Growing Job Scope, Plus More Writing

More than half a year passed since I wrote a journalistic piece, let alone anything substantial and book-related. But among some additional responsibilities at work include blogging for the company's online retail portal, and in between the prerequisite promotions was this piece about how ChatGPT is helping people write their books.

When diving deep into the subject, I've had to revise my viewpoints and phrasing of some passages in the drfat a few times. Doubts over whether I did a good job – not great but merely good – still linger, mixed up with their counterparts from previous projects, and are unlikely to remain and feed new doubts raised while writing the next post.

Nevertheless, I'm pleased with the results, not just because it's been a while since I've done something like this and it seems to have jolted my writing gears loose after such a long while. Hence, I'd like to furnish the full text of the post here but given the nature of the new arrangements and to be on the safe side, I settled for a partial copy-paste with a link to the actual post.

Wish I could say "it's good to be back" but I think it's still too soon. I'll be fretting over what to write about next but until then, let me savour the relief of being able to write again.

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ChatGPT – the ghostwriter in the machine

In a book titled The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing, a squirrel named Sammy finds a gold coin while picking up acorns. Sammy's friends Benny the Bear and Lily the Chipmunk then help the squirrel learn about the importance and benefits of saving and investing.

Sounds normal, except that the author, Brett Schickler, had help writing it: the software sensation ChatGPT, an AI interface developed by artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI that produces replies based on user queries. Schickler "wrote" The Wise Little Squirrel by prompting ChatGPT with queries like "write a story about a dad teaching his son about financial literacy". He also employed AI to design the cover...


Read in full here.

Love (Of A Language) Shouldn't Be Forced

The Malaysian Institute of Language and Literature (DBP) has proposed amendments to the DBP Act 1959 to give it more bite in policing usage of the Malay language.

News reports about the matter stated that "Individuals who do not respect the national language can be fined up to RM50,000 or sentenced to imprisonment."

“This is not about grammar or spelling errors, but disrespect for the national language. The proposed fine is not to punish but to evoke love and patriotism to the country,” said the chairman of the Institute's board of governors.

The proposed amendments will reportedly be tabled at the next Parliament session and likely to be passed, but I doubt the aims will be achieved without some collateral damage.

The news reports reveal little about the nature or details of the offences worthy of the ehnanced penaltiess. Even if grammar and spelling errors will not penalised, given the way Malaysian authorities work, one gets an idea of what "offences" might be targeted and who would be most affected: the poor, migrants, older people, and those not sufficiently schooled in BM.

Instead of evoking evoke "love and patriotism to the country", offenders are more likely to end up hating the laws and the Institute. Instead of uniting people, sections of society are pigeonholed based on their proficiency in Malay.

In many ways, how DBP polices language is the same as how the religious authorities police religion in this country, steadfast in the belief that the heavier the mallet, the easier their job. But mangling words or grammar in a language shouldn't be a crime, especially if done unintentionally. As a Finance Minister put it, "why use a sledgehammer to crack a nut?"

More egregious uses of BM can be found on social media. For one, the proliferation of bahasa WeChat needs to be checked.

Language is a living thing, and as in all living things, evolution and growth needs to be organic, and that involves making and learning from mistakes. How will anyone grow if they're made to fear making mistakes?

As much as the authorities like to think harsh punishments will lead to better things, it's not often the case. A conducive learning environment needs to be nurtured, not enforced. Unfortunately, the authorities penchant for the latter seems to suggest they don't have the aptitude for the former.

Love for something needs to be nurtured with knowledge, compassion and forgiveness. Teach and guide people through the basics, be patient with their progress (or initial lack thereof), and be kind when they stumble. Only then will people be more encouraged to learn and participate.

One example is how Indonesian VTubers from the Indonesian branch of the Hololive VTuber agency got their Japanese counterparts to use Indonesian. Never mind that most of what they picked up were swear words, at least they're learning.

A better instance is the collab streams by Hololive Indonesia's Pavolia Reine, where she teaches Indonesian to other Hololivers. Reine's a pretty good tutor, and watching her students pick up choice Indonesian phrases - and throw them back at her - is fun.

Yes, fun. Learning and using languages should be fun. Not an obstacle course at a boot camp for the US Marines. For an example of fun, DBP's official Twitter taps into the pulse of the local daily news cycle by serving up related word or phrase lessons, and poetry - enriching and entertaining.

I felt pangs of grief and a little pride as the Japanese VTubers threw choice phrases at each other and no one in general. Indonesian VTubers are building bridges to Japan, thrilling Indonesian audiences, while DBP fantasises about being a language sheriff.

Relentlessly controlling language - or any form of art, for that matter - will only stifle its growth and lead to fear of its adoption due to such unnecessary pitfalls as fines and jail time for any "disrespect".

And it's not as if the learning will stop with swear words. When the gates and penalties are gone, curiosity will take over and a new world will beckon. What kind of world that would be, depends on those who champion the language.

I think one way to get people curious about language is to tell stories. Well-told stories can be compelling especially if the tales being told share the same culture as the language used to tell it. The writing and production of recent mainland Chinese animated series such as Fairy Album and White Cat Legend got me picking up and rehearsing Chinese off and on. But that's just me.

Malay does have a use beyond urusan kerajaan, beyond an instrument of jingoistic nationalism. We just have to work out what that is.

Kitchen Hijinks And WFH

Not long after returning from my Chinese New Year break, the old fridge gave up the ghost. Every perishable inside had gone bad or was on the way there.

I've had a new fridge since then but getting back to cooking or making simple meals took a while. Even after the new fridge came in, I had waited for about 36 hours before switching it on instead of the six to eight hours for the refrigerant in the unit to settle down after transit.

Part of me feels like the fridge isn't merely a thing that keeps food fresh, but a kitchen helper. Was I trying to get acquainted with it before trying out things in the kitchen like I used to with the old fridge?

Anthropomorphising household objects might sound strange but it's how I feel about stuff I use and depend on regularly to make my life easier, especially things that have been around for a long time.

Like the old backpack I had to abandon when I found holes at the bottom. I tend to carry stuff in it - medicines, groceries and other things, and waiting for the bottom to give way while hauling stuff wouldn't do. The backpack was almost as old as the fridge, almost two decades, so having to get rid of two things that had been part of the household for so long felt poignant.

The deliverymen took care of the old fridge after bringing in the new one, while I disposed of the old backpack, my frequent travelling companion of almost twenty years. I wouldn't allow it the final indignity of going out as a trash bag, so I emptied it and laid it on the contents of a dumpster.

...No, I don't talk to the fridge or the backpack. That's silly.

At least I've started getting back to messing about in the kitchen like it was before the pandemic. With the arrival of a new powerful blender, a Phillips ProBlend 6 3D, the banana-oat-nut-and-seed smoothie made a return. This yummy meal replacement used to be a regular thing until my immersion blender blew out.

Though the new machine produces a smoother concoction, cleaning and drying it is bothersome, so I won't be using it more than once a day. I might need another immersion blender - maybe one with a food processor attachment - as the ProBlend 6 is too much of a monster for stuff like sauces, soups and pesto.

I miss the latter though, to the point where I pulled a jar of ready-made pesto off a shelf for home-made pasta. Crowds are still keeping me out of malls and store-bought is convenient. I get my bourgeois goods from a nearby corner shop, like a mini Hock Choon, though it hasn't stocked basil leaves for a long time since it first opened.

I also whipped up a prototype mun fan (Chinese braised rice) with roast pork and mixed frozen vegetables. Few things are comforting as a dish of rice drenched in the sauce from braising miscellaneous ingredients.

Some frying was involved to reduce a bit of onion to almost nothing. The post-meal clean-up was quite the chore as I had also neglected having a cooker hood installed while renovating the place. Will be quite a while before the next attempt.

Wraps have also arrived in the kitchen. Assorted fresh greens, some protein and a sauce rolled up in what is essentially a flatbread makes a satisfying meal. So simple, I wondered why I took so long to try it out. Roast pork, tuna mayo, garlic sausage, scrambled eggs, even tinned beef curry...

Ah, the possibilities. What's next? Coleslaw? Burger ingredients? A chicken rice burrito? The mind is still boggling. Unless I'm lazy or in a hurry, I won't be getting another tuna wrap from Subway.

A shame that I came to realise this a bit late. With restrictions easing all over, I expect my days of working from home to end, along with the cooking. Prepping for a home-cooked meal and cleaning up afterwards take up a fair chunk of time and switching gear back to work after that can be a pain.

Being a creature of habit, I confine certain routines to their places and hate it when things change halfway. Work is work, home is home. So when restrictions were lifted for the first MCO, going back to work felt liberating. Taking out food meant not having to prep ingredients and clean up the kitchen.

But working from home beats having to deal with the time- and soul-consuming commute to and from work, no thanks in part to the antics of Malaysian road users. Didn't miss that at all.

Nor shall I miss having to scramble for limited parking bays at work, or having my parked car blocked by trucks as they are being loaded or unloaded when I want to drive out for lunchtime takeaways.

One is often in a calmer state of mind without striving to beat the clock daily. When there's no work, chores can be done. A home always has something that needs tending to.

Looking Back At A Long-Gone Life

Lately, like many in my current pandemic-addled state of mind, I've been tuning to VTubers at the end of each day to wind down. Some of them have other talents than being entertaining on screen while streaming, and quite a few can sing well enough to put out singles and even whole albums.

One of these talents is the "rapping reaper", Calliope Mori. She's produced quite a few songs, some of which feature a mix of English and Japanese lyrics, and the apparent ease with which she comes up with them speak of many, many hours, if not years, of practice.

A recent original, "End of a Life", took me down an emotional memory lane. Something about the soothing yet melancholic number makes you want to listen to it again and again.

While I lack the vocabulary to analyse songs, I could tell from the lyrics that on the surface, "End of a Life" seems to be about someone - perhaps Calli or anyone in the music business - who feels nostalgic about their starving artist days.

Life is a series of stages, and when people are dissatisfied with what they have to deal with now, they tend to look back towards simpler times, no matter how rough and far removed from where they are now.

There's a certain romance to the journeyman's struggle: despite the bad bosses, bad co-workers, bad environment and other occupational hazards on a road seemingly going nowhere, something comes along that makes things a little better: that one good colleague, the kind waitress at the diner, or unexpected things such as a helping hand from a stranger, an epiphany that descends while savouring a dinner or a drink, or some serendipitous event. And the occasional trip to a rooftop with a view, with or without friends, and the cathartic ranting, singing or hollering away of the day's troubles.

Times may have been tough when you were up and coming, but these things kept you going, one day at a time. Eventually, you developed a camaraderie with the community and the place where all this happened. Each day fraught with hardship that's survived is an accomplishment.

But then you catch a break, you move up and life gets cushier. A sort of torpor sets in, not the stuck-at-the-bottom type but the lonely-at-the-top or the now-what type often encountered at loftier heights. The grind is different, not as real like when you sweated buckets for what you can now do with a flick of the wrist, forgetting that it's also due to all the experience earned along the way.

That's when you look back and feel like an impostor, seeing the past with rose-tinted lens. That's when you feel guilty for leaving the old hood and all your old friends behind, the ones who came up with you but didn't get the break you did. All this messes with you and makes you feel you don't deserve what you have now.

But wasn't all this what you dreamed of when you stared into the stars from that roof, holding on to the ghost of that beer or cigarette in your mouth as you wished that horrible boss would drop dead?

Near the bottom, the struggle was real, but so were the connections you made, the gems you found. Those seem to get fewer and farther between as you get near the top, don't they?

Each stage of life has its good and bad. Before long you'd notice it too. The grind, the lulls in between, and the end-of-the-day ritual for tomorrow. The environment may be better, but it's still the same. Less real, perhaps, because you aren't suffering as much.

That's the longing for simple days that creep in when you're down, that some people attribute to Stockholm syndrome. If only they knew, huh?

It's a privilege to be able to look back at a shitty life with such fondness for the occasional bright spots, and you know it. Not everybody is as fortunate. Maybe these trips back in time are a distraction from the anxieties of the future.

Maybe what you miss is being young, being tough enough to survive whatever life throws at you. The high from making it through a tough day that makes you feel like you will life forever.

Alas, all lives must end. Just as the shitty life ended for you, so will these best years eventually join that shitty life in the recesses of your memory, only to surface at the lower points when you're older and less resilient to the emotional battering from mourning the sweet spots in your past.

Until then, from time to time, you'll revisit the old hood, old friends, and that rooftop with the view, where you held on to the taste of that beer or cigarette, laughed at your bullshit dreams of the big time, and hurled curses or sang songs alone or with your friends.

And you'll keep wondering how they're doing and if any of them made it out like you did, or disappear into the lights of the old hood, as you mentally compose thank-yous you might never get to send to them and others who in their little ways, took you through life day by day until you caught a break - and dreading what would've become of you if they hadn't shown up. Will they even be there when you drop by? Do you even want to and risk opening old wounds?

We all have such thoughts occasionally. All these and more surface each time I replay the song. To what extent Calli drew from experience when she wrote this, or whether she made it all up, I don't know. But I feel they echo strongly within content creators, like the ones we're watching. Many of them languished in similar dead ends until they became online stars.

I didn't quite set out to write an open letter of sorts to the protagonist or anyone who find themselves in the protagonist's shoes in the song, but here I am. So let me finish.

Well, you toughed it out too. All the good fortune one can receive means nothing if you didn't put in the work. You are here, and the "you" who didn't get lucky is a hypothetical, erased by the paths you did take.

Some people didn't believe in you, put you down, didn't stick around. That's fine. Do what you're doing now for those who did. If they're real homies they'd be cheering and singing along with you, proud that you're taking on the world.

Even if the old hood is gone, it'll live on in the heart, still doing what it's always been doing to get you through life one day at a time. And now, you also have new people who support you. As long as one is alive, might as well cherish the good things, tough out the bad, and make the most of every opportunity.

So don't stop dreaming. We'll be here when you wake up.

Some Flavours From Home

Besides some home-made Penang Hokkien mee, relatives sent me three jars of home-made spice pastes last week. A cousin just started doing this on the side and is only making these pastes to order, so there's no big push to market.

But this was part of an unexpected but much-needed care package - that's what I'm calling it - as I've not been out to shop in two weeks while the second jab settles in, and the pastes added colour and flavour to my otherwise drab rice dishes that reminded me of mask-free days of yore.

You take it for granted that café or restaurant you found and whose dishes you like will be there forever - until they close down. I'm terrified of checking up on these. Who knows how many are still in business in the current situation?

...Ah, yes.

An aunt - said cousin's mom - offered me samples of the pastes through WhatsApp. These were supposed to be sold but she "belanja" me, she said. I took up the offer. If these are as good as the Hokkien mee, I'll be ordering more.

The noodles and pastes - two sambals and a ginger-scallion paste - arrived at the condo, Uber-ed to me by the cousin's husband. He arrived pretty late, so I could only figure out what to do with the pastes the next day.

I made a batch of rice with chicken stock, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds in a saucepan, then mixed it with a beaten egg. I split the rice into two portions and mixed one sambal with each. I would do this with the ginger-scallion paste days later.

The versatile and familiar Sambal Hae Bi perhaps needs no introduction. The meaty sweetness of dried shrimp in chilli paste means extra protein is optional ... though this one could be a little spicier. The texture is a bit rough but it's a given, and the occasional crunch of shrimp shell feels kind of good.

The temptation to add extra sambal is strong after the first few bites. This contains shellfish, so those with allergies are cautioned. Several relatives on my dad's side developed allergies to shrimp, a future that might be on my cards. But until then, I'll be living it up.

The Sambal Bunga Kantan - torch ginger flower sambal - was new to me, though not necessarily novel. Others, I would learn, are making this. Mellow, floral, yet zesty, it made me think of all the Nyonya dishes I've seen in cookbooks.

The flavours also brought me back to my family dining table in Penang - specifically, to Mom's sambal-stuffed mackerel. The stuffing might be the same thing, albeit another recipe.

Again, I just want to pile this on, but keep in mind not to mix other stronger flavours that tend to overpower it. Let it be the star in a rice or pasta dish, or spread on bread or croissant. I can also see this going into a mackerel or used as a marinade.

I couldn't find many uses for the ginger-scallion paste, which also has garlic. I imagine it would go well with stir-fried vegetables, atop steamed white fish, chicken or pork, or mixed into congee. I was surprised to find that it gave my base rice a Hainanese note - like chicken rice.

An ex-colleague suggested marinating some chicken with it, plus some soya sauce, then steaming it. I suppose it could also be used as a composite ingredient, like the ginger-garlic paste that YouTube chef Sanjay Thumma often uses for his curries.

Looks like raw chicken is going into my shopping list for next week.

I don't dare eat this for dinner or use too much of it because ginger really gets your blood pumping - not good if you're winding down before bedtime. Also, this paste tends to brown while thawing and exposed to the air, so it's probably best to stir it into whatever you're cooking as soon as it's out of the jar.

Wonderful stuff, though the pastes harden when refrigerated - probably because of the oil. No preservatives means a shorter shelf life - up to three to four weeks if kept in a fridge, but at the rate I'm going the jars will be empty by then. At least that's better than having to throw out what's left that's gone bad.

It would be great if this venture can grow. With so much competition out there, however, it'll be quite a slog. But in this climate, we do what we can. I wish The Night Owls success.

Cooked Rice In A Saucepan

Twice. And it turned out okay.

What led me to my stove were a couple of clips of Puerto Rican streamers reacting not too favourably to Gordon Ramsay's "pegao-cooking" segment.

A rice dish made in a saucepan. No discernible difference
between what comes out of a rice-cooker.

What Puerto Ricans call pegao is the crust of crispy, brown-in-places rice at the bottom of a pot - probably a rare treat in some homes these days with the advent of modern cooking tools and techniques.

And if the crust resulted from, say, the cooking of claypot rice, fuiyoh. Crispy, fragrant caramelised flavourtown.

This substance is also familiar to other cultures where rice is a staple. The Vietnamese call it cơm cháy, Iranians have tahdig, in Japan it's okoge, nurungji in Korea, and in Indonesia and perhaps Malaysia it's called kerak nasi. The Chinese have guōbā, but the Cantonese call it faan jiu.

Though most of these are a by-product of conventional rice-cooking, sometimes this scorched rice is deliberately created, as might be the case with cơm cháy, guōbā and nurungji.

But then comes this white dude with his idea of scorched rice: pressing cooked rice into a piping-hot frying pan and searing it until it's "crispy", melts butter down the sides of the pan to make it easier to come out, then taps it out onto a plate when it's done.

One of the streamers I linked noted that rather than pegao (a derivative of pegado or "stuck" in Spanish), what Ramsay had made more closely resembled arroz mamposteao. Given Ramsay's reputation, we can acknowledge that his version won't suck - far from it - but it's not what he said it was.

I can only assume that the making of bona fide pegao wasn't enough to showcase the Michelin-starred chef's moves, and he didn't get the memo about what he ended up cooking.

I guess what I'm trying to do here is burn away the shame from getting carried away by a comedian's indignant, low-brow one-note act. The guy is still harping on Jamie Oliver, recently over Thai green curry.

This time, I noticed the energy Oliver radiated in that segment, and others before. This is a bloke who has nothing left to prove, is SO DONE being judged, and is now winging it for all the joy in the world. "Not authentic"? Go elsewhere.

Doesn't look that nice now, but when mixed together...

So I cooked rice in a saucepan. Rice, almonds, cashews and sunflower seeds were followed by thawed-out mixed frozen veg and mashed tinned sardines when the rice looked half-cooked. A good thing about an electric stove is the built-in timer and off switch.

I was concerned that I'd screw up and burn the rice, as I can't remember doing this before. However, only several per cent of the rice was glued to the bottom, nicely dried but not too charred, because I turned down the heat earlier.

I had to keep an eye on the pan until it boiled. A rice cooker is not completely covered by design even if the lid is on, so that extra steam can escape, but it still doesn't prevent spills from boil-over starchy water.

Once the rice started boiling, I waited a bit before adding the rest of the ingredients. After that, I waited a bit longer before lowering the heat and letting it simmer and steam away.

The results didn't taste too different from how I normally cook rice these days: steaming it in a steel bowl propped up by a steaming rack and a bit submerged in boiling water inside a rice cooker. This was a tip from Twitter for single-portion rice cooking that emerged during the first MCO, and it has served me well since.

The next day, I repeated this with a tin of Yeo's beef curry and roughly diced carrot. The resulting "pegao" was spicy as well as savoury, albeit low in volume. In both cases, the flavour reminded me of rice crackers.

But oh, wow, getting it out of the pan was tough. I broke a spoon made of a rice husk compound - a good spoon! RIP - to extract the crust because I didn't want to scrape the bottom with a metal utensil. Considering that the pan is stainless steel, I probably shouldn't have been so delicate about it.

The aftermath of saucepanned rice #2, after the rice grains
were scraped off. Hard work, but worth it.

I have concerns over using a claypot on my glasstop ceramic stove, so for now this is a viable alternative when I'm in the mood for a one-pot meal, made in a pot.

Some would say that it won't be like how it's made in a claypot, but that's okay. With the pandemic changing our relationship with our kitchens (I love you, kitchen!) and our regard for hawker food and outside dining (OMG you're all heroes!), some things need to be re-evaluated.

Here Are Some Words

I had more to say in this post, but decided not to, lest I mention something that might be offensive or proven incorrect later. But that's just one of several fears I've borne since I began writing less.

Voltaire was believed to have said, "Perfect is the enemy of good". However, he was apparently quoting some Italian proverb and somewhere down the line it was mistranslated a bit. But its profundity has encouraged some writers to keep writing, internal - and external - editors be damned.

That has become a monumental feat for me because I had a job that demanded a certain degree of perfection in my writing and my current job compels me to demand the same in myself - still! - and in others. Vague briefs and bad writing habits of others complicate matters further. Unfair, but that's how it is.

I had been comfortable with how I wrote for a long time, and in the job where I was first called on to write, my flair and self-possessiveness were shattered. My words were not perfect. All their imperfections were pointed out to me, and in some cases I wasn't allowed to fix them the way I wanted to.

Perhaps it's why I've been subconsciously "counting my scars" now and then, while acquiring new ones.

Someone dragged me into the business of words when they entered my life, but they're gone now, leaving a gaping void I still struggle to fill today.

Words wouldn't fit. Either I haven't written enough of them or it's the compulsion to harshly judge my output. Perhaps due to the nature of their departure, I've come to associate the whole business of writing with this person and have come to loathe it, to be as far away from it as possible.

Regardless, all this led me to distrust my words, and the ever-growing, ever-thickening pandemic fog is not helping.

The lockdowns have kept me away from my old haunts, stripping me of havens where the words can flow a little and depriving me of what little respite I have from my daily troubles.

Some of these factors are beyond my control. What I can do, however, is write. Even on days when I'm not called on to write, when the words don't flow or aren't right, or when I just feel like a pound of fried chicken skin slathered with cheese sauce, a bucket of mashed potatoes and a pile of coleslaw, the mind swarms with words, however chaotic or terrible they sound when put together.

So here I am, and here are some words.

Perfect may be the enemy of good, but I've been told a few times that what I've written is good. My scribbles have been published in newspapers in print and online, so they have to be of a certain standard.

Still, when I pound the keyboard, the desk, and ocassionally the wall in frustration when the words don't fit, all that seems insignificant.

Who the hell am I still trying to please?

What is shattered can never be put back perfectly together - some pieces shall remain missing, however minute. The Japanese practice of kintsugi supposedly illustrates that these gaps can be beautiful when filled with the right things. You probably can't eat out of that bowl again but damn, it looks good and broke the ice with your guests.

So here I am, and here are more words.

My ability to write doesn't have to win a prize or generate social media buzz. It just has to be good enough. Though time and heartache have distorted my Good Enough™ sense, pulling it back into shape shouldn't be too difficult.

Because every time I write, just write, I pound the keyboard, the desk, and ocassionally the wall with less and less frustration as I remember the original shape and feel of my wordsmithing. The journey back is hard but doable because the words still swarm in my head, trying to escape.

Bit by bit, I'll fill that void in me. I can't do a perfect job but hell, I'll do my best to make it interesting.

And instead of asking "Who the hell am I still trying to please?", someday I hope to ask, "Why the hell did it take me so long to figure it out?"