reduced and recycled

It’s been a week, and Good Friday’s service was tiring. I expected it to rain, as it’s always rained on Good Friday, at least over here. Yesterday, I encountered a few drops of rain, and that was it. As I was leaving – I left slightly early – I heard the rumbling of thunder. That was it. I big, whole, anti-climax, mostly because I was warning my family there’d be rain. Now that I think about it, I sounded almost apocalyptic, intoning “it will rain today, mark my words”. So much for superstition.

As usual, work’s kept me away from the keyboard, which is a shame, since quite a number of things have happened since I last updated my blog. Lim Kit Siang apologized, then Syed Husin Ali of PKR threatened to block the Perak assembly’s swearing in, and so on and so forth. As I browsed through Malaysiakini today, I still see that things haven’t really settled down – which shouldn’t be surprising since we just had the fresh cabinet line-up announced.

Arthur C. Clarke passed away, a few days ago; no, I’ll admit it here: I’ve not read many of Arthur C. Clarke’s books, icon that he is notwithstanding. My interests back then were on fantasy, not sci-fi, and I was more interested (strangely enough) in the cyberpunk of William Gibson and sometimes, Phillip K. Dick. I should remedy this, shouldn’t I? What grabbed me more, however, was the death of Gary Gygax.

Heroes Never Die
I was stunned when I learned that Gary Gygax had passed away. I’ve left my table-top roleplaying days far behind (yes, I’m a nerd – or geek, take your pick), but have switched my obsession for all things Dungeons and Dragons on to computer-based D&D products. Everything from the Gold Box games to Dark Sun to Dragonlance to Baldur’s Gate to Icewind Dale to Neverwinter Nights. And when I could I’d collect D&D paraphernalia – dungeon master’s guides, player’s handbooks, modules and stuff – not to play, but to immerse myself in the details of imaginary worlds.

Has Dungeon & Dragons changed my life? Yes, it has – and this, coming from a 30-something geek isn’t surprising, I suppose, but it’s the truth. My first roleplaying experience: in Secondary School in Singapore, a mutual friend (with a rich dad) introduced us to the contents of a small, 6” x 10” box with the words “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Basic” printed across the face of the cover. That was the first time I’d laid eyes on the Basic set, way back when I was just 14 years old.

The group was quickly formed: owner of the set was the dungeon master (DM), while I played a barbarian (ha!), Shamsul played a thief and this other Chinese friend played a sex-crazed paladin before switching over to playing a nymphomaniac cleric we took turns screwing (in the game, lah) – yes, adolescent fantasies, laced with homoeroticism, isn’t this such a fantastic advertisement for D&D? The group grew beyond the core 3 players and 1 DM, and curious bystanders would stay to watch while we gamed during canteen breaks and after school. We played behind the canteen on stone tables in the midst of towering trees. It was the ideal setting for our imagined adventures.

We progressed from the Basic set, to the Companion set, then the Advanced and finished with the Immortals set. I don’t remember what happened in the end, because we finished our adventures and basked in the glow of achievement – we were all gods by then. It didn’t end there, of course. For those who remember, these games led to hours on Saturdays spent in Leisurecraft and Comics…something.. browsing through gamebooks, comics and miniatures – all this way before that plague, “Magic: The Gathering”. We progressed from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to GURPS and then things petered out when we went our separate ways to Junior College.

After my A levels, I was part of a training group which had lots of time on hand. I started a D&D game going in that group, and our team of players grew to 14 people(!!!). Shit, battles used to soak up hours, there were ah beng players in my team, and I was the DM – and we had so much fun, we stayed on in camp right through the evening tossing 20-sided dice, playing out in the open and struggling to finish battles with skeleton warriors, wraiths and demon sorceresses while the straining to observe our relative positions drawn on graph paper while the sun went down.

Yeah, Gygax’s D&D was – and maybe still is – a large part of my life back then. For anyone who’s ever played a game with hit points, experience points, character stats and magic spells – those are innovations that Gygax introduced to the world.

To Mr. Gygax, wherever you are, rest in peace.

Birth of New Troubles
Maudlin thoughts, eh? Even before Gygax’s passing, I was perched on the throne one day as I reflected on the reactions in the blogosphere over LKS’s remarks, the more moderate response over at Nat’s blog and the lack of an outcry over PKR’s barring of the Perak assembly. The thing that keeps coming to mind, whenever I think about these things, is a cover of a book I saw while shopping around in City Square’s Popular bookshop. The book is titled, to paraphrase “The Age of the Amateur”. Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing fame, said something about this on the BBC which you can read here, almost three years ago.

In any case, the title of that book made me wonder about the legitimacy of bloggers and blogs as sources of alternative information. I remember once a friend of mine from across the causeway remarking how she had attended a workshop which concluded that bloggers were mostly clueless and had little effect on the general populace - and represented a small portion of the public in general.

Not in Malaysia, baby.

And yeah, that should scare a lot of people. I’m not immune to the mob phenomenon, I’ll be the first to admit that, so the generally negative reaction against LKS’s statement from so many parties made me wonder just how many were influenced by denunciations on LKS’s blog rather than the sheer bloody-mindedness of his move. If anything, the reaction should make BR parties acutely aware of how bloggers - and online opinion in general - are largely out of their control.

Which should be fine, if the BR are willing to encourage a diversity of opinion, even opinions from armchair generals who are, really, amateurs. No, that’s not what I’m worried about; what I’m worried about is if this “political sea-change” marks a decided shift toward pandering to the public’s demands - even if members of the public aren’t experienced technocrats and don’t have a clue about the horrible balancing act real governance is.

My sympathy’s with the newly-elected BR representatives. They’ve got a massive balancing act to pull off.

I might be crazy, here, but after giving it some thought, I don’t see any political sea change. I see a lot of people who, when pissed off by BN, chose to vote for BR. Are they voting on principle, or are they voting for change - any change, it doesn’t matter. Was I voting for any change or for particular changes? I know I voted on principles - that the opposition, logically, is the lesser evil; that breaking the grip of the BN regime makes way for more intelligent and committed discourse in the public domain about where we, as Malaysians, want to head toward.

And honestly - and I know I’m going to sound like a jerk-know-it-all playing up the hindsight bit - maybe we should have expected change (if not so drastic) when Mahathir stepped down. I think everyone will agree that within weeks of Badawi’s tenure, everyone knew he wasn’t up to filling Mahathir’s authoritarian shoes. I should’ve seen that the power vacuum left behind by Mahathir would have a dramatic impact. I should’ve seen (and had more faith) in the dark side of human nature in UMNO ranks.

Dismantling a racist Malaysia
I give it two generations and a major recession somewhere in the middle. Even if BN had won another 2/3rds majority, I still say those of us on the side of angels - on the side of less repression and more liberty - will win in 2 generations. I’ve seen it almost happen in Singapore, only that PAP’s taken a very smart route - PAP’s chosen the right time to be more open and more accommodating to dissent (in some sense). Honestly, after the SG elections of 2006 and watching how LHL reconfigured the parliament and cabinet to be more inclusive in terms of NMPs, I got the feeling that he was more than willing to play the inclusivist game. Some Singaporeans may disagree with my opinion, I’m sure.

In any case, my point (or rather, conjecture) is that as the Malay middle-class gains critical mass, and as the government keeps developing a viable Malay intelligentsia through race-based preferential scholarships and such, and as more and more of these opt out of the System, the calls for a more merit-based, secular, equitable government will get louder and louder. It’s “globalization” if you want to call it that. Call it “westernization” if you want to - call it falling prey to “western liberal values” - but I think it’s inevitable.

In the meantime, I think we need to come to grasp with the fact that the edifice of a “Barisan Rakyat” is simply one of two sides of a coin. I came to this conclusion after watching the tussle for seats and such in the state assemblies; there was much concern about reflecting the ethnic proportions of a state; there has been much argument over at Ktemoc’s blog about this question or proportionate representation by ethnicity or proportionate representation by acquisition of seats by parties.

On the one hand, I do think that the simplest method of seat allocation is by the proportion of seats won by each party. That is if I trust all my representatives to be real technocrats who are colour-blind, and that the people in the state in question are colour-blind. It’s just too much to hope for.

The reality, and I think we can’t let what we want to see cloud what actually goes on, is that people are still going to see things through the prism of race. If anything, I think the real victory of the recent elections is that these same people are willing to take a stab at a different kind of governance. And I do pray that what we have in return really is good governance which, hopefully, will nurture a new discourse, a new way of talking about being Malaysian - hopefully before two generations of Malaysians come and go.