The Daily Whine

…is hot. But Jessica Alba is hotter when she’s not Jessica Alba. She’s hotter when you don’t realize she’s Jessica Alba. Or to be more exact, she’s hottest when she looks like she could be Jessica Alba but you don’t know for sure that she is.
I caught The Sleeping Dictionary on Cinemax last night. I started watching a third of the way through — something about an English officer who goes to an Iban tribe in Sarawak on a civilizing mission back in the 19th century — and there was this beautiful native girl whom the Englishman adopted as his ’sleeping dictionary’ (natives that the colonizers sleep with to pick up the local language and customs). She was gorgeous but looked unbelievably out of place — nothing like the other natives. (The story explains her exotic charms away by virtue of her being the offspring of an Englishman and her sleeping dictionary mother).

Anyway, the point is, she was hot and I thought she looked like Jessica Alba, but I reasoned that it wasn’t her because this looked like an English movie (Bob Hoskins and Emily Mortimer were in it). Furthermore, even Jessica Alba doesn’t look this hot.

Jessica Alba in a sarong. Hubba hubba!

Then the end credits came.
Epiphany: Anyone is a hundred times hotter in a sarong. Especially Jessica Alba.

And by the way, pass the damn ball!

I don’t think it would solve all the conflicts in the world, but if people knew how to pass the ball to the open man, there would be far less angst around. Doesn’t matter which sport you play — basketball, football, hockey — no team has ever lost a match by getting the ball in the hands of the guy in open space with a scoring opportunity.

Let’s talk pick-up basketball. It’s simple, really. Guys who come down once a week to play ball, run a little, maybe even go home with a highlight reel to playback in their heads till Sunday. If you’re the point guard on a team of amateurs, you don’t go shooting off the second you bring the ball into play. Your job is to spread the play around. Let everyone get a feel for the ball. Let everyone feel they’re enjoying the workout. Nobody plays pickup basketball purely to run up and down the court. It’s about feeling like the decisions that each individual makes have a positive effect on the outcome of the game. That’s what amateurs look forward to — they want to contribute in a purposeful manner. This isn’t the pro game — nobody wants to be a role player, nobody wants to be the guy that just rebounds, or the guy that sets the screen for the go-to player. Amateurs don’t enjoy that. So if you’re the point guard on a team of amateurs, you better recognize that your job isn’t to fire off even when there’s a hand in your face, much less to drive to the hoop with Manute Bol waiting for you. Doesn’t matter if you can knock down the tear-drops or the fadeaways. Doesn’t even matter if you’re the best finisher on the court. If you take on the responsibility to feed the ball, you feed the ball. The other four guys don’t want to traipse up and down just to watch you go one-on-five.

I blame Michael Jordan. He made the impossible look easy. Which just made everyone else on the planet attempt to do the impossible too. And that gave rise to a generation-and-a-half of delusional youngsters who thought they were all Mini Jordans. I remember this kid Kenny and I used to call the ‘Twerp’ — a pint-sized freshman who had the ball skills of a tropical fruit fly. Because he was the smallest guy on the floor, he would always assume the role of the point guard. Problem was, he was more trigger-happy than Allen Iverson — and it’s impossible to be more trigger-happy than Allen Iverson! Needless to say, nobody ever wanted to be on his team.

Nobody likes playing with a black-hole. You never see the ball again. If the black-hole is manning point, you might as well stay back to cover the inevitable fast-break going the other way. Because God designed ball-hogging, shoot-first pass-later point guards to also be the laziest, slowest transition defenders. Meaning that once they turn the ball over, they almost never ever cover as safety. Which is so wrong on a tactical level — at the point of turning the ball over, the point guard is typically nearest to his own basket, meaning he’s in the best position to hustle back and slow down the counter-attack. Does it ever happen? Point guards who defend against the turnover are rarer than an apology from the PAP.

I’m old school. I believe the point guard needs to be able to shoot from the arc, needs to be able to penetrate, and needs to be able to finish. But the point guard’s job isn’t to do all that with options 1 through 3. His job is to find them out in the in open.

The most absurdly useless eating utensil in the history of mankind are the thin, silver chopsticks you find in Korean restaurants. It is practically impossible to use those chopsticks meaningfully. Give me a pair of bamboo chopsticks and I’ll catch flies for you. Hand me the silver chopsticks and watch me drop everything on my lap.

so this is how i see it…

I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a lot more alive. Intelligent, sure — everyone used to be smarter in college. But I know I was defo a lot more interested.

The calm, thoughtful, forward-thinking, responsible me is a joke. An empty shell of Minn 1.0. Doesn’t react to insults and insinuations. Doesn’t put people in a spot. Doesn’t let emotion get in the way. Empathizes too much. Tries to see things everybody else’s way. Tries to understand. Tries to put the common before the self. Makes the difficult decisions. Deals with shit.

dang i’m a soulless corporate zombie.

But let me put it this way. Who wouldn’t want to be a radical firebrand living in the moment? Who wouldn’t want to say "Fuck You" to brainless fuckwits whatever the consequences? Who wouldn’t want to let go of all responsibility and hit the mall for a smoothie at 3pm? Who wouldn’t prefer to spout Nietzsche nonsence in the middle of a latte and sound mildly cool?

Why would anyone choose to be less interesting?

So it comes down to this: you make a choice about what you want in life. You recognize the way the world spins, and you choose. If you follow the money, then you need to know that 98% of wealth is centered in large, soulless multinational corporations owned by shareholders who have absolutely no interest in what their companies do so long as their coffers continue to be filled. They don’t care about your political views, about your education, about your beliefs, and, least of all, about you. You are not there to entertain them. You are there to protect their interests. And the only way you can is by making more money. And since capitalism rewards the most efficient systems, and efficiency and distractions are so at odds with each other, it’s not in the shareholder’s interests to have interesting people staff their financial ambitions.

In other words, fuck you if you want to have a ‘life’ because, really, why would anyone pay you to have one? Unless your having a life and being interesting can be proven to increase shareholder dividends, nobody’s interested.

So, back to me. Did I really choose money over life? I guess I did. I mean, I’m not in all this because I enjoy being soulless. Would I rather be spending more time planning my retirement in Tuscany (fat hope!) rather than the next campaign?

It’s mere rhetoric, but is it so wrong to choose money? At what point did we learn to be guilty about wanting to be affluent? Isn’t it such a typically middle-class condition to scoff at other middle-classers who aspire towards a higher station.

I’ll leave the bubbly dreams of being infinitely rich AND interesting to those who can afford to be neither. I’ve made peace with my choice. I like being able to own my apartment before I’m retired. I like being able to spend shitloads each time I step into Kinokuniya. I like being able to enjoy thick slabs of meat with May when we crave for it. I like being able to give my parents money to spend on their grandchildren. So fuck this shit if I’m materialistic.

Okay. But this is how I also see it…

In the end, could I really be happier with less? If I’m honest, I think so. If having less didn’t mean I was totally shitpoor and living with a taupalin sheet for a roof and wearing fishnet wifebeaters and rummaging through the municipal thrash dump in order to find food. I’m thinking along the lines of owning a 3-room HDB flat instead of a 5-room flat. Taking the MRT to work every day instead of flagging a cab. Having to borrow reading material instead of buying my own. That level of ‘less’.

If living at that level of ‘less’ meant I could tell anyone to fuck off any time they verbalized the garbage in their heads, I’d be happier without a doubt.

Singapore turned 41 yesterday.

This felt strange news to me, because when I was growing up, every National Day the Prime Minister made no bones about how young we were. We’re just 18. We’re only 19. Then 20, 21, 22… the last time I paid attention, we were barely 25. I’m not sure where other people were at that stage of life; all I know is me and my buddies were spending a lot of that time along Mohd Sultan Road.

So it’s a bit disorienting to realize tiny little Singapore isn’t so little anymore. We’re on the verge of a mid-life crisis here.

… okay, there must have been a point to all this, but I’m really too lazy to care now, so whatever. This is what happens when you let a full week interrupt your thoughts.

Correction. This is what happens when you grow into a lazy fuckwit with no real convictions. Ah well. At least I’m honest.