JULY 31 — My fixations are myriad and right now most of my thoughts revolve mostly around croissants, or specifically one particular croissant.
My colleague bought me Bray's smoked rosemary honey and sea salt croissant and as frou-frou as it sounds it is also the best I have ever had in the Klang Valley.
Funnily I was the one who recommended Bray to her as I had stopped there after my US visa interview and was pleasantly surprised at how decent the coffee and sourdough treats were.
I know that if Bray was not on the other side of town from me, I would probably be stuffing my face with their croissants until inevitably I start fixating on some other dish (last week it was satay from a nearby Thai satay joint).
Alas, Bray had run out of delivery slots on Monday so I walked to dou dou bake.
I didn't believe Google Maps when it showed it was really easy to walk to but yes, the cafe was near enough I could walk there every day if I did not care about my financial stability.
Their description of their French toast, which I had that morning, sounds incredibly twee: "Our rendition of French Toast uses homemade shokupan drenched in nutmeg-infused egg mixture then pan-seared ‘til golden brown. Atop are seared South African plums as a complementary sweet element and aside, tie-guanyin diplomat for added texture and complexity."
I will translate it into actual human speech: it is fluffy Japanese bread, dipped in egg and nutmeg and pan-seared, topped by plums that are also seared, and we did something to it so it's nice and crispy on top.
Regrettably it is delicious. Also regrettably I can only have it perhaps once every month or every other month because RM32 is three days' worth of takeaway for me.
My questionable discretionary spending habits aside, starting the week in a nice cafe with a verbosely-written menu put me in a nice mood for the rest of the day despite, as usual, the country and the world being generally on fire.
On social media Malaysians are panicking because they think that either we need to register to use social media or that the government is about to shut down the websites and services where we spend far too much time bickering with Singapore about food.
I wish people would actually read the news articles about the upcoming Internet regulations instead of declaring that if social media is shut down they will emigrate (I wish I was kidding but someone did say that).
As someone who actually writes said articles I am concerned because the perception is that the government is curtailing free speech, when the purpose of said regulations is to supposedly combat hate speech and cyberbullying.
Some would argue that this would make Malaysia look bad and it would chase away foreign direct investment.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present: China, Indonesia and India, who all have some form of internet regulation in place and let us not forget that the US government is trying to take control of TikTok.
I am not excusing the new regulations because personally I feel that putting the onus on tech companies to do content moderation is flawed and that a better approach would be finally defining what hate speech is in the legal sense.
Currently I am already experiencing what happens when tech companies decide on their own to moderate the conversation because my account is semi-banned on Twitter (don't make me call it X).
You know how they removed Taylor Swift from Gen-AI image generators so they can't make deepfakes or porn using her image?
Apparently Twitter needs saving from my banal tweets about my cat not eating her kibble again because you can't look for me on that site either.
The reality is this: the internet is no longer the Wild, Wild West where anything and everything is possible. It is becoming a policed and gated landscape that will need to be traversed carefully because landmines are everywhere.
From almost no rules to many rules, it is left to us to navigate a landscape that has become hostile to dissent as well as incendiary statements.
What is also important to consider is that something needs to be done about deepfakes of our own leaders that I have seen floating around.
Still, I'm cautiously optimistic because there are few creatures as eminently adaptable as the human race and few people as good at cari lubang (finding loopholes) as Malaysians.
I think what would be more important moving forward is giving Malaysians a better avenue for expressing their concerns and getting them addressed than cyberbullying people in power. Let's face it — it works.
So can we blame Malaysians for thinking cyberbullying will always be the answer? They deserve and need a better alternative right now so whoever's in charge, get them off making bad gen-AI posters for social media and into better feedback channels.
