Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

I have not played this game. But by the looks of it, it looks ridiculously good. And this is not coming from a gameplay or technical perspective - since technically I have not even played it - but the theme, the sensation and the concept of it is simply ingenious. It is no secret I am a fan of structures and symbolism, and here are some thoughts that came to mind when I watched reviews and let's play footage of the game. 

There is not much plot to spoil here, but anyway the basic idea is that this is a co-operative game where you will need someone to play with you. The two of you pilot a spaceship through space, rescuing bunnies, while fighting off anti-love aliens, avoiding obstacles and exploring the uncharted universe; that's about it. The magnificence of the game comes within the concept. 

From what I can see, there are essentially three things the two players have to do: Attack (By firing cannons or the special weapon), Defend (By rotating the shield to block off enemy attacks), and Move (with the ship's booster). What this means is that players are no longer independent of each other, and more importantly players cannot stay at the same posts as there are only two pair of hands for three jobs. Coordinating your path through the loveless spacetime requires real coordination between players in real life - one piloting and the other defending, and when facing a horde of enemy to booster and run while shielding, or back to one corner, throw up the shield and have both players fire the guns. The anxiety and excitement generated from these three tasks, I feel, can only be experienced when you play the game. Which I really should, but this brings me to a next problem.

The theme here is 'lovers'. The game currently does not have a online multi-player mode, and game reviewers have cited this as one of its greatest weakness. For me, as much as I agree having the online mode turns this into a better game, it downplays the theme of 'lovers' - the idea of having two person sitting on the same couch, talking to each other face to face and not through headphones, and going through a series of dangers together. What's more, the threat here is Anti-Love, and this is essentially two person journey to find the path of love together - this is not a game to play with a friend, your brother and especially not some random person online. The current state of the game, I feel, places the game right where it should be. 

And as I watched my second video on gameplay footage, I felt a sense of tingling... loneliness. The longing for such a partner to play this. It is kind of like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - but that of course is about a relationship between brothers, or your left and right hand. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a co-op game that calls for lovers - to undertake this journey together against whatever that is stopping you from bringing Love to the entire universe. And on this journey, there will be quarrels, there will be moments you fume up as your partner fails to support you in the way you want them to, there will be disagreements on where to head to next, or what to do together, or who to play what roles. But like love, there will be joy, moments of dancing together to celebrate a mission well done, moments where you are thankful that you are not on this journey alone, and moments where, you think, you realise that this person beside you may just be the right one, to travel to the edges of space and the ends of time.

I haven't felt so much doubt about singlehood ever since I watched Her by Spike Jonze. The feeling that something is missing, after seeing such a perfect game yet not have someone right to play it with - it just feels like I'm looking at a loving couple at the altar, burning with envy and wondering why can't I have a life like that. What this shows, I guess, is that Games, truly can be and should be considered Art forms, especially something like this - and most importantly, an Art that is not like films or dramas. A game shouldn't need long cutscenes and plots filled with twists to pretend it is a movie or anything. Instead, I think a Game can only be considered Art when the interactive, the 'playing' of the game, is invoked, It makes the player not only immersed in the experience but also involved in how the game is played out. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is truly a stroke of genius, a work of Art. I hope the studio continues to make such games in the future.

Post GE2015 thoughts on snobbishness and freedom of speech

As with all my writings I'll start off with this disclaimer: This is not a complete analysis, because it is especially impossible the shorter essays go, but I'll try to say as much as possible.

I have lost a lot of sleep over the past few days, mainly trying to juggle work and political enthusiasm over the 2015 Singapore General Elections. I go to rallies, read stuff online, and made fun of people who were simply making baseless criticisms that were completely lacking in self-awareness. As the elections draw to a close with PAP winning an almost 70% majority - the hardcore opposition supporters are making themselves look like heroes of a new world that was supposed to come, but was hindered by the still dormant and un-awakened 60% joined by another 10% of traitors and defectors. All over my facebook wall are these people of this lot chiding at Singaporeans who voted for the PAP, how they better not complain about problems in the next 5 years, how they only did so because they were drawn in to the lies of a freak election, how the PAP's dominance of the mainstream media helped to stop these people from leaving their opiate fantasy.

Many a time the political candidates are complete fools, and in this round we had people like Cheo Chai Chen, Lawrence Wong, and that pathetic son of JBJ... but I think most of the time the fans make them out to be worse people than they are (or they really are). These people, who also happen to be the vocal majority (on the social media platforms I am exposed to at least), are fashioning themselves as a bunch of snobs who think they know of that better world with their 'democracy', and 'freedom of speech' and whatnot. The 70% to them, are people who cannot accept their opinionated ideals and therefore should be criticised.

There are a two things I want to discuss here. Firstly, the idea of snobbishness and elitism. Elitism, to me, is a feeling of superiority that is for the most of it baseless because it is based on the claim that you are intellectually and mentally superior to another, for your supposed wit and erudition above all because of a paper degree, or you simply are because you can see things better or something. For instance, you are student of the pseudo-sciences and you can analyse things with your pseudological imagination, or you are the supporter of an opposition to a party that has been in power for 55 years and therefore that makes you the hero of the democratic dawn of some sort. Elitism plunges into pure snobbishness when people in these elite circles refuse to explain why they are better, or are unable to explain, because their stance was never based in logic nor reason. Some of these people have never read a word of policy recommendation from the parties they support, and join the fray because they are unhappy their selfish needs cannot be fulfilled by the establishment. Leaving the debate on first past the post aside for now, and assuming democracy is the most system that we all trust in, is democracy not about the mandate of the majority? If the majority does not vote in a way that you desire, I think it is more reasonable to question who is the lot who is deluded here, the people who sided with 70% of the population, or those who sided with the 30%? If all you are saying is that you are more awakened and more knowledgeable than the potatoes that sided with the PAP, is that not the elitism that you chided PAP candidates and supporters for? If you accept democracy, then please also accept that your opinion is simply not shared with many, many out there, including me. We can have an endless debate on who is more deluded, with theories and history and pretty words till the cows come home and no conclusion can be drawn unless one of us starts beating the other up, because there simply isn't a better opinion. Democracy is not a system that elects the better opinion, but only the thoughts of the more, or to use that recently dirtified word, the opinions that are popular.

Secondly, the idea of democracy and freedom. This is where I flash out my elitist side - I will not go in length to discuss why I think these ideas are relative and should not be enshrined as some natural and moral good - because you should really be reading more, and other people would have explained this point better than me. I will just like to throw in a few questions in relation to this context. Does letting the Worker's Party take all 20 seats they contested in in Parliament mean democracy? Are there no problems with other two-party systems in other 'democracies'? Is Singapore the only country using the first past the post voting system? And in general, what is this, Democracy? The point that is less discussed and meditated upon is the idea of 'freedom of speech'. I will argue that we absolutely have freedom of speech by my understanding of the term - and this is not about Hong Lim Park, but about Low Thia Khiang and the WP's debate with PAP members in Parliament (and amongst the PAP MPs also), this is about the Internet, EDMW, HWZ where people can throw distasteful comments at Mdm Halimah Yacob after her mother passed away yesterday, and still get away with it. This is about all the more opened discussions we have seen in post-LKY Singapore for the past 4 years - not national conversation but the discussions on different pro- or anti- establishment websites, MPs and statesmen's social media pages, news sites and forums. You can argue that the Amos Yee issue is a case where freedom of speech was suppressed, but although I would agree that the punishment was rather uncalled for, whether hate speeches are a good thing is high debatable, and frankly speaking I don't think the government was doing this oppress freedom of speech considering the backlash from the general public afterwards. People are allowed to overreact over the death of LKY by spouting lies about how Singapore was a fishing village in 1965, and people are allowed to overreact over the case of Amos Yee by claiming that the government was containing free speech over his capture, that's freedom of speech. People can act like snobs and claim the PAP is deluding the masses, and not be hunted down like poor Marx was over his Manifesto, that's freedom of speech. Where debates are allowed to exist, freedom of speech exists - and you are allowed to disagree and debate with me on that.

My recommendation for all this is really to start your meditation with the idea of democracy and governance, and not start by assuming that majority votes are good thing. If you wish to talk about how our system of democracy is not good, and should be fashioned after another system existing somewhere else in the world or in some theory, we can have that debate but I am quite sure I will win that too. But we should still have that debate, we should always have debates.

Laments: Authority over Memory

This is a scrapped section of an essay on an Autobiography that I felt was pretty interesting, posting it here so that I know where to find it if it becomes useful again. FYI: The book is Sold for Silver by Janet Lim. Maybe I'll post it here if it turns out as an acceptable read.

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Who are we to judge whether a piece of writing is authentic or not? Who are we to judge whether the author is lying or not? Who are we to say whether the author is writing with specific intentions or not? And to that I answer, why not? 

When a piece of writing calls itself an autobiography, memoir, reflections, it becomes impossible (unless if one is a mind reader) for an outsider to grapple with the ‘truthfulness’ of the information conveyed – memory has a special kind of authority that is hard to topple because memory is personal and inaccessible without first being filtered through the mind of the person who holds those memories. Memory grants the autobiographer or memorist almost absolute power over the reader and it intimidates us into not judging – because we are unable to create an equally authentic alternative, due to the fact that we did not physically live in the world the author has reconstructed.

I will like to present two counterpoints to rethink that position. Firstly, memory is imperfect. Memory can be altered, fragmented or lost through traumatic experiences or simply due to aging. When one tries to reconstruct a coherent picture from incomplete memory of a lost time, he takes the fragments and clues left within the memory to piece out a complete picture that at least makes sense to him. Secondly, people can lie and more importantly not lying is not the same as telling the truth. As authentic an account may be, the author may choose to communicate to us only part of the memory and conceal other parts, again consciously or unconsciously – there is a high chance that the eventual portion of the memory being conveyed to us through the text is incomplete and far from a certain ‘truth’ that gives the person holding those memories the authority over outsiders in the first place.  

Changing nature of Prostitution in Geylang

Keywords: Power relations, control, organisation, social backlash, shifting patterns, negotiations

Practical tools to clamp down on freelancers - use of security cameras at every corner, brighter lightings (?) to shy away illegal freelancers. Symbols of the state's power to observe and control? Foucault?

Clandestine prostitutes forced into bars, karaoke lounges, or under the control of a pimp to continue to sell. Turning prostitution into an organised activity that is easier to monitor and control.

New third party (bar owners, karaoke owners, new pimps) now involved between this once solo-operational freelancers to use as point of contact/ control. Also a figurehead to blame if issurs pertaining eg. moral, std, pop up.

Does this prove my previous point that the state is not inherently concerned with social issues, but more of social backlashes from people? Populism sentiments rising within the party-state?

What is the relationship between the state/police and these third party figureheads? Wary frienemies? Marriages of convenience?

What can we read about the state? Power seeping into every crook and nanny of society - confining a vice to a small area and impose newer ways to futher control it.

Double whammy of vice control in same time period? Anti-prostitution + anti-alcohol. Common area of confinememt also?

On the economic side - how will this affect Geylang's economy? More businesses at bars, karaokes and legal brothels going into accountable GDP? Or banning reducing the general crowd to geylang (together with alcohol ban).

Who does this benefit? If this diverts business to organised prostitution (both legal, illegal; and both direct and indirect), the people with the economic and social capability to control such organisations will definitely benefit. Secret societies rising in power? Why? Through negotiation of power with the state? How is the police/ state involved in all this? (Not implying corruption, simply negotiation and changing power relations).

[I don't have time to write these into proper arguments now. Will do so when I am free.]

Two stories of Bangladeshi workers while walking home from Fajar

These are recounts from my Junior College days (the context is pretty important here, at least for one story), and they both involve foreign workers whom I am quite sure are from Bangladesh. I apologise if I got that wrong, but this is really a post about foreign workers in general.

The first story is a funny one, and this is where the context comes into play. My school uniform was a grey top and dark blue pants, pretty darn ugly if you ask me, and us in school always mocked it as a uniform for ‘factory workers’. My school, famous for students’ capability in ‘mugging’ – memorisation and regurgitation of textual knowledge – so the factory uniform is actually quite symbolic of who we are and how we are perceived in society (Think Lego Movie). Perhaps we are who we look like, just cogs in this grand scheme of things and there is no such thing as individualism and personal achievement. And it came this faithful day, I walked home from Fajar LRT station. This particular Bangladeshi worker walking in front of me… was wearing a grey top and dark blue jeans. I looked at him, and looked at me: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE.

There he was, on his 6 year contract to do nothing but serve a foreign nation and help build their nation; this is one who is most definitely nothing more than a cog, but does that bother him? I doubt it. To be willing to leave his homeland and work abroad to build someone else’s nation, means there is a greater drive behind him than seeking individualism. Maybe individualism should not be a thing at all. Maybe individualism is not a means to an end. In my field I study prostitutes; and many of them willingly sell their bodies in hope of saving enough money to start their own businesses (not always in the same field). Maybe the sacrifice of oneself’s individuality in the present is for greater pleasures in the future – it is not wrong to hope after all; maybe individualism has to be sacrificed for the ‘greater good’ of the society (read my views in posts that discuss Unicorndia); but what we should all agree that the form of individualism we believe in needs to be modified to suit realistic standards.

Being individualistic does not mean you should do what you want. I’ll develop this in another post, but the general idea is that we should do what we want, as long as we remain courteous to one another. This is an ambiguous word, and I’ll try my best to define it when I write that post. The point here is that regardless of whether we like it or not, we are all cogs of the grand mechanism of society, of history, and we are all in service of one another. Offend the fellow who picks up your customer service call, tomorrow he may be your customer on your cab or your restaurant.

It was really a strange sight with the Bangladeshi worker, but it made me realise, if only a little, what I mean to this society, this time in history… I don’t mean anything as of now, and if I really want to be one of the greats I need to find something else to drive me than grades and academic achievement, unless I wanted to stay in the academia that is. I went on to pursue a dream to become an Academic, and at this point in time that dream just died, and that’s the reason why I felt it is time to pen this story down. I am finally ready to strip naked of all my past glories and move on to new projects in search of myself again, I don’t know where this will lead to, but mystery is part of the journey too, I guess.

And on the foreign worker himself, it also made me realise how similar we are, we are both working for the sake of an unknown future, we both understand that we are nothing but gears in the grand scheme of things, and we are not doing what we are doing to claim we are contributing to the nation building of this nation. We are all selfish cogs in this pretentious society. We are both working for our own individualistic benefits, and if it just so happens to aid nation building, so be it. It does not matter. So who are we to act high and mighty in front of these people? I am glad to say that our society as a whole has learnt to deal more kindly with these people, at least in public places, and there is often public outrage if we see displays of discrimination against foreign workers. This is a big step for the Generation Revolution. 

The second story is a rather depressing one. This was the time when Fajar was getting an overhead shelter; not surprisingly, it was being built by foreign workers, where the majority are from Bangladesh. So one day, it rained, rather heavily. The shelter was not quite done, so I walked home with my umbrella. In the distance, I saw 3 of these Bangladeshi workers trying to get shelter under a metal board. Then it struck me: “These people are building shelters for us, but who is sheltering them?”

We have all heard those horror stories about how employers exploit these people, delaying their pays, making them pay for CPF contributions of shadow workers; in a perfect world, in Unicorndia, these cruelties will not exist. Similarly to the previous post, this will not be a problem if we learnt how to deal more kindly with one another, be individualistic and selfish and yet know how to extend basic courtesy to each and every other being in the society. We need to stop donning those labels, I don’t want to be seen as a local Chinese middle income student youth, these labels are not important for our social interaction. It is important to acknowledge differences and diversifications, but it is exceedingly detrimental to base our actions and behaviour towards one another according to these differences. Why can’t we just treat each other like human beings? This is something that happened almost 10 years back, again, I am sure if they took shelter under the flats these days the residents should be ok with it now. Shame on those who lodge complains on foreign workers just because they are just trying to say, get away from the rain, or get some rest at the void deck benches.

I’m not a person with much empathy. However, it saddens me to see human beings causing harm to other human beings when they do not have to. Perhaps it is just because I am young and have not seen enough cruelties of life, to be so ignorant and hopeful that we can arrive at an utopia where people love and assist each other. But so what if the world is fucked up? Is there really no way to change how this cruel world is? Why must we conform to these world’s laws and not resent them. If we compare the nation’s situation now to a decade ago, I’d say at least for the visible parts of society, people have changed for the better. Maybe this is my optimistic observation, maybe I am deluding myself, but if the situation is as I have observed, maybe we have already kicked start a series of change for Bangladeshi workers to be seen as equals in the far future.  

Memoirs versus Memories

Just doing some brainstorming here before jumping into my next essay. This time I'll be writing on one of the most controversial figures in modern Southeast Asian history, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. I'm currently reading his Memoirs, A Doctor in the House, and getting some of my Chinese friends from Malaysia to discuss their memories of Dr Mahathir. There's really nothing political about this essay - because I honestly do not like discussing politics and I shy away from political history - so politics will be integrated to the essay but really not the main point.

The essay is tentatively titled 《Memoirs versus Memories: Impressions of the Good Doctor》. Firstly I wonder if there is such a thing as 'historian of impressions'. I guess that's what social historians do, perhaps. The reason for crafting this essay this way is because impressions interest me; things you see, hear and read, alongisde some post- seeing, hearing, reading thinking (which I think most people do but of course not doing so is fine too, helps to leave an impression. Of all I have gathered so far, I have heard him being described as 'good', some 'bad', one 'sly' and multiple 'smart'. Impressions can be as short as a word, or as long as one economics major friend's explanation about how ballsy he was to close Malaysia's financial market during the 1997 crisis. The one thing that fascinates me the most however, is how little we actually know about Dr Mahathir, though he was the leader of our closest neighbour for so many years. One of the guiding question for this essay will be, why wasn't this impression left? Or were we as kids too young to be interested or understand anything when it was still his reign? Once I start my discussions with the older generations, this should clear up.

I am also specifically exclusively interviewing (not really interview, just a word of convenience) Chinese (more specifically non-Malay-categorised Malaysians, of which I only know Chinese-categorised friends, sadly. Also note whenever I say Chinese or Malay I mean it with the -categorised at the back, I'm just lazy to type) Malaysians, because one of Dr Mahathir's greatest controversies was being accused of being racist, and advocating communal policies. Or to rehash that term from class... affirmative action. Racist vs affirmative action is a fun topic to explore too, and I am expecting some nasty things from them, but preliminary enquiry shows that some of them are actually pretty ok with him.

60 more chapters to go on his book. It's going to be helluva journey but I enjoy torturing myself like that. (Just finished a 650 page Chinese book on Vietnam history, this semester is just crazy.) Definitely cross-reading it with Mr Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs and watch how each tries to break the narrative of the other. In the mean time, I'll be having fun walking around popping this question to random people, "What's your impression of Mahathir?"

Unicorndia, The Final Land

How mankind conducts itself sometimes is really disheartening. Different people recognise different things as bad, but regardless how complex these things seem, they somehow link to the evilest thing of all, power.

Now before you start calling me a Marxist, I neither agree nor disagree with Marx, but I do sympathise with him on many issues. The problem discussing Marx with people in this post Cold War era is that the everyman's perception of Marxism is too shallow and narrow. Marxism is not communism, nor socialism; yes it has inspired many (misguided) world changing movements that resulted in mostly shitty lives for many, but I feel Marx is right about one thing, power. Specifically, the need to dissolve power.

Imagine Unicorndia, the final land we can reach (I will argue that we will reach it, but that'll be saved for later) if we learnt how to treat each other courteously. People recognise the futility of violence, arguments, wars, mental and physical torture of each other, and instead find the answer to life in helping and thinking for another. I disagree with Marx that an utopia can be created through violence; power relations have to be broken down in order for mankind to reach Unicorndia, but it will come to us slowly, subtlely, and we will not know when it hit us. Unicorndia cannot be a community that is created consciously.

We will reach Unicorndia, therefore, by just carrying on with life with it is now. Our only way to achieve Unicorndia is through a "Generation Revolution": one generation of mankind will become closer to Unicorndia than the previous, and eventually we will pass an individual indicator and progressed into the final land. I argued previously that this process cannot be conscious, but can anything at all be done at all? Yes. Should anything be done at all? Yes. Must anything be done at all? Yes. Considering how our world is like now, we will need to set it in motion to move itself towards the final land. And the reason is the problem with education.

Education in itself is a problematic concept. People are taught to know things through educators following a curriculum set by the edcational system. For anyone to teach anybody anything, the educator must be God. Because only a 'God' cannot err, cannot be wrong, and is unconfused about what they are saying. He will have considered everything before he makes a decision to say any word, to imply any meaning. I am not saying that our educations are not good, I am saying that educators shouldn't even be a thing. Education in this age is nothing more than a stupid erring human providing another stupid erring human with answers - this power relation that exists between an educator and their student now needs to be torn down to make way for 'learning'. Schools should still exist, but only to act as a venue for thought. Everyone thinks, everyone shares, everyone discuss then come to different conclusionS.

The only merit of mankind that remains today is our ability to evolve. And whether we can evolve physically to make the world a better place is really something not for me to speculate. I do strongly believe, however, that if we get everyone thinking about humanity, we will eventually come to a conclusion that there is need for people to relate to one another. Every form of relationship that involves power has to be broken down: a governor and the people, a father and his son, a boss with his employees... and so on. Do I mean I think everything the world has now is problematic? More or less.

There are many many issues that this short blogpost cannot discuss and also I will need to lament on them further because this idea is far from complete, below are some that are still work in progress:

1. How can thinking be taught?

2. What will Unicorndia be like exactly?

3. The last section on power relations seems rushed and blasphemous, can you discuss more on it?

4. So how do we reach Unicorndia when everyone thinking comes to different conclusions?

I will think more about it and write when I am free. In the mean time, I'll try to treat people more courteously and see how it goes.