I used to be amused by the elaborate lengths that supporters of political correctness would go to describe people with deficiencies. So plain-looking women were aesthetically challenged, bald men who were also impotent were both follically and libidinally challenged.
Now there is a not so politically correct term that I use for myself — a techno-bodoh. A bodoh is a Malay word for someone who is the family or classroom duffer, deserving knocks on the head or on the knuckles, sometimes followed by a tweak of the ear to elicit the bodoh’s plaintive cries of ‘Aiyoh! Aiyoh!’ A techno-bodoh is so technologically challenged that he or she might as well live in a pre-industrial age where there would be no modern appliances to expose his or her bodohness in every domain of activity, whether in the home, office, or out in the world at large.
In Singapore, a true techno-pandai land which always ranks among the top three in international surveys on the use of advanced technology, I must be the biggest misfit. Here is a listing of my deficiencies which I am certainly not proud of:
• I do not have a mobile phone.
• My use of the computer is limited to absolutely essential functions such as sending email, typing out my stories and articles, and storing them.
• I do not know what Facebook or Twitter or Skype are all about.
• For a long time, I had no idea what the abbreviations LOL and IMHO meant, and will, out of sheer embarrassment, not reveal what I had originally thought the initials stood for.
• I have not the slightest idea about how to book theatre tickets online.
• I cannot read an instruction manual. So to build a toy for a child or assemble a home appliance would be completely beyond my capacity.
• The TV set in my home is never used, except on those occasions when my daughter who resides in Hong Kong comes home on visits.
• My kitchen appliances are so basic that I did not dare accept the kind offer of a friend, who is an expert cook, to come and do my favourite Penang char kway teow for me.
• My happiest day at home is when all the appliances which I need for basic liveability, that is, the air conditioner, the computer, the washing machine, the fridge and the cooker, are all behaving well, humming along co-operatively and not threatening to give any trouble.
In short, I’m a functional illiterate.
My disgraceful techno-bodoh condition must have an explanation. It cannot be just natural inaptitude or that induced by old age, as there are senior citizens all over Singapore happily learning and applying computer skills, in programmes specially organised for them. I think there are three reasons. The first one is sheer reluctance to learn new things with no immediate appeal, even if they are considered important for everyday living. When I first came to Singapore, it seemed that everyone was learning Mandarin, a language strongly promoted by the government and in the schools, but which had no particular attraction for me. I suppose I would have forced myself to learn it if it were absolutely necessary, for instance, for the teaching profession, or for transactions in the shopping centres and marketplace. But English, both standard and pidgin, sometimes with a smattering of colloquial Malay, served me very well for all purposes.
The second reason has to do with my experience as an English Language teacher. I belong to the old world of conservative teachers who emphasise the importance of correct spelling, grammar and vocabulary use in written English. When I see errors in email messages or newspaper reports, I mentally whip out the teacher’s good old corrective red pencil and mark in the corrections on that errant piece of writing. When I see captions like ‘Product X and it’s good reputation’, even in respectable magazines, I’m almost tempted to shoot off a note to the magazine editor, drawing attention to what I consider an inexcusable misuse of the punctuation mark. Now the shortcuts taken in electronic communication — the exuberant use of abbreviations and total disregard for grammar, spelling and punctuation — are simply unacceptable to an old-fashioned teacher of language! It could be this aversion to computerese that has made me technology-unfriendly. Additionally, the language of Internet messaging, either because these messages are supposed to be on-the-spur-of-the-moment, completely spontaneous efforts, or because they are made anonymously, is anathema to an old world language teacher who has chosen to remain in a linguistically aloof, pure ivory tower.
The third reason for my avoidance of technology is a more serious one and may even point to a pathology. From a young age, I had concentrated on a single love: a love of reading which in later years would ramify into a love of writing and a general love of knowledge. It was a passion that absorbed all my time and energies, leaving no place whatsoever for other activities that were part of a normal healthy childhood, such as learning to ride a bicycle, swim, dance. I was this odd-looking child with the thick-lensed glasses and furrowed brow, my nose always buried in a book or magazine or whatever reading material I could lay my hands on (including some accountancy books that I had found on my father’s working table). In the world of my imagination and intellectual explorations, I was on happy terra firma, away from the frightening terra incognita of physical activity.
Now the neuroscientists tell us that there are certain centres in the brain for certain skills, which will grow or die away depending on one’s use or neglect of them. The centres for physical, mechanical and technical skills inside my head must have dwindled into nothingness long ago, while those for the English language, English vocabulary, English literature and knowledge of even the most esoteric, patently useless kind, must have overgrown, co-opting all neuronal activity to serve them alone. As a young student, I learnt the entire list of collective nouns in a book I found, even though I would never use a tiny percentage of them in my life. But I loved the whimsicality of collectively calling lions a ‘pride’, crocodiles a ‘float’, crows a ‘murder’, owls a ‘parliament’, starlings a ‘murmuration’.
While I could never name all the common tools in the functional home toolbox (what’s the difference between a wrench and pliers, for goodness’ sake?), I picked up all manner of lexical items I would never have the opportunity to use in a lifetime. Psephology? Paraprodoskian? Zeugma?
But there is a group of items which are very elaborate euphemisms comprising mainly polysyllabic, high-sounding words, that serve a special purpose for me. Whenever my tech-savvy daughter rolls her eyes to high heaven as she explains to me, for the umpteenth time, how to do this or that, on my computer, I turn round and ask triumphantly, if she knows, since she is so clever, what the ‘terpsichorean art’ is (dancing) or the ‘osculatory art’ (kissing), or the special French term for a woman who is ugly but still very attractive to men (jolie laide) or the word to describe a man who loves his wife so much as to appear quite stupid (uxorious). My daughter fails each time.
My (forced) entry into the world of computers came about in the most unexpected way. In 1994, when I was writing my novel The Bondmaid, I was doing it in longhand, on cheap writing paper that I could buy in abundance for the many drafts that I would work on and then throw away, before the writing was satisfactory enough to be typed out. My typing skills, which have till today remained the two-fingered kind, were pathetic, and so a kind sibling did the difficult job of deciphering my handwriting and converting it into respectable type. I continued this clumsy method for subsequent novels until my publisher in London, obviously tired of receiving the bulky hard copies by mail, politely suggested that I should pick up computer skills.
And then a stroke of good luck came my way. (I am convinced that there is a benign goddess up there, presiding over the development of fumbling writers like myself, helping us with what we sometimes ungratefully call ‘good luck’.) A representative of Apple Computers contacted me and asked if he could send over a complimentary model, one of their newest. I was thrilled, but had to admit I didn’t know how to use the computer. ‘In that case,’ said the generous representative, ‘could we send over someone to teach you?’ I couldn’t be more delighted. He sent round two young persons who very patiently and laboriously over a number of weeks taught me the basics, and must have left with a big sigh of relief. Today, I have someone whom I call my ‘computer doctor’ who shows the same kind of patience helping me to do this or that on a machine that remains an awesome and intimidating force in my life.
The future does not look good for a techno-bodoh residing in a country that has become so techno-pandai that in a matter of years it may lead Asia in digital technology. For solace, I think of two friends who are in the same boat. They don’t even have a computer. But then one is in her eighties, and the other in her nineties.
One night I had the most horrible dream.
I saw the Prime Minister holding a meeting with his colleagues. And they were talking, with grave, frowning looks, about — me! I thought it was their displeasure over a recent political commentary I had written, cast boldly in the form of an Open Letter to the Prime Minister in which I had daringly stated that there was a crisis of trust, and he had to do something to restore the people’s confidence in his government. Many years ago, I could have had a bad dream too, about then Prime Minister Mr Goh Chok Tong and his colleagues discussing how to punish me for writing that controversial ‘Great Affective’ article which had been so critical of him.
My dream, this time, seemed also about punishment. In the typical dream confusion of shifting images and muffled sounds, I nevertheless heard the voice of the PM in clear ringing tones: ‘We have no choice but to punish her.’ I could not hear clearly the flurry of suggestions as to how I should be penalised, but after a while it became obvious to me that the penalty, whatever it was going to be, was not for the Open Letter. I heard the PM say distinctly, ‘Firstly, she is a bad example to the seniors in flaunting her techno-bodoh status. Some of them may decide not to continue with their computer lessons in our community centres. Secondly, she is a real blot on the fair technological face of Singapore! How can we say that we are the best, if a writer who has been around as long as she has, tells everybody she does not own a mobile phone and does not have a Facebook account! Thirdly, and this is the real reason why she should be punished, we want to win top place in the coming international competition on ‘The Most Tech-Savvy People in The World’. The organisers will be fanning out to interview people in the various competing countries. What if they interview her? She will be a big risk to our chances of winning that title!’ Again, there was a chorus of voices in agreement. Then everybody settled down to discuss the best method of punishment. I heard something about making use of the 50th birthday celebration, with its brilliant use of the most up-to-date pyrotechnics, to humble me, in front of a whole crowd of technological savants who would feel ashamed of me.
Fortunately, I woke up then, in the worst attack of technophobia I had ever experienced.