Why Would I Write

Category: Rants

  • Skill Expression

    I need to use AI at work.

    That’s just the reality of how it is right now.

    If I don’t use it, I fall behind. I don’t have a supercomputer in my head that allows me to skip using AI. I’m not a genius. So I use it.

    In a professional context, that makes sense; especially when your work requires efficient output.

    The more I use AI for work, the more I worry about its impact on me. I can already feel my writing skills atrophying, and it bothers me.

    The moments where I’d sit with a problem and slowly work it out have been replaced with me typing prompts. I’ll admit, it’s useful. It saves me a lot of time. But I also recognize that trying to write a post completely on my own is now a struggle and that’s scary.

    There’s a common argument that AI art is just the next step in democratized tools.

    Photography made image-making more accessible. Digital art removed the cost of materials. Creative software let more people participate. Everyone can do it now. Everyone can share their experiences. And those experiences are part of what art is.

    I actually agree with that.

    Tools becoming more accessible is good. Lowering barriers is good. More people expressing themselves is good.

    But something important gets lost in the jump from “accessible tools” to “AI that generates the result for you.”

    Traditional tools, even digital ones are extensions of your hands. They require your taste, your decisions, your time, your frustration. And the whole learning process, mistakes included.

    Beyond the ethics of art being trained on stolen work (this post isn’t about that), I’m addressing people who use AI entirely to replace the experience (of making art, writing, music etc).

    If you’re looking for some well-put-together takes on AI, check out these videos

    Another justification I see a lot is that criticizing AI art is ableist.

    The argument goes: not everyone has the time, physical ability, or cognitive capacity to develop traditional artistic skills. AI allows them to participate. It levels the playing field.

    I understand why that resonates. But I don’t think the alternative to “you can’t physically draw” is “a machine does it entirely for you.”

    Art has always adapted. There are tools, techniques, accommodations, collaboration, different mediums. Expression isn’t limited to one physical pathway.

    What makes art meaningful isn’t that it was hard in a universal sense. It’s that it required something from the person making it. Their perspective, limitations and problem-solving techniques. Everyone struggles and approaches something differently.

    But removing the struggle entirely, removes the need to develop skill or to make decisions beyond a prompt, and changes the nature of what’s being expressed.

    And I don’t think it’s ableist to say that the process matters. For me, it is the entire point.

    The journey. The struggle. The learning. The capturing of a moment in time.

    When I look at something I made years ago, I don’t just see the result. I see who I was when I made it. What I knew. What I didn’t know. The mistakes I couldn’t see yet. The things I was proud of that I’d do differently now.

    It’s a memento.

    Skill expression isn’t about proving I’m talented. It’s about documenting growth.

    Every piece is evidence of effort, a record of time spent, and a reminder that I cared enough to get better. That’s what makes it purposeful.

    If I outsource the hard part, I’m not just saving time. I’m removing the part of me that changes.

    Art, to me, isn’t only about producing an impressive image or song or story. It’s the whole expedition it takes to get there.

    Sometimes it is slow, frustrating and even embarrassing. But that’s the whole point. When you overcome a challenge, you change, for better or worse.

    Sometimes you have something to be happy about, or even proud of. Sometimes you end up with nothing, and that’s okay too. It’s just one rep of many. You’re just practicing for the future. You put in the effort and you learn from it.

    Using AI at work consistently has already shown me how easy it is to let parts of my brain deteriorate.

    When there’s no friction, you don’t learn anything. You retain less information, you become a little dumber, too.

    Maybe that’s fine when the goal is efficiency.

    Art is one of the few spaces in my life where I’m not trying to optimize. I’m not trying to scale. I’m not trying to compete with someone else’s speed.

    I’m just trying to get better than I was. Heck, sometimes not even that. I just enjoy creating so much that I keep doing it.

    If I let AI take over that space too, I’m giving up a huge part of me.

    Art isn’t essential to my survival.

    I don’t need it to pay my rent. I don’t need it to meet a deadline.

    I do it because I enjoy the ordeal. I enjoy struggling through something and coming out the other side slightly better than before. That improvement is slow, sometimes invisible and sometimes humbling.

    And I’m okay with that.

    I use AI when it makes sense. To speed up my workflow or polish my grammar. But when it comes to my art, I’m not looking for a shortcut. I don’t want the work done for me, because for me, the work is the point.

    The 12 drawings throughout this post were inspired by DREWSCAPE’s video on making custom art styles for comics. With each drawing, I tried to (poorly) capture the style of an artist I admire. Super fun exercise I recommend every artist to try out!
    1. Gipi
    2. Paolo Parante
    3. Steve Emond
    4. RK Post
    5. Baka Arts
    6. Kentaro Miura
    7. Roman Muradov
    8. Quetin Blake
    9. Angryfrog
    10. Monster and Beer
    11. Adventure Time
    12. Master Tingus

  • Looking up at Giants

    Looking up at Giants

    It’s easy to write about memories and nostalgia. And I can talk a lot about my childhood, now that I’m old and decrepit, and many people reading my blog can relate because they grew up in the late 80s and 90s.

    It’s crazy to think I was barely a child when Take on Me was considered a fresh new song.

    Also, did you know there was another version of this song released in 1984? Now you do:

    Like I’ve written before, I don’t have any memories before kindergarten. Whatever happened before my first day of school is lost to the void. Maybe one day I’ll try hypnotherapy to figure out what happened or create some false memories. Perhaps I had a traumatic 1985-1990, so my brain repressed those thoughts. In that case, it’s best to leave them alone.

    Also, those five years of my life were likely insignificant. After all, it’s only 12.5% of my almost 40-year-old life and shrinking over time. How much of who I am now was formed during those years? We’ll never know.

    I was a lump of clay to be molded at that age. I probably didn’t even have a real personality or was anything like how I turned out to be right now. I could write a letter to my future self to ask how much has changed. Always thought about doing one of those.

    Things I enjoyed in my childhood that I still enjoy now: reading, writing, gaming, watching cartoons and drawing. I suppose I’m not as different as I thought.

    Things I used to do I don’t do anymore: playing Magic: The Gathering. Does enjoying Slay the Spire or Balatro count?

    Things I do now that I never did as a kid: work, workout, and make music. Let’s not forget smoking/vaping and drinking coffee and alcohol.

    I had a lot of time as a kid. Life was easy then. When you’re privileged, and you don’t have to help out at your parents’ restaurant or shop, or do house chores because you have a helper, you have all the time in the world.

    I went to school, sat through classes, learned shit, came home, finished my homework, and there was plenty of time left in the day to indulge in my hobbies. I didn’t have tuition classes or extracurricular activities that I didn’t enjoy back then.

    Just like everything in life, you don’t know how good you had it until it’s gone. It didn’t occur to me that all the free time I had back then – all the minutes I took for granted – would be something I’d miss as an adult. It wasn’t something I appreciated or even noticed.

    It was only as an adult in the workforce that I came to realize this. No more semester breaks, no more free time that started in the afternoon. Not to mention all the new responsibilities and bills I now have to pay as part of my life.

    As a kid, I would look up to the adults around me, literally and figuratively, thinking they had their shit all figured out. I was tiny and insignificant. They always had the answers to all my questions. The only problems I ever had were related to school, because as a privileged kid, you have no other issues.

    Message I left for GIS kids.

    I didn’t have to live through poverty, gang fighting, crime-infested neighborhoods and all sorts of shenanigans. It was a pretty sheltered life. I wasn’t living like a prince or anything, but it was a comfortable one.

    The main problem I had to deal with was convincing my mom to let me watch TV shows after bedtime (6 PM, by the way). If that wasn’t allowed, I had to convince her to record it for me on the VCR so I could watch it the next day.

    I hated going to bed early as a kid. I was forced to. I was forced to take afternoon naps on the weekends. What a waste of time, I would tell myself. These days, I willingly go to sleep in the middle of the day because being an old man is exhausting.

    However, I also wake up feeling bad, as if I had wasted the day. The same thing happens when I wake up late in the day. It wasn’t as if I had been partying late the previous night. I’m no longer in my 20s. I sleep more because I can, and because it’s enjoyable.

    Back to my problems, or lack thereof. I didn’t have any serious ones. Getting my drawing book confiscated and then getting in trouble because I took it from my teacher’s desk during lunchtime, and possibly walking in the wrong direction in the hallways during lunchtime (we weren’t allowed to go back to our classroom during the break). That sort of shit.

    In the bus, I witnessed (was not part of) older kids bullying juniors. I kept my nose out of other people’s business (I suppose that’s another trait I’ve maintained as an adult). I remember kids playing yo-yos on the bus, knocking other people’s heads. Schoolboy stuff.

    I recall my friend on the bus who read that, to obtain Mew, the rarest Pokémon in the game, you had to follow a series of steps that included deleting your save game file. At that time, he had already collected 150/150 monsters, so when deleting his save didn’t give him Mew (#151), he broke down crying. I felt bad for him; he was miserable for a while.

    Oh boy, what a time to be alive. Getting tricked by random shit you read on the internet.

    Remember those chain emails that required you to fill in your personal information and forward them within seven days, or else you would die or your crush would never love you? That was a great way to collect personal information.

    The only real problems I had were the complicated math and science problems assigned for homework. Back then, I didn’t see the value in solving those problems.

    But as an adult, I now know. We weren’t solving those problems because we were going to be scientists or math geniuses (well, most of us weren’t). The idea behind learning how to solve those problems was to enable us to analyze and understand how to approach them effectively.

    That’s why teachers always told us to write down the steps we used. We might not have the ability of a calculator to get the answer right. Still, if the steps were correct, it was usually good enough to score some points. It proved we understood the process.

    And that lesson ties directly into adulthood. As a kid, I thought grown-ups had all the answers. Now I know it’s not about having the answer. It’s about knowing how to approach the problem, even if you stumble along the way.

    Which is funny, because now I’m the “giant” my younger self used to look up to. And the truth? I don’t know shit either.

    I’m a regular schmuck figuring out his own life. I’m not special. Just because I’m older and taller doesn’t mean I know everything, despite having almost forty years on this Earth. I see more than I did as a kid, sure but I’m no savior, no hero. Just another person figuring it out.

    And my parents, uncles, and aunties, they all probably felt the same way. And I can empathize with them. Now I’m in their shoes. I know. Till this day, they are probably still as clueless as I am.

    However, I have the emotional quotient to admit I don’t deserve to be revered at all. But the few young ones looking up to me don’t know that. They think otherwise, and they can’t begin to comprehend how adults really don’t know shit.

    Since assuming the role of uncle to my sister’s kids, I’ve learned a great deal about myself. And I have them to thank for opening my eyes. I was once in their shoes, and one day they’ll be in mine, looking down at another hopeful kid…repeating this cycle.

    For now, I’ll do my best to impart my years of knowledge and wisdom, so they become better people. No, I’m not that ambitious. How to be a functional human being on Earth. That’s the bar I’m setting.

    I don’t know if I’ll ever answer all the questions my niece and nephews have. But I can at least tell them this: adulthood isn’t about having the answers. It’s about admitting you don’t, and still trying anyway.

    One thing I swear I won’t do is lead them to religion. I’m not going to promise them something crazy, like eternal life in heaven, because there’s no such thing, and I don’t like to spread lies (I wish young me had the opportunity to know all this before wasting his life for Christ).

    They can go down that road if they want to; that’s not for me to say. Just don’t come asking for donations.

    “If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit.” Couldn’t have said it better than Rusty.

  • Clown Feet

    Clown Feet

    It’s been a while since I’ve had to wear shoes. Working from home for the past two years and rarely going into the office meant that my shower slippers were what I wore 99% of the time.

    A few weeks ago, I put my shoes on because I had to visit the office. All seemed fine until midday when the soles of my shoes started falling apart. I had to hobble back to my car with half the class of the Mentos lady.

    I figured, old shoes, untouched for a long time, they’re expected to deteriorate.

    Fast forward a couple of weeks, I put on the nice dress shoes I hadn’t worn in years. The soles literally crumbled as I stepped out of my house onto the welcome mat. What the fuck was going on?

    I looked it up. Basically, shoes are designed to crumble so they don’t clog up landfills when they have been disposed of. It’s called Hydrolysis. The materials in your shoes are broken down by water and this process is accelerated when they are kept in places where moisture can’t escape (like in a regular shoe cupboard). The solution to this is simple though it sounds counterproductive: wear your shoes frequently so they can dry out.

    With two pairs destroyed in this manner (and one more falling apart, though I think it can be saved with shoe glue, will be bringing that to the cobbler), I decided to shop for new shoes.

    My requirements were simple: footwear suitable for formal and casual occasions (so I can wear them more frequently), brown in color, and within my budget of RM500. I didn’t want to spend over a thousand bucks on something that is meant to be replaced.

    Which led me to the most unfruitful shopping trip of my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find shoes that matched what I wanted – far from it, I’m not that picky. There were many pairs I could see myself wearing if only they came in the correct size.

    I walked into almost every shoe shop in Mid Valley and Gardens (Aldo, Clarks, Isetan, Aeon, Metrojaya, Tomaz, Bata, Pedro) – none of them stocked shoes that fit my feet. Geox and Ecco were out of my budget but looking at online stores, it doesn’t seem like they have larger sizes either.

    For context – I wear a range of sizes, from UK 11 to 13. Even though size 11 shoes are the correct length, they usually aren’t wide enough to be comfortable for me. I have to buy larger sizes to accommodate my extra-wide feet. This width isn’t standard across all brands and types, hence the variation in my shoe sizes.

    Initially, I thought it was a budget thing – maybe cheaper brands don’t have so many sizes, nope. After talking to everyone at the different stores, they don’t stock shoes for people my size. Even Zeve Shoes, a store which a few friends recommended, told me they don’t stock larger sizes anymore – nobody bought them. They recommended I get custom-made shoes instead. How crazy is that?

    For feet lovers

    I thought, maybe it was an offline store issue. They have limited inventory space, so they can’t keep every single size in stock. Would you believe me if I said Zalora has the same issue?

    I filtered men’s shoes > formal > brown > size 12 UK. I got a whole bunch of shoes, but almost every shoe I clicked on was out of stock for UK 12. The only brand that had shoes that size was called Kings Collection (3 out of 27 listings) and I had never heard of them before.

    After some deliberation, I decided, fuck it, pulled the trigger, and purchased a pair. I never buy shoes online because of my need to try them out (also, I find the process of returning goods such a hassle) but seeing how I don’t have many options, I might as well go through it once. Let’s hope they fit properly first try.

    If I can’t walk into one of Kuala Lumpur’s largest malls to pick up a pair of shoes that fit, something’s very wrong with this country – or me. Am I the only person with clown feet in Malaysia? How do other people deal with this?