Nostalgia

Went to visit my grandmother’s grave today, and went back to the park and market I grew up in. Back in the heartlands, the place that now looks far too empty and far too simple and far too… far – Choa Chu Kang.

My grandmother’s ashes are in a temple very near my old flat, the place I had the fondest memories. The first home my family owned. It was a house my father put in much effort to reovate. But of course, it is no longer ours. Today I looked up at the window of what used to be my room, wondered how it looks like now, but I don’t know and never will.

I remember feeling vaguely unhappy about moving away from the house and selling it to people who didn’t appreciate the furniture my father handmade. They painted an ugly plastic vanish over the originally matt finish, which my father sandpapered and rubbed wax and sandpapered and rubbed wax over.

Though young, I felt cheated when I first saw the furniture painted in cheap vanish after we sold the flat. Afterall, I helped with the renovation and the making of the furniture. I asked my dad, in indignation, if he felt sorry for the furniture. He just told me, rather coldly (though I knew very well he does feel sorry for the furniture), that we sold it and that it didn’t belong to us anymore – so there’s not much to be sad about. It struck a chord in me then. I thought however precious, it can’t be mine forever. And once gone, there’s no longer much to regret about. My first lesson in the cruelty of business.

In my years in that flat and the years after, I have seen the flat had a few coats of paint, in different colour combinations. Perhaps it was purely nostalgia, but I thought the best colour was the christmasy one (dark red and green) when we first bought it.

I see the park where I climbed over the huge egg plant slide, not to slide down, but up the sides just to compete. Why didn’t I join rock climbing? The place where I had bicycle races with the boys, one of whom I caused to fly out of his bike and got hurt real bad that I never once played with again. I remember the cold stare he gave when I saw him again after the accident.

The temple was no longer an isolated run down temple near Lim Chu Kang. It is now framed by highways and HDB flats up almost to its gate. They rebuilt the building into a new modern finish, is now conducting classes with proper monks living in it instead of the old grouchy caretaker lady. Ironically, it is renamed with an “Old” added in front of the temple name, in the freshly made new signboard.

Place changed; people gone. Times of which will never come back again.

消极中的潇洒，潇洒中的消极

得既高歌失即修，
多愁多恨亦悠悠。
今朝有酒今朝醉，
明日愁来明日愁。
- 罗隐

Pre-Christmas, Pre-New Year resolution

I shall be cynical, critical, caustic and sarcastic NO MORE.

Let’s see how long I can keep this up.
Whack!*
Damnit, no more cynicism.

遗忘尊严的价钱

刚刚看完一集《大冒险家》，有一场戏让我特别有感触。

在许多记者与陌生人面前，白活对一名女子说：“我要买你的衣服，就在这里。多少钱？”

起初女子感到被冒犯，羞怒地转过身去。

白活不放弃，追问着说：“一万？” “两万？” “五万？” “十万？” “二十万？”

随着数目的征加，女子被动摇了。她渐渐转过身，便在听到“二十万”时匆匆答道，“是你出的价，二十万！”。一说完，她便开始解开衣服的纽扣。

白活冷静地说，“等等。我自己来。”

他走向女子，将她的墨镜除下并自己戴上：“二十万，成交。原来你就值二十万。”

他说完便离开，喃喃自语道：“就这么简单。原来就这么简单。”

这让白活发觉原来什么东西都有个价钱- 就算是人，也能用钱买到。

这想法太消极了！我相信，人和尊严始终是无价的。

金钱只能买到人的善忘。

那二十万买了女子的遗忘。当那女子听到白活要买她的衣服时，她起初觉得羞耻，如同出卖自己的尊严。但当那女子决定以二十万卖了她的衣服时，她忘了羞耻。或许她只知道脱了衣服便能赚二十万，就如只是出卖劳力的一份工作。

白活却不买她的劳力，以一句“原来你值二十万” 把那个交易等同于把那女子的尊严买下，而那女子的身价就是二十万。 我相信，那女子在听到“原来你值二十万”时，她应该是会后悔的。

又或许，能让人遗忘尊严的那个价钱就是人的价值？

那么，人的时间呢？

有人跟我说过，时间是每个人最宝贵的东西，因为时间只会少而且赚不回来。但是每当我打份无畏的假期工时，我把时间以每小时＄6卖了。金钱让我遗忘了我时间的宝贵。不过每个人都心甘情愿地为自己的时间和劳力定了一个价钱。

一个人的价值又要怎么定义？

This Dysfunctional World

In a minimalistic world where simplicity is beauty, simple words instead of elaborate pictures are found in most signs. But this doesn’t exactly work for toilet signs.

I found 2 doors with only a label on each. One says “Ladies”; the other “Gentlemen”. Gone were the days with little girl and boy pictures and bright red and blue doors. How elegantly simple.

But, what if I can’t read English? Why did most toilets use pictures instead of words? Why did people complain about overly artistic pictures on toilet doors with a cross-dressing female and a metrosexual male?

And it doesn’t help that these toilets are located in a hotel.

—

Haven’t you been attracted to that new fashion phone? The one you saved up for months to get and when you finally get it, you couldn’t bear to remove the wrapping stickers that came with it. For a month, you carry your prized fashion phone around in the wrappers it was packed in from the factories.

When finally the stickers won’t stick anymore, you spend another small fortune on a cover for the phone. Fantastic, now your prized skinny 6mm phone won’t be scratched being in its cover that double the thickness.

How amusing it is to watch people carry around fashion phones marketed and bought for their aesthetic values in little cases that make them look little different from old functional phones in similar covers.

Why can’t people understand that wear and tear is part and parcel of the pleasure gained from using it?

Are Men Necessary?

First book I read in ages, (not counting textbooks that is). I’ve decided to dedicate this December holidays to myself, I’ll read and write to revive this blog. Time spent this way might be worth more than 6 bucks an hour at a mundane stupid job.

Maureen Dowd. The name caught my eye while browsing at the library. I remember reading one of her articles on NYTimes magazine, What’s a Modern Girl to do? and have enjoyed very much her wit and humour. She shared insights from her mother’s period of conservative females to her time of “coming to age” in the period where feminists were very much active and to now, a period where feminism seems to have died down.

Sadly, this book, though detailed in the discussion, did not bring out her caustic wit and most of her puns felt forced or simply fell flat.

Nevertheless, she had a point to make. Generally, it was a discussion that despite women seeming to have equal rights, it is more of a man’s world than ever. Feminism is dying, if not dead. Women have moved from the times of Stepford Wives, past the period of attempting domination and now back to where it started (after adopting sexual liberation) – women just want to be sex objects like those in Playboy. Contrary to the golden period of feminism, when women are trying to be like men, women are now willingly submissive and are changing themselves to please men.

Capable and intelligent women find themselves feared and shunned by men while pretty airheads gain all the attention. Have we progressed to become the world feminists envisioned decades ago, where the abilities of women are appreciated and validated? Well in a way, yes we have. Validated so much that men are frightened by capable women who threaten their dominance both in the workplace and in relationships.

“Men can have their cake and eat it.” Smart successful men get the best of both worlds – a high paying job with good prospects and a (ideally) non-critical wife and kids. Smart successful women find themselves too unattractive to men and too old to bear children, and to make it worse, some find a glass ceiling at work.

At a time like this, it would seem as though women had to choose between the two – a career or a family. Although women are getting the education that feminists have fought for, decades later, educated women are (unlike what feminists aimed for) not going out to lead and excel in their fields despite having the capabilities. Graduates are choosing to be stay-home mums and women are just more obsessed in their looks than ever “in ways that make the Stepford Wives pale in comparision”.

Dowd didn’t use much complex studies and weighty research to back up her arguments. Instead, much of her observations are based on chats with girlfriends and anecdotal evidence. But I like her personal approach of the observations of a regular woman.

I have blogged previously about how women have all been screwed up by the feminists. Women are now thrown into the terrible rat race with men in the workplace while the responsibility of taking care of the family remains, leaving us in the difficult situation of balancing work and family. Dowd observed that women felt betrayed because even before they got to the balancing act, successful women couldn’t even start a family.

Critics attacked Dowd of her narrow view of feminism and her ignorance of the fact that feminism has matured over the years. Yet I believe she wasn’t so. Although her observations implied that feminism is dead, it seemed to refer to the hardcore feminism of yesteryears, the no-makeup all jeans, smoke and drink female feminism. In fact, she brought out observations of how the battle of the sexes has evolved and attempted to provide reasons for the movement away from old feminism.

Women of today have the power to change their looks and no longer need to conform to the old feminist ideas of no makeup and jeans not because they wish to please men but simply because they wish to please themselves. Definitely. But this doesn’t make Dowd’s observations of increasing obsession with vanity or men’s preference for pretty airheads any less accurate. “Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they’ve forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.”

In fact, reading the book let me see that feminism has achieved much. Women may have boomeranged back to the pre-feminism days, but they have gone back as educated and respected equals by choice. Women may be back in the age of obsession with looks, but they have gone back with the right and financial ability to change their looks for themselves.

Perhaps it is not the world envisioned by feminists, where capable women rise to the ranks purely by ability and are admired and respected as peers for being able to do so. But, women retained the benefit of using looks and their gender to their advantage both in the workplace and in relationships. Well, women might not have gained all, but they’ve not lost all either.

Whatever it is, with technology and the shrinking Y chromosome, women seem to have little to worry as men face extinction and women have a future to rule the world by themselves, 125,000 years later.

Guilty Pleasure

Since the holidays started, I did what most lazy city dwellers did. Shopped, borrowed a couple of books to read, did some catching up with friends…

And I also did something more. After being unsuccessful at finding brainless classic webgames to kill time with, I picked up an embarrassing old interest – Neopets.

I couldn’t remember my password, so I had to go through the painful process of setting up a new account, starting with selecting my age group. I belong to the group with no upper limit.

At the pet selection stage, I picked the first one that didn’t look familiar, ran my fingers through the keyboard to give it a name with the vowels in the right place so it could be pronounced and stayed with the first statistics they gave me. Frankly, I didn’t care if they gave me a coloured box with an impossible to remember serial number, even better if the “pet” had no statistics and never needs to be fed. The pets were never the reason I played Neopets.

Initially, Neopets was meant to be my supply of silly games to kill time, but after playing a couple of games, the interest in it quickly shifted from killing time to making Neopoints (Neopet land’s equivalent of money). In each game, you are given 3 chances per day to exchange the scores gained in the game to Neopoints and of course, playing games wasn’t the only way to earn Neopoints.

So there’s the crux. Neopets is a captivating greed satisfying capitalist game. And that’s where all the attraction lies.

Before long, I found myself opening a shop in Neopets land, fervently stocking it with goods I bought (hopefully) at a bargain from the main food store. Back to the old ways, I searched using the internal search engine of Neopets for “market prices” of the goods and priced my goods accordingly at competitive but profit generating rates. After a day at Neopets, I’m (at an unofficial count) 20,000Np richer, which I as quickly as I earned, reinvested into increasing the size of the shop and restocking it.

Ask me what’s the purpose of doing so. Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it was just the satisfaction of fulfiling what I couldn’t do (at least not yet) in real life. I can’t just open a shop and stock it with goods and see the profits roll in, despite how alluring and deceptingly simple Neopets made it seem. I can’t accumulate wealth and spend it on self-gratifying goods as easily as I could in Neopets land. I can’t succumb to pure sinful materialism with absolutely no moral callings or obligations that came with the anonymity Neopets gave.

Neopets land had everything capitalist about our way of living. It has a stock market (which by the way, is classified under “Luck/Chance” games ), lottery, casinos, a market for goods… But there is no form of regulation – no government, no church, no written law or moral codes; nothing related to for example, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. Sure, there is some charity and means to help the poorer Neopians, but nothing beyond sustenance. And there’s no taxes, so everything that’s contributed to help poor Neopians is purely voluntary. Not surprisingly, the charity organisation is nothing better than a garbage dump with occasional “generous” donations of Np amounts not worth mentioning.

It baffles me how, at the rate of Neopoints being given out and at the rate new goods are generated, inflation doesn’t seem to hit Neopets land despite the volume of free market and trading involved as well as the seemingly lack of regulation. Maybe because of the ever increasing Neopet community and the consumption of the goods by some who truly wish to treat their pets well. Or rather, in this virtual community, everything is easily regulated by the owners with complete opacity and no explanation needs to be given.

Okay, so there really isn’t any true market forces in it. Maybe despite its similarity to the real world we live in, it may not represent accurately how people behave.

But one thing’s for sure though, it remains a success after so many years. Bored gamers leave their accounts to die off, new gamers sign on and even boreder old gamers sign back up again. Whatever is the reason behind the allure of this game, be it escapism, greed or materialism, it has driven the popularity of the game and the popularity looks like it’s staying.

I did a quick search on google for any previous studies that might be related to Neopets but didn’t find much except for general concerns about kids being involved in virtual pets and virtual community. But there are also some criticisms about Neopets feeding kids with ideas of consumerism and capitalism.

Despite so, it is a little game with cute virtual pets kids flock to and deprived no-lifer adults escape to while their sophisticated busy peers leading wholesome capitalist lives scorn at it. You may say, “Get a life, pathetic moron.” But what life? Fulfil in reality what is done virtually in Neopets land? I can’t help thinking that offline or online, materialism and capitalism is mainstream.