The late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain described Singapore’s food scene as having: “More variety, more options, more specialties from many lands. And cheap”. Yet, since the first coronavirus case was announced in the country, F&B businesses have had to adjust. Through conversations with an F&B owner and a team which created a crowdsourced hawker directory, we want to understand both the problems as well as the ground-up solutions.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus among migrant workers has reflected serious lapses in Singapore’s pandemic planning in the country, but it would be remiss to not discuss the policies surrounding migrant workers and immigration in a more systemic or structural manner. For this, we turn to Professor Kenneth Paul Tan of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at the National University of Singapore, who is an expert on Singapore’s politics, society, and culture. He has written extensively and holistically on the tensions and contradictions around Singapore’s transition from a developmental state to a neoliberal global city.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in Singapore, I’ve been closely following the Facebook updates of former colleague Brenda Tan, with whom I used to work at the former news site “The Middle Ground”. A few days ago, she posted a powerful reflection about her personal experience, which you will hear in this episode. Singaporean blogger mrbrown also shared Brenda’s post on Twitter.

In the context of the pandemic and the circuit breaker in Singapore, the designation of psychological treatments as a non-essential service is an obvious starting point. Yet, it also seems appropriate to both consider the state of mental health wellness and advocacy in the country before the pandemic, as well as our aspirations for where we want mental health wellness and advocacy to be.

Singapore is expected to enter a full-year recession, and the ripple effect of pay cuts and hiring freezes is just beginning. Even with the Unity, Resilience, and Solidarity Budgets, graduating students from the institutes of higher learning and the universities are justifiably anxious.