Stood up a bit abruptly just now after consuming a highly munchable biscuit, following an even more munchable dinner. Felt a bit faint and announced such to the world, manfully adding, Don't worry about me. The Missus just laughed and said she wasn't worried at all.
Sometimes people take me too literally.
So, what exactly is a lifestyle product and why am I asking such a dumb-sounding question? Well I came across the phrase in a message sent to me by those good people at Starhub (or was it Singtel? - I deleted the message in question without really taking too much in) and was struck by its exclusionary quality. What products would not be lifestyle in nature? It takes quite some figuring out. In fact, I reckon in the final analysis it's stubbornly unfigurable, as it were.
I can't quite remember all the products identified as lifestyle-related in the message, but one was a television. So perhaps such products have an innate sense of prestige and enhance one's life in terms of whatever style it has? But, then, televisions don't seem to me to be particularly prestigious these days when even the grotesquely over-sized are generally affordable. Then I considered the idea that such a product is something one doesn't actually need, so it isn't really necessary for life, just the style of a life. But it seems to me that quite a few people regard a television (or more than one) as somehow necessary.
Hence I reframed my efforts at coherent thought to consider a product that is more day-to-day than a telly, and more affordable, and settled on a tin of baked beans. Definitely a product, because someone produces it to sell it. And it connects with life, at least my life because I sometimes eat the things. But does possessing a tin of baked beans enhance my life and its sense of style? Not for me, because I don't have a sense of style, being rather pleased about having a life and not a lifestyle (something I've rather complacently posted about, more than a little boastfully I'm afraid, before now). But it's not impossible that someone, somewhere feels that chowing down on baked beans does lend a certain cachet to their otherwise undistinguished existence. And it struck me further that, much as I enjoy a tin of beans said tin is by no means an out and out necessity, so it sort of equals the tv in that respect, assuming the goggle box belongs to someone who doesn't really bother about owning it.
This all means that four paragraphs later I'm just hopelessly confused, but suspect that all products are lifestyle products in some deep (or quite possibly shallow) sense and that my question wasn't worth asking and there's no point in the good people at Starhub/Singtel using the phrase. Must say, I'll bet they're glad they haven't got anyone like me working in their advertising departments.
I wouldn't recommend Beevor's account of the battle for Stalingrad to the faint-hearted. The accumulation of horrifying details does little to engender any kind of positive view of humanity. And there are moments when even a hardened sceptic like myself has to reread a sentence to try and assimilate the implications of the plain fact being spelled out.
For some reason this one hit me hard this morning: Sonderkommando 4a, following the Sixth Army's advance, had reached Nizhe-Chirskaya in the wake of XXIV Panza Corps on 25 August, and promptly massacred two truck-loads of children, 'the majority aged between six and twelve.'
I think it's the word promptly that somehow intensifies the horror of the unthinkable.
We're cashless, said the guy taking my order for a cafe latte at the Tiong Bahru Bakery when I attempted to pass him a ten dollar note. He didn't say this rudely, but there was no note of apology either. It was simply a brute fact. I took out a credit card to pay but couldn't help inquiring as to how I could have paid had I not been carrying a card. He assured me that they would take cash, but only the exact amount. Progress, quoth I, smiling. At which point he sort of half-laughed, recognising my somewhat ironic tone.
I could have gone on to point out that I was sure the shop would claim to be offering their customers excellent service, but, in fact, were focused only on their own convenience in not wanting to have to deal with the complexities of having change available for perfectly legal tender. But I didn't. Because the shop was pleasant enough and he was just doing his job and he already knew the truth of what I was saying and it wouldn't make the slightest difference in our Brave New World.
Cash is no longer king. In this Age of Appearances those really in charge remain happily faceless.
We heard the news of Encik Dollah's accident with great concern late yesterday evening and are deeply saddened tonight over his death.
But that sadness is mixed in with the warmth of remembering my time working with him, for more than fifteen years. In all that time I cannot recall ever seeing Dollah upset or annoyed about anything. No matter what he remained cheerful and deeply obliging. If there was any heavy lifting to be done he'd be there to assist despite his short stature. Oddly I assumed he was quite a bit younger than myself, at least eight to ten years I thought. So I was taken aback on reading the reports about his accident to realise I'm his junior by two or three years. I suppose it was his air of carefree enthusiasm as he went about his business that kept him seeming so young. The only guy I've ever heard sing as he emptied bins.
We met quite frequently at Masjid Khadijah for Friday Prayers in my final years at TKGS, and as we worshipped together I caught a rare glimpse of his serious side in his reverence. But even then we'd greet and part with the broadest of smiles.
Sad tonight, but happy memories. Innalillahi Wainnalillahi rojiuun... Indeed from God we came and to Him we shall return.
It's that time of year (in terms of the Islamic calendar) when I find myself making broad plans for the holy month of Ramadhan, which pretty much coincides with March in 2025 CE. I'd vaguely been thinking about the focus of my reading as the new year came in but it was just yesterday that I realised it was time to reread Ziauddin Sardar's Reading The Qur'an. Apart from a number of fascinating short essays on various aspects of the relevance of the scripture to our contemporary world, Sarder gives a lengthy, close exposition of its longest chapter, Al Baqara, and I need that kind of focus at this point in time. My very keenness to get to grips with his text, manifested in some dipping into its shorter essays today, suggests that paying due attention when I need to won't be too difficult even for an easily distracted reader like myself.
That's a bit of a confession, by the way, the 'distracted' thing. I've been foolishly half-expecting my ability to concentrate to improve simply because I want it to. But if I were commanded to subject myself to a regime of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading), as I've sometimes had occasion to supervise when students have been forced to do it, I don't think I'd do too well. For example, I've read four more of Conan Doyle's tales of the great detective since getting back from the UK and haven't managed to finish one of them in a single sitting. Oh, and I set off on a reading of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad thinking the sheer narrative power of his account of the battle would find me racing through the book at speed only to realise that I'm breaking off after a couple of pages almost every time I pick it up even though it fascinates.
Not sure what happened to the version of me that once felt guilty about reading Stephen King's Tommyknockers over a weekend simply because I couldn't stop myself - and this when I had work I really should have been doing.
Found myself in a meeting this evening that lasted until 9.30. Weirdly I sort of enjoyed it, I suppose because there was some point to it all. It makes a difference, you know.
On three occasions this year I've arrived early enough at the basketball courts to do a quick clean-up before my guys arrive for training. Each time the area wasn't exactly a mess - otherwise I'd have got the players to clean-up for me - but there were two or three empty cans up against the perimeter and at least one empty plastic bottle lying around. And each time I've got to wondering how exactly these were left behind. Was it some vague act of pointless malice, from someone who presumably had used the court but thought it best to show they didn't care about the maintenance thereof? Or was it just complete forgetfulness from someone caught up in other more important personal matters when leaving the place who'd neglected to take care of all their 'stuff'? Or was it it somewhere between these extremes?
Whatever it was I can't really wrap my head around the behaviour involved.
And here's the personal conundrum. As far as I can remember I didn't do anything like this as a kid. But I know for certain I was no angel. I can recall in embarrassing detail two anti-social acts I was involved in which were a good deal worse than just leaving a couple of cans around. So there's the possibility I'm ignoring or suppressing what I know to be true of the behaviour of idiotic teenagers (like me) in the interests of building a kind of communitarian mythology.
This is disconcerting. Maybe the sense of guilt lies behind my compulsion to tidy public spaces?
If I were short of sleep after the first week of work - and I'm not sure I was - I certainly reclaimed the necessary over the weekend. The ease with which I've been toppling over into the Land of Nod is a bit frightening. It's a useful talent to possess, but caution needs to be applied in deploying it too readily. Life does need to be got on with, after all.
