Keep Calm and Battle On!

I was recently reminded of this blog when I made a new friend, let's call her M, at work, and showed it to her so she could get to know me better.

My last post was over a year ago. I felt I really should update it, give it some love and a fresh lick of paint.

Besides, it's been a while since I've written anything for my own enjoyment. Writing is now my job, but I want to rediscover the joys of doing it for its own sake as well.

So when inspiration struck in the form of a sudden wave of nostalgia brought about by experiencing an old childhood game in a totally new way, I decided I'd take advantage of this four-day extended weekend to pump out a new post.

Let's start from the very beginning, shall we?

The light of mana

A ball of yellow flame burst from the adventurer's hand, striking the mer-monster square in the chest.

The mer-monster, which had the tail of a fish but a hideous-looking body, staggered in pain, then retaliated, blasting the adventurer with a water spell.

The adventurer recovered and readied another ball of yellow in his hand.

"No no no, why you keep using 'Light of Mana'? This monster is weak to energy, so you should use energy spells, not light!"

A voice cuts in. A hand grabs the cursor and positions it over the "monster attributes" section of the screen, causing a popup to appear.

It displayed a dizzying array of numbers.

That was the moment I fell head-over-heels in love with computer games, especially those involving the Skinner box design philosophy of "big numbers getting bigger", with a bit of RNG thrown in for good measure.

Geeky pastime

The owner of the voice, and the hand, was my classmate.

Now, please remember that this was a long time ago. We were in Primary 3, and it was a post-exam period so we were all left to our own devices in the school's computer lab. But I'm pretty sure his name was Isaac, and back then he lived in Jalan Tiga.

He was a short, chubby boy with big, round, black-framed glasses. Exactly the sort of quiet, geeky kid who would be suffering wedgies every day at the hands of the jocks if we had been in a typical American school. Fortunately, this is the nerd capital of the world, Singapore.

We were sharing one of the school computers. He had offered to show me a computer game. I had not played computer games before that day, because I was quite deprived of life beyond academics.

"It's called BattleOn," he told me breathlessly, his eyes twinkling with excitement.

He logged into his account and showed me the basics. Click "Attack" to attack with your primary weapon, click "Spells" to choose a magical attack, click "Weapons", "Shields", "Armor", and "Pets" to change your loadout. Seemed simple enough.

I played on his account for a while, during which he taught me more about the game mechanics, such as why it's not a good strategy to spam 'Light of Mana', which was the spell he had used when demonstrating the game to me, against every monster.

Basically, most monsters conform to a certain element, which makes them weak to the opposing element. So for example, the mer-monster, whose exact name escapes me, I was fighting was a water-based creature, so its weakness was energy.

Similarly, fire creatures are weak to ice, darkness creatures are weak to light, and so on. You should tailor your attacks to exploit your opponent's weaknesses.

Eventually, Isaac popped the question.

"Do you want your own account?"

I answered yes. Less than ten minutes later, he had me all set up.

Jonathan798 was good to go.

The marijuana of computer games

I like to say that for '90s kids, BattleOn was the "gateway drug" for those of us who would eventually become hooked on computer games.

It was simple enough for our tiny, kiddy brains to handle, yet complex enough to introduce us to fundamental game mechanics and concepts such as the rock-paper-scissors approach that the combat systems of most games essentially boil down to.

And it had that potent combination of monster variety, quests and lore, and "just one more level before bed".

I've always had an addictive personality, so that "just one more level before bed" effect was very strong on me.

As I tend to do, I flung myself headlong into the game, grinding the levels day after day.

Every recess time, I would proudly report back to Isaac what level I had achieved the night before.

I think I got a bit tiresome, because one day he got a bit irritated and said: "This is not a competition."

Oops.

Rose-tinted nostalgia

I eventually graduated to bigger games like RuneScape, but I always kept Jonathan798. Every couple of years, I would revisit him and play with him again for a while.

The feeling of familiarity, of homecoming, of simpler times, never fails to bring a smile to my face.

When work stress got to me a couple of weeks ago, I took Jonathan798 out for a spin again.

I posted about it on social media. M's husband saw my post, and immediately recognised the game, declaring it a "legendary game". Damn right it is!

He said that when he was a kid, he had a Guardian account with the Blade of Awe!

WTF... Jonathan798 was about 15 years old, and level 80+, but he was not a Guardian, nor did he have the Blade of Awe.

I had wasted hours as a kid, jostling with the other free players around the world for the very limited 8,000 server places available to us.

I remember, with a tinge of disgust, repeatedly being greeted with the all-too-familiar message that the server was full, and if I really wanted to play, I should become a Guardian so I wouldn't have to queue like a poor person.

I felt like such a pleb. The situation was unacceptable. How would I remedy this?

A quick Google search later, I had my answer. A one-off payment of US$19.95 would make me a Guardian, while a one-off payment of US$24.95 would make me a Guardian with X-Boost, which is essentially a bunch of cool upgrades over the regular Guardian account type.

I thought about the fact that RuneScape is costing me just under a hundred bucks a year on a recurring membership. BattleOn's Guardianship is a permanent unlock for a single payment, and the price is very low by today's industry standards.

My mind was made up. "Go big or go home," I said to myself as I bought the higher tier. "Look who's back, to buy the thing he couldn't afford as a kid."

Breathing new life into an old hobby

First order of business: acquire the Blade of Awe. It's essentially a very powerful weapon only available to Guardians.

To get it, you have to collect five pieces of the weapon. These will spawn in rare treasure chests which randomly appear as you play.

Once you have all five weapon components, bring them to Valencia, a rare item hunter in the main city, who will assemble them for you into the complete sword.

I was expecting a long, RNG-based grind to find and collect all five pieces, but when I spoke to Valencia, she immediately said I had everything I needed and she promptly made and presented me with the Blade of Awe!

Apparently, free players are able to find the weapon pieces, just that they can't put them together, and at some point over the last 15 years, I had successfully collected all five of them.

Presenting... the Blade of Awe!

It's a very pog weapon. For me, regular attacks hit in the high two-digits or low three-digits, and it has random special attacks which can hit in the high three-digits. It also grows stronger with the player's level, and I've seen veteran players hitting thousands of damage with it!

Of course, the Blade of Awe is not the only thing Guardianship has to offer. There are lots of new classes of combat to train in, and I can also go further in depth into the older classes that were available in free-to-play on a restricted basis, now that I'm no longer subject to those limitations.

My X-Boost also netted me extra Z-Tokens, the game's premium MTX currency. So I bought a cottage.

Apparently the cottage comes with several plots of real estate for me to build stuff on for resource gathering. I'm still figuring out this part.

And of course, I now have unfettered access to every single item, quest, and location in the entire game.

Jonathan798, my trusty BattleOn account that Isaac helped me create when I was nine years old, is reborn.

A new adventure is just beginning!

RuneScape and the hole in my stomach

"Technically challenging but uneventful."

Those were the words Nurse Lydia typed in a text message to my dad as I lay shivering under a pile of heated blankets in the recovery room in the bowels of Tan Tock Seng Hospital on 10 June 2020.

I had just undergone a successful medical procedure known as a percutaneous radiologically guided gastrostomy (PRG).

The PRG tube where it exits my abdomen.

It's a very fancy label for a very simple idea.

My radiologist Dr Sundeep looked at a live x-ray video feed of my abdomen. A tube was passed through my nostril, down my throat, and into my stomach (the technical term for this is nasogastric tube), and air was pumped into my stomach through the tube. This inflated my stomach like a balloon, so that it pushed away the surrounding organs such as the liver and colon, giving the radiologist a clearer field in which to operate.

The inflated stomach also came close to the abdominal wall. All the radiologist had to do was insert some sutures to tie the stomach lining to the abdominal wall to minimise the distance between them, then poke a hole from the outside of my abdomen to the inside, right through my stomach lining. He then threaded a feeding tube through the hole.

The feeding tube is kept in place by a tiny balloon inside my stomach, which is bigger than the size of the hole in my abdomen and therefore prevents the tube from falling out of me.

Why the procedure was technically challenging was because of my anatomy. My body is much smaller than that of a normal 22-year-old, but my organs are full-sized and have to cram into a much tinier space than they should. This had caused my liver to lie in front of my stomach during a pre-op computerised tomography scan, completely obstructing the approach from the front of my abdomen and making the radiologist unsure of the feasibility of the procedure.

If my liver didn't give way to my stomach, the radiologist would've been unable to reach my stomach to insert the feeding tube into it. They would've had to abort the procedure and done an open surgery instead, which would have involved heavy use of general anaesthesia and incurred lots of attendant risks to my safety.

The hope was that, when gas was pumped into my stomach, it would be able to push the liver away and expose itself clearly. There was a scary moment during the procedure when it looked like this wasn't going to happen. The medical team first pumped a tank of compressed carbon dioxide into my stomach through the nasogastric tube, but it didn't respond. My liver lay happily in the way still.

Then the medical team switched to "good old air", as the anaesthesiologist Dr Chan quipped, by connecting the external end of the nasogastric tube to a manual resuscitator (basically a rubber bag filled with atmospheric air) and getting someone to squeeze the resuscitator by hand. Poof! My stomach blew up nicely and my liver slid obligingly to the side, accompanied by running commentary from a relieved Dr Sundeep whose eyes were glued to the monitor showing the live stream from the x-ray machine.

Once this happened, the medical team went into action.

"Push 100mg of glucagon, STAT!" Dr Chan shouted. Disclaimer: I don't think he ordered 100mg. I made up that part because I can't remember exactly what he said, but 100mg looks quite impressive. Also disclaimer: I don't think he shouted, but in my favourite medical drama The Resident, the doctors are always shouting with great urgency and it's very exciting to watch, so I chose to describe Dr Chan as shouting to dramatise my account of the proceedings. In the same vein, I added "STAT" to the end of his dialogue to spice it up a bit. The doctors on television say "STAT" at the end of every sentence and it sounds so badass.

I felt the slight burn of medicine entering the intravenous plug in my right hand and before I knew it, my hearing had gone wonky. It was like I was listening to the medical team's chatter through a long, metal pipe. My eyes started to grow heavy and I struggled to remain conscious.

I observed with a detached sense of fascination a bedside monitor displaying my vital signs. "Damn," I thought. "My heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation are all really good and holding steady. Am I a tough little mo-fo or what!"

Someone said: "Ok Jonathan, I'm going to inject some local anaesthetic into your tummy area now. It's going to sting and burn. Ready? 1, 2, 3, ouch!"

I was so distracted wondering about the wisdom of a doctor saying "Ouch!" when injecting a patient that I hardly noticed the sting and burn. I mean, it did sting and burn, but it wasn't too bad.

At some point, Dr Chan shouted something about morphine and a bunch of other chemical names, and I started losing the battle to hold on to consciousness. "I'm feeling very drowsy," I complained to Nurse Lydia who was standing within my field of view (I was immobilised by a veritable forest of restraining straps so I couldn't see much). Earlier, she had told me that she would be there throughout the procedure, watching over me and making sure I was okay. She told me to just close my eyes. I did so with relief, and promptly went under.

That's not to say I was totally out of it. I soon heard someone saying my name, and I came back to full alertness almost instantly. "We're putting in the stitches now," said a voice. I groggily acknowledged, then fell asleep again.

My respiration must have suffered at some point because I suddenly felt a hand clamp my ventilator mask over my face, somewhat inaccurately because the mask missed most of my nose and spewed air everywhere. I'm very proud to report that I had the wherewithal to instruct the owner of the hand to "move the mask down" because "my right nostril is not covered". I heard someone say thanks before I drifted off again, feeling much more comfortable with the respiratory support.

The next time I woke up was when I heard my name being called again. "It's done," said Dr Chan. I was transferred from the procedure table to a hospital bed, and wheeled a great distance. "You're a good patient. Very compliant and didn't struggle," said Dr Chan along the way. I didn't respond but I was quite pleased to hear this compliment.

Finally, I rolled into the recovery room. I passed many other post-op patients. All of them were ancient, like my parents' age. I felt a little weird at this observation.

All things considered, I wasn't feeling too bad. I was sleepy but mentally alert. The morphine and chemical cocktail Dr Chan had concocted for me had reduced my pain level to 0. The only thing was, I was freezing. My jaw chattered and I shivered a bit. Nurse Lydia was very observant. She noticed and promptly had me swathed in thermal blankets. Then she sent the text message to update my dad on the successful procedure.

Hospital

Many people fear staying in hospital, but I'm a veteran of hospital stays so I don't mind having to be warded. Hospital stays can result in some quite interesting and funny occurrences.

Take for example my admission. I checked into the hospital on 9 June 2020, the day before the procedure, so that the doctors could ensure I was fit.

One of the tests they wanted to run was an arterial blood gas measurement, which involves taking blood from the artery in your wrist that causes your pulse. The junior doctor that came to do the extraction managed to hit my artery on the very first try, which was great because it minimised the painful poking and prodding I needed to endure.

But he was kinda clumsy, and high-pressure blood sprayed out of me and spurted everywhere: into the collection vial, all over my hand, his hands, my hospital gown, my bedsheet, and the floor. I felt like a pig in a slaughterhouse, or a bad guy in a John Wick movie.

Within an hour of checking in to the hospital, my pristine new bedsheet had become stained with my crimson life-juice.

At least the doctor was apologetic about the mess he made.

After the successful PRG procedure, I stayed in the hospital for two more days to recuperate, and was discharged on 12 June 2020.

I may not mind being warded, but I'll always have problems sleeping in hospitals. The nights I had to spend in the ward were pretty miserable. There was a poor old man in the bed across from me who looked very ill, and in the dead of night, the nurses would draw the curtains around him and spend hours doing goodness-knows-what to him. His bloodcurdling screams would echo round the building, and amazingly, he had the stamina to keep this up constantly until the nurses left him alone. The night after my procedure was the only night I could tune him out and get a good sleep, thanks to the able assistance of Dr Chan's drugs.

Another patient, who looked like 猪八戒 from the Chinese legend 西游记, was the opposite of noisy. He was admitted in some sort of catatonic state. He slept and slept and slept. One morning, the nurses wanted to wake him up to clean him and give him his breakfast.

They called his name. No response.

They patted him lightly. Nothing.

They rubbed his left nipple vigorously, sending shockwaves undulating across the fats on his torso. Still no luck.

Eventually, some woman standing by his bedside in civilian attire, who seemed to be a girlfriend of some sort, managed to get him to sit up and eat the hospital-provided meal. He still looked quite dazed. His eyes were glassy and he didn't answer when anyone spoke to him.

But as he ate, he underwent a miraculous transformation. His eyes focused, and he was able to answer the nurses. Out of a plastic bag, the presumptive girlfriend produced, of all things, a braised pork trotter. The man, every trace of catatonia now extinguished from his demeanour, tore into the trotter voraciously.

He was never the same after that. He was still there when I was discharged, but he looked much healthier than he had been when he came in. He was fully alert, responsive, and was always either playing with his phone or talking to the presumptive girlfriend.

Truly a medical miracle!

My daily life

What's the practical effect of the PRG feeding tube?

Well, to put it simply, it has allowed me to leave behind the mortal burden known as eating. Yes, I no longer am bound by the need to have meals to stay alive.

You see, the muscles in my face and throat were getting weaker and weaker by the day. This meant that eating was becoming a dangerous pursuit, as I was under a constant threat of choking or inhaling food and drink and causing a lung infection. I was also taking an inordinate amount of time to finish my meals. My dinners stretched to about 2 hours every day. Such time expenditure wasn't very sustainable, and I was very upset to imagine what better things I could've been doing during that time.

Now, instead of slaving over solid food, I subsist on a milk diet: 800ml of Ensure Plus each day. I take 400ml in the mornings and 400ml in the evenings. The milk formula is poured straight through the tube into my stomach.

This amount of milk formula was calculated by the dietician to be adequate for my daily nutritional needs. The beauty is that the formula is manufactured with the intention that it should be able to function as someone's sole source of nutrients, so it's perfectly balanced and contains literally everything necessary for my body to survive healthily.

So I don't even have to eat anything. Of course, I won't totally stop putting stuff in my mouth, 'cuz that would be just pathetic. After coming home from the hospital, I've still been drinking a Pepsi a day, and that won't change until the day I die. The great thing about the tube is that it's made of plastic, which means it doesn't react with anything and I can eat and drink whatever I want without worrying about whether it will affect the tube. I've eaten chicken rice chilli with no problems.

One part of my body that has benefited immensely from the new diet is my bowels. Funnily enough, even though my diet is now almost completely milk-based and liquid, my faeces has become the best quality that it has been for years! It's hard, dry, and big. Really big. And consistent. I go every day, and every day it's the same.

My first love: RuneScape

Nowadays, my "meals" go as follows.

First, my caregiver uses a syringe to suck stuff out of the tube and stomach. Sometimes, there will be some residual curds from the previous load of milk. There might also be gastric fluids or other leftover detritus from whatever I ate or drank in the preceding few hours. This step is important because if a lot of stuff is left behind in the stomach and I try to take in the next load of formula, I could get bloated or regurgitate.

Next, my caregiver pours the 400ml of formula into the tube via the syringe. Finally, 50ml of water is poured into the tube to flush it.

The entire process takes about half an hour. This means I suddenly have so much more free time.

On 4 June 2020, I posted on my social media channels my intention to obtain Level 99 in Fishing in RuneScape and put on the Fishing skillcape while recovering in hospital using the RuneScape Mobile app. To prepare for that plan, I bought and redeemed a bond, which is an in-game item bought using virtual currency which gave me 14 days of access to the full version of the game known as membership.

My social media post on 4 June 2020:

RuneScape has been a pillar of my life since I was in primary school. I have dedicated hours every holiday season to improving my character. But I was always free-to-play. I never became a member because I never had enough money of my own. Besides, I was a good student who never had the time to play during the school terms, so buying a subscription would have been a waste.

This changed today. I bought a bond for 19m in-game coins a couple of days ago after receiving news that next week, I am scheduled to undergo a simple yet elegant medical procedure which, if successful, would dramatically improve my quality of life. It would be a momentous occasion. Being a sentimental soul, I wanted to have a similarly remarkable milestone to match in my parallel, virtual life on RuneScape.

Despite my account being more than a decade old, I have not reached the maximum level in any of the skills in the game. As I said, I usually play infrequently so I never had enough game time to train my skills fully. So I planned my remarkable in-game milestone to be: attaining the maximum level of 99 in my favourite skill, fishing, then buying and wearing the special members-only cape that this achievement unlocks.

Today, I laid the groundwork for this plan by redeeming the bond, becoming a member for the first time ever. This membership lasts for 14 days. With access to more powerful training methods at the Fishing Guild's Deep Sea Fishing Hub (pictured), I quickly increased my fishing level to 98. I will continue to accumulate experience points over the next few days until I am just short of the threshold to cross to level 99.

And if the doctors manage to pull off the life-changing procedure next week, I will fire up RuneScape Mobile while recovering in my hospital bed, cross the threshold, then acquire and put on that sweet, sweet fishing skill cape.

The next day, I updated the plan to merely buying and wearing the skillcape in hospital because I'd already obtained Level 99.

My social media post on 5 June 2020:

I never thought I would live to see this glorious day.

Yesterday, I posted about wanting to achieve level 99 in fishing in RuneScape while recovering from my medical procedure scheduled for next week. But I ended up achieving it today instead because of a sudden burst of experience points that was awarded to my character by the game for finding and handing in some "strange rocks" to the museum. No actual catching of fish involved! Pictured here is the server-wide broadcast announcing my milestone to everyone who was online then.

I still plan on having a special moment in the hospital, just that now it will be me buying and putting on the fishing skill cape immediately rather than having to finish getting level 99 first. The 99k coins I will need to pay the guildmaster for the outfit are already in my coin pouch.

So it is a double celebration: today, 5 June 2020, I got my first level 99 ever in RuneScape; if all goes well, virtual me will don the fishing skill mastery cape for the first time ever on the afternoon of 10 June 2020, after real me has undergone the procedure.

As it turns out, I couldn't log into RuneScape Mobile while in hospital because there was a very uncomfortable intravenous plug embedded in my hand which made tapping my phone screen quite unwieldy.

So I bought and put on the skillcape on 13 June 2020 instead, when I was back home from the hospital.

The cape which certifies that I have achieved mastery in the Fishing skill!

The skillcape comes with its own unique cosmetic animation, called an emote.

I then used the remainder of my 14-day membership to immerse myself in the real RuneScape, which I had never before experienced in all my decade-plus as a free player.

Walking through the servers reserved for paying members, I shed tears of joy at seeing actual fellow players running by. It took me back to the heyday of RuneScape, in the 2000s, when the servers were almost always brimming with players. I flashed back to the previous time I played RuneScape after being discharged from hospital. It was 2008 and I had just recovered from having a titanium rod fused to my spine to correct my severe scoliosis. I was so happy to be able to play again after a marathon two-week-plus hospitalisation that I literally peed myself because I didn't want to leave the computer.

The servers for the free players of RuneScape these days tend to be sparsely populated, which makes me sad. It might seem weird that there are so many more paid subscribers than free users, but data from the developer of RuneScape shows that more than 90% of players are members. This is due to the niche nature of the RuneScape community. It's not a game that appeals to a mass audience. The gameplay mechanics are repetitive and grindy and the pace is largely sedate. Those of us who've stuck around through the years have more or less become loyalists and staunch supporters, which means we're more likely to want to buy the proper gameplay experience.

The free version of RuneScape is more like a trial, but no one wants to try RuneScape nowadays. It's boring and doesn't give instant gratification, so modern consumers (you know, those with the attention span of a housefly) shun it for the flashy colours of Roblox or the heart-thumping excitement of Fortnite.

Anyway, have a look at this 8-minute-long video to take a break from all this reading.


Did you make it through the whole clip? You didn't, right? You housefly, you.

I think this video encapsulates two points very nicely.

1. This is what I mean when I say RuneScape isn't for everyone. Notice how I was running up and down the same stretch of forest repeatedly? Doing the same action over and over is a typical way of training skills in RuneScape.
2. But it also hints at why I love the game. Being disabled in real life, I literally can't do almost everything, not even basic things like jumping or cooking or catching animals. RuneScape allows me to do all these things and more. In this clip I'm practically doing jungle parkour! I can also cook, hunt, farm, and fish! Normal people play video games as a form of escapism where they kill enemies or monsters, because obviously you're not allowed to go around murdering stuff in real life. I'm just happy to be able to do mundane stuff that you probably take for granted, like climbing over fences and shovelling animal poop (yup, that's an activity in RuneScape).

Over the past few days, I've discovered that my nights have become rather long. Previously, I would struggle over my dinner until around 10pm, then be too exhausted to do much else. But now, I take my evening dose of formula at 6pm, then have the entire night free to do whatever I like.

It's an amazing feeling. It's like I've been liberated, a phoenix rising from the ashes of my past life. The PRG tube has given me my life back. The past couple of nights, I watched one-and-a-half-hour-long RuneScape videos on YouTube about the history of tutorials in the game. A senior content developer of RuneScape critically examined the design of the various iterations of the RuneScape tutorial through the years and from his analysis, I learned about concepts in user experience design like cognitive load and A/B testing, after which I was inspired to read up further about the topic and found this very insightful and timely article. So geeky, right? But such things do interest me, just that I never had the time to explore them before.

And having played RuneScape every night since coming home, I was loath to give it all up just because my 14-day bond had expired. I reasoned that now that I don't have to waste time on meals, I will have more time to work on my various personal and school projects during the day, and therefore more free time to play during the night.

So I checked out the pricing of the membership packages. It's S$13.99 per month, but there's a discount for buying more than a month at a go. A yearlong package costs S$128.99, which works out to S$10.75 a month. (In fact, membership gives me full access to RuneScape's retro counterpart Old School RuneScape as well. I have a character in that other version of the game under the same master account that I sometimes play to take a break from the main RuneScape. So I'm actually getting quite good value here!)

I checked my earnings for last month: I made well over S$500. I bought a one-year membership subscription so I don't have to worry about losing membership status for the next 12 months. I'm always buying nice things for others. It's high time I bought something nice for myself. And unlike food, which turns into poop immediately the next day only to get flushed into the sewers forever, this subscription guarantees me a year of fun anytime I want.

The user interface design of the process of buying stuff is really smooth. Looks like all that A/B testing was worth the effort.

I convinced myself that this purchase makes sense, and cross-checked my thinking with a trusted friend who concurred after doing some quick calculations (you know who you are *winks*).

Besides, what better way is there to celebrate coming through a "technically challenging" medical procedure unscathed and with a new lease of life?

Boys and their toys

Feminists look away now! Stereotypes incoming!

There are a few truths in this world that are self-evident. For one, women like makeup and hairdos. And men like gizmos and gadgets.

Being male, I am no exception. I do love cool stuff.

So when Mr Dennis Viau, an American YouTube influencer I follow (and previously wrote about here and here), bought himself a new Vitamix heavy-duty blender and started using it in his videos, I was captivated by its amazing Bluetooth app smart control feature.

SmoothieTube

His new channel SmoothieTube teaches viewers how to make smoothies, which are supposedly healthy yet delicious drinks. If he were Singaporean he could go tie up with the Health Promotion Board and take a lot of money from the government but sadly the sleepy backwater of Santa Barbara, Southern California has no such government body. No offence to people with links to that place! A couple of my professors were from the University of California, Santa Barbara and they are lovely.

Anyway, I found his new blender endlessly intriguing as it comes with the capability to pair with an Android tablet through Bluetooth. An app called Perfect Blend, when installed on the tablet, can give users step-by-step instructions on how to assemble various recipes. This is done using a special weighing scale which detects the amount of a certain ingredient the user has added and triggers the tablet to make a sound when there is enough of the ingredient in the container. Once all the ingredients are in, the user transfers the container onto the blender which then blends the smoothie together, automatically adjusting the duration and speed of the blending without any input from the user at all.

This video shows the process in action.

If that is not the height of awesomeness then what is?

Dead spot be gone

The master bedroom in my house had long suffered from poor WiFi coverage as the radio waves were unable to make the sharp 90-degree turn from their origin in the living room router.

As a result, everybody's phones would lose the signal once they passed the doorway of the bedroom. For my parents, it was a minor inconvenience that they could simply solve by leaving the room. But I like to relax on that bed and play a bit of Old School RuneScape Mobile before sleeping. So the situation was unacceptable and I decided to do something about it.

Enter Lazada. My mother is very experienced in using that online shopping platform, having bought innumerable useless ornamental items off the site. I, on the other hand, was an online-shopping virgin. I did not, and still do not, have any means of e-payment to my name whatsoever, because I am a child.

But I work around this obstacle by using my mother's PayPal and Lazada accounts to make purchases, after which I reimburse her with good, old cash. The government wants to go cashless, and I want to spit on their face. Give me hard money that I can see and touch any day, rather than some digits on a screen that, for all intents and purposes, do not even exist in the real world.

So to get rid of the pesky problem of the WiFi dead spot once and for all, I went onto Lazada during the 11/11 sale and got a TP-LINK RE650/AC2600 WiFi Range Extender at about 25% discount. Including delivery, it cost just under $110.

The RE650 is one of the more expensive TP-LINK extenders but it is rated for up to 2600Mbps, which means that it can relay the full speed of your WiFi signals if your incoming internet connection speed is within 2600Mbps. Given that the standard fibre broadband speed in Singapore is 1Gbps and some choose to pay extra for the 2Gbps connection, the RE650 can smoothly handle all these connections without bottlenecking. If you get a cheaper model, it may not be able to relay the WiFi signals fast enough and you will lose some of the speed that you are paying your internet service provider for.

Setting up my new extender was easy. All I had to do was follow the instructions in the manual. Once I had it up and running, the master bedroom was bathed in the rich glow of glorious WiFi, and all was right with the world.

Now me and my parents can use our phones while relaxing in bed, with a strong and stable internet connection!

Roaming robots

A decade ago, it was almost unheard of to have autonomous cybernetic beings roaming freely amongst humans. The robots that shuttle file cabinets and meal trolleys around the KK Women's and Children's Hospital were cutting-edge technology back then.

We are far from reaching the advanced sophistry of C3PO, the protocol droid in Star Wars who was designed to facilitate human-cyborg relations and could translate between more than seven million forms of communication, but our progress over the past few years has nonetheless been quite remarkable. Now we have robots acting as porters in hotels, delivering items directly to guests in their rooms upon request, as I discovered during a recent staycation at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront. These robots are packed with navigational sensors that allow them to find their way around the building independently while avoiding obstructions and humans, and wireless communication antennas that allow them to control the elevators and in-room telephones throughout the hotel.

And we are even allowing robots into our very own inner sanctums: robotic vacuum cleaners, which are basically vacuum cleaners that move around by themselves using artificial intelligence, are now fairly commonplace. They keep our house floors clean without us having to get off our lazy backsides, bringing much relief to overworked mums everywhere.

My mum is one such poor overworked soul. In addition to her day job, she does all the usual household chores that women do, and takes care of the house rabbits too. To help lighten her load, and because I was flush with success from my purchase of the WiFi extender, I decided to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner for the house.

As usual with technology products, my family is late to the game. The majority of middle-class Singapore families already own a robotic vacuum cleaner. So I had plenty of people to consult about buying one. One friend even took a video specially for me, to show me how it does not pose a threat to pet rabbits, which she also has. Hers was a Xiaomi Roborock 1, and she was satisfied with its performance.

I went onto Lazada again, and compared the various robotic vacuum cleaners on offer. The Xiaomi Roborock 2 impressed me greatly as it packed the most amount of features yet went for the lowest price. Anybody who is familiar with the smartphone market will know that this is typical of Xiaomi. My phone is a Xiaomi and it is badass!

But I still had slight reservations. Even though it was relatively cheap, and this year has been a bumper harvest for me economically due to my earnings from freelance writing plus the SG Bonus, it was still going to cost me a few hundred dollars. Then one day I went downstairs on the way to the car for an exam on campus and saw, in the trash heap, an empty Xiaomi Roborock cardboard box that someone else in my block must have discarded the previous day. And I was sold. Like I said to the abovementioned friend: "It must be a message from the gods!" And, perhaps a little annoyed by my incessant pestering, she replied: "Just buy it lah!" (Note: lah is an expression in Singapore English which is added to the ends of sentences to make them more emphatic.)

So when the 12/12 sale started on 10 December, I ordered the Xiaomi Roborock 2 in a combo deal that included refill packs and accessories for the various protuberances on the device. The machine itself was at a markdown, buying the accessories as a bundle came with some small discounts, and I instantly earned and redeemed a $10 voucher for spending above $500 in a single transaction, so I saved about $50 in total. Including delivery, I spent roughly $550.

Unlike my friend's Xiaomi Roborock 1, which is an older model, my Xiaomi Roborock 2 has an additional water tank so not only can it vacuum away dust, it can also mop the floor! All you have to do is fill up the water tank and slot it, and the cloth attachment, into the robot. The robot finds its way around your home on its own and is even able to detect cliff edges and stop itself from falling. One of the steps in my house is of an odd height which is too low for the robot to detect as a problematic drop, but too high for the robot to climb back up once it has fallen. But the designers thought of that too, and created some magnetic tape that you can stick to demarcate forbidden zones that you do not want the robot to enter. And when its battery is low, it will return to the docking station by itself, where it will recharge before going back to the spot where it left off and resuming its work from there! It truly is a "fire and forget" solution to your cleaning needs.

You control the robot's settings using the Mi Home app which you must install onto your smartphone. The first time you use the robot, you will have to use Bluetooth on your phone to communicate with the vacuum cleaner to get it to connect to your home WiFi network. Subsequently it will detect your home WiFi network automatically. Once the robot and your phone both have internet connections, you can use the Mi Home app to issue instructions to the robot, such as telling it to clean the whole house or just a specific area. The robot uses lasers like an insect uses its feelers to map out its surroundings, and will bump gently against obstacles to see if they are solid like the side of a bed or can be passed through like a curtain. It draws out this map live as it moves around your house and you can see the map, which looks like a radar plot, being created right in front of your eyes on the app. You can use the app to schedule regular cleanups too, meaning that the robot will activate itself at specific times of your choosing, and return to the docking station to recharge once it has finished its rounds. Through the app, you can also adjust the mode of the vacuum, such as making it quieter but sacrificing suction power, or stronger but noisier; or set it to use the mop function. When the robot has something to tell you, like "Finished cleaning. Going back to the dock.", it will verbalise the message in its default female English voice, but you can change the voice pack in the app too. There are options for Spanish, German, Italian, French, and many cartoon-inspired Chinese ones.

The yellow dot shows the position of the robot in real time. The green lightning symbol shows the location of the docking station, which is where the robot automatically returns to when it is idle.

How does the robot perform at its function of keeping the floor clean? Marvellously well. One round of my house by my robot produces a ball of fluff in the dustbin roughly the size of an adult's fist. The mopping ability is handy too, but it does run out of water fairly quickly and you will have to keep an eye on it and top up the water when needed. It also does not do as thorough a job when mopping as it does when vacuuming, so it cannot totally replace a woman with a stick.

The rabbits in my house are slowly getting used to the robot. At first they were slightly alarmed by the sound, and a little freaked out by the sight of a plastic contraption moving on its own, but now they have made an uneasy peace with it and are content to keep a wary eye on it so that they can walk away if it comes too close.

Here you can see the rabbit adopting a classic attack posture towards the robotic vacuum cleaner. It has placed its weight on its front paws to give it more power when it lunges; its ears are flared wide open and pointed directly at the target.

Speaking of the rabbits...

Bun Lightyear

These fancy pet carriers are also from Lazada, imported from China. But they were not bought by me, but by a friend as a Christmas gift.

What sets this design apart from that of a bog-standard pet carrier is that the big bubble window in front allows the animal inside to see out. It is also shaped like a backpack so instead of holding it by a handle like normal carriers, you strap it over your shoulders.

The inside is spacious enough for one rabbit to lie down comfortably, or two rabbits to stand side by side with wiggle room left over.

Perfect for a leisurely stroll in the great outdoors, when the rabbit gets some much-needed sunlight while travelling in style, and the human being carting them around gets some much-needed exercise!

Mobile games: MapleStory M and Subway Train Simulator 2D

MapleStory M

I was at the Jurong East interchange station recently and saw, on the way to Westgate mall, a huge advertisement plastered across an entire wall announcing the global release of MapleStory M.

MapleStory is a classic multiplayer online role-playing game from the 2000s. Asian kids who were born in the 1990s, like me, would probably remember its heyday when every primary school student seemed to play it. It was the RuneScape of the Orient because it was developed by a Korean company and made it biggest in this part of the world.

Now, MapleStory is going mobile. As developers discover that their fans are ageing and need to be out and about more often due to work or college, they have to adapt by allowing the players to play anywhere. This means porting these venerable games to the ultimate modern platform: smartphones.

On 17 July 2017, RuneScape promised a mobile version of the game. This has yet to materialise, sadly.

But MapleStory M is set for launch on 25 July 2018. Preregistration is now open through Google Play.

I never played MapleStory as a kid. RuneScape was my first love and I could never find space in my life for another game that is so similar in concept.

But I will be trying out MapleStory M when it comes out. I have already preregistered. The advertisements bombarding me at the subway stations, on television, and all over my social media feeds are hard to ignore. My peers are excited that one of our fondest childhood memories is getting a reboot, and their enthusiasm is infectious, making me want to find out what the hype surrounding MapleStory is all about.

And what of RuneScape? I might go AFK ("away from keyboard", implying a temporary suspension of a certain activity) for a while. They asked for it, with all the broken promises about their mobile version and increasingly predatory business practices.

MapleStory M on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nexon.maplem.global&hl=en_SG

Subway Train Simulator 2D

Speaking of subways, my rediscovery of the fun of taking the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) to get around Singapore has rekindled another little-boy obsession within me: driving trains.

As a child, I could only rely on my imagination to make believe that I was a train driver. But now, there are apps for it!

My favourite one right now is Subway Train Simulator 2D. To call this game simplistic would be like calling the sun warm. Speeding up, slowing down, and opening and closing the doors are literally all that this game offers in terms of mechanics. The graphics look like something produced by a polytechnic student, and the scenery is flat and only scrolls sideways like the Mario-esque platform games of yesteryear.

But this is also its strength. It uses very little of your phone's resources so it runs smoothly no matter how overworked your phone may be by other background processes. And it is easy to learn due to its rudimentary controls, but you will find it difficult to master as you go too fast and overshoot the stations time and time again, eliciting groans from your disappointed passengers.

In addition to groans, this game also has some fantastic sound effects such as the hiss of the engine, the clicking of the doors, and the squealing of the brakes. The tones that play when you are pulling into a station, and closing the doors, will remind you so much of MRT rides.

It does get repetitive and monotonous after a while, but then again this is not a game that lends itself to hours of uninterrupted play. I use it as a relaxation agent, to prepare myself to go to sleep... a useful and important job.

Subway Train Simulator 2D on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ecocitygames.subwayz

Reflections on France vs Croatia

"It wasn't pretty but they got the job done. That's what counts at the end of the day."

Former Liverpool player and now pundit Mark Lawrenson says this in football simulation game Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. It also perfectly sums up yesterday's French win.

The victory was built on a solid foundation of cynicism. Griezmann's dive to earn the free kick that led to the opener was obvious to the whole world except for the referee and his assistant, and debate continues to rage about the handball that caused the penalty and the second French goal (for what it's worth, I'd say it was a penalty, because Perisic seemed to pat the ball down).

But the French should be commended for taking the chances they were given, deserved or not. They're nothing if not clinical. Based on the statistics, they were outperformed by the Croatians. Indeed, they faced wave after wave of attacks from the red-and-white shirts. So the fact that they still managed not one, not two, not three, but four goals is testament to their ruthless finishing.

And it's not as if they didn't score nice goals. The shots by Pogba and the wunderkind Kylian Mbappe (who at 19 years of age has achieved more than I ever have at 20 and probably ever will) were right out of the top drawer.

Fair credit to Croatia too. They've done what Iceland did at Euro 2016, winning hearts all over the world as they shook up the traditional order of football powerhouses which have dominated the sport for years. Their run to the 2018 World Cup final is one that will live long in the memory.

They just couldn't squeeze out one last performance that would have written a happy ending to their fairytale.

Chinese

The share price of Shanghai Fukong Interactive Entertainment Co. Ltd. can only go up from here, right? It's so far in the doldrums now.

Don't take my word for it. I've only just ventured into looking superficially at stock charts, and have no idea what I'm talking about. So to keep things simple, when I see a line that goes almost straight down, I judge that that particular stock will probably increase in price again soon, i.e., rebound. Because that's the circle of life. Regression to the mean is a real thing, even in trading.

A couple of things happened recently that made me interested in Chinese stuff. First, I won the China Daily Prize for being a top performer in my university course. Hot on the heels of that came the MTX controversy surrounding the game I play, which many players blamed on the corporate greed of the holding company... Shanghai Fukong Interactive Entertainment Co. Ltd., which the RuneScape community refers to as "Chinese overlords".

Cue a series of comments, mainly on Reddit, sarcastically written in Chinese. Or rather, written by Westerners in English, then badly translated by Google into Chinese characters which were then pasted onto the comment threads. For example, here's one from u/ChineseOverlord, a satirical account, responding to a satirical suggestion that the company should lock all accounts and charge players a fee to be able to log into the game again. Yes, RuneScape players are sarcastic that way.

谢谢你的想法！

P. S请用中文发布您的投诉，以便霸王更容易理解。

Being a helpful person, and not wanting anyone to miss out on the joke, I manually translated the comment back into English using my considerable command of my mother tongue.

Thanks for your idea! Please use Chinese to give your suggestions so that it's easier for the overlords to understand.

- translated by human being who knows Chinese

I received 14 upvotes and 1 Reddit Silver for my troubles. A subsequent translation of another comment bagged me another 4 upvotes. These are nothing more than virtual currency for bragging rights but it was fun nonetheless!

The thing is, if not for the China Daily Prize, I probably wouldn't have bothered with the translations. I struggled with Chinese throughout my 10 years of compulsory education. The only subject I ever failed an exam in was Chinese in Primary 4, and I had tuition for no other subject except Chinese from upper primary all the way through to the O Levels.

It's safe to say I hated that language with a passion.

But that's not to say I'm completely inept at it. I can hold a normal conversation with another Singaporean using it, and my recognition of the characters is adequate for carrying out chats online in it. Sure, I stammer a lot because sometimes I don't know the words for certain things, and my pronunciation sounds like an American learning Chinese for the first time, but the problem was mainly psychological. Because I was forced to suffer through 10 years of Chinese hell, I didn't want anything to do with the language if I had a choice.

So I turned my back on it. For almost four years I took great pride in my inability to speak Chinese, and never used it unless someone used it on me first, and even then I would use it begrudgingly and purposely dumb down my standards.

At times I did feel slightly guilty. What kind of Chinese person can't speak Chinese? And was I hurting myself, given the growing influence of China on the world stage?

I never did anything about these misgivings though.

Winning the China Daily Prize changed that.

I can't really explain why. Maybe it's the feel-good factor. Suddenly the concept of "China" is associated with the positive feelings stirred up by my award, displacing the negative ones from my school days. In fact on the night I opened the letter announcing my win, I voluntarily spoke Chinese for the next hour, because I felt I ought to do so in honour of China Daily.

And the opportunity to practice my Chinese by helping those Westerners understand the sardonic comments reinforced the joy of using the language. Positive Reddit karma is always nice too.

I can't say for sure how long this rekindled interest in the Chinese language will last, but hey, a little bit is still better than nothing at all.

Now perhaps I should go read some investment analysis reports about Shanghai Fukong Interactive Entertainment Co. Ltd. that are published in Chinese...

When is enough enough?

A video game and Singapore politics. You wouldn't usually link the two, but right now there's a strong commonality between them.

The developers of medieval-fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game RuneScape and the government of the small city-state have both managed to thoroughly piss off their respective communities with thinly veiled cash grabs.

Here's a look at what each has done.

Milking whales

The company behind RuneScape, Jagex, introduced microtransactions (MTX) into the game in 2012. Since then, it has ramped up its MTX offerings, much to the annoyance of players.

MTX is a common practice in the gaming industry. If you've ever played a free mobile game, chances are you would have seen an in-app store where you can pay real-world money to get a boost in the virtual one. This is fine because game studios are, after all, businesses whose goal is to make profit.

But there's a right way to implement MTX and a wrong way, and unfortunately Jagex have got it absolutely horribly wrong. First of all, they have piled MTX on top of an existing subscription-based monetisation model in which players have to fork out $11 a month to even play the game in the first place. Other games which have MTX give access to the full game for free. By squeezing players for a recurring monthly payment, and then adding MTX, Jagex seem like they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Jagex have also pushed the boundaries of MTX too far. Players need to cough up money for essential features like bank presets, action bars, and the RuneMetrics activity tracking systems, all of which are integral to the game experience. That's a big no-no because players feel like they're being forced to spend money. Basically Jagex is saying: "If you want to continue enjoying our services, give us more money." What kind of business gets away with such blatant greed?

Responsible MTX should also never include elements of gambling. Sadly, Jagex's primary MTX is Treasure Hunter, which uses the lootbox mechanism, at its core a slot machine simulator. Players buy keys to open chests which contain randomly generated rewards. Most of the time you get complete garbage, but every now and then you get a rare and powerful item accompanied by a burst of animated fireworks and cheerful audio. This preys on exactly the kind of mental circuit that gets people addicted to gambling. So it's unethical that a supposedly above-board company shamelessly uses such tactics to increase its revenue.

It all came to a head recently when Jagex introduced another type of MTX called RunePass, and claimed that they were addressing the players' concerns over the prevalence of MTX. Not only were players angered by the fact that RunePass is a ripoff of the Battle Pass concept from another popular game Fortnite, they also failed to comprehend how putting in a new MTX is supposed to help solve the problem of there being too much MTX in the game.

Things got worse when the lead developer brazenly said in a video about the new MTX that players should "buy them". Ill-advised move certainly, and it only served to reinforce the notion that Jagex is only interested in lining its own pockets.

All the missteps accumulated over the past few years have led to lots of talk about the future of RuneScape. The playerbase is declining at an increasing rate, and there is a small but growing number of people who believe that this is the beginning of the end. With so many other more modern games to choose from, who will stay around to ride this bloated cash cow into the grave?

If Jagex doesn't do something drastic in the next two years to fix the MTX issue, I think we'll see a big exodus as the last few faithful fans finally say "enough is enough" and quit the game for good.

That will be the coup de grace for Jagex, and they will only have themselves to blame.

Paying more for things that fall out of the sky

The Singapore government is no stranger to upsetting the local populace with policies that inflict agonising pain on citizens' wallets.

It has a long history of raising existing taxes, creating new taxes, and jacking up the cost of everyday necessities willy-nilly.

The latest example of this is the 30% increase in water prices, which kicked in on 1 July.

It has had many devastating knock-on economic effects for the man-on-the-street consumer. Virtually everything we use needs water somewhere along the line, from something as simple as brewing a cup of coffee to as complex as the industrial processes involved in plastic manufacturing.

As a result, lots of things have become more expensive to produce, and the cost is often passed on to the consumer. Many drinks stalls have already raised the price of coffee and tea.

The woes of normal Singaporeans, already in a country with one of the highest cost of living in the world, continue.

I have seen plenty of rumblings of discontent online, and some are predicting that the people will soon reach a breaking point.

Perhaps the days of the incumbent government, which has been in power since our independence, are coming to an end, because their moneygrubbing practices have gone too far.

Just like Jagex.

The Malaysians recently kicked out their greedy and corrupt government which had also been in power for over 50 years.

We might be approaching that time when RuneScapers and Singaporeans put their foot down and follow suit, the former by jumping off that sinking ship of a game, and the latter by casting their ballots.

The past two days...

... Have been filled with thrills!

27 June

I went to hang out with my dad at the airport. Nobody we know was flying anywhere, but it's a Singaporean thing that we like to go to the airport for no good reason. Changi Airport is after all one of the best international airports, it has air-conditioning, and what else is there to do in this tiny country anyway? Besides, I like the skytrain, which is a light-rail system connecting Terminals 1, 2, and 3. As my longer-term readers will know, I have a thing for trains.

We took the skytrain a few times, and I got to see the Jewel under construction. The Jewel is the latest vanity project our airport authorities are working on. It'll be a big shopping centre and lifestyle attraction, and there will also be lots of greenery and waterfalls inside the building. But what's most exciting for me is that they're running a new line for the skytrain that travels right through the heart of Jewel itself. From the outside, you can see they've already finished putting up the track leading into the building. I can't wait for the opening next year!

After leaving the airport, we went to a hawker centre. I wasn't craving for anything in particular that day, so I simply browsed the stalls until a ban mian (handmade noodles) stall caught my eye. The pictures on the menu board looked nice, and I picked a bowl of mee hoon kueh (randomly shaped bits of rice flour dough, boiled in liquid) on impulse.

I'd never tried mee hoon kueh until then. I'm not sure how it had escaped my notice all these years. I've had almost every kind of noodle: mee pok (flat yellow alkaline noodles, like linguine pasta), mee kia (thin yellow noodles), thick beehoon (rice noodles), thin beehoon, yellow noodles (generic noodles of medium thickness, contains a delightful cocktail of synthetic chemicals which lend it an overpowering alkaline smell), lamian (noodles pulled by hand), ee mee (another kind of thin yellow noodles), you mee (yet another kind of thin yellow noodles), beetaimak (fat white noodles colloquially termed as mousetails)... But not mee hoon kueh.

Fortunately, I liked it. The smooth yet chewy pieces of dough were fun to eat as they had an interesting texture. They were helped in terms of taste by the addition of a runny egg, anchovies, and fatty minced pork to the soup.

I also had a cup of tea. Lately this has been my beverage of choice, especially during daylight hours. What can I say? I'm getting on in years.

That night, my mum came home from work with the mail from the letterbox downstairs. There was a brown envelope addressed to me, with the return address of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean's Office. "Must be a bill of some sort," I thought. "Or maybe they're accusing me of misconduct."

When the government sends us mail, it's never anything pleasant right?

Not this time. The letter turned out to be good news: I am awarded the China Daily Prize for the Arts 2 level for the 2017/18 academic year! The prize is given to the best Communications and New Media (CNM) student in each level each year, and has a cash payout of $1500.

Hype!

There was a lot of jumping and screaming when the contents of the letter had been digested. I knew I'd done well in my CNM modules, having obtained straight 'A's, but I wasn't quite sure how they determined which straight 'A' student gets the prize, or if I was even eligible for it rules-wise as my period of candidature has been rather short for a level 2 student.

Anyhow, it's apparently mine, and I'm glad.

Still high from the buzz of this revelation, my dad and I proceeded to watch the Germany versus South Korea game. Everybody knows what happened in the end so I won't belabour the point here, but suffice to say that what the match lacked in football quality, it more than made up for in drama. It was easily one of the top three most entertaining matches I've ever seen. Being a typical kiasu (afraid of losing out) Singaporean, I started out supporting the Germans, but by the time the referee trotted over to watch the video assistant referee review footage, my heart was thumping in my chest, willing the referee to award the goal to the plucky underdogs. Time seemed to slow. And when the referee returned to the field and pointed to the kickoff spot, there was another round of hollering from the guys in the house.

The second goal was icing on the cake, made even more memorable by the lack of a goalkeeper.

28 June

For the first time in over a decade, I rode the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) subway train system.

Also for the first time, I visited The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands (MBS).

Parking at The Shoppes costs an arm and a leg, just like everything else in that cesspool of pretentiousness, so it made sense for me to take the MRT there if I wanted to explore it. But taking the MRT isn't straightforward for someone like me. Just to get from my house to the station involves a dangerous traversal of the condominium driveway, exposure to the elements, and a trek of half a kilometre. Then I have to take a lift into the basement, tap my payment card through the fare gates, and take yet another lift deeper underground, all of which would be almost impossible if I were by myself.

And all that wouldn't count for anything if my wheelchair can't cross the platform gap to get into the train carriage.

That's what dads are for. He was the one who suggested this journey in the first place, since I have a lot of free time during the university off-season to give it a shot and see how it goes. And he helped me overcome all the obstacles between me and the train, and luckily my wheels are big enough not to get stuck in the platform gap.

Problems avoided, we were on our way to The Shoppes!

We alighted at Bayfront station on the Circle Line, which is conveniently connected to The Shoppes and the rest of MBS by a warren of subterranean tunnels, allowing us to stroll around leisurely without melting under the sun. I got to lay my plebian eyes upon a host of branded items that I'll never be able to afford, restaurants bearing the names of various celebrity chefs that I hopefully will one day, and the casino. Ah yes, that casino which keeps the money flowing through our economy like blood through your veins, and the very purpose for the existence of MBS. Ka-ching!

I was very intrigued when we discovered a plate of chicken rice going for a mere $7 in a hidden corner of the place, but it was too early for lunch so we gave it a miss.

One thing that I really loved about The Shoppes was the number of angmoh (Caucasian) people. They were walking everywhere, and a few groups of them were even riding the boats down the canals which run through the mall, being paddled along by Filipino and Chinese underlings. Forming the upper class here, even among the tourists, they tend to congregate around the bay area where everything is bathed in gold.

Angmoh people are my favourite kind of human and I don't care if you judge me for it.

The famous Singapore skyline, the beautiful Marina Bay, and me.

Soon it was time to eat, and we decided to retreat to a more heartland location in search of sustenance. Back onto the MRT we went! A quick trip to Chinatown on the Downtown Line ended with us discovering that there was no way to connect underground to Chinatown Point shopping centre, and I would have to use aboveground roads. I didn't like that, so we hopped back onto the MRT and returned to Bayfront to change back to the Circle Line.

You know what else dads are for? Making sure their kids don't get lost. The interchange stations nowadays are a helluva lot more mind-boggling than they were when I took the MRT as a child in a stroller. There are so many train lines running in so many directions that the stations now are sprawling complexes that have so many different levels and platforms so as to be able to accommodate them all. I felt like a fish out of water, but I just had to follow my dad's lead and I'd eventually get to the right part of the station.

My dad is also a great shield against people I want to avoid. While we were going back to Bayfront, an acquaintance boarded the same train. I got a rude shock because this was a real case of speak of the devil. The day before, while we were at the airport, this acquaintance had rung up my dad out of the blue, inviting us to a dialogue with other people with my disease, to openly discuss morbid topics in a safe space. Sounds good, but I've got no problems discussing morbid topics in an unsafe space, as evidenced by my posts on this blog which is publicly visible for the world to see, so thanks but no thanks because I'd rather use the time for other things. I had snickered about this to both my parents that night and the morning after, and lo and behold here she appeared in front of me. She's always been a bit too much of a goody-two-shoes for my liking, and I didn't feel like entertaining any inane conversation with her. As it was, I was barely holding myself together against the aural assault of the train and tunnel sounds and the rocking motions jolting every bony protrusion in my body. So the five-year-old boy withdrew behind his mum's skirt, peeking out shyly I stared at the wall and kept quiet, and my dad smoothly stepped in and handled the acquaintance with his excellent interpersonal skills until it was time for us to get off the train.

We took the Circle Line to Stadium station, where we ate at Old Town White Coffee at Kallang Wave Mall. It was our first experience with this casual dining chain, which was apparently brought to Singapore by actor and one of my favourite local celebrities Mark Lee, and I'm pleased to say it was a good one. The staff were prompt and polite. My dad enjoyed his nasi lemak (coconut rice) and loved the thick black coffee it came with, and my garlic butter thick toast, essentially an Asian version of garlic bread, was crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, exactly what a toast should be. The flavour of the garlic was adequate, and accentuated with the salty undertones of the butter. I had it with a cup of white milk tea, and oh my god it was the strongest cup of tea I've ever had. Usually I like my tea overly sweet and excessively milky, because I don't like the bitter taste of the tannins. But this one of full of that tannin bitterness. That's not to say it was unpleasant. In fact, it was surprisingly palatable for me, and a novel experience. But I did feel a bit trembly all over and my heart started to race, so perhaps I should cut down on the caffeine intake... Who am I kidding? Not a few hours later, I knocked back a can of Pepsi.

At the mall, I passed an electronics shop and it was selling the GoPro Hero 6, which I talked about in my previous post, for $595. I mention this because if not for the GoPro in the hands of the American man Dennis, I might not have agreed to my dad's idea of riding the MRT to explore Singapore. Dennis' video series showing off his neighbourhood spurred me to want to get out there and get to know mine better, from the ground and on foot rather than from inside the sterile and detached environment of a car.

The past two days have been a rollercoaster ride. What an adventure! It was tiring but I have no regrets. Now I look forward to a few peaceful days just chilling at home, playing computer games, and recharging my battered body and mind... But I'm already planning where to take the MRT to next, and beyond that, becoming $1500 richer!

Fun and games: Real Madrid's triumph and Jagex's tribulations

Such great value this post is. It's actually two posts in one! If I were to charge you to read my blog on a per-article basis, this post would be a bargain. But my blog is completely free, so all you have to do is enjoy!

Real Madrid make history again...

UEFA Champion's League final
Real Madrid 3 - Liverpool 1

I didn't watch the game live. I considered it but couldn't bear to forego my beauty sleep. But I watched the highlights the next day and what a match it was!

Both teams were evenly matched until Salah popped his shoulder. He was on fire all season and the Liverpool fanbase was hoping that he could work his magic once more and produce the Champion's League trophy for them. There was even talk that he was in contention for the Golden Ball award, which is given to the best player of the year. Safe to say, the weight of expectation was just too much for the poor guy to shoulder, pun 100% intended. He simply isn't ready to hang with the big boys.

Mohamed Salah lies in agony on the pitch after dislocating his shoulder and tearing several ligaments in a challenge with Sergio Ramos during the Champion's League final in Kiev, Ukraine on May 26, 2018. Source: Getty Images

Another player who isn't ready to hang with the big boys is the Liverpool goalkeeper, Karius. Real Madrid should give him an honorary contract for having practically gifted them the title with that strange throw to Benzema!

Of course there are lots of sourpuss anti-Real Madrid football fans bandying conspiracy theories around like nobody's business. One popular one is that Sergio Ramos, who is a so-called dirty player, intentionally hurt Salah by using some kind of wrestling technique like an arm lock to force Salah's arm into a position where his entire body weight came down hard on it when both players fell to the ground. Looking at the video footage of the incident, it's clear to see that Ramos indeed had his arm tangled in Salah's. But anybody who's watched enough football will know that limbs get intertwined all the time. There's nothing to suggest that Ramos trapped Salah's arm on purpose. Have a look at this YouTube clip and judge for yourself.

Another preposterous allegation is that Karius was paid to throw the match. This is even worse than the accusations against Ramos because it's completely unfounded. There's not even a shred of evidence to back up this claim.

Whatever. The haters can say what they like. The fact is, Real Madrid are the record-extending 13-time champions of Europe, having won the cup six times more than the next-best team, AC Milan. And the great Zinedine Zidane, such a legendary footballer in his time, has now become the first manager to win three Champion's League tournaments in succession.

Happy, happy.

... And Jagex cause trouble for themselves again

The Cambridge-based game development studio continues to lurch from one crisis to another. On the heels of the scandal they caused by threatening the creator of a popular third-party client software with legal action (see the appendix at the bottom of this post), they announced last week that they are shutting down the RuneScape Classic servers in August.

Understandably, this revelation has stirred up quite some consternation among the playerbase. RuneScape Classic is the original version of RuneScape from 2001, and is a piece of video game history. A few die-hard players have stuck with it over the past 17 years, and many felt that Jagex's decision to kill the game was unfair to those who've devoted almost their whole lives to it. Those who'd never played RuneScape Classic also criticised the move, saying that Jagex had lost its roots. Jagex really needs to tread carefully here. RuneScape is a franchise that depends heavily on nostalgia to retain customers, and the company cannot afford to alienate its stakeholders by disrespecting the long history and rich heritage of the series.

RuneScape Classic is only the latest casualty in a line of recent culls by Jagex. Chronicle: RuneScape Legends, a card battler similar to Hearthstone, and FunOrb, a minigame site, were also previously cut and will go offline later this year. The way I see it, this could mean one of two things:

Streamlining

Jagex, at the behest of its Chinese overlords also known as Fukong Interactive Entertainment, might be shedding the dead weight it has accumulated over the years in an effort to boost its income. This makes sense because the Chinamen paid $300 million to buy over Jagex in 2016 and they need to start earning a return on their investment. From the manpower perspective, dropping old and unprofitable titles frees up development time for new projects which hopefully will bring in more revenue. For example, the staff can devote more attention to making RuneScape Mobile, which is slated for launch during the next fiscal year, the best product that it could possibly be. With microtransactions, which charge small amounts of real-world currency in exchange for in-game loot, a commonly accepted and lucrative part of mobile gaming, Jagex will try their utmost to ensure that RuneScape Mobile brings in new players, who will in turn bring in more money.

Death throes

The less palatable explanation for Jagex's recent actions is that they represent a last-ditch effort to save the company. Maybe the company is in dire financial straits and jettisoning underperforming publications is an attempt to stem the bleeding from the coffers. After all, RuneScape Classic and FunOrb have been running for more than a decade with a tiny playerbase and low maintenance from the developers, so why are they suddenly urgent problems now? The official line is that they are based on outdated technology, suffer from multiple bugs, and players are using cheating software rampantly to abuse them, but these issues have been around for many years and Jagex never bothered. The abrupt decision to kill off these games seems rather... well, abrupt, and I can't help but suspect that there's something more behind it that's being hidden from us players. It wouldn't be the first time Jagex has tried to pull the wool over our eyes and it certainly won't be the last.

As a longtime 'Scaper, I fervently hope that the latter theory isn't true. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that if Jagex goes under, a huge part of my life will go with it. They really need to get their act together though, starting with hiring a competent and experienced public relations professional to stop them from repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. Their brand image has taken a terrible beating even among the most loyal followers, and repairs are badly needed.

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Appendix: The third-party client controversy

Old School RuneScape (OSRS) is a version of RuneScape based on a backup of the game's code from the year 2007. Jagex launched it in 2013 after many players quit the game following a massive but unpopular overhaul to the main RuneScape, now known as RuneScape 3, which introduced a more complex user interface and combat system.

OSRS has a large following among veteran players who are nostalgic for the simple game experience they had when they were growing up. The game must be played using a downloaded piece of software called a client, because modern internet browsers do not support Java, an old coding language on which the game is based. The client serves as a "translator" between the user's computer and the game servers.

Jagex provides a client for OSRS, which is referred to by players as the vanilla client. In computing, the word "vanilla" when used to describe software means original and unadulterated. But the vanilla client by Jagex lacks many quality-of-life features that make the game easier to play such as timers and automated statistic trackers, so fans with the technical know-how have developed several more sophisticated alternative clients, called third-party clients, and a large proportion of OSRS players use such clients.

On May 15, 2018, Jagex told the creator of a relatively new client, RuneLite, to shut down his client or face a lawsuit for copyright infringement. News of this broke on Reddit after the founder of RuneLite wrote about it on the RuneLite website, and players were outraged as Jagex was perceived to be showing favour to another established third-party client, OSBuddy, which had not been ordered to close. Several OSBuddy developers are former Jagex employees, and unlike RuneLite which is totally free, OSBuddy requires a payment of $2 a month to unlock the most useful features. RuneLite had been gaining traction and there had been a corresponding drop in the number of users subscribing to OSBuddy, and players suspected Jagex of trying to kill RuneLite to protect OSBuddy. To make matters worse, it was reported by several older players that OSBuddy had evolved from a cheating software that played the game automatically without user input, a practice known as botting. A few players also accused OSBuddy of stealing their account details and IP addresses, and selling them to third parties. The association between Jagex and OSBuddy was seen as an alliance of evil, and RuneLite characterised as the "good guy".

Players turned up in force to defend RuneLite and its founder, holding massive protests in the virtual city of Falador, cancelling their monthly membership payments to Jagex, airing their displeasure on social media, and sending death threats to Jagex staff. On May 16, Jagex belatedly released an official statement explaining that RuneLite contained tools that revealed sensitive code in the game engine whose function it was to detect botting behaviour, and because RuneLite was fully open-source, anybody could download the source code off the internet, decipher Jagex's anti-botting measures, and write botting scripts that evade those measures. After the developer of RuneLite agreed to take those portions of the code off the internet, Jagex backed down and allowed RuneLite to continue operating on May 18. This satisfied the playerbase and the protests stopped, but the poor communication by Jagex, who by failing to adequately explain their actions from the very beginning allowed the situation to spiral out of control, had already done enormous damage to the relationship between Jagex and its players.