Thought #2: Most Christian games aim at imparting knowledge. That’s not my goal. My goal is to create games about Christian PRACTICE. Let the player feel what it’s like to be a Christian, by putting them into a shoes of a practising Christian. Not by telling them the theology or history or message of Christianity. Show, don’t tell. And it’s very possible that my game really will appeal a lot to the casual game crowd, who want to experience games which put them into familiar roles they see, with ordinary people in real-life settings doing their everyday activities.

I accepted Christ was I was 13-14, in my secondary school Christian Fellowship. We had a youth pastor who visited us every week from Calvary Church KL, and he would speak at our meetings. One of those meetings, he gave an altar call, and I accepted Christ then as my Lord and Saviour. The next year, the seniors who were leading our CF graduated, and I and a few other of the younger ones were left to form the  nucleus of the next generation of CF leaders. So I became a leader of the CF. There was a committee of about 4-5 of us, and we had a very good teacher advisor – Ms. Yap, who helped us organise meetings. I was a CF leader, but I didn’t really know much about what a life in Christ entailed. The CF was just an event – a weekly activity that we would organise. It became more of a social gathering than anything else. We ended up playing games most of the time.

Then when I got to college, out of sheer inertia, I sought out and joined my college CF. If I was a Christian, then I thought I should join and hang out with other Christians in college. That was my thinking at that time. Christianity was a social group identifier for me. So I joined the Taylor’s College CF, which was also known as the Mid-Week Service, and we were partnered and hosted by the Asian Youth Ambassadors, a Christian youth organization founded and led by Pastors Kenneth and Sandra Chin (they’ve now birthed a 700-member church out of the seeds they sowed during that college ministry).  After about a year, I was approached to be a leader of the CF… to be part of the committee. Eventually I became Secretary. While I did grow a lot in my own Christian walk during that time, my service in the CF wasn’t really about my service to God. It was just something I had to do. A list of tasks to do in order to keep an organization running… and I was comfortable with the organization, and I didn’t want to see it stop, and somebody had to do it… so I helped do it. That was my attitude. I didn’t want to see the CF stop, because that’s where all my friends were, so I took on the burden of helping to organize meetings, to keep things going. In the process, I learned the procedures of how to run a morning prayer meeting, the order of a typical service / cell meeting, and all the nitty-gritty that goes behind the scenes of running regular youth meetings.

But still, what I was interested in was running the meetings. People were only incidental to me. I had friends, of course, but they took a back seat compared to the desire in me that “the show must go on”. The program was important. If you stick to the program, and people got blessed by it… well, good for them. The program has fulfilled its’ purpose. If people didn’t get blessed, then it’s okay. Just keep trying with the program, and things will work out eventually. At that time, I also had a very vague conception of what “being blessed” meant.

As I look back now, I wonder if I really touched anyone’s life at all while I was in college. I think I impacted only one or two people significantly… my friend and classmate Chuan Shern, who I invited to a camp where he got saved and whom I helped to serve as an example and give advice on the Christian perspective on things sometimes after that, and my junior Vivien, who had just recently accepted Christ, but didn’t know how to do quiet time. I explained what that involved – “a mini-church service by yourself” – and lent her the bible study book that I had found very useful in my own formative Christian growth. She thanked me for it later, and told me that my explanation and the book had really helped her grow. But other than that, I don’t think I really made much of a difference in people’s lives. In fact, I’m pretty sure I made a few horrible or embarrassing mistakes along the way. (I can still remember my first time as an MC for the service. Ouch.)

This carried on into university. Being the good Christian boy that I was, I visited all three Christian organizations on campus, and half a dozen churches before settling down in Community of Praise Baptist Church and Varsity Christian Fellowship. I joined the dedicated Bible study group on Mondays (Swordfighters), as well as three cells – on Wednesday (Science CF), Thursday (PGP hostel CF) and Friday nights (DNA church cell) respectively. Tuesday was the CF-wide Sunset Prayer meeting. After about a year of that, I had burned out. I left the church, got into video game addiction, and only joined PGP CF (the VCF branch that had meetings in my student hostel) once a week. Because of my background, I was asked to help co-lead Bible studies and cell meetings for PGP CF in my second year of university, and I did so… again, it was more of a “keep things running” mentality. I tried to organize daily devotions and prayer meetings, because I thought that’s what a CF leader should do. But my heart wasn’t really in it, and the efforts died out eventually. Thank God, I wasn’t the PGP CF chair… each year I was serving, I found someone else who could be the chairperson representing our branch to VCF. I was always the number two. Maybe God was gracious, because frankly… I don’t think I would have made a really good cell leader at that time.

However, what PGP CF taught me was the close-ness and the bond that can grow up between people who meet up regularly every week. Even until today, several years from when we’ve all graduated, we still try to gather at least once a year to catch up. And I learned how to prepare and lead small group Bible studies and worship during my 3 years at PGP CF. And I polished my eloquence in praying out loud for other people too.

So there I was. I had all of this experience. I had all the skills to effectively lead a small group, honed through years and years of Christian meetings… nearly 8 years in leadership of various Christian organizations and cells. I could run a cell group meeting all by myself from start to finish without any problems… and I often still do so. Frankly, looking back at it now… I honestly wonder whether I made any difference at all to the people I’ve met and the lives that I had the privilege to care for. I believe the last 1-2 years have made me grow more than anything else in terms of my understanding of people and God’s heart for them.

When I accepted a leadership role in Branches – the young adults cell I’m leading now in church – I had a lot of reservations. I had already learned from experience that if God didn’t call you to a ministry, don’t bother stepping in. It’s a waste of time, because it won’t grow. During my years as a leader in all of the other ministries, they didn’t grow. I didn’t want to repeat the same experience here. I spent three months in prayer (off-and-on) about it, and needed a lot of encouragement from Sylvia (the previous Branches cell leader), plus the prospect of co-leadership with Huiting before I agreed. And even then, it was partially a responsibility angle again – Huiting didn’t want to lead by herself, and if she wouldn’t, then Branches would have no leader. So I filled in the other half necessary for Huiting to lead. I ran the meetings, and she took care of the members.

However, it was only after Huiting got married and left me with the sole responsibility of leading Branches that I really started to grow as a cell leader, I think. Many things have changed since I first took up leadership. In fact, of the original Branches group from Sylvia’s time, only Natasha, myself, Li Ping and Darren remain. All the rest has changed. I’m really grateful and thankful for God’s grace upon our cell, and for each of our new members. And somehow, this last year has been a year of great growth for me, I think. With no one else to share responsibility with, I now had to be the one to start caring for the members spiritually. I had to listen to them, pray with them, share my life stories with them and disciple them and help them grow in each of their personal, individual walks with God.

And I have never been more blessed.

This is what cell leadership is all about. It’s not about how to run meetings, or lead Bible studies. It’s about the day-to-day, spiritual watchfulness and care over the people whose growth God has asked you to be a part of. It’s about discipling them, watching them grow into spiritual maturity. It’s about listening to their problems, and helping them find answers and solace in His words, as well as in practical matters. In a weird way, I thank God for each and every problem that my cell members bring to me, because it gives me an opportunity to grow in love for them, and to learn the limits of my own abilities and why I need to depend on God. This is real. This is meaningful. This work touches and changes people’s lives. It’s not about running meetings, or planning programs. It’s about changing lives. About finding ways to help people grow.

There’s still a lot I have left to learn. But this past one year has taught me so much. And by the grace of God, I will continue to grow to accommodate more of his love shining through my life.

Power is the ability to exert your will on the surroundings – to make the environment, people, places, things, respond to your bidding. The ability to control part of the world around you. Most games are about power. Some people have claimed that many hardcore games are all about fulfilling the “male power fantasy”… the ability to dominate and master the world around them, by proving they are bigger, badder and more powerful than anything the game can bring against them. It primarily exists in two forms in games. The first form is the ability to take direct action that becomes increasingly more powerful as you progress through the game (eg. more powerful weapons in first-person shooters, higher-leveled characters in role-playing games, faster cars in racing games, etc.). The second form is the ability to control more and more things as you progress through the game (eg. more soldiers and resources in strategy games, more objects and tools in simulation games, or even something as simple as more tables in Diner Dash).

It seems to me that most games fall into one or both of these paradigms – either make your actions affect the world more and more as you progress, or give you a wider and wider array of possible actions as you progress. All of this is predicated on direct control – you command, they obey. Often instantly. That’s what feedback mechanisms are for, after all. They let you as they player know that You Are In Control – that you have agency, that You Can Change The World with the push of a button.

I think this view may be limited.

I think the enormous popularity of social games are showing why it is limited.

Think about it. Just how powerful or how much in control do you feel in a social game? Heck, not just the ones on Facebook. Even real-life games based around social interaction, like Charades or Taboo. The point of the game isn’t about power or control. It’s about interaction… it’s about making connections – between people, between ideas and words, between perception and action.

It’s about influence.

Which led me to start thinking… what would an influence-based hardcore game be like? What would the mature form of social gaming turn out to be, ten, twenty years from now? So here’s what I know about influence:

• Influence is not direct. It is usually indirect in pursuit of its goals. I don’t tell you what to do. I persuade you that it’s worth doing.
• Influence is based on connections. It’s not about what you can do. It’s about who you know.
• Influence requires that the other party have wills of their own, that are distinct from yours. We control robots. We influence people.
• Influence often is closely linked to several other societal phenomena. Morality, social norms, public perception, ties of friendship, emotions, traditions, ideas. We make appeals to God, to tradition, to principles and laws, to the things that touch people’s hearts when we want to influence them.
• Influence requires that you care about something – either the agent you want to influence, or the result you are influencing them towards. It requires meaning to be created for an action to be taken.

Where do we find systems of influence working in real life?

We see systems of power operating in the military, science and technology, and in feudal governments (which perhaps explains why those themes are so common in hardcore games today). Command, control, conquer. Beat the game. Beat it HARD.

Systems of influence are built to connect, to persuade, to relate. You find them in religion, in politics, in the media, in the ordinary everyday relationships between family and friends.

In other words, everything that hasn’t really been addressed fully by (Western) games as yet. There has been, even to this day a decade later, exactly ONE successful implementation of a commercial game wholly based around interactions between family and friends. (I exaggerate slightly for effect… The Sims series certainly contains many more iterations than just one game. Nevertheless.) There are no decent games about religious or political influence – the ones that aren’t backed up by guns and assassins, that is. There have been many that have tried to incorporate sub-themes or minigames of influence into games about power (the Fable series comes to mind, as do many MMORPGs). But they sometimes feel like they’re trying to shoehorn influence in as an afterthought, rather than as a core mechanic. Or they’re trying to mix and match with power games, instead of strictly focusing on mechanisms for influence, and that dumbs it down. (Dragon Age, I’m looking at you.)

I wonder what would happen if a developer tried focusing on nothing except influence. A game entirely focused on persuading people or NPCs to do things, a game about understanding people’s motivations, a game about making the right connections between peoples, desires and ideas. A game about building relationships and meaning with agents that have a mind of their own – that you can’t overtly control, but you can influence. It would be a remarkably interesting game to play, I think. Any suggestions?

Just recently, I read two manga series one after another – both dealing with Christian themes, but vastly different from each other. The first was Little House with an Orange Roof (a.k.a. Orange Yane no Chiisana Ie), and the second was Let’s Bible. The contrast between the two serves to illustrate an important point.

There is a difference between using Christian themes as a variation of a medium’s standard tropes, and using the standard tropes of a medium to explain Christian themes. One applies the Form of Christianity, but leaves the underlying structure and content unchanged. The other leaves the forms of the medium unchanged, but applies Christianity to change the structure and content. In simpler terms, Let’s Bible just uses Christian names and symbolism as a thin layer for what is in all essence a shounen action-comedy series. On the other hand, Orange Roof starts with a typical seinen romantic comedy setting, but gradually introduces Christian themes and messages through the behaviour of its characters. You can easily tell the difference once you read them. The creator of Orange Roof is a practising Christian – he himself gives testimony in his author comments at the back of every chapter (chapter 10’s comments are translated, for an example). Let’s Bible, on the other hand, is drawn by a pair of Koreans artist, who seem like they absorbed the surface knowledge of what the Gospel means and the major characters of the New Testament (probably from cultural acquaintance), but are not actually practising Christians themselves. Or perhaps they are practising Christians, but have not found a way to integrate their faith into their works.

To really create a good Christian manga, you need to have a strong background in the techniques of the medium, an understanding of its tropes and how to use them to tell a good story. And then beyond that, you must really think about the message, and how to best encapsulate it in a way that FITS with both the properties of the message, and the properties of the medium you are using. Orange Roof did it well. Let’s Bible did it terribly, because it fit the medium, but didn’t fit the message. A third manga, created by Americans, called Serenity, also tried it… that one fit the message, but didn’t really fit the medium. It was okay, but because it was targeted at American teens, there were certain stylistic choices that moved it away from pure manga and into a different sort of comic. It fit THAT comic medium very well, and I think it thus was a success on that level (as also proven by sales), but the medium was no longer that of manga.

In order to really create good Christian media content, you need to find a common ground where both the medium and message can meet and synergise properly to create something unique. The themes of Christianity must go deeper than surface level – in fact, sometimes they can be buried under the guise of what seems to be typical fare for the medium, but become more explicit as you delve deeper or further into it.

This is the problem that I also see in the Christian games industry. The reason why so many Christian games are bad is because the creators either lack a deep enough understanding of the medium they are working with (Christian educators who are trying to make games because they think the people they want to reach out to would be interested in anything if it comes in a “game” package), or they do not have a deep understanding of the message they want to bring (gamers who want to enjoy the same sort of games they’ve always played, but slap “Christian” labels on it so that they can feel justified in front of their non-gamer Christian family).

AND IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK.

You can’t slap on a “Christian” label to a standard hardcore game and expect that it would be good. Likewise, you can’t just package a “game” around what is essentially a bunch of Sunday school material and expect that it would be appealing to the audience. What is needed is a fundamental approach to the problem of designing Christian games – you need a deep understanding of the properties of the medium and the properties of the message before you can truly design a good (and fun) Christian game. The current games out there enjoy some limited success because of the sheer hunger of people for such games. But it’s limited. I believe that when we can see the real thing, we’ll appreciate what the difference is between a slapdash approach and a fundamental design approach. Unfortunately, that time may be a long time in coming.

I completely and thoroughly approve of this couple, and I’m very happy for both of them. During the wedding ceremony, something went “click” inside of me, and I felt myself saying internally, “Ah, this is just RIGHT. They are meant for each other.” It’s a very special and rare feeling that I’ve only experienced at one other wedding (Bee’s one), and so I’m sure that this marriage will be special.

The wedding ceremony itself I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it was impressive and unique – Jason sang her down the aisle during the wedding ceremony, and they had written their own wedding vows, tacking on about four or five paragraphs to the traditional script – but on the other hand, it was almost TOO showy, and I didn’t know many people there. Still. I managed to have a good time, and despite the showiness of the atmosphere, the speeches that were made were all warm and down-to-earth homey. Maybe that’s what happens when the boy-next-door marries the girl-next-door. The families have known each other for a long time now, and there’s a special bond between old friends.

In any case, I’m very very happy for them, and I hope to find something like that for my marriage as well, someday.

Big Bang’s MVs are always so interesting.

The Stars Like Dust was the first Asimov book I read, back in Garden International School, when I was about 14 years old. I remember coming across it in the secondary school library, and read it a few times throughout my school year. But ever since I left school, I’ve been unable to buy, borrow or steal a copy for 10 years… until now. I saw it being a released in a new edition at Borders bookstore and snapped it up immediately. It’s basically a simple space-adventure story, with an ending that is a little propangandic for the United States / democracy. Isaac Asimov himself had remarked that it was the book that he least liked among all 100+ stories that he had written. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to find a reprint of the book anywhere until now, 17 years after he died. It even says in the flyleaf that it was published with permission from the Estate of Isaac Asimov, so I’m guessing his relatives must have finally agreed to it.

But I don’t care… even if Asimov himself hated the book, I loved it, and still do, despite its’ flaws. No one can hate the first book that introduced them to an author they love. The Stars Like Dust was that for me.

1. Sometimes trying to arrange for a competitive advantage backfires on you. There was this one team which was hastily formed one week later than the rest due to scheduling and grouping problems, so I tried to pick the best members from other groups to compensate for the 1-week loss. The group ended up having three technical people, which was supposed to give them an edge in the second, computer game project. It didn’t really work too well, since they all wanted to do the same job, and it produced an imbalanced game at the end (high technical polish, low design values). Interdisciplinary variety is still best.
2. I need to improve my turnaround time on grading assignments. This semester was terrible in terms of keeping to deadlines for me. Admittedly, my workload tripled since I got assigned a second module to help teach, plus started my Master’s course. But not being able to get feedback and marks back to the students on time resulted in them not performing as well as they could have for the subsequent assignments. I have to improve my marking-turnaround time to three days or less.
3. Need to spend more time contacting students and using email to leave a paper trail. I was a bit slack in following up on students this semester if they missed classes. Partly it was because I was just too distracted and busy with other things, but still… it’s part of doing due diligence that I need to improve. Professionalism, and all that.

What to teach if there was an Advanced Game Design course:

• Player types, play styles and demographics (Bartle’s test)
• Emotions of play (Lazarro’s Four Keys)
• Difficulty curves – how to balance them across levels (Rule of 3? Mario’s 4 stages). Difference between hardcore and casual difficulty curves. Games should be forgiving of errors, but not easy to perfect.
• Choices – How to weight them properly. Not every choice should be equally important. How to manage cognitive load of player. Grokking. (Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun)
• Dynamics of play – types of interactions between different players, playing styles, how different player power configurations (asymmetric, zero-sum, etc.) lead to different dynamics.

Soon, with rival kingdoms at war, political skulduggery, sorcery and secrets hidden for generations coming to light, and even rising tensions between the humans who birthed her and the intelligent Royal Beasts who raised her, Firekeeper goes through a whole host of adventures in lands fascinating and foreign. What I really appreciate about this series is the depth of the world-building involved.

Lindskold may not always tell the most riveting or action-packed of stories, and the plot sometimes staggers along without being as smooth-flowing as some other writers, but the sheer depth and complexity of the thought that has been put into the world that Firekeeper inhabits is mind-boggling.Whole societal structures, belief systems, languages and syntax, geography, history and magic are created and viewed through the eyes of the simple girl who thinks she’s a wolf, and finds out that she’s something much more complex. The clash of cultures and worldviews is something that comes across very well, and it’s a treat to see how deftly that’s handled by the author. It’s a world that rivals Tolkien’s Middle-Earth for its depth and richness (with the possible exception of Elvish poetry).

And the author takes advantage of that excellently. Time and time again, Firekeeper and her wolfish companion Blind Seer are whisked away to foreign lands, where they have to deal with even more complex societies, where politics, magic and religion mix in strange new forms. More and more, with each successive book, mysteries about the world and the secrets behind the Plague that destroyed all magic-users generations ago are revealed. New societies of Man and Beast co-existing in different ways… and how Firekeeper acts as a catalyst upon the world, changing the way things work, bringing more of the world’s nations together, because she is separated from all of them. And her essential loneliness is shown to us too… a being in between the worlds of Man and Beast, belonging to neither and both at the same time.

Admittedly, the narrative is complex and can sometimes get a bit bogged down in political drama and the endless travelling between countries. It sometimes feels like the narrative of a MMORPG fetch-and-carry quest, where the main character constantly travels from one end of the world to the other, bringing messages and fighting battles along the way. Yet the sheer richness of the world and the mystery behind the magic is something that keeps drawing you back. If you can take the slow and complex pace, and enjoy the richness of the world, you’ll find this series an enjoyable one.

Wolf’s Blood feels like the culmination of the entire series, though the ending is predictably open-ended. But many beloved characters from the older books are brought back, every nation that Firekeeper has visited is helping in some way, and one of the biggest mysteries of the series has been solved. True, there is still room for expansion – knowing what happened is not the same as reversing the process – but the very fact that the two worlds are now connected once again gives hope. It feels like an ending… and Firekeeper seems to have accepted her relationship with Blind Seer. A satisfying stopping point for me. But who knows? If Jane Lindskold does continue to write Firekeeper stories, I wouldn’t mind going on to the next adventure of the wolf-girl.

You see, the people around me always live such busy and active lives that they rarely have time to sit down, do nothing, and just listen for several hours at a time. Every day – every year – I find myself becoming less and less willing to share with other people about my life, simply because they don’t have the patience to listen for several hours while I try to find the words that express my doubts, my fears, my thoughts and feelings. Extroverts have it easy. They can say whatever comes to their mind immediately, and connect quickly and simply. Introverts have a harder time of it – especially Idealist introverts. It takes time for me to open up. And not just time, but demonstrated care and concern as well. I can only truly open up to someone if I know that they care enough to spend time waiting for me to voice out to them, and put away all other distractions and concerns to focus solely on listening to me. And that can take hours.

It’s something I’ve only very rarely experienced with my parents – maybe once or twice in the last 8 years. I remember it happening more often when I was younger. My Dad and I would talk in the car while travelling back from my college, or when picking someone up. My Mom and I would talk over the dining table after dinner, or during teatime. And the time I failed at university – that was when they were willing to sit with me to listen to me, and let me take my time to verbalise all that I felt, all that I thought. Those were the memories I treasured most about my parents… though it took a string of “F”-grades to bring them about sometimes.

Maybe that’s why I became such a good listener. Because at heart, I knew that everyone wanted someone to listen to them. Someone to show care and concern, someone who was willing to sacrifice hours of time they could have used to spend Doing Things, and just listen instead. My primary criterion for a soul-sister – the first indicator that lets me tell whether I’ve found a kindred spirit or not – is this ability to Just Listen. That’s why I love spending time with my soul sisters, and we often have multi-hour-long conversations every time we meet. Because we both Just Listen to each other – for as long as it takes. And sometimes, it takes a long time to get down to the root of our fears – to peel away the layers that we are used to showing in casual, shallow conversations and go deep to the bottom of our hearts. To have heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul talks.

People go around with layers on their hearts. There’s a shallow layer you show to acquaintances at work or on the street or at church – the standard “I’m doing fine” reply to the perfunctory “How are you?” question that everyone asks in order to be polite. Sometimes, with people whom you meet regularly and have deeper connections with, like cell members or close colleagues, you can drop hints about your current situation – “I’m angry about this”, or “Today I got a bonus!” And those can be taken at face value… maybe it’ll lead to a stream of small talk and decent mid-level sharing. And you go away, with your feelings slightly eased, vaguely okay. And most people seem comfortable with that. If you practise it daily, then I guess you could get by with regular doses of middle-level conversations every day, and never miss what you don’t know exists… that soul-deep, bottom-of-your-heart kind of conversation you can only get when someone Listens to you for several hours.

But if you’re an introvert surrounded by busy people, nobody Listens to you. And so the urge to speak builds and builds, but there’s no friendly outlet. So you’re constantly vaguely dissatisfied… lonely and trying to share with the people around, but no one really bothers to Listen.

My parents and most of my friends wonder sometimes how I can get so jazzed up after one good conversation. They don’t believe or don’t understand how just one conversation with my soul sisters – with someone who Listens – can keep me on a euphoric high for several days on end. They sometimes think I’m overexaggerating. I’m not sure if they understand the concept of soul nourishment – a deep conversation with someone who Listens is like a drink of water in a desert, or fresh bread to a man starving for months. Maybe it’s because they haven’t had these kinds of conversations before. Maybe they don’t need them like I do. Maybe their personalities are different, or they imagine that the mid-level conversations they have with their friends is the closest things will ever get. Maybe they’re just too busy, wanting to Do Things, and can’t see the value of “wasting time” doing nothing but sitting and talking. I don’t know.

All I know is, nobody Listens to me.

Every week, as a cell leader, as a friend, as a son, I get called upon to Listen to somebody. I spend hours on the phone and over meals, listening to people. I keep taking in more and more things from other people’s lives – their hurts, their insecurities, their problems, their hopes and dreams. I Listen, and make them feel good to unburden themselves. I Listen, and they feel cared for, comforted to know that someone understands what they’re going through – someone’s willing to pay attention to them and soothe the hurts in their soul. My family, my friends, my cell members… even my co-workers – they all need someone to Listen, and I do that for them.

But who does it for me?

That’s why I have this blog, really. I write in it all the thoughts and feelings I have… all the things I want to say but never can say because nobody listens. They have to come out somehow. So I write on a website that nobody reads… kinda pathetic, but there’s always the off-chance that someone who values me might read it. Even if they don’t, at least I’ve voiced it out. The pressure’s slightly eased. But it’ll never go away until somebody listens.

And frankly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. No one in my family has been willing to spend hours to Listen to me for the last few years, all too busy with their own lives. Of my three soul sisters, one has a constant irregular schedule as a flight attendant, and the other two are studying overseas at separate colleges, and I don’t even attend the same church as them anymore. And of my two oldest friends, whom although they aren’t soul sisters have learned how to get me to share openly after 10 years of friendship… one is halfway around the world, and the other is preparing for marriage. And my oldest friend here in Singapore is already married. And the only other person here whom I think has the potential to grow into another kindred soul is so busy with so many problems that I think I need to spend more time Listening to her than talking to her.

So. Nobody Listens to me, and it looks like nobody will ever really listen to me. I wonder if that’s the reason why I fall so easily into addictive or self-destructive habits sometimes?