Land of Smiles

It's been so long since we topped a list, we were starting to have withdrawals. Fear not; Bloomberg just released its Misery Index, which assigns a misery ranking to countries using a formula involving unemployment rates and inflation. Turns out, Singapore is the second least miserable country in the world. Hooray! (Incidentally, #1 is Thailand, which held a public referendum yesterday on its—wait for it—20th constitution since 1932, so maybe this study needs broader markers.)

Pain of Pokemon

Pokemon Go got off to a busy and somewhat unsportsmanlike start last Saturday. Mashable was quick to slam local players who seem to be cheating. Editor of Mashable Asia Victoria Ho wrote, "It's a pretty safe bet that many of these players have been levelling up over the past month by employing a number of workarounds. One of those is GPS spoofing, which feeds a different GPS location to the software, so it thinks you're in another country." Well, as embarrassing as it is to have our cheating called out on the interwebs, we're sort of glad these unscrupulous players are at least not getting run over by cars.

Dinosaur Purse, Dinosaur Patriarchy

Everyone from The Straits Times to The Mothership to even the BBC ran a story about Prime Minister Lee's wife Ho Ching's less-than-exciting style and her $11 purse, which she carried to the big-deal state dinner at the White House. No one, except Quartz, bothered to state that the she's more than just the PM's wife. The billionnaire CEO of Temasek Holdings, the sovereign fund of Singapore, is also according to Forbes, the 30th most powerful woman in the world. Who could have remembered there's more to her than what she wears to her husband's work dinners? For what it's worth, that $11 purse is now on back-order with a two-month wait time.

Hooray for Hawkers

Vice is all about Singapore these days. A few days ago, they ran a story about HK Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle, the Singaporean hawker stall that won a Michelin star in late July, the first street food establishment to ever do so. Mr Chan, the owner and chef of the stall, was also, incidentally, featured in a sweet video done by Michelin itself. And that's not all. Vice seems to have sent a film team over to Singapore. They've been cavorting around town with Artichoke's Bjorn Shen, according to his Facebook. Stay tuned for a fun video!

Trippin' Down Party Lane

Speaking of Vice, their electronic music and culture offshoot Thump ran a nostalgic feature about Singapore's alternative clubbing history, as seen through the drum and bass lens. The story, by Nisa Kreems and Bandwagon's Hidzir Junaini, begins at Zouk and ends at Sub City, a new drum and bass night launching this month at Kult Kafe, with stops at Phuture, Mad Monk's and Insomnia. Aging party people, have a read.

Airing our Legal Laundry

Taiwan and Hong Kong's independent news website The News Lens had a few things to say about the Administration of Justice (Protection) Bill, which was tabled in Parliament almost a month ago. While the purpose of the bill is to clarify the existing contempt of court laws in Singapore, The News Lens and other international NGOs says the bill in fact makes the law ever more vague, and cite concerns that it would limit freedom of expression and encourage self-censorship in the media.