The Annotated Mikonawa

Co-op App

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:22:21 +0800

It’s like Twitter for teams. Mad Men fans, you must check out their anatomy page.

Burka vs. Booty Shorts

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:27:00 +0800

I agree: just because something is cultural and religious doesn’t make it morally correct. But it also isn’t morally correct for you to judge an entire person’s life and belief system on a single outward appearance.

Do you think that this woman thinks our society is morally correct, letting women walk around in booty shorts and crop tops? For her, she’s probably looking at the majority of Western women and thinking the exact thing you are: “wow, what a misogynistic society those women must live in, look how oppressed they are, objectifying and hypersexualizing their bodies”.

When you get down to it, the problem here is that there is a divide in cultural understanding. For this woman, she most likely either A) doesn’t see a burka as misogynistic, B) doesn’t mind living in a misogynistic society, or C) wouldn’t be wearing a burka in the first place. Which are all valid options that you should be supporting, if you’re going to call yourself a feminist.

Again, there are women who have chosen not to wear a burka because they do see it as misogynistic, but that’s their individual belief and opinion. Just like their beliefs should be respected, so should this woman’s. If she doesn’t see a burka as a misogynistic statement or if she doesn’t mind it being a misogynistic statement, then regardless of how much you disagree, her beliefs are still valid and should be respected and fought for if you’re going to call yourself a supporter of the rights of women.

I could ask you the same question that you ask me: why don’t you give me some statistics or tell me why your assumption is more likely than mine? I’ve given you my reasoning and I’d like to hear yours.

Once again you attribute things to me that I haven’t mentioned. I didn’t call myself a feminist, nor am I one. In fact, I’m not a ______ist of any kind and I don’t subscribe to any ______isms. Someone who preaches any idealogy is tyrannical because they assume that what they believe in is what’s best for everyone. I only claim to know what’s best for me, and I’m likely wrong in that most of the time.

Is it morally wrong to judge a person based on their appearance? I don’t think so. This is how everyone make most of their initial judgments. It’s only wrong if you stop right there and lock your beliefs on a person based on that initial judgment.

And anyway, I did not judge this single person’s life. I’m making a judgment on burka culture.

Moving on, you’re saying that this woman may have chosen to wear a burka because she doesn’t think it’s misogynistic, and in fact, may think our booty shorts culture is the morally reprehensible one. I’m fine with this if this is the case: that she is totally aware and freely capable of making this choice. I know you are because you were raised in a culture that allows free flow of information and education and equal rights to women. But was she?

Neither of us have statistics, but based on what I read about on burkas, Islam, and Arabs, women in this culture still do not have access to the same equal rights and education as men. This is the reality they live in. So I think that there is a very high possibility that for this woman, her choice to wear a burka is, in fact, no choice at all. She “chooses” to but not in the same way that you would choose to. Yes, she doesn’t think that burkas are misogynistic or that she doesn’t mind living in a misogynistic society because possibly, she’s unaware that it is. She’s unaware that there’s a different way of life.

Now, there may be women who are completely aware of these and still freely choose to wear a burka. That’s fine and good for them, and that choice I absolutely respect and support. But I think this is more the exception to the rule. Women asserting their rights in Arab countries make the news precisely because it’s uncommon in their country. So that’s why I think my judgment is more likely than yours.

A response to egalitarianforequality, who is passionate and full of fire

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:07:00 +0800

egalitarianforequality:

mikonawa:

A Burka at Carrefour
Let us recap what a burka is: it’s a garment that covers a woman from head to foot, leaving only her eyes uncovered so she can see where she’s going. It is customarily worn by some Arab women when they go out in public so that no other man but her husband may look upon her. Only her husband may look upon her. She is his property. This is the ideal represented by a burka. That women are property. So it offends me to see a woman wearing it in public. Even more so in a mundane a place such as the supermarket. Because that requires that I accept this ideal—that women are property—as an everyday thing. That something like that is equally unremarkable as potato chips or canned tuna. “Just another Saturday afternoon shopping for this week’s groceries and oh look there’s a-woman-whose-life-is-completely-owned-by-her-husband can I have a half kilo of chicken please thanks.” I can’t wrap my mind around it. It just feels wrong.

Yeah, but see, it doesn’t fucking matter if you “don’t like looking at it”, because she’s choosing to wear it.

It’s not only cultural, but religious. If you don’t understand the culture, that’s your fault. Why should an Arab woman change the way she was brought up simply because it makes you uncomfortable?

There are women that come from that part of the world who completely eschew that way of life and thinking. This woman obviously didn’t, because she simply doesn’t mind it. So fucking what? If she’s happy, let her be happy.

Frankly, I find it offensive that you’re insinuating that this woman somehow isn’t in control of her own life. It’s bullshit like this that pisses me off. “Oh, she doesn’t even realize she’s oppressed, the patriarchy has brainwashed her, how sad!” Give her some credit and let her live her life the way she wants to.

Hi there! Sorry for the late response to this. I just figured out that I can actually read the text you reblogged and then reply like this.

First of all, never in my post did I evangelize and demand that this woman, or any arab women, change their ways. Nor did I demand that burkas be banned in supermarkets. I was merely stating my opinion and what I felt. Surely if this woman has the freedom to have her beliefs then I have the freedom to mine as well?

Secondly, just because something is “cultural” or “religious” doesn’t make it morally correct. It’s not that I don’t understand or see where they’re coming from. I do. Just like I understand where these Congo soldiers are coming from when they explain why they rape women. That’s their culture. Still, I can’t accept it as morally right. But again, that’s just me, and I’m not imposing my morals on anyone.

Lastly, why do you find it offensive that I’m insinuating that she’s not in control of her life? I crunched everything I know about burkas and Islam culture and made an assumption. You assumption is that she’s not oppressed or burdened by fear or tradition; she freely chose to wear a burka. That’s possible too. But your assumption is more likely than mine because… ?

If you have facts and statistics that most women who wear burkas understand and enjoy the same freedom as Western women such as yourself, then please share them with me. All I know about burkas I learned from western media so yeah, I may be completely wrong and I’m open to having my worldview corrected.

Cheers!

The Bux Must Flow

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 19:21:00 +0800

UPDATE, 19 July 2011: NimbleBit released an update to Tiny Tower, version 1.2, that reduces dream job rewards to 1 tower bux instead of 3. If you want to take advantage of this strategy, don’t update to 1.2 yet.

Here’s the tactic I use to get a shitload of tower bux in Tiny Tower. It was passed down to me by my colleague @Cere13ral, who is Chinese. They’re shrewd, the Chinese.

The trick is to assign bitizens to their dream jobs. This instantly nets you 3 tower bux per happy bitizen. Problem is, the bitizens you have probably wants jobs in establishments that your tower doesn’t have yet. What you need to do is create residential space for new bitizens to move in, whose dream jobs potentially match your existing establishments.

Now if you build a new residential apartment (giving you five free spaces), it’ll take forever for bitizens to move in. You’ll have to wait for a bitizen with a lift request to that floor. If your tower is, say, 30 floors already and you only have one floor with free residential space, then that’s only a 1 in 30 chance of getting a lift request to that floor. That’s 3.33%.

It’s worse for taller towers. The chances of anybody moving into Baycrest Apts. above is 1 in 51, or 1.96%

What you need to do is distribute those free residential spaces spaces among all your apartments. Simply: evict the fifth (unhappy or contented) bitizen on every residential floor you have. This dramatically increases your chances of getting a new bitizen for every lift request.

The superior setup. Every residential floor has one free space.

Compare, for example, having 2 residential floors with 5 spaces each vs. 10 residential floors with 1 space each. This is the same amount of free space, but the chances of getting a new bitizen is different. On, say, a 30 floor tower, the 2 floors give you a 6.66% chance of a new bitizen. The 10 floors give you a whopping 33% chance of a new bitizen.

This gives you a near-constant flow of new bitizens! Once someone moves in, have a look at their dream job. Do they match what you have? If no, evict them immediately to leave that space free (be heartless). If yes, assign them the job and enjoy the 3 tower bux.

It’s still a matter of random chance, but the increased flow of bitizens going in and out of your tower gives you much better odds than just keeping your contented citizens and hoping you eventually build an establishment that matches their aspirations.

This is a great way to get a lot of tower bux really fast, which speeds up your tower growth if you exchange it for money. But there are also other benefits.

First, it lets you fill up your establishments with happy bitizens much faster. Happy bitizens doubles the stock of your items per order. One doubles the first item, two doubles the second, and three doubles the third item. This make your stock last longer, which means you have to check up on them less often and they also net you more profit while you sleep. Plus, you can make astounding profit when you get the big spender VIP to buy that doubled third stock (for example, my Architect’s Office third item is Tower Design. By default, it stocks 10,500 pieces of this. Fully manned by happy bitizens, the stock is 21,000 pieces. If you get the big buyer VIP to buy this, that’s an instant 63,000 coins!)

Using this method I was able to jump to around 25 happy bitizens to 80. Also, grow my tower really fast.

Second, it actually gives you something else to do in the game. Before this, I was reduced to just restocking stores, ferrying people up and down, waiting for tips and VIPs. This gets boring. With this, there’s the additional task of managing and moving the bitizens around.

That’s it! Get to it! May your towers reach the heaven and your bitizens walk amongst the gods themselves.

Some additional notes:

You can start with this method immediately, but if you were like me, you probably have all bitizens fully employed so when you start evicting the 5th tenant of every apartment, you’ll end up with some commercial floors that only have two people in them. That’s okay. You can move your employed bitizens around the shops. You only need them when stocking. So once you fully stock a store, move the third (or even 2nd, if needed) bitizen to the next store that needs stocking.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for new happy bitizens, build new residential apartments to create more space. What’s the ideal number of residential apartments for this method? Well since we want each apartment to only have 4 bitizens, follow this formula:

[ (number of commercial floors) x 3 bitizens ] / 4 residential slots = number of residential floors you need

The beautiful thing about this method is that it works even if the commercial establishments already have three happy bitizens. Go ahead and evict any of the happy ones and employ the newcomer. You’ll get another 3 tower bux. So even if you’ve already managed to get 100% happy bitizens, you can still use this method to gain bux.

Oh yeah, lastly, don’t concern yourself with the stats anymore. A happy bitizen with 0 stats is better to employ than a content bitizen with a 9. The discount is negligible compared to the benefits of double stock. Even if they’re all happy already, don’t be afraid to evict one for a new one with lesser stats. That’s still an extra 3 tower bux.

There Was Definitely A Point During That Stoning Where We All Thought, 'Is This Weird?'

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 17:01:55 +0800

There Was Definitely A Point During That Stoning Where We All Thought, 'Is This Weird?':

Related to this morning’s post.

A Burka at Carrefour

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 07:05:06 +0800

A Burka at Carrefour:

Let us recap what a burka is: it’s a garment that covers a woman from head to foot, leaving only her eyes uncovered so she can see where she’s going.

It is customarily worn by some Arab women when they go out in public so that no other man but her husband may look upon her.

Only her husband may look upon her. She is his property.

This is the ideal represented by a burka. That women are property.

So it offends me to see a woman wearing it in public. Even more so in a mundane a place such as the supermarket. Because that requires that I accept this ideal—that women are property—as an everyday thing. That something like that is equally unremarkable as potato chips or canned tuna.

“Just another Saturday afternoon shopping for this week’s groceries and oh look there’s a-woman-whose-life-is-completely-owned-by-her-husband can I have a half kilo of chicken please thanks.”

I can’t wrap my mind around it. It just feels wrong.

Cardigans before Lovefool. This song brings me back to the time...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:02:05 +0800

Cardigans before Lovefool.

This song brings me back to the time when I sincerely believed my high school romance would last forever.

We broke up when I cheated on her at University.

Fucken idiot.

If you’re ever in the Outram area, you gotta hit up...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 13:56:00 +0800

If you’re ever in the Outram area, you gotta hit up Sebastian Mix Fusion Cuisine. Ever since it opened at Everton Food Place, a coffee shop near our office, we’ve been hitting it consistently every week, sometimes more.

They have the best aglio olio I’ve ever had in a Singapore coffee shop. Hell, it even rivals some restaurant pasta dishes. Perfectly cooked pasta, generous portion of meat that’s juicy and tasty, and just the right flavour of garlic and spices.

Dishes are priced under $7.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:20:00 +0800

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

I’m back. 8 months huh? I was so innocent back then.

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:06:05 +0800

I’m back.

8 months huh?

I was so innocent back then.

Dem apples.

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 23:27:25 +0800

Dem apples.

"I’m sorry I keep pestering you. I just can’t help myself. I don’t expect anything..."

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:13:26 +0800

“I’m sorry I keep pestering you. I just can’t help myself. I don’t expect anything to happen.”

- Roger Sterling, Mad Men s04e09

slaughterhouse90210: “As a general rule, people, even the...

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:15:42 +0800

slaughterhouse90210:

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we supposed. And we ourselves are, too.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov