If any of you are thinking of getting married, consider the following before you do:
On the one hand, you get to wear a pretty cool ring.
On the other hand, you don’t.
The Ordinary Singaporean
Musings from Singapore
Page 25 of 27
I got a migraine after taking in too much in a day.
I read a lot in a day. I kind of have to, it’s an (healthy) addiction of mine.
Now, this isn’t some kind of boast. I don’t necessarily read the most intellectual stuff – 90% of all that I read is basketball-related – but this does mean that I’m wired to receive only useful and/or interesting content.
Bang for buck matters. And even if the point or format of your article is long-form in nature, the journey had better be an absorbing one.
And yet, there are some avenues, which are supposed to be enlightening, that increasingly end in utter disappointment. I recently attended a few panel discussions at a large conference that left me with several instances of rolled eyes and lots of muttering under my breath.
I don’t think I’ve spent 1.5 hours so wastefully since my NS days. Luckily, my ticket was free.
The panels were an abhorrent mix of Captain Obvious’ greatest hits and a multitude of PR messaging*. I go to these things to learn, but I did. not. get. a. single. piece. of. useful. information.
(*PR messaging is basically what communications departments tell their spokespeople to push when they’re on stage: stuff like key stats and figures, and one or two key pointers such as “champion data sharing” or “emphasize our community development efforts”)
It was like being in a one-way conversation in which I was just a receptacle for gibberish. And maybe it’s just me, but I actually have a physical reaction to an overload of this kind of crap – I got a headache that night, and I at least partially attribute it to the frustration I felt.
I feel that the best learning opportunities are those in which you are an active participant. Conversation-making ability is incredibly valuable – it gets the other party involved.
And although you might say that that doesn’t apply to panel discussions or keynotes, I’d argue that it does, because in either case, there’s an audience. And a quick Google search for public speaking tips will always bring up the pointer that it’s all about the audience. You may be doing all the talking, but the content is for them.
There’s a greater onus on the speaker(s) to not talk out of their ass or just vomit out stats and figures. I can look those up on a computer on my own.
People need to think about what they want to say before they go out and do it. It has to be useful or at least entertaining, because even going neutral is a failure by default – the audience’s time would have been wasted.
Speaking isn’t easy – I wish I could do it better, myself. But I hope people come to realize that just having an agreeable accent or subject matter knowledge isn’t enough; if they aren’t sharing anything useful, it’s a bad talk.
And I really don’t need more headaches in my life.
Talking offseason, beers, and the genesis of my fandom.
In late April, I got the opportunity to be a guest on the Hoops And Hefeweizens podcast.
Hosted by the good dudes Alex and Ruben, and joined by Jeevan, a fellow Singaporean MFFL (Mavs Fan For Life), we talked about how we became Dallas Mavericks fans, our thoughts on the offseason, and our favourite beers.
Check out the specific episode here.
Please listen to it, I’ll love you for it ♥️
(P.S. This was recorded in late April, so my opinions – especially on Kemba joining the Mavs – may have changed a little)
I’m terrible at keeping to my New Year resolutions to lose weight. Let me show you my checklist:
2013: Didn’t jog
2014: Didn’t jog
2015: Didn’t jog
2016: Didn’t jog
2017: Didn’t jog
2018: Didn’t jog
2019: Still haven’t started jogging
Clearly, this is a running joke.
Whoa? Woah? Woa?
Keanu Reeves has been experiencing a resurgence in the public consciousness lately. From John Wick to Always Be My Maybe and even Toy Story 4, it seems his agent has been hard at work.
He even appeared on the E3 stage, presenting the latest trailer and the release date for the Cyberpunk 2077 (which I’m definitely getting), creating a new meme in the process.
But before ‘breathtaking’, Keanu’s most memorable quote was another singular, exclamatory word:
Whoa.
… which is what this piece is really about. Not the incomparable Mr. Reeves. (Sorry.)
As you can see, I spell the word like so: ‘whoa’. The first time I read the word, it was spelled like this, and that’s now etched into my mind as the one true and right way to do so.
But today I came across an article that spelled it as ‘woah’. And at the risk of being meta (in a stupid way), my first reaction was: “Whoa. Why do people spell it that way?”
(To be clear: it’s not the first time I’ve seen it spelled ‘woah’. But it WAS the first time I stopped to think about it.)
It just looks… wrong to me. It is, without hyperbole, a crime against nature to spell it that way.
I stopped to consider its pronunciation, broken down into phonetic form – wouldn’t that sound like ‘wo-ah’? Which is so obviously wrong that I don’t even need to point it out, do I?
But then, ‘whoa’ broken down in the same way would be ‘wh-o-aye’, and suddenly: incoming existential crisis.
How SHOULD it be spelled then, to fit its pronunciation? The best I could come up with was ‘whoh’, but thinking and typing that out was so painfully unnatural. Look how they (I) massacred my boy.
My bullshit aside, I think this exercise reminded me that first impressions tend to leave the deepest… impression.
(I write for a living, y’all.)
Another example, and another chance to laugh at me: I must’ve skimmed by really fast when I first read the word ‘abysmal’, because for many years, I thought it was spelled ‘absymal’. I even tried to correct a friend once.
So! While what you see at first might irrevocably colour the way you understand something or someone, sometimes it pays to go back and re-think those opinions.
You never really know something or someone until you give it a few months of active consideration, at least.
… except for words. Just double-check those more than none at all, and you should do better than me.
The best kind of people are smart and can poke fun at themselves. Turns out, it’s the same for games.
Have you ever heard of Metal Gear Solid? Broadly speaking, it’s the game series that revolutionized the cinematic possibilities of video games, and brought stealth gaming to a whole new level.
The opening of the first PS1 game was straight out of Hollywood:
The series has an anti-war message coursing through it. Some of the games in the franchise have themes: Gene (MGS1), Meme (MGS2), Scene (MGS3), Sense (MGS4), and Peace (MGS Peace Walker). They inform the overall story, and series creator Hideo Kojima tries to convey some very serious ideas through these games.
So the series has got to be really deep and meaningful, right? Well, yes and no. Because this series also has some crazy nonsense in it:
This Mad Hatter mix isn’t clearly demarcated between the serious and funny parts either, because you get comedic gameplay elements too:
And you know what? I love it. I love this insane juxtaposition. I love it so much. I dub these hi-jinks ‘stupid-cool’, because I can’t think of anything better (feel free to let me know if you have a better term!).
Here’s another example:
It’s a cyborg ninja, battling a giant robot that looks and acts like a dinosaur, with a sword known as a high-frequency blade (for visual purposes, it’s essentially a katana, which means Japanese sword), backed by an electro-metal (?) soundtrack that knows that holding back the vocal track until it kicks into the climax of the fight just makes things that much sicker, topped off with a cool sheathing-the-sword-with-my-back-to-the-explosions pose to close the scene.
(Run-on sentence? You’re goddamn right I’m using a run-on sentence. It’s the least I could do to describe… that.)
The key here is that it’s all presented straight. No nudge-nudge wink-wink “hehe it’s kinda wacky and kooky isn’t it hehe” awareness in the delivery. This allows the audience to make their own judgment call: take it straight, or choose to see the ridiculous elements.
The beauty of this is that it isn’t a mutually-exclusive choice. You can enjoy it both as a soooooo coooooool cyborg vs. giant robot fight, and as a hilarious commentary on cliched elements in Japanese pop culture narrative subtexts and you know what I’m just throwing words together but you get my point. And you can do both simultaneously.
The MGS series isn’t the only one that does this. The Devil May Cry and Yakuza series are also amazing at this balancing act.
(But I don’t agree with his review; buy Yakuza 0 and try it for yourself, I guarantee you’ll be crying at the end, the story’s great)
To me, games like these are representative of life itself – neither 100% serious nor 100% fun, an amalgamation of emotions largely out of our control.
There’s another facet to all this too: there’s a certain dignity that comes with enjoying things to the fullest, in a very innocent, 10-year-old-kid way, even if they’re really niche, somewhat weird things.
Especially if they’re really niche, somewhat weird things.
It’s a form of honesty, which is refreshing in a world that judges you for everything from your clothes to the food you eat.
Of course, it helps that these are good games. But even if they weren’t, the fact that the humour and storytelling of these games come from a pure “I just want you to enjoy yourself” kind of place, means that you can’t help but be touched.
More than anything else, it’s real. And perhaps that’s what matters the most.
A martial arts student asks his teacher:
“Master, why does my ability not improve? I’m always defeated.”
The master, pensive and forever patient, answers: “My dear pupil, have you seen the gulls flying by the setting sun, and their wings seeming like flames?”
“Yes, my master, I have.”
“And a waterfall, spilling mightly over the stones without taking anything out of its proper place?”
“Yes, my master, I have witnessed it.”
“And the moon… when it touches the calm water to reflect all its enormous beauty?”
“Yes, my master, I have also seen this marvelous phenomenon.”
“That is the problem. You keep watching all this shit instead of training.”
It could’ve been better, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Eight years ago today, my team, the Dallas Mavericks, won the NBA title.
Since then, we haven’t even won a single playoff series. I watched as we wasted the last of Dirk Nowitzki’s remaining productive years, the roster a revolving door of just-decent players (Monta Ellis, Harrison Barnes) at best, and old and/or busted ones (Deron Williams, Amar’e Stoudemire, Rajon Rondo) at worst.
Even our most exciting free agency capture ever was perma-crocked, with my final feelings on Chandler Parsons that of relief that we didn’t give him another big contract and instead let the Memphis Grizzlies do it. This, coming from someone excited enough at the time to describe the team’s pursuit of him as “addictive”.
It was a rather mediocre existence the Mavs led from 2012 to 2017. The team always flattered to deceive, putting together teams that looked good on paper (remember O.J. Mayo?) but which never went anywhere. We built players like Al-Farouq Aminu and Seth Curry up, only to see them leave as soon as free agency hit. Our trades were either inconsequential or actively hurt us. The Lamar Odom and Rajon Rondo transactions essentially snuffed out all hope of a contending team in Dirk’s last few seasons.
As far as league-wide attention went, we were pretty much non-existent. I never stopped supporting the team and I still regularly watched Dallas games, but I admit that my enthusiasm waned a bit.
(Luckily, I was assigned the Andrew Bogut beat in 2015-16 for The Pick and Roll. Got to watch a lot of good and fun basketball thanks to that.)
We kept trading away draft picks, and were hardly bad enough to get really high selections anyway. This meant that, for a good long while, friggin’ Justin Anderson was the only glimmer of youthful hope we had.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the dude – he seems like a bright and positive young man. But a franchise-changing talent he is not.
Dennis Smith Jr. then came along, but the obvious flaws in his game tempered any high expectations fans might have had. It may be a bit harsh to say of someone who just completed his second pro season, but DSJ is still very much more ‘potential’ than ‘valuable contributor’.
Here’s where I thank Giannis Antetokounmpo for becoming the superstar he is today.
Mark Cuban nixed general manager Donnie Nelson’s suggestion to pick Giannis in the 2013 NBA Draft, all to save money to chase Dwight Howard.
Jesus Christ.
Thankfully, that chicken coop’s worth of eggs on his face meant that he shut up in 2018 and empowered Nelson to go ahead and trade up to select Luka Dončić. And oh my god what a refreshing blast of cool air it’s been to witness the birth of Dončić’s NBA career on the team I support.
Dončić is a star in every way: he puts up numbers, he hits buzzer-beaters, he’s getting praise from veterans, and he’s inspiring memes:
What’s more: not only is he a good player, he’s a fun player. And having a young and truly exciting player who’s a perfect fit for the modern game means that the Dallas Mavericks are relevant again. We are finally worth a damn after so many years.
Of course, there are still many question marks about the future. Can Luka continue to develop, or is this more or less all he is? How healthy is Kristaps Porziņģis, and are his off-court issues for real? And even if these two guys come good, will the front office be able to maximize their talents with a great supporting cast or a third star?
I’ll tell you hwat though: these are great problems to have. I can’t emphasize enough how much fun and how energizing this past season was to experience, even with Dirk retiring at the end of it. Luka’s just that damn good, and the team has a chance to be special again.
And after eight years of total irrelevance, a chance is all I need.
That’s just the essence of fandom, isn’t it? Sticking with a team through its low points just makes the good times that much better.
For all my talk of irrelevance, I guess the last few years really weren’t useless after all. Much like how all of Dirk’s troubles made the 2011 win so much sweeter for him, perhaps all this time spent waiting will lead to something special.
Eight years on, I can dream again.
Jeff rubs a magic lamp and the genie grants him 3 wishes.
Genie: “What will be your first wish?”
Jeff: “I want to be rich.”
Genie: “Granted. What will be your second wish?”
Rich: “I want a lot of money.”
I just had two police officers at my front door.
Police officers: “Are you familiar with the initials HB?”
Me: “No.”
Police officers: “How about LS?”
Me: “No.”
Police officers: “’What about JD?”
Me: “No. Wait, am I in trouble for something? What’s going on?
Police officers: “Oh don’t worry. These are just initial inquiries.”
© 2024 The Ordinary Singaporean
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑