Athletes who dream of winning a medal at the Olympics or Asian Games must make an immense financial commitment to train and compete. To ensure that their efforts are not in vain, the Singapore National Olympic Council introduced an incentive scheme in the 1990s to award cash to medal winners. But the scheme’s success has been questioned in recent times, and some athletes have opted out of it.
A 70-year-old man found S$10,000 in a bus seat when he alighted from service 925 on Dec. 31, 2024, and publicised his story to help find the ticket’s owner. However, he was shocked to learn that the ticket had actually won a S$5 “Big” bet on Dec. 30, and not the S$10,000 he was expecting to win.
The National University of Singapore’s Department of History has introduced the first-ever book prize in Singapore to celebrate its citizens’ love for history. The NUS Singapore History Prize will be awarded to a publication in the English or Chinese language that has made an impact on Singaporeans’ understanding of the country’s past.
In a year of firsts, the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) crowned its first female winner for English poetry and gave out an unprecedented pair of double wins in the Chinese and English fiction categories. Marylyn Tan won the former with her lyrical debut collection, Gaze Back, which delves into taboo topics like menstruation and sexuality. Its title refers to the Greek mythological Gorgon who turned people to stone with her piercing gaze.
SLP organiser the Singapore Book Council (SBC) added three new categories for this year’s biennial awards in recognition of more diverse home-grown literary work. The new categories for translators and comic-book authors are in addition to the existing categories for poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction written in Singapore’s four official languages. They also recognise works that reflect the Singapore spirit, which encapsulates values like equality, religious harmony and pragmatism.
The prize money for each category will be US$3,000, a trophy and a 12-month subscription to the digital literary service Storytel. The shortlists for the various genres include Straits Times journalist Akshita Nanda’s debut novel Nimita’s Place, about two women navigating society’s expectations in India and Singapore; Epigram Books writer Chia Joo Ming’s SG50-centric novel Kian Kok; and Wong Koi Tet’s blackly humorous Dakota, about a lost housing estate. Almost 3,000 members of the public voted for their favourite titles in the Readers’ Favourite category. The results will be revealed at a public ceremony next month.