Selfies

So if you had noticed, I’ve been taking selfies.

It may seem strange that I do so considering that I never advocate, or rather abhor those who take selfies in almost all scenarios that present an opportunity to.

My stand is still unchanged, if you have a picture worthwhile photographing, you don’t put yourself as the picture’s centrepiece when obviously the main highlight of the photo is not you. People who do this want to tell everyone that I was here, I ate at this place, I was with this animal, guy, gal, celebrity – real or fake. it’s all me, me, me where I’m more important than the presence of something/someone that should have been.

Fuck this selfish attitude. hated it.

So, I only take selfies where I am the main highlight of the picture.

And if I had to pose with someone / something important I’ll make sure that I’m not photographed in a way that insults their prominence.

And why now? when I’m in my middle age and I am happily married and in no need to fish for an admirer to feed my need for companionship. Perhaps it is that well, I’m ageing and I would like my memories of how I used to look like in pictures. In these times where I’m happy and satisfied for myself.  I know I’m a late bloomer, and probably had always thought of myself as unworthy.  But since moving here, I have begun to accept myself more.

So here is a selfie of me as it’s how I’d like to be taken.

I probably will receive some snide remarks and so on, people are always going to get angry about anything possible to get angry with.  But I’m already halfway through my life. Goodness knows how long I have more to live. I mean, if I’m a withered old man and I take selfies, I probably be wary because I may scare off a lot of people with them. Hopefully, people will see me for what I am rather than what I look like, thus by then, scary or not, it’s just me, man. I may get old, withered, scaly skin. My eyes may have wrinkles and I probably may not have any teeth left, I may not be able to cut the haircut that I have and may have to be bald? I don’t know. Will I be able to accept myself then, if I can’t even accept my image now? Questions, questions.

So yeah, selfies are self portraits. not the “I’m greater than the pic that you see and everyone’s that is in it.” type.
They should and would probably journal my journey as I age. That and nothing else.

Losing Myself – The Demons Within (Part 1/2)

If you don’t deal with your demons, they will deal with you, and it’s gonna hurt.

Nikki Sixx

One of the things I have to be prepared as I write online is the nakedness of vulnerability I put myself in. And this blog is one of them that will do so. If you are offended by writings that depict a fall from the echelons of religion, read no further, if you are not, read on, this is my personal testimony.

It is quite a difficult entry to write, and maybe unfortunately to some readers, it’ll be a long one and more ‘frank’ with regards to the colour of the language used. I have split the blog into parts so that it does not appear like a endless wall of text, hopefully that might help.

Each of us have weaknesses,  no matter how strong we profess ourselves to be.  However, it becomes a real problem when they haunt and torment you incessantly.  Such, are problems with mine.  I introduce my inner demons, Fear and Guilt.

A bit of history

I was brought up as an Adventist. Maybe a bit too strictly as one, my parents controlled almost all areas of my life, who I mixed with, who I chose to hang out with. The country I was in controlled my destiny, I was supposedly on a standard, normal track of education. PSLE, O’Levels, A’Levels and then army for 2 years, and to the University to study Engineering. And all this while, socialising with normal friends was pretty difficult because of my religious background, it is just not convenient when you are so ‘special’ even though I was supposed to be the standard mould of the Singaporean society. Still, I wasn’t taught how to think out of the box, I was taught how to think how to make the grade. I was never taught how to pursue my dreams, I was only taught how to make other people’s dreams of me a reality.  When I nearly flunked my Mandarin language at the O levels (just barely made it to JC), it was as if I had disgraced my mum, who used to be a really excellent Mandarin teacher. (I guess I was unlucky not to have her genes).  I tried my best, but it was just not good enough. At the A levels, I was given another chance, and when I finally did pass, by a whisker, my then hard nosed Mandarin teacher actually broke down and cried (in relief, probably).

And then there’s love.

Yes, the girl that I fell in love as my first love didn’t quite work out.

That was then quite a blow to me – I attempted suicide. Fortunately, I had a pastor that talked me out of it. Wryly, I still remember their names, and in a way, now as I typed this, I am embarrassed at my immaturity then.

And then there’s art.

I wrote plays, one about the devil and his fiends and it was slammed by my then church for being too ‘realistic’.  At this point, I don’t know what to do anymore, it seems that everything I did was not right, I didn’t even let my parents know of my suicide attempt until much, much later. I sort of just blindly held on to my faith then because it was the only security blanket that gave me some sense of security.  Or so it seems.

Of course, there’s technology.

Strangely, I recall that I really hated computers. I think they enslave humans (yet ironically, they are a part of my existence now).  The first foray I had with computers was with this Japanese American neighbour that I had who got a Commodore. Yeah, my first hello world was written in BASIC. Still, I did not quite like it. The Japanese-American was a snotty guy, I wasn’t allowed a long time to play with the computer and had hardly time (and money) to explore much.

It was only in my University days that things start to change. I was supposed to be studying engineering.  Yet, I got more interested in forums and so on, and yes, computers.  I had an Atari 1040STE and a 9600 modem. I used that to dial in to my university. I also found that you could actually bypass the university quota on computer time by a simple hack. That ability to control things like this seemed amazing. Unfortunately, at that time, I was more interested in getting games and “graphic binary files” from ftp sites than studying. I flunked my engineering course. And yes, the break up and suicide attempt happened during that time too.  Hurt, tone deaf to all pointing fingers, I decided I shall try to go with what I want to do rather than the standard route of become that sad fuck of a model trophy that people can parade. So I entered in to the Japan Singapore Institute of Software Technology, Singapore Polytechnic (It’s no longer there any more).

And yes, I finally saved to get a computer, I got interested in its hardware.  For once, in this make believe world, I was in control. Total control. I can fuck up, I can start again. No one is going to scold me, no one is going to reprimand me, I don’t need to live anyone’s dream, I can make my own. I got my own computer. I tore it apart after a few months and taught myself how to fix a better one on just very little pocket money. Soon, I got my own line. And soon I was operating a BBS. But the best thing I learned was,  how much of a comfort zone computing could bring me in. I can totally immerse in coding and reading about hacking, security until I forgot it was morning, until I forgot that hurt, that self pity, low self esteem and depression. Computing was my drug, it was my heroin.

But this didn’t really last, I had to live life. It is more than fixing computers, watching anime, reading 2600 etc…It’s about sharing this with someone which is Marianne, my wife and soulmate.

By that time, I had ‘progressed’ from being an Adventist to a Sunday church going Christian. Of course that made me the black sheep of the family again, but I did seem happier. I believed that God had this future all cared for and I don’t have to worry. Just believe. Only believe. I thought I have finally found the freedom to believe.  God has set me free, so I thought. But well, not really. I was in a very bad illusion. I shall elaborate this more in another post, yes, you guessed it, about losing my religion. :).

Fast forward, I left church in 2011-2012 thereabouts. I realise, by then, even though I’m more secure in my mental and emotional state, I have not really addressed my fears, although they have been suppressed and I can talk about them. But I realise I cannot really address new ones, or rather the root of the problem. I can only face to the problem realities, and that, is already a feat in itself.  Probably this was because of what I went through. Even until recently, I really hated my upbringing, I was never taught to be independent. And when life beckons me to be, I cringed, I retreated, I became a wimp. I was confident in life, or so I thought, or so I concluded, only to be let down by moments where I knew I ought to be. Not only has this affected my daily life, it had threatened my marriage as well.  If I had actually continued to stay in Singapore, I guess, it’s just a denial that my life is out of my grasp, these inner demons kept haunting me. And it’s not as if you can catch them, you think you would, I thought I did, only to come to the realisation that it had been dormant, and resurrected in another form, even more sinister.

A visit to Singapore

So it has been more than over a week since I returned back to Norway from Singapore.  I had been in Singapore for around 12 days, not too long, in fact, actually, it was just nice.

For Marianne and myself, this time our itinerary was less packed, we met up with our relatives and some friends that we knew, friends that we’ve not met for a long time, and made some new friends over friends we have never seen before. 🙂  Culture wise it has been a bit of a shock at first, but fortunately (or not so fortunately) we had some “warm up” of what to expect when we flew to Singapore with Singapore Airlines. Thus, by the time we arrived, we had already been acclimatised a bit.

We left Oslo on the evening of 19th of Dec 2016 en route to Singapore via Frankfurt.  Then, I had just finished my weekend standby duties so I had to pop in to my office and hand in the standby phone (and wish everyone merry Christmas etc)… Then comes the hard part that I had to go back to Gardermoen to send Kohi off to a pet hotel to look after him while we were gone.  Yeah, parting was hard, but travelling with us would be even more stressful for him. So, in a way, I try to see this as a holiday for him too, to get to know other dogs, to run around freely.  At the airport, I changed into my “airplane travel wear” which was a jumpsuit with a hoodie (in case it rains/have to disembark outdoors), loose jeans without a belt (yeah, because silly scanners),  flight socks and track shoes. Then, Oslo’s Gardemoen airport was having a big makeover which looks promising, but it also meant that there were detours which were unexpected.

Marianne and myself had dinner at O’Learys, which was quite nice actually in spite of my sweatshirt that smelled a bit because of the not very ideal ventilation there… oh well, I’d know better next time.

And we left for Frankfurt thereafter without much of a fuss. Except when we were just about to land, there was some excitement when the descending Lufthansa plane in Frankfurt suddenly pulled up sharply again after nearly touching the ground! Turned out there was a stray plane that wandered off into the runway! What drama!

And then we arrived to the hot and humid after the cold. On the left was Norway, just before leaving, and on the right, Singapore when we arrived.

The last time when I stepped into Singapore was about 11 months ago, not a long time by anyone standards. However, that time felt more like a working trip and I was travelling to Malaysia quite a bit as well. This time, in Singapore, we stayed at a hotel somewhere in MacPherson, and it was a bit nostalgic as I used to frequent that area often when I was a kid.

But 11 months felt like 11 years… so much had changed.

To be frank, after a long time of mindfully speaking proper English and half-standard Norwegian so as to appear more understood, it was quite a bit of a cultural awakening to revert back into Singapore English mode. It was especially cringe-worthy to hear that spoken on the SIA flight from Frankfurt to Singapore between airline staff, but after resigning to the fact that yes, I was going back to Singapore after all, so what should I expect?

Still, familiarity is a bittersweet pill.  On one hand, you don’t have to go through a proxy before you speak or think. Think of it like you are surfing the internet via a firewall and you just removed all the rules! Or rather after surfing without a firewall for a long time and suddenly, when the firewall is re-activated, hey, this experience feels familiar…. :).

So yes, the familiarity was quite comfortable, I must say. At least I know that I could speak all the Pidgin English without being misunderstood. And yes, I could order things without fucking up my orders because of communication issues. And I could take a break from cooking my own meals. And I did not need to dress like a kuih lapis just to run a small errand unlike in Norway.  After all, it was summertime all year round in Singapore. Christmas? What Christmas? Stores were still open and almost everything still functioned as normal. Shopping was a convenience rather than a inconvenient luxury.

These were familiar, yes, this was the life I used to live.

However, familiarity also means, bearing with rude people.  I guess rudeness in Singapore got upgraded since I last witnessed it.

And the noise level OMG….

And yes, the privacy and independence which I took so long for granted in Norway that I had forgotten that in Singapore – We have become so accustomed to having our privacy and our independence to think taken away, that we have looked at this as something not unexpected nor unusual.

Well, before I come across as a potty bitch, there were nice things that I found while in Singapore as well.

I got to meet my ex-colleague and we had a nice time catching up over dinner at Jurong East.

But the best of all was I got to meet some twitter friends purely by chance as I was walking down Orchard Road and they happen to be nearby for lunch. It was quite pleasant. While it is true that since Marianne and I have left church, we do not have much “friends” – as in these friends we knew were just people that were cliched to talk about God and how their entire human existence weighed on only their imagination. But it was good to meet friends that do not have any such agenda and just wanting to chat. 🙂

And guess what, we also met our classmates from our Polytechnic days!! That was TOTALLY by accident when we were around Wisma Atria at our last day in Singapore! They were a couple together and had 2 lovely daughters. I think it was more than 10 years since I had last seen them. Familiarity in this sense was really welcome.

We also paid a visit to the Art-Science museum at Marina Sands as well as the Lee Kong Chian natural history museum at the National University of Singapore.

Yeah, we were really living as tourists in our own homeland  😛

Also managed to do some minor shopping, I got some nice clothes (sizes that I can never really find here), my favourite Japanese toiletries, as well as a zoom lens for my Sony NEX-F3 (which I was longing to buy for a very, very long time) that was on offer at Best Denki for half the price!! :).

Last but not least, food. I think Marianne was really happy because she got to try all the local favourites that she was missing here. By now, I am not really a food person, but yes, there were some that really caught my taste buds and brought back nice memories. So here’s a list of some of the food I ate while in Singapore, including the much anticipated durians 😀

Soon, it was time to leave, and by then, we were already getting jaded with things that did not work as advertised, nor tasted as advertised, or advertised with so much wrong but no one gives a hoot about it.

I guess I was a bit “homesick” so to put it that way.

I mean, Singapore is nice, and familiarity is also nice (and not so nice), but too much of familiarity breeds contempt. I think I don’t mind coming back to savour what I use to like (and what I do not like does come as a package), but it also reminds me of why I chose to leave the life that I once had.

I don’t think I am quite there yet. I admit that there is still a lot of Singapore in me (but of course), though I chose to see it a bit differently in the sense that there is good in the Singaporean ethos, but not all of it. And sadly, it has gotten worse over the years.

But I cannot deny or refute the fact that I was brought up in Singapore, inherited its culture, kiasuism, kiasi-ism or whatever “isms” it has.

I am Singaporean, but that is increasingly being described as my character trait rather than a nationality, and these are in the process of becoming separate elements.

I think the stereotypical Singaporean identity is not something I can run away from, but it is something that I find evolving as I live here longer.
Nationality has no longer a place in my heart seeing what the country has evolved in its values and how it treats its own citizens.

I would like to think I have become more independent, more capable of doing things myself, and so more than just blindly use a service provider for every damn thing like I used to. But there are things that I know that this service provider mindset is still relevant. As in the things that I am good at, the things that I can be good at, the things that I am expected to be competent are subjective. Like I don’t think I can ever change my kitchen cooking hood, or do gardening as good as the professionals would have done. True, there are instructions here in Norway to fix almost anything from sofa beds to cupboards to working chairs. But there are folks who do this as a living and are probably good with it.

Conversely speaking, looking at it the other way around, I am competent at computers, and I do not expect anyone without any proper education/experience on how to operate and maintain computers on a large scale can just sit down and “follow instructions” to make computers “just work”.  They probably need specialists like those in my line with the knowledge and the experience. However, the mindset is to empower and motivate people to eventually do these things themselves. That would be awesome.

Confidence.

Hmm.. I would see myself being more confident now, however, that confidence can be easily misinterpret as arrogance as shown when I was in Singapore. Yeah, I was annoyed with a lot of things, but I am then reminded of why I chose this life that I wanted to live, and suddenly all that anger and irritation gave way to enlightenment.
Perhaps I am getting along with years, and maybe I am not that brash, snobbish, anarchic misfit that society once knew me as.  I have also learnt to say no politely but firmly when I am pressed for other priorities and obligations that I would have otherwise obliged only to regret later.

I guess this is something I never would have done if I had continued my life in the rut.

Perhaps it took living outside of Singapore to bring out this part of me. One can also argue that you could do that too just living in Singapore, but I have tried for over 40 years and nothing seems to move, so I guess this only does. So, probably it is just me. I don’t want to die not experiencing this change of perspective which I am now. Therefore, I look to the future where I see myself more fluidly melding into someone with ideals I will not die regretting for.

So I leave with these tweets and the whole barrage of complaints, kudos and amusements when I was in Singapore from 19-31 Dec 2016.

Enjoy reading 🙂

 

Freeing ebooks in Linux

In this day and age where space is a really a luxury, gone are the days where one can afford huge bookshelves, and tons and tons of books. I still do like the freedom and non-intrusive nature of paper books, but I also like to be able to view books in electronic form (ebooks), and besides they are a huge space saver, I do no longer need physical bookshelves, just virtual ones.

Unfortunately, there are some folks who believe they have the right to decide where you can only view your ebooks as well as what you can use to view them. Suddenly, you find that you don’t just have to pay for the book you read, but you also have to pay for lending it to a friend, or just moving from one place to another.  Sadly, they have become bound with the same disease that has plagued the video and music industry, which is the loss of control of what you have purchased.  And these guys think they are doing a noble deed, after all, they claim it is for the protection of the book’s author and ensuring that they get paid… eventually, they have packaged everything under the grand name of: Digital Rights Management (DRM).  I wonder sometimes, if paper books are subjected to the same humiliation, what would be the general public reaction then…

If you ever bought an ebook before, chances are that they are likely to be in Adobe ePUB format (Otherwise known as ACSM files). These files can only be opened via Adobe Digital Editions, or ADE for short. Of course, there are many other readers out there where you can also peruse to view these files with BUT only with the “many other readers”.  And what could have been more farcical itself is that these other readers use the same technology that I used to remove the DRM from Adobe ePUB so that you can only use their viewer to view the books.

Therefore, the book that you have bought in itself is not free, you do not own the book, the reader does and indirectly, the online seller does. That is because most online ebook sellers often package their “proprietary” ebook reader so that you can read books bought from their store.  For this same reason too, I never liked online music, I prefer to own my music, rather than put ownership in the ‘cloud’ and pretend it is mine just because I own a playlist where in actuality, I do not own my music, the online provider does.

But I digress,  here is how I got my ebooks to be truly mine. The aim is to put the ebooks in a portable format (read: could be opened in any OS/ebook reader)  Hence, there are 2 main steps to it.

  1. Extract the DRM protected ePUB from the ACSM file.
  2. Create a copy of the Adobe ePUB with the DRM removed.

Note that there are actually quite a bit of guides out there on how to remove DRM from ebooks. And beware again, as a disclaimer: That in some countries this may be considered illegal, by doing so I do not claim to be responsible for anything that might happen to you should you run afoul of the law.

Besides not believing that anyone has any right to decide to manage or control over my purchased goods, I am also writing this guide as I feel that some of the most of the guides are in Windows/Mac. I use neither of these, for I only use Linux. So there. Everyone probably has a different version of how they do it. so here goes…

Wine

  • Install Wine
    I installed Wine in a Debian VM because I don’t want 32 bit libs messing my main system and if I screw up, well it is just a vm….
  • Use winetricks to install Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). It is an old version, but it still works well.
    Theoretically, you could also install it with just wine on the default WINEPREFIX and not having to key it in when you need to install additional components later.
  • Log on to it with your Adobe ID and activate the computer.
  • Note the WINEPREFIX for ADE, you will need it later. You can find that out at the program launcher or via winetricks.
  • Export your books from your online book store if you can in .acsm format, import it into ADE. This may vary, I use Kobo and they do have an Export Book function.
  • Now you should see a “My Digital Editions” folder with corresponding .epub files of the acsm files that you have used ADE to open with

Apprentice Alf

Get the DRM removal tool, extract the zip file.

You will probably see this after unzipping the file:

caleb@ravn-debian:~/Downloads/DeDRM$ ls -al
total 40
drwxr-xr-x 7 caleb caleb 4096 Nov 18 22:07 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 caleb caleb 4096 Nov 18 22:07 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 7 09:32 DeDRM_calibre_plugin
drwxr-xr-x 3 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 9 16:06 DeDRM_Macintosh_Application
drwxr-xr-x 3 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 7 09:32 DeDRM_Windows_Application
drwxr-xr-x 2 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 7 09:32 Obok_calibre_plugin
drwxr-xr-x 9 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 7 09:32 Other_Tools
-rw-r--r-- 1 caleb caleb 8464 Aug 10 06:38 ReadMe_First.txt

It is the Other_Tools directory which is of interest. A python script, adobekey.pyw will have to be executed there but before it can be done….

Installation

You will need to install the following in your Wine profile

  • Note:
    .msi files require you to use “env WINEPREFIX=”blahblah” wine start <name of .msi file>”
    .exe files, you just have to  “env WINEPREFIX=”blahblah” wine <name of .exe file>”
  • And then go into the Other_Tools directory and invoke this command
Other_Tools/DRM_Key_Scripts/Adobe_Digital_Editions$ env WINEPREFIX="/home/caleb/.local/share/wineprefixes/adobe_diged" wine python adobekey.pyw

This will generate a key called adobekey_1.der. This is your Adobe key file, keep it in a safe place 🙂

caleb@ravn-debian:~/Downloads/Other_Tools/DRM_Key_Scripts/Adobe_Digital_Editions$ ls -al
total 36

drwxr-xr-x 2 caleb caleb 4096 Nov 18 20:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 caleb caleb 4096 Oct 7 09:32 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 caleb caleb 609 Nov 18 20:41 adobekey_1.der
-rw-r--r-- 1 caleb caleb 22467 Oct 7 09:32 adobekey.pyw
  • On Debian, install Calibre the epub book reader and get the DeDRM Calibre plugin installed as per instructions.
  • Customise the Calibre plugin by
    • Importing your adobekey_1.der file (Click on the Import Existing Keyfiles button)
    • Keying in your WINEPREFIX for ADE in the field on the dialog box.
    • Pictorially, it looks something like this.

dedrm-customise

  • Now try to Add Books to Calibre and select the DRM locked ePUBs previously extracted by ADE under your “My Digital Editions” folder.
  • Voila!! The ePUBS are automatically stripped of their DRMs, you can henceforth export (save to disc) the ePUBs from Calibre out and use your favourite ebook viewer elsewhere to view them, like I finally got them showing in my Chromebook :).