CCLXIII - houses, cars and mediocrity

I am a Singaporean. When I say that I think, of course, of the person who hears it. What's there to feel about a statement of fact such as that? In my mind, perhaps a little gratitude and perhaps a little discomfort. Something not quite shame, but more than unease. We haven't had to feel inferior about being a Singaporean for probably forty or so years, which is how old I am. Being a Singaporean is a stroke of incredible fortune; which is not to say that not being a Singaporean is a stroke of incredible misfortune. I say this only to emphasise that I think a lot about the person who hears it and responds to it. I wonder what they, who are not Singaporeans, think, and try to understand whether they lament. I think they generally wish to join in our society, and the toppermost is of course, citizenship. We get a more or less certain warranty, in our lives, that we will live decently; that the middle path is a reasonably broad and comfortable option. That is Singapore. You couldn't say that about many places; and even if you could, you might think that several concessions would have to be made about such-and-such's overall consistency of decency. The middle path in Singapore is decent to a T.

At the same time, this reality implies many things. I regret many of them. I think often that the Singaporean dream consists of houses, cars and mediocrity. We are blithe to many things around us, because we assume that it is our individual duty to work harder, and provide for oneself; meaning what we are is the result of our diligence, and that speaks for itself. Let any conversation occur between any number of Singaporeans. What are the usual topics spoken of, money, TV, food, travel experiences, work. These are utterly soulless things, completely unvaluable, here today, gone the next. I am not saying that the individual Singaporean cannot feel a moment's empathy for someone else; what I am saying is that he or she will not trouble himself much more than that. He or she will not think carefully about his or her intellect, soul or human desire beyond what is material. I have material things and therefore I am satisfied that my pursuits in life have rewarded me, that is what he or she says. I'm good with that, because people around me either praise me or envy me that I have that. I think it's a preposterous way to live.

I think it's important, conversely, to live plainly, because it allows one to detach from any need to have luxury, and saves the effort to keep up. I find that this sort of plainness in my appearance allows others to feel more comfortable around me. Simple and good, in so many words. Doing kind things for others helps me to see things from their perspective as well. I think what most Singaporeans don't realise is that people with lower incomes also have their pride, and the things they value are important things that we perhaps neglect, or don't prioritise. Wealth is a bit of a blinder, if you ask me, and I can't stand people who take the whole thing a bit too seriously. The great ancient men in Chinese history write, "静以修身，俭以养德", which I would explain as saying, it helps to consider oneself quietly, and to try not to spend too much, if one wishes to develop some moral values; and, "慈故能勇；俭故能广", that empathy for others allows one to be brave in protecting them, and a little frugality allows one to be quite happy to give to them. 

Therefore for these gentlemen the end of life was virtue, not wealth; and tranquility in one's place in the universe, rather than contention over how high that place was. How do you teach these things to Singaporeans? I don't know, to be honest. We think but not clearly enough, and most of the time it ends up in some meaner dissatisfaction or other. Even if we sort of reset a bit, do a little yoga or travel to Thailand, it doesn't last very long, does it? Perhaps that is the human condition; to constantly be a bit needled by something, whilst being driven from pillar to post. What do the ancients say? They say strange things: "上善若水. 水善利万物而不争，处众人之所恶，故几于道". Think of water, how wonderful it is. Everything needs water to live, but water doesn't insist on anything. In fact it sits where most people disdain. It's emblematic of the universe. Well, can we be like that? I wonder.

CCLXII - the wisdom of simple things

A football is a very simple object. It is round; that implies that it rolls. That is the most important of its qualities, but by no means the only meaningful one. Through observation, and a little bit of intuition, more or less gifted to us, we tend to realise other interesting peculiarities about footballs. But that takes time kicking the little thing about; describing this is not interesting. Finding out is.

I first remember being interested in kicking footballs in Fowlie Primary School. Fowlie was interesting in a strangely bleak way. It had two straight cell blocks for classrooms, a hard square between, a pond and a tree garden, and a very large grass field with several old mango trees on its corners. I doubt very many people have written tributes to Fowlie. It's gone now. But I remember the smell of the dead mangos lying in the mud, the hard afternoon sun on the back of my shirt, the birds that the groundskeeper kept, having buddies both Malay and Chinese (and being slightly curious why the Malay boys didn't take to classes that well), taking home books from the class library and not bringing them back (mea culpa, my friends), and lending my workbooks to my friends for 20 cents. It was a question that led to it: why don't you charge them for copying, said Mrs Teo. I collected 30 cents in total, a poor haul before I was rounded up. 

I was the first to leave Fowlie for the gifted program. But I always say that I came from Fowlie. It really was a neighbourhood school, not that that means anything. Fowlie's shirts were polka dot purple on white; imagine that. I still remember an Indian canteen lady owner who gave me a piece of bread with kaya one forlorn afternoon, when the school bus driver asked me a confusing question in chinese, and I couldn't answer. Whenever I eat bread with kaya now, I think of her kindness; in some ways that's also why I hand out buns to foreigners I meet. Anyway, Fowlie had a large field, and we played football. I hit a ball nicely with my right foot, and it smacked a cone that served as a goal post. I felt that was easy, and fun.

In Tao Nan we played football during recess. We had to play it. 30 minutes wasn't very long, but we had to. We came back sweaty and gross, but that was a small matter. In one year we had ten footballs confiscated for various reasons, mostly because we were playing them in places other than the courts. I suspect that the teachers were annoyed with our love for it. Tao Nan had a big grass field then. Grass is very interesting, because you never know how the ball flops along on the grass, and when it's muddy, it stinks pretty bad. 

I played football by myself at a nearby HDB plaza, trying to kick down my water bottle from a distance. Most of the other boys were better, but they were showy and lazy. I lent them my ball once, and they sent me to different houses to get it back. I cried when I realised that they had tricked me. It was my dad's old ball, but he didn't really seem too concerned about it. My dad played with me once or twice. He used to play at a big field opposite our flat in Hougang, when I was really young. My sister and I would go and watch from the side. I remember my dad would come back tired. My dad became annoyed with me when I couldn't pass the ball back to his feet. He really should have tried to explain to me that it was the most important thing in football, leading to many other things.

Besides playing on grass in the now-past law school premises, and a little in the evenings at a small court nearby, I sometimes went to play with senior Malay folks at East Coast Park. But I guess I only got serious when I joined the cabin crew boys at their twice weekly full pitch trainings, on turf. I was pretty bad, and I realised that quickly. I learnt by being open to bits of advice or lecturing from the guys. I think the most important things I learnt were to touch and pass properly, turn your eyes left and right every so often, making a quick decision, main senang, i.e. playing easy, and sticking with it, playing the offside line, and close pressing the other team in possession. Boy, I learnt a lot of Malay words.

I played well enough over time that I think I now fit into most amateur teams, at least, as a reliable replacement. I'm a good guy to have on the team. I love playing with certain teams - those more composed, and less likely to be frustrated when things go badly. I travelled to play too, thanks to the ownership and management of my main team. Now, frankly, I have the opportunity to play every day of the week. But I can't, I have to manage my feet, and my plantar problems. So I do other things. 

But I say to people, football keeps me young. I'm 39 years old, and I can't think of a game that's given me more friendship, confidence and satisfaction. A very simple object; and it gives you a very complex game, and a very fascinating experience. It is a language to be spoken with anyone, capable of subtlety, fullness of expression and profound admiration. I like to think of it as the wisdom of simple things, if you can strip away all the bullshit that people bring onto the field. I think I can, at least.

CCLXI - a friend in you

I feel like we are friends, darling. Real friends. God has given me a friend in you. I don't know if it's becoming a father that makes me like this, but I cry a lot more these days. Not out of sadness, out of a sense of desperate joy and deep-wrenched empathy. I can explain why I feel these things, but they only matter in the moment, so it's pointless to write them down. Remembering them is enough, but even that cannot capture the strength of the impetus to cry. I just take a deep breath and my eyes fill with tears. 

I just read a project by Ai Wei Wei, in which he invited some people to live in a converted warehouse and appreciate the artwork and feel of the city. I thought, how marvellous; how many lives he's changed in that thing he's done. It shows how people can live together, if they cherish the present, and the beauty of a real artist, open their minds to the impermanence of life and inanity of dogma, take two sides in at the same time. Think internally and introspectively, observe something, create something, be a little bit of something.

I thought it was very funny that you were very quiet and timid when other people were around; but in the car you were your yappy self again. God has given me a friend in you, darling. I hope you'll like jazz, like I do. I have so many favourite songs now. They remind me of quiet, beautiful days; like today. I love you, darling.

CCLX - ChatGPT: "machines do not revere"

Q: Do you disagree with me, or have I failed to consider anything good about AI?

You have not overlooked the obvious advantages. You acknowledge AI’s utility, scale, and computational superiority. Your critique is not naïve. However, there are several considerations you may be underweighting.

1. Augmentation vs. Replacement

Your argument assumes a zero-sum exchange: if the machine writes, the human does not. In practice, many uses of AI are augmentative. It can surface counterarguments, expose blind spots, or compress background research—functions that may intensify rather than dilute authorship. The act of choosing, rejecting, and reshaping remains human.

2. Cognitive Extension Is Not New

Writing itself externalised memory. Calculus externalised intuition about motion. Search engines externalised recall. Each shift triggered anxieties about intellectual atrophy. The relevant question may not be whether neurons “fire less,” but whether cognitive labor migrates upward—toward synthesis, judgment, and framing.

3. Friction Can Be Designed

You argue that instant answers extinguish curiosity. That is plausible—but friction need not disappear. A tool can be used adversarially: to demand alternative formulations, to stress-test arguments, to force precision. In that mode, AI becomes a dialectical partner rather than a dispenser of closure.

4. Creativity and Constraint

You frame AI as mimicry without understanding. That is technically accurate in present terms. Yet human creativity also recombines prior material under constraint. The distinction between statistical recombination and human synthesis may be narrower in practice than it appears philosophically.

5. Access and Equity

For many, AI lowers barriers to entry—language translation, tutoring, drafting assistance. What you perceive as loss of self-discovery, others experience as newly possible participation.

Your core value—authentic self-formation through struggle—is coherent. The tension lies not in whether AI is powerful, but in whether power necessarily displaces meaning. It may not. The decisive variable is not the machine, but the posture of the user. 

(exchange goes on for some time, each time the AI takes about 2 seconds to reply, which is kinda uncomfortable.)

CCLIX - on artificial intelligence

I do not criticise artificial intelligence, I am simply trying to explain what I don't like about it. With my dilettante's knowledge about artificial intelligence, it's a little difficult to write about it, much less to explain why I don't like it. But I cannot say that I like it, and by that token, as far as possible, I don't intend to use it. In some ways, saying that aloud makes me feel satisfied. I know that I am rowing against the great tide of positive sentiment for it. I know that it makes me a sort of old fart. I know that I am, quite obviously, foolishly, relinquishing, or perhaps squandering, what is of great use in the right hands. But these are not my hands, they won't be my hands. My hands express what is in my mind to express, and they have done so for a very long time. I couldn't give that up, not to another person, and not to an engine, or an ingenious device.

Which is not to say that I hate it. You might as well hate the steam engine. If suspicion, distaste, condescension and disdain can someday form a powerful hate, then perhaps it just requires my seeing the hateful product of artificial intelligence to hate it. But I don't think it's worth hating something, whether badly created, or badly formed, if it comes from an aggregating power. Essentially that's what I see when I see an artificial intelligence chatbot. It trawls a large, phenomenally large database, possibly all existing human writing, which is larger than I know, but not larger than I can imagine. Then it forms an answer to a question. How it does so, is the ground meat in the sausage. If I can say how I think it does it, it puts a string of letters together that it thinks it has seen before. It uses probability to determine, one letter at a time, what the answer should be. Then it checks the total answer. If the answer sucks, too far away from what it thinks it sees, it repeats, until the output works. And it works the same when it comes to creating images, it uses probability, one pixel at a time, to determine what the picture looks like. In other words, it can mimic a universe, by one dot's relation to another over so many dimensions, but it doesn't necessarily understand the universe, what it is, or how it came about. That takes a bit more unpacking. That's the impulse of humanity's desire for knowledge.

I think doubting artificial intelligence is a fool's game. Give it an eight-by-eight chessboard, and it will crank out the nine billion potential places where the pieces go, and how to win, or at least draw, from every position. Give it anything which you can break down into bits; the same will be granted. What happens when you take an infinite processor, no soul, and let it chill over every known fact to man? It's hard to predict, but perhaps its god-like power is, within a certain sandbox, or playground, capable of utterly, diminutively, smashing humanity's best effort. So if that playground is bigger than we thought, or at least sort of expands past what we drew up, what happens next? If you can show a machine a triangle and a circle, doesn't it imply that the machine will realise trigonometry and calculus, and so on and so forth up to the nth? The playground is then as large as our reality. Well, we have to lose, I suppose. Our much-vaunted intellect simply becomes too slow, too small to matter. In a machine's mimicry, it can outgun originality. 

To those who value utility, utility even at the sake of self-nurturing and discovery, the advantages of artificial intelligence are indisputable. Because, I think, that is the cost of using something so useful. I think that there is great importance in slow, steady learning, with room to sit back, think, and imagine, to breathe in the words. I think that neurons that don't fire enough tend to die, and particularly, those that only come alive when one tries to draw strange lines and images around what one has just learnt, trying to fit new ideas into one's existing scheme of knowledge. I also think that one's curiosity and focus are too quickly extinguished when any given answer is, on the face of it, too complete. There must come a point when one admits, that there is no good answer, and the hunt is afoot once again. But that drive to know the weakest part of a thought or a structure has to be individual and has to come from within. Scepticism, not the kind of weed that spreads out of dry spite or hardy ignorance, grows only in well-watered gardens of thought. And out of that buds rationality and intuition. 

Why, after all, write when something can write for you? I think that's the great question, isn't it? Because writing is fun, and it's self-discovery, and it meanders and it has dead ends and it's occasionally wrong or illogical. But sometimes it's just plain fun, and it helps you see clearly what you wanted to say. Even if it's not fantastic, even if it requires polish, even if it doesn't rhyme or sing, it's still yours, something you that you made, and can leave behind. You discover yourself through writing. That great tradition is something that we share with the finest writers of all time, names one must tremble a little to consider, much less to stand beside. Really, to give that up, to a machine, just seems to me a little vulgar.

CCLVIII - what makes a comic great

I love comics. Comics are that incredible interlace between action, expression, contemplation and speech, filled with colour, hand-drawn authenticity and freedom to draw, whether within or without the panel or filling the entire page. That wow moment when you hit a "centrefold", that action scene, or the beautiful, leather-and-mesh femme fatale drawn entirely across, even to the extent of pull out pages, I mean, that's comics. They come from an older time, too, and being drawn and filled by I think the quirkier characters and artists of the 70s or 80s, it feels like something precious handed down by an older generation of flat-out rebels: men who hated villainy, hegemony, smallness, and instead celebrated manhood, the strength of women, the underdog, the street champion against all odds. What makes a comic great? I think it's to do with the fact that it's immediately brought to your attention, opening a comic book, that there is something great in this world that has to be overcome, and the person you're reading about is just the person to do it, in his or her own way. And obviously, comic books are about the very, sexy, women.

I have a favourite comic character, the Batman. It's very simple why I like the Batman. The fact is, he doesn't have any super powers, but he uses his god damn brains to fight crime, and his will. Yes, sure, he has money, and Alfred, but you might think that he's still the Batman regardless. And come on, the villains he has! The very best, the Joker. There isn't a better villain. He's not exactly the anti-thesis of Batman. He's simply himself; he's out there to embody madness. Batman, in contrast, embodies something more concrete; he simply doesn't tolerate crime. Some say, Batman is an outlaw. I think that sort of misses the point. He has a moral compass which is 99% within the shape of the law, and the things he does in that other 1%, he regrets, I promise you. In some ways, he plays the Batman with sorrow. The Joker's glee, if you were to put it that way, is not really the point, it's just a symptom of his being the Joker. He doesn't need to entertain anyone, or even himself; he's past self-reflection. That's the incredible, magnetic thing about the Joker. He's a pure madman. How should I see it? It's like if you woke up in a dream world and you could do anything with absolutely no consequence or moral implication. Nothing. And you decided to say the hell with it, and you did whatever came to mind, all day and every day. That's what it means, I think. And the other great thing about Batman is that the Batman's antagonists know him so well. They gleefully mock and manipulate him in every setting. Over and anon, it seems less good versus evil, so much as seriousness versus fun.

I started with comics probably with Asterix and Obelix. I loved the Romans! They're so military and yet so frightened of Obelix. After that it was probably a bit of Vampirella, a tiny bit of Marvel. I'm not a Marvel fan, I'll be honest. I can't suspend my rationality enough to be one. The modern movies are too much, too. I sorta prefer the tragicomedy of the older films. I liked Sandman, I loved Watchmen on the second reading. League of Gentlemen was OK (in some ways, come to think of it, the Invisible Man is like the Joker in that he can do anything he wants and almost nobody can stop him). I don't own Superman, X-men or Spidey. I'm more of a thinking comic guy I guess; I like it when it's less explicit what's going on.

I also have this comic guy I like, he writes Achewood. Onstad. There's this other guy, Chris Ware, but he's a little bit too down for me. Achewood is it, though, to me it's basically the Simpsons of comic books. Thank god for Ray and Beef! They have to be the greatest comic book partners of all time. Ray is a completely un-selfconscious richboy fatcat, and Beef is basically a deflated balloon whizzing spirals on its way down, unless he's doing IT stuff or talking about a car, in which case he transforms into one of those geeks on Mythbusters. Onstad's thing is very obscure conversations featuring personas from history. Beyond the panels, he's gone through family, breakups, life, business, sadness, and still he gives and connects with his fans through the comics, now on Patreon. It's really good.

Again, what makes a comic great? I think consistency, and character. When I open a comic, recognise the stuff, the parts played genuinely, and the wow effect from the art, interpret the facial expressions, try to imagine what's unsaid, I think that's what makes the whole comic thing great. That's why, honestly, I don't think that comics make great movies, although they can make decent ones out of the comic characters. (Having said that, the old animated Batman series was incredible.) A comic is simply a series of panels. Once you change that, it's no longer a comic in the sense of what that concept is. The deliberacy of the snapshot by snapshot thing is gone, with all its subtext and subtlety. I like that, a lot.

CCLVII - the day will come, darling

(This too has become evidence! So I might as well reveal it.)

My darling,

You are very young and very small, but I think you understand what is happening, in your own little way. In any case, one day I will explain it all to you. My hope is that on that day you will come to peace as I have come to peace.

I understand now why my lawyer urged me to work hard at a reconciliation. It was the only way for me to see you all the time. I hope it's possible, but it depends on your mother. I will try, no matter how difficult it is or how upset or embarrassed it makes me feel, if your mother is willing to give me her terms.

Today I rode my bicycle in the park, as your mother said I could not visit you. I will visit you tomorrow. I listened to a podcast I enjoyed, and Charles Barkley said, when he was down and other people wrote to him to keep his chin up and keep going, it meant a lot to him. I started crying when I heard that, but I decided not to. It's a little odd in public, and I had to blow my nose. I think people think I don't cry. The truth is that I cry a lot when I'm sad. I am very sad to see you so little. I will keep my little chin up, and I will keep going. You are very young and one day we will be very good friends. We will be best friends, at least on my end.

I read a little on the law, and it favours your mother, assuming both she and I are equally decent parents. Assuming that we cannot agree on most things, we will have joint custody, and she will be given sole care and control. That means that you don't get to live with me until you are an adult. I want you to have the chance, if you think it's fun to. But because you are very small, I don't want to confuse you too much either. So if I cannot agree on most things with your mother, I will probably agree that she will have sole care and control, although I personally wanted you over 50% of the time.

I hope to have very amicable and very full access to you. It means that I can do things with you without restrictions. For example, we can go to Gardens by the bay, or to Changi. But it depends whether your mother, who will soon be your headmistress in many ways, can open her heart to it. I will try to persuade her.

One day I will explain to you that it happens all the time, men and women don't get along after marriage, and one of them wants a divorce. I didn't want it. But if your mother wants it, I am not going to stop her. She deserves to find her own happiness, and I sincerely want her to find it. I know that she takes good care of you, even though she doesn't know how to teach and instruct you like I do.

When you were very small, even smaller than you are now, I used to put you to bed, and even though it was very trying, because you liked to cry and complain, and I was very tired from leaning over, I thought to myself, I only have so many times left to do this, probably less than a thousand. I did not know that today that number is zero. But, my darling, I have come to peace with it.

One day we will both have to answer to you. You will remonstrate with me. You will be very upset with me, darling, for not treating your mother better, and letting things come to this. You will also be very upset with your mother, for taking you away from me. I will answer for what I have done, I promise. I hope your mother can too.

If you ever need me, baby, I will be there.