The City of New York

Posted by Andric on May 31, 2012 in Life Diary, Opinion

I feel like you should always come to New York when you have noth­ing in your life, or when you feel a cer­tain empti­ness in your life, or when you feel like your life is going up, up, up. Whatever it is, unless you are con­ten­ted with your life, unless you have settled down, come to New York.

The Empire State will then avail you with a cer­tain per­spect­ive, one that will change you forever. Know that this city is so magical and fabled and revered not because it brings you hap­pi­ness, but because it’s so devoid of it that you under­stand to seek else­where. You will finally under­stand that your hap­pi­ness is not tethered to your sur­round­ings, only until you are happy. It’s only then that the right place will con­tain your hap­pi­ness and nur­ture it.

It’s that moment you real­ize what hap­pi­ness truly means to you; regard­less of what Jane McGonigal tells you, what your par­ents tell you, or what every­one else tells you.

When you come to New York, it doesn’t mat­ter what you had in your life, or what you didn’t really have in your life. You won’t find those things you seek in New York. What you will find is the strength to move on to some­thing real, some­thing that isn’t a myth.

This is truly the city that dreams are made of. You will dream, you will die a bit know­ing it will not make you happy, and then you will do some­thing about your life. Eventually. You will know where to go.

And when you are lost all you need to do is return. And maybe, maybe then you find a new direction.

Hyped & Hated – How Naomi Neo became Singapore’s Lana Del Rey, and why you should care

Posted by Andric on Feb 3, 2012 in Opinion

A blog post writ­ten at length with the dom­in­ant sen­ti­ment of being “hated” cir­cu­lates online, and within minutes every­body is talk­ing about it. Except which, the sen­ti­ment is lost on such innu­mer­able cur­at­ors, and when all’s said and done, you’re look­ing at super­fi­cial hype.

That’s a scen­ario all too famil­iar to us. You’ve seen it: the rise and fall of indi­vidu­als and top­ics, repeatedly reb­logged, retweeted, and repur­posed. Hyped or hated, trend­ing on Twitter is now the new paparazzi cover – a schaden­freude extra­vag­anza that seeks only to glor­ify and/or vil­ify someone or some­thing for hedonic pleasure.

By now, you should already be aware of Naomi Neo, a self-purported Internet blog­ger that shot to fame after a mis­guided, laden rant on her blog about “haters”.

If one is mis­in­formed, he or she might even think Naomi was maligned, as it were.

Anyone who keeps abreast of music and Internet trends would have likely con­nec­ted the dots by now: Naomi Neo is Singapore’s very own Lana Del Rey. Lana, an indie musi­cian who trended on Twitter and blogs some time in late 2011 and early 2012, was the single most hyped – and later, hated – indi­vidual the Internet has seen since Rebecca Black.

[What’s up with Lana Del Rey? Thought Catalog and MTHRFNKER explains the hype and hate.]

Naomi Neo’s not the first “less-than-pretty” fash­ionista blog­ger to walk the Earth – now, there are tons of them. What sep­ar­ates her isn’t her, per se. It’s the Internet’s sud­den obses­sion with hyp­ing and hat­ing any­thing and everything, any­one and every­one. I call it the Lana Del Rey effect, the cluster­fuck of Internet and paparazzi cul­ture that has reached crit­ical mass.

Why is this rel­ev­ant, and why should you even care?

For a while, Singapore’s been known for hyp­ing schizo­phrenic indi­vidu­als like Steven Lim and Aaron Tan, pro­pelling them to a high ped­es­tal of infamy. So why are we put­ting Naomi Neo up for dis­cus­sion in a dif­fer­ent vein?

It’s because Naomi’s inch­ing us closer to the Internet’s main­stream. Naomi Neo is Lana Del Rey, not that she’s a fallen-from-grace musi­cian, not that she has collagen-enhanced lips, and cer­tainly not that she’s attract­ive, even. Sure, Naomi is attract­ive, by some stand­ards. But what puts her in the same vein as Lana is her alleged inau­thenti­city, some­thing we should not endorse, but should no less pay atten­tion to.

That, and the sen­ti­ment of being “hated”, which para­dox­ic­ally draws more hate from spec­tat­ors.

I say this, not with expli­cit intent to fuel the hype/hate for Naomi, but to note that as far as Internet cul­ture goes, the Lana Del Rey effect has now per­vaded far bey­ond its con­fines, burst­ing at the seams that should rep­res­ent our all but invis­ible geo­graph­ical divides. The Internet is, after all, international.

Why should you care, really? The pop­u­lar opin­ion is that should some­body be shamed pub­licly, com­mit a social faux pas, or incite back­lash; he or she bears weight of the con­sequence. Everything that comes after, everything as a res­ult is this person’s fault.

That pop­u­lar opin­ion is also not entirely truthful.

The reason why Naomi Neo is trend­ing isn’t because it was a cal­cu­lated, delib­er­ate mar­ket­ing effort. It wasn’t because Naomi wanted to become infam­ous overnight. No, rather, it was the col­lect­ive effort of thou­sands of Singaporeans who have chosen to talk about her, react to her, and share it with friends. She was hyped, trend­ing only because you chose to repur­pose someone else’s reac­tion to it, or react in your own way to fuel the flames.

It was because of you that sud­denly, Naomi Neo is now the talk of the Twitterverse, in Singapore any­way. You should care because it isn’t Naomi who per­petu­ated the hype, the hate, or even the super­fi­ci­al­ity or inau­thenti­city she was accused of. She may have star­ted it, but it was you who shared it.

You per­petu­ated it.

You per­petu­ated it when you asked, “Who is Naomi Neo?” and decided to con­cern your­self with her, and that is why you should care about this blog post. I ask of you to stop. Immediately, stop talk­ing about Naomi Neo, whether or not you feel you should defend her or single her out. Don’t tweet about her, don’t blog about her, don’t share her blog link.

There’s really noth­ing that inter­est­ing about her “haters” rant, now that you think about it, huh?

Great. Now share this blog post, and pray that this will be the last thing about Naomi Neo or Lana Del Rey you’ll ever have to share – even after you real­ise the sheer irony of this post, which quite unfor­tu­nately isn’t capped off with super­fi­cial pho­tos that prove con­trary to my point.

The Introspective: Hopes for 2012

Posted by Andric on Jan 2, 2012 in The Diary

I am usu­ally one to reflect. And yet, I just find it’s futile to look over the pas­sage of time that is long gone, and syn­thes­ise some­thing out of my memor­ies of it.

But – now that it’s the 2nd of January, I’m in a bet­ter pos­i­tion to look to the past and say, “That’s enough of the past, what can I change?”

The year in passing

Do you know what it’s like to want some­thing your whole life, and to plan for it, and count on it, and not get it? I did, twice over.

That was 2011 for me.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a great year. It was. I loved 2011. There were so many bad parts that made the great parts really stand out. Lest I for­get, it was the year I decided I would become some­body. I’d decided I wanted to become a designer. It didn’t mat­ter what I would design. I just knew that was my thing.

On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs passed away. Like so many oth­ers, I was saddened. I had seen the rare gem of his 2005 Stanford University address later in the day, and found out that it res­on­ated with me a great deal. The reason it did was because it had happened to me, just like it had happened to him. I found what I loved doing.

Do what you love. Love what you do.

That wasn’t some­thing I thought about before 2011. I swear it was the best thing to have happened to be thus far. A world by design is the only world I know now.

Dreaming on

So, 2011 was a crazy year. What’s next?

Here are 7 of my hopes and res­ol­u­tions to begin the year with:

1. Keep read­ing. Literature is an end­less lit­any of wisdom.
2. Quit giv­ing in to tempta­tions. Discipline gets one fur­ther than instant gratification.
3. Learn to stop and play a video game. Video games are bet­ter than sex.
4. Attain focus. Design think­ing is all about focus.
5. Make my first $10,000. Money comes into play eventually.
6. Learn a new skill. I’d start with some­thing design-y.
7. Appreciate. Because snob­bish elit­ism is so 2011.

Review: Grand Theft Auto III Anniversary Edition

Posted by Andric on Dec 15, 2011 in Video Games

Are we talk­ing about Grand Theft Auto III again?

The very game that revolu­tion­ised enter­tain­ment a dec­ade ago is back – this time on mobile devices – exactly as you remembered it.

The year is com­ing to a close. But before we usher in its fifth major install­ment, Grand Theft Auto cre­at­ors Rockstar Games would have us remem­ber the game that made the series such a crit­ical and com­mer­cial suc­cess – by cel­eb­rat­ing Grand Theft Auto III’sIf you haven’t heard of GTA III, you haven’t lived. Grand Theft Auto III was the Playstation 2’s killer app. Released in 2001, the game’s satir­ical, irrev­er­ent art dir­ec­tion defined Rockstar Games, mak­ing them quite lit­er­ally rock­stars of the over­arch­ing enter­tain­ment industry. tenth anniversary with a fant­astic debut on our mobile phones, now bathed with gold (lots of it).

With mistle­toes ador­ing every square inch of human exist­ence this month, love is in the air. A good bunch of gamers like myself aren’t pre­pared to be dis­ap­poin­ted. GTA3’s Anniversary Edition does a good job at that, with a faith­ful repro­duc­tion of the sand­box game we so fondly remem­ber on our big-brother video game consoles.

A mas­ter­piece, remastered

It’s impossible to over­state the import­ance of Grand Theft Auto IIIIf you haven’t heard of GTA III, you haven’t lived. Grand Theft Auto III was the Playstation 2’s killer app. Released in 2001, the game’s satir­ical, irrev­er­ent art dir­ec­tion defined Rockstar Games, mak­ing them quite lit­er­ally rock­stars of the over­arch­ing enter­tain­ment industry. (or GTA3, to most fans). Released ten years ago, the game still holds up really well des­pite its age.

With that said, a lot of the bugs from the ori­ginal game have been fixedThat means: No more weird-ass jump­ing anim­a­tions. Not more than one vehicle can fit into your Portland gar­age. No cheats to fly you across to Staunton Island, as well. . This might come as a dis­ap­point­ment to pur­ists, but it’s a wel­come ges­ture. Rockstar didn’t just hack together a port for our iOS and Android devices. They pol­ished it with a lot of sheen, and the res­ult is spec­tac­u­lar. #win­ningCharlie Sheen would be proud. Tiger blood, Bro.

Perhaps the most delight­ful ‘non-bug’ the remastered anniversary edi­tion retained is GTA3’s infin­ite sprintYou could tap the sprint but­ton for Claude to sprint forever.. All in all, the remas­ter­ing was appro­pri­ate and well con­sidered. Autosave is imple­men­ted, GTA IV style, as is a “retry if you die” fea­ture that would have worked won­ders in the original.

In addi­tion, the vir­tual ana­log con­trol for on foot action took cues from other iPhone games – the vir­tual stick isn’t stuck in one pos­i­tion on the screen, it adapts to where you place your thumb, mak­ing it ultra-responsive and a pleas­ure to play. The anim­a­tions have also been made more snappy, improv­ing upon its super­ior PC port.

Hardly a per­fect makeover

If you’ve played Rockstar’s pre­vi­ous GTA port (Chinatown Wars) onto mobile devices, you’ll know how clumsy the con­trols can get. They’re not awfully easy to get used to, as is the case in GTAIII as well, at least on the iPhone. The driv­ing con­trols are a mess. Buttons are placed to closely to each other, and the touch response area is fairly small. Sometimes taps do not get registered. The accel­er­o­meter con­trol is also flaky at best, like Grand Theft Auto IV’s SIXAXIS con­trols on the PS3 – an afterthought.

You should also know that while GTA3 shows off the graph­ical prowess of the latest iOS and Android devices you can buy now, it’s not graph­ic­ally per­fect. Compared to the PC ver­sion, there’s con­sid­er­ably less game­play lag, but shows quite a notice­able delay in tex­ture load­ing. As is its lim­ited draw dis­tance – you can’t exactly see very far off into the city’s hori­zons, because those tex­tures don’t load.

A deserving game

It’s awe­some, I’ll say. It’s the best tra­di­tional gam­ing exper­i­ence you’ll get on your mobile devices right now. It’s not per­fectly tailored to these devices, but alas, there’re more hits than misses when it comes to Grand Theft Auto III’s Anniversary Edition, mak­ing it the best port of a Grand Theft Auto game ever released,Rockstar Games doesn’t have a great record when it comes to port­ing games over to other plat­forms. and with good reason.

You can get it now for US$4.99 on the App Store and Android Marketplace, right now. Happy holidays!

Awesome or what? GeekaWatt made the news.

Posted by Andric on Dec 10, 2011 in Geek Diary, Life Diary, The Diary

Hours ago, I got a text mes­sage from one of my friends which made me stop in thought alto­gether. “Good stuff, man!”, he rhapsodised.

As it turned out, my friends and I – we’re in the news. Hell, I’m in the news.

I want to take time out of my overtly impossibly busy sched­ule this week­end and just say a few words of thanks; of gratitude.

This is pos­sible because of Theon. Some nine months ago, he approached me to work with him on this, and since then, we’ve gone from noth­ing much to some­thing else: some­thing news­worthy. I’m proud. I’m proud to say that this is the first step to some­thing great, and that I’m part of it. I’m not much of a Creative Director, but I’ve toiled and learnt and grown so much with GeekaWatt that it’s noth­ing short of life changing.

In so many ways, this is an early Christmas gift to every­one who’s worked with GeekaWatt in this past year. Let’s not dis­count any­one who’s had to put in the work in order to make this even pos­sible. I want to thank Theon for mak­ing this pos­sible, but above all it’s not just Sean and I. It’s any­one who worked to con­trib­ute to this ven­ture, espe­cially Jin Wen, our awe­some in-house developer to whom we owe all the cod­ing magic.

Thoughts: Sacrifice & Perfection

Posted by Andric on Dec 2, 2011 in Life Diary, Opinion

Sacrifice is a les­son I believe that, once learned, you’ll never be able to please any­one. You’ll tell them that it’s all for the greater good. You will.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll have to leave you behind.” That is the single worst thing any­one wants to hear. It doesn’t mat­ter if it’s put in con­text of work, or friend­ship, or dating.

Doesn’t. At all. Matter.

In the end you’re leav­ing someone or some­thing behind. You’ll always have to. And per­haps it’s high time I learned it, because it’s inev­it­able. I’m fairly cer­tain nobody would think of accom­plish­ing great things without so much as a cost to their sick, delu­sional, com­fort­able first world lives.

Yes, it is pretty sick. All of these first world lux­ur­ies are com­plete drivel. As the tele­vi­sion world would have it, you can a) become rich, b) lead a real­istic life, c) have friends who’ll be there for you regard­less, d) have stable romantic rela­tion­ships with other people and still find time and effort and con­science for cas­ual dal­li­ances, and e) lead a dra­matic and excit­ing life with ups and downs.

Television is a whole load of hooey. The closest you get to real­ity is Battlestar Galactica, per­haps Mad Men. And the rest, I assure you, is there to paint an ideal pic­ture to con­sole you out of your miser­able little lives. Miserable, but com­fort­able non­ethe­less. Is it that bad? You live vicari­ously, at least.

Where am I going with this? Sacrifice. You have to sac­ri­fice one – or more – of those things TV tells you you should, or abso­lutely must have in order to be a func­tion­ing mem­ber of soci­ety. And it’s not just people or things. It’s also those meta­phys­ical things you can’t see or touch or hear.

For me, it’s leav­ing behind cer­tain things I’ve become accus­tomed to, like in school where per­fec­tion was pos­sible (100 marks, any­one? Top stu­dent? Gold stars? A whole load of hooey, once again!).

I real­ise if I am to suc­ceed as an entre­pren­eur (or whatever cor­por­ate stooge who dresses in a $200 suit, pre­tend­ing to be happy only when I’m at the bar every Friday night), I’ve got to give up this ulti­mate delu­sion of perfection.

NOTHING IS PERFECT. NOTHING CAN BE.

Find your own way. Make your own change. Everything else will even­tu­ally fall in place.

Perhaps even the excite­ment of those TV char­ac­ter lives.

Thoughts: Optimism & Happiness

Posted by Andric on Nov 27, 2011 in Opinion

I think, in some way, pess­im­ism is actu­ally optimism.

If you per­ceive some­thing to be grim and dis­ap­point­ing, nat­ur­ally, you’d think, “Hey, it can’t pos­sibly get any worse than this, yeah?”

When you’ve hit rock bot­tom, the only way is up.

When the only way is up, aren’t you effect­ively being optimistic?

Is there, then, really such a thing as optim­ism or pess­im­ism? Absolutely, yes. I’m pos­it­ive you must have met that one per­son who wears a per­man­ent smile in the face of cata­clysm, or that one other per­son who mumbles in no whole words whin­ing or rant­ing about some­thing. But were these hypo­thet­ical people like this before? Have they, and will they be like this all the damn time?

Everything’s rel­at­ive.

Now, sup­pose you describe your­self as optim­istic. That’s because you pride your­self with the cun­ning abil­ity to muster hap­pi­ness in the face of cer­tain dark­ness. Say, you just lost every pretty penny you had in the bank because you blew it on a lover that ran south. You dis­miss it as “les­son learned”. What hap­pens, though, if you don’t learn from that and six years from now, future you makes the same mistake?

You’re stuck in this cycle of disappointment–acceptance. Could you stay optim­istic forever? Look back, and you’ll say, “I should’ve learned my les­son the first time around.” This is pessimism-in-hindsight. If you’ve always been optim­istic about your future, and the present is often a source of dis­ap­point­ment, where do you look back grimly on? Your past. You can only be pos­it­ive unless there’s some­thing grim to con­trast that pos­it­iv­ity with.

Conversely, sup­pose you describe your­self as pessimistic. 

“My life sucks. FUCK MY LIFE. Why did this have to hap­pen to me?” Familiar? Well, that’s actu­ally a hyper­bolic me, but never mind about that.

Anyway, sup­pose this: because you think your life sucks now, and that it will con­tinue to suck real bad forever and ever, what anchors you to your pess­im­istic real­ity? Like the optim­ist, it is your past. You’ll look back and say, “What the fuck happened to my life? IT WAS BETTER BEFORE.”

Or, you’ll go through cer­tain times in your life where things actu­ally hap­pen to you that make you happy and ful­filled. Your expect­a­tions are met. You’re on cloud nine. So what hap­pens is that you’re actu­ally think­ing back and say­ing, “Wow, my life sucked so hard back then, I’m actu­ally damned pleased I’m right here, where I am.”

What I’m try­ing to say is…

You might be the guy who’s won­der­ing why the sec­tion on pess­im­ism is longer than the one on optim­ism, or the emo gal who hap­pens to dress up real nice and who fucks ran­dom hot, dumb guys at the local col­lege bar; or you could be the guy who cracks up a little while read­ing this every time I’m bor­der­line cyn­ical, or that gal that knows she could gain some insight by learn­ing what I have to say here.

Regardless of who you are, believe me when I say this: Don’t label your­self, because it lim­its you.

Understand that you are neither an optim­ist nor a pess­im­ist, because everything is rel­at­ive, so let your­self be who you want to be, whenever. Disappointments hap­pen all the time and you either regret the past or the present anyway.

One last thing: Flow

A great way to under­stand the relativ­ity of hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment lead­ing up to the state of either optim­ism or pess­im­ism is to first under­stand the concept of flow.

You’re prob­ably famil­iar about the glass-half-full and glass-half-empty meta­phor. What flow pro­poses is to get into the state between optimism/pessimism. Always have some­thing to prove and some­thing to lose. Watch the fol­low­ing video to attain a bet­ter understanding:

As they say, hap­pi­ness is a dir­ec­tion, not a destination.