Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Awards

Develop Awards 2011 - Won “Best New IP” at Develop Industry Excellence Awards 2011.

2010 Game Focus Awards - Won 3 Game Focus Awards, including Achievement in Story Writing.

Devil May Cry: DmC - Official Trailer (E3 2011)

Post-live Q&A session with Capcom at E3...

10 Lessons For Young Designers

Wieden+Kennedy’s Executive Creative Director, John C Jay, shares his 10 most important lessons for designers. However, these lessons could apply to any creative discipline, including the games industry.

10 lessons for young designers:

1. Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.
2. Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.
3. Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.
4. Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.
5. Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.
6. Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.
7. Try not to work for stupid people or you'll soon become one of them.
8. Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.
9. The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.
10. If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career.

Original article @AIGA

My Blog Design

Several readers has asked me about how I make my blog so interesting as it is both informative and pleasing to the eye. And lets be honest, most private technology blogs are usually boring/unattractive and "beautiful" blogs are usually well beautiful. Having said that, there are many other blogs & sites that are really well designed and written to serve its purpose and deliver the message to the masses. To those authors, I'm deeply grateful you choose to share your knowledge with me.

Back to the question, I tend to keep to several rules regarding my blog design:

1. Choose a simple layout & template.
2. Modify it to to have an outstanding color. Ensure that everything complies to a set of color template.
3. Post away with as much visual aid as possible.

I read lots of technology articles & blogs; may it be games, software or technology in general, each day (during office hours shhh...). There are lots of information out there and the only problem is taking time to read them. Therefore I prefer to squeeze in as much information and publish my own condensed version with visual aid for a fast but educational read. Very much how I do it in the good old university days. 

This is how I like my blog to be - short & sweet heavy with awesomeness.

Hope everyone enjoys it ~

- dc

Dungeon Raid

I love RPGs & I love puzzles. What is more interesting then both of them combined into one? Dungeon Raid has done it in a RPG-Match3 game.

This game basically is a match minimum 3 of a kind by simply connecting them together. To connect enemies you can slot in weapons in between to deal more damage. This game is pretty cool cause you have all of the basic RPG elements like item collection, dealing and receiving damage and also upgrade!

Crayon Physics

It is such a shame that Crayon Physics managed to steer out of my gamedar, well up until now. Crayon Physics was the grand price winner of The Independent Games Festival 2008.

Crayon Physics is very unique in the sense that you can literary design or draw your solution for the game. This is a physics base game where like many others the objective is to get the ball from point A to B. Apart from the physics elements, there are several key mechanisms like merging drawn objects together by overlapping them, pinning objects in space, etc.

It is a very cool game, in technical and the game design aspect. So check it out.

Android 3.0 New Developer Features

The Android 3.0 platform is designed specially to meet the unique needs of applications on devices with larger screen sizes.

• New UI framework for creating great tablet apps.
• High-performance 2D and 3D graphics.
• Support for multicore processor architectures.
• Rich Multimedia and connectivity.
• Enhancements for enterprise.
• Compatibility with existing apps.

New UI Framework for Creating Great Tablet Apps

Activity Fragments are broken down subcomponents of the application. Fragments:

• Can be combined in a variety of ways to create a richer and more interactive experience.
• Can be added, removed, replaced, and animated inside an Activity dynamically.
• Modular and offers an efficient for applications to run properly on both larger and smaller screen devices.
• Reusable across multiple Activities.

Redesign UI widgets for

• Larger screens such as tables.
• New holographic UI theme.
• New widget types such as 3D stack, search box, a date/time picker, number picker, calendar, popup menu, etc.
• Can be used as remote views in application widgets displayed on the home screen.
• Application written for earlier version can inherit the new widget designs and themes.

Expanded Home Screen widgets now has more types of content and new modes of interaction. Developers can use standard UI widget types in the home screen widget. New interaction such as using touch gestures to scroll and flip content displayed in a widget.

Persistent Action Bar at the top of the application screen which gives quick access to contextual options, widgets, status, navigation, etc.

Richer notifications in a new builder class that include large and small icons, a title, a priority flag, and any properties existing in previous versions, and more content by expanding on the UI Widgets via remove Views.

Multiselect, clipboard and drag-and-drop for managing collections of items in lists or grids.

• Multiselect mode lets users choose mutile items for an action.
• New system-wide Clipboard to let uses easily copy any type of data into and out of their applications.
• Drag-and-Drop interaction through a DragEvent framework allos easier file management and organization.

High-Performance 2D and 3D Graphics

New Animation framework is more flexible and allows easy animation of the properties of UI elements such as Views, Widgets, Fragments, Drawables, and any arbitrary objects.

Hardware-accelerated 2D graphics with OpenGL renderer that gives a performance boost for most operations in Canvas, Paint, Xfermode, ColorFilter, Shader, and Camera. Developers can control how hardware-acceleration is applied at every level; enabling it globally, specific Activities or Views inside the application.

Renderscript 3D graphics engine

• Provides an API for building 3D scenes.
• A platform-independent shader language for maximum performance.
• Accelerate graphics operations and data processing.

Support for multicore processor architectures 
Is the first Android version that has a variety of changes in the Dalvik VM, Bionic library, etc. Single-threaded applications might also see a performance boost if the Dalvik garbage collector runs on the second core automatically.

Rich multimedia and connectivity

• HTTP Live streaming allows an M3U playlist URL to the media framework to begin an HTTP Live streaming session including adaptive bit rate.
• Pluggable DRM framework that lets applications manage protected content according to a variety of DRM mechanisms that may be available on the device.
• Digital media file transfer includes built-in support for Media/Picture Transfer Protocol (MTP/PTP) over USB, let users create or manage media files that they may want to transfer or share across devices.
• Bluetooth A2DP and HSP profiles lets applications query Bluetooth profiles for connected devices, audio state, and more, then notify the user.
• System broadcasts of pre-defined vendor-specific AT commands, such as Platronics Xevent.
• New support for full keyboards connected by USB or Bluetooth.

Enhancements for enterprise 
Developer of device administration applications can support new types of policies, including policies for encrypted storage, password expiration, password history, and password complex characters required.

Compatibility with existing apps
There is a new UI designed for tablets and other larger screen devices, but it also is fully compatible with applications developed for earlier versions of the platform, or for smaller screen sizes. Developers wanting to take fuller advantage of larger screen sizes can also create dedicated layouts and assets for larger screens and add them to their existing applications.

A Gamer's Valentine.

I read this off Reddit and it is really sweet. So I would like to share it with all of you gamers out there on this day. Who says geeks can't be romantic.

I meant to bring you jewelry,

a lovely emerald ring,

but Knuckles robbed me blind last night

and stole the precious thing.

I wanted next to take you riding

all across Hyrule,

but Link and Zelda need to put

an end to Ganon's rule.

I asked my old friend Mario

what flowers I should give,

but after burning both my hands

I thought you'd rather live.

Since each romantic plan I made

completely went askew,

I'm trying hard to figure out

what else there is to do.

I have some quarters in my pocket. 

Would you please be my Player 2?

Say "I Love You" the Valve way.

We All Should Learn To Say No...

lwding shared a question/link with me sometime back. The question was, "Should I Work for Free"?

Friendly Robot Neighbour Out In Town for a Scone.

Source Link: Robot buys a scone in a coffee shop.

Well if earth is ever overrun by robots, I sure do hope they are of this kind, those that runs errands & tips well.

Fin d'ete - End Of Summer

Chanced upon this cool and serene yet heart breaking short animated film. This short film is about a woman who decides to stay on in an abandoned city before a tropical storm...

BMW 'The Suit That Takes You' ~ to places looking like a geek.

Well the Bimmer is one of my favorite rides. They have the best technology, look and style you want to be seen in on a Saturday night out on the streets. But sometimes being on a cool ride does not always make you look cool even if you do feel it. Check BMW's new vision for future mobility:

Somewhat cook shoes though :D

EyeSight's Touch Free Gasture Control

Who needs a fairy-godmother or a magic wand if I could just wave my hands and voila !

de Blob 2 Animated Short by THQ.

I love animated shorts. Mainly because they are often overlooked as a movie yet there is so much effort and detail put into them. They often show creativity, personal style & taste, and passion for the work one enjoy's doing.

This animated short is called "de Blob 2" and it is about the the plight of being an air traffic controller.

Liberty City's Pile Up...

I have 4 loves in my life; fast cars, physics, games and violence. It is pretty messed up but it is educational (in a physics geeky way) and well...simply hilarious from my point of view. May the best crash win !

Games as The Ultimate Treatment

The mind does funny things to our body. In this world, this realm of reality, our mind controls the way well feel and experience pleasure as mush as pain. A lot of us as reached out for games mainly for pleasure and entertainment but is that all it is to it? Games has so much more value that we give credit.

Burn patients in the US are being helped to escape the pain of burn injuries by immersing them in the virtual reality of a computer game during treatment. Patients who played the game while having treatment experienced less pain. Patients can escape into the virtual reality of games like "Snow World", with brain scans done on patients who have used the therapy showing a decrease in pain-related brain activity.

LEGO Rammstein - Feuer Frei

This is an old vid but I still think it is pretty awesome. Well cause LEGO is a cool toy, Rammstein is a cool band. What can go wrong when putting two cool things together? NO-thing !

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Winner of Cutscenes.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West has been nominated as the game with the best cutscenes (of all time - Okay I added that little bit).

On a serious note, Enslaved's cutscenes has a dash of everything you would expect as you were to watch a hollywood blockbuster; friendship, humour, love, triangles, beautiful scenes and well killer robots. What more could you ask for?

A little taste of the good stuff:

Esper Domino by IAMAS Ubiqutous Interaction Research Group

Domino is a cool game. Kids could spend hours just building & demolishing the perfectly lined up domino pieces just to repeated hear the sound of it "tack tack tack tack tack" against each other. Well after many years not being a kid, I could still waste good money worth of hours playing with these programmable domino pieces.

Dara O'Briain: I Love Video Game

Well if I was in a game off I would like Dara O'Briain on my team. Well even if we can't win, he'll at least make my opponents laugh to death.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (Trip and Monkey) - Love The Way You Lie

A music video by Ziroana.

The lyrics doesn't really fit the game's storyline. However it is based off a love hate relationship. Still, it is really cool stuff - Love the combination.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Behind the Game Part 5

Behind the Game Part 5 : Monkey Meets Machine - Gameplay and Combat

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Behind the Game Part 4

Behind The Game Part 4 : Future Sound Of America - Music and Audio

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Behind the Game Part 3

Behind the Game Part 3 : Born Free - Bringing the Characters to Life

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - DLC

Pigsy's Perfect 10 Gameplay

Enslaved's DLC named Pigsy's perfect 10, this new adventure starring the porcine lover will have a new gameplay dynamic, with a focus on stealth and sharp-shooting.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - DLC

Pigsy's Perfect 10 - Launch Trailer

Pigsy -the comical sidekick from the original Enslaved story- finally gets his time in the spotlight for a quest to find the perfect woman.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Behind the Game Part 2

Behind the Game Part 2: A World Apart - Creative Vision

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Behind the Game Part 1

There are many sides to a story, my next few post would be what that is not seen on the TV screen when playing Enslaved but what happens during the development of Enslaved.


Behind The Game Part 1 : Reinventing A Legend - Ideas and Inspiration

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #6

Developer Diary #6 - A new perspective

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - The People #4

Meet the artist behind the soundtrack

In this video, Nitin Sawhney shares with you his sources of inspiration and working process on composing the soundtrack of Enslaved.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - The People #3

Do you know the real Pigsy ?

Richard Ridings: Meet Pigsy in real life

Enslaved was Richard Ridings' first motion capture for a video game. He talks about his first impressions and how he got into Pigsy's pixels.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - The People #2

Lindsey Shaw: Meet Trip in Real Life

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - The People #1

For those of you that have seen, heard or (in the best case) played Enslaved, you would know that Enslaved is not just another game that you play and may or may not get the storyline. In Enslaved the game is the story and the story is within the game. No way can you separate them.

To achieve this level of immersive story telling, it is very important that the actors that played the game characters are fully in the role. They would live and feel the life of Monkey, Trip and even Pigsy. Let the Odyssey begin...

Andy Serkis: Meet Monkey in Real Life

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - DLC

Pigsy's Perfect 10 DLC presentation

The new Enslaved DLC including a side story starring Pigsy character is on the way later this year for Xbox LIVE Marketplace and PlayStation Network. It will also allow options to play both the DLC and the full Game in 3D!

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Launch Trailer

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #5

Developer Diary #5 - Rising to the Challenge

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #4

Developer Diary #4 - Sources Of Inspiration

Devil May Cry: New Dante Explained

Working on DmC is a thrill for me. Devil May Cry is a well known franchise in the gaming industry and Dante is an iconic character. With his cool guy looks, super white hair and his pair of bad a** guns. Since the debut trailer, there has been lots of questions (and rage is some parts) regarding Dante... Hope this explains some...

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #3

Developer Diary #3 - Visualizing The Terrain

Devil May Cry: DmC - Debut Trailer

Capcom's new Devil May Cry game. A New taste, New style, New look, New Dante?

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #2

Developer Diary #2 - A Symbiotic Relationship

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - DLC

Some Enslaved downloadable goodies.

DLC - Ninja Monkey. One for the modern taste...


DLC - Classic Monkey. One for the Old School style...


DLC - Sexy Robot Trip. 2 is not enough, we need more skin. Literally, more skin...

Nice little Otaku area

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - Developer Diary #1

As a game programmer I'm often interested in the blood, sweat and tears that goes into developing a game. In the next few posts, I would be uploading interview session on Enslaved: Odyssey to the West development diaries.

Development Diary #1 - Building Story & Character

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Some links related to the game:

Enslaved official site

YouTube

Facebook

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West - E3 Trailer

This is the second game I've worked on.

Enslaved™: Odyssey to the West™ - Debut Trailer

Eternally Us

Sweet & touching. Simple & elegant.

Symphony Of Science

From http://www.symphonyofscience.com.
I never thought I could describe something as both geeky and cool at the same time but here it is:



"The goal of the project is to bring scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public, in a novel way, through the medium of music." - And that is way cool.

Runman

What can I say but, Cute.

Android 2.0 New Developer Features

Media Framework

• Revamped graphics architecture for improved performance that enables better hardware acceleration.

Bluetooth

• Bluetooth 2.1
• New BT profiles: Object Push Profile (OPP) and Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP)

New Framework APIs

• Includes several new developer APIs. 
• For an overview of new APIs, see the Android 2.0 version notes. 
• For a complete report of all API changes, see the API Differences Report.

Need For Speed: SHIFT & Transmitter from Regular John

The music video for single Transmitter from Aussie band Regular John, features footage from Need For Speed SHIFT. Pretty cool stuff.

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Performance Tuning

If you are into speed & cars, tuning is basically your baby step to awesomeness... Well here is a little taste to a sweet race.

Windows - Fooling around with Services

Creating A Service.

DON'Ts

1. Once a service has been installed, do not change the path of the executable (*.exe, *.dll, etc.) that the service is running. This is because in registry, the path of the executable is "hardcoded". Eg. C:\Folder\ServiceApp.exe. To view this, Run > regedit for the Registry Editor. \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\[ServiceName]\ImagePath

Running A Service.

A service can be started under a different user account (either on the local machine or on the domain).

This setting can be modified at

1. Control Panel > Administrative Tools > [Services | Component Services > Services]
2. Right click on the service name.
3. Log On tab.

If a service is running but there are error thrown in the ServiceMain function loop, then try troubleshooting the below:

1. The user may have access rights only to the particular service and not to make modifications to the Service Control Manager. Ensure that the Service to be ran does not try to modify system related settings or values. Eg. OpenSCManager(NULL,NULL,SC_MANAGER_ALL_ACCESS) is not allowed. Try using the SC_MANAGER_CONNECT flag.

Setting Service Permission.

There is limited permission given to a normal user account to manipulate a service. Starting the service with Tools as a normal user privilege will cause an “Error 5: Access is denied.” message. Try troubleshooting with the below steps one at a time:

1. The service program (*.exe) is in a protected folder. If the service is started by a user that is not registered as the local machine user account, then the user may not have access to the folder to execute the service.
2. The user does not have rights to execute any service related actions. Please refer to SubInACL usage below. Eg. To check if the service exist using command line: subinacl.exe /service monkeylogging. If it does the result will display the service details and Permission ACS (PACE). Eg. To change the service permission using command line: subinacl.exe /service \\[ComputerName]\[ServiceName] /grant=[domain]\[username]=F. The service PACE should now show the new permission “/pace =[domain]\[username] ...”. Reference Setting Service permissions with subinacl.exe. SubInACL (SubInACL.exe) is a command-line tool that enables administrators to obtain security information about files, registry keys, and services, and transfer this information from user to user, from local or global group to group, and from domain to domain. This is part of the Windows Resource Kits and by default will be installed in C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools. For command line arguments, refer to C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\subinacl.htm.

OR

1. How to grant users rights to manage services in Windows 2000 using Group Policy.

The Beauty of Need for Speed: SHIFT

Portraying the level of detail in both gameplay mechanics and visual art in Need for Speed SHIFT.

My New Ride

Anyone that knows me personally would think that my new ride would be something like the latest Honda Type-R. Well in the UK its not so cost effective to get petrol powered vehicle. Anyway this is my new ride, an electric powered Windsor LPX. Specification as below:~

• 6 speed shimano gears
• 200W intelligent brushless motor
• Throttle and pedal assist modes
• 26V/10.5Ah Lithium Polymer lightweight battery
• Charging time 2 - 4 hours (from flat)
• up to 30 mile range
• Top speed up to 15 mph

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Track Guide: London Circuit

At the time this post went online, I'm no longer living in London. However, during the time while I worked on NFS, I was there.

When you live in London, work in London and while working, playing NFS on the London circuit. Well you pretty much have a superbly cool thing going on for yourself. What more to say when the office is almost just on the next street where the "circuit" is. You will feel like you are right there overtaking the 188 bus.

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Car Battle Mode

Need for Speed: SHIFT - TV Commercial

Music In Malaysia

I'm a really music buff. Not one of pure heart, I'm bias for certain genre but I'll accept anything with really good meaningful lyrics. I'm glad that the music taste in Malaysia is stepping up a lot and evolving into something that is modern and upbeat (yes we used to have really 60s styled songs written in the 90s). Now local artists are more open to sing about life, love and troubles of modern life and not only about nature! A nice piece by OAG:

And one from Estrella. She is such a sweet thing!

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Opening Video

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Tommy Milner on Instinct

Tommy Milner, driver for the Rahal Letterman Racing team, talks about his experience behind the wheel of the BMW M3 GT2. He offers a great insight to the mind of a racing driver, what it takes to compete and what it takes to win.

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Andrea Bertolini on Focus

Andrea Bertolini is one of the most fortunate racing drivers in the world as he gets to call the Maserati MC12 his company car. He is currently driving for Vitaphone Racing in the FIA GT Championship.

Need For Speed: Shift - Chris Rado on Passion

Chris Rado talks about his passion for racing. With one of the most distinct cars on the racing circuit, the dual-spoilered Scion tC, Rado has made a name for himself on the Time Attack world setting some of the fastest times on record.

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Drift Reveal

Need for Speed: SHIFT - Driver Profile

Need for Speed: SHIFT - GT2 Reveal

I'm mainly posting this video mainly for the scene & background transition. Looks & feels cool to me.

StarCraft II Beta

SWEET~~~ Calling out to all potential SC II beta testers.

Yeah well beta testing sign-ups are open so why are you hardcore gamers still doing playing that old game? Get to it and sign up to be a SC II beta tester via Battle.net Account Management, create a beta profile of your system specification and get notified to be a beta tester...

Ohhhhh..... I just can't wait. More details here at this link.

Need For Speed: SHIFT

This is the 1st game I've ever worked on.

OnLive

Sweet~ This "may be" the next big thing...

Dead Space Video

I love the style, reminds me of Bioshock but more gothic.

My love for WOW

I just love watching Blizzard trailers any time. Cheers~

All I Want for Christmas is...

a Ferrari F2008


nah~ I mean a LEGO Ferrari F2008


Yeah, who wouldn't want one of this? I won't even mind hanging around to demolish it piece by piece later on too ;)

During the annual ‘Lego World’ event in Holland, Amsterdam, 12k-20k invested and 80,000 LEGO pieces were put together to create the biggest and most lifelike LEGO F1 car. This Ferrari F1, based on the F2008, is 1:1 scale, which is fully apparently drivable model.

Full story here.

Minority Report Comes to Life

Oblong's g-speak is the OS that combines "gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels" to creating the dream-OS of every geek's desires.
Ref: http://oblong.com

Finger Wiggling Fun

Tuttuki Bako has now made poking something (not dead) actually fun.

Heavenly Sword Anime

5 short episodes that makes up Heavenly Sword the animation.

LittleBigPlanet

I feel that this is one of the coolest game lately out. It may seem like a child's game but its really very creative and hilarious how the objects look like. A little video on the creation of LittleBigPlanet, enjoy~

LittleBigBang : The Evolution Of LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule on Vimeo.

Here is a video of the game itself,

Life and How to Survive It by Adrian Tan

Adrian Tan's speech at NTU convocation 2008. I've read his book, The Teenage Textbook when I was a 10 and I found it really interesting the way he wrote it. When I chanced upon this speech he gave this year, I couldn't resist but to pass it along because within it he has expressed several of my own principles in life with words better than I could. Enjoy~ Reference: here.

"I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you..

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that ‘Learning is a lifelong process’ and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan , and tied with San Marino . It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term ‘Karoshi’, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are ‘making a living’. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan ‘Arbeit macht frei’ was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction - probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say ‘be loved’. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work - the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work.. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy."