The 2022 Singapore Prize – the biennial literary award that recognises writers across all four official languages of the city-state – saw 12 winners in Chinese, English, Malay, and Tamil. The prize celebrates the finest published works in each language and honours authors of distinction who have contributed to the literature of their respective language communities.

The prize is awarded by the Singapore Book Council. In a statement, the organising body noted that the judges for the poetry category commended Tan’s “clarion call for gender and linguistic reclamation” in her work Gaze Back, which is “a soaring anthem of the future reclaimed from the past.”

This year’s winner of the Singapore Literature Prize is Jeremy Tiang for his translation of Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon. A sombre tale of two childhood friends who uncover dark secrets about their families in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution, it won praise for its “total lack of compromise and absurdist audacity”.

It is the second time that the prize has been awarded to a work of fiction, after last year’s win by Khir Johari for The Food of the Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through The Archipelago. The tome, which took 14 years to complete, weighs 3.2kg and features a wealth of photographs. The prize jury praised it for bringing the “rich and varied history of Singapore’s multiculturalism to life”.

In the non-fiction category, the Jury Panel singled out two books that deserved special commendation for their contribution to knowledge about Singapore’s past: Reviving Qixi: Singapore’s Forgotten Seven Sisters Festival by Lynn Wong Yuqing and Lee Kok Leong; and Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore by Loh Kah Seng, Alex Tan Tiong Hee, and Juria Toramae. The latter, a work of ethnographic research, sheds light on understudied aspects of Singapore’s history such as labour and industrial culture.

The Singapore Prize also offers two challenge prizes to advance AI research in the areas of audiovisual fake media detection and visual localisation. The Online Safety Prize Challenge is a 10-week competition that seeks to develop and test multimodal, multilingual, zero-shot models to detect malicious memes in the diverse and nuanced Singaporean digital landscape. For more information, click here.

Blackjack is one of the most popular casino table games, and for good reason. It’s easy to understand and, if played correctly, can be a highly profitable game. The objective is simple: beat the dealer. While there are some misconceptions about the game, a basic understanding of the rules is all that’s required to get started.

After all players have placed their bets, the dealer will deal two cards to each player and then they’ll choose whether to hit (receive additional cards) or stand. The dealer will then reveal their card and determine if they have a Blackjack (Ace with a ten or Jack) or if they need to draw to make a winning hand. If the player has a hand value that is closer to 21 than the dealer’s, they win and are paid out accordingly. If the dealer’s hand is higher than the player’s, they lose and their bet is pushes (not won).

When playing Blackjack it is important to follow a specific strategy. The best way to do this is by using a Blackjack chart, which will tell you the correct action to take for each scenario. This will help you to increase your chances of beating the dealer and make more money.

To use a Blackjack chart, simply look at the row in the chart that corresponds to the current card value of your hand. For example, if you have a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8, refer to the top chart. Similarly, if you have an 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, refer to the bottom chart. The chart will also show you which hands you should split and when.

For example, if you have two 7s, it is always better to split them than to stay and hope for a lucky hit. The reason is that there are four times as many tens in a deck as other ranks, so there’s a much greater chance of drawing a pair of sevens than a pair of threes or two nines. Likewise, it is usually better to surrender on a weak hand than to stand and risk losing all your chips to the dealer’s potential blackjack.

Another important thing to remember is that you should never change your betting strategy just because you’re on a streak. While this may seem like common sense, it is surprising how many people will double their bets when they’re hot, thinking that they are due for a big payout. The odds of the next hand don’t change based on your previous bets, so keep your bet value consistent and stick to your strategy. With a little practice, you’ll soon be able to memorize the chart and pick the right option for each situation. This will improve your chances of success and allow you to enjoy the game more. Good luck!