the desire for cheap meals and hawkers’ livelihoods, but local F&B industry noisemaker Jialiang retorts that the op-ed fundamentally misrepresents the issue. Butter your popcorn, folks.

Ponder

I think we can give ourselves a break from pondering this week, folks; I know my brain needs it. Go learn / do something new – like this Japanese wine tasting I attended last weekend. Suffice it to say that I will never be a fan of Pet Nat and most sparklings.