In The Background

Did you know that there are people who need to have the tv series Friends being screened in the background so they can lull themselves to sleep? It seems that the show has been a mainstay of the streaming service Netflix for several years, but now they're dropping their screening, and there's been an outcry from fans who desperately need the comforting familiarity of the many episodes to drop off to. According to the article I was reading about all this, it's the predictability of the rhythms of it all that do the job for these folk, sending them happily to the land of nod. I certainly didn't know this, or suspect anything like it, until I read about the phenomenon today, and I don't think the new information has in any way enhanced my life

Indeed, the way in which I found it out, idly scanning the news just to fill in time, frankly, is strangely reminiscent of what these viewers, or, rather, half-viewers are doing. I'm feeling acutely guilty at the moment at just how little of real value I've accomplished today. I've read hardly anything of genuine value, requiring effort and attention. Just trivial stuff off the phone, with me sometimes scrolling pointless comments on the pointless stories simply to fill in time, it being too much trouble to extend myself further.

So instead of feeling complacently superior to those who employ an old favourite comedy as a narcotic, I'm worrying that I'm only too ready to embrace my own version of brain-rotting substances at the first opportunity. 

Keeping Still

Nephew Ashraf popped round today to help us make some sense of the problems we're having with the electrics of the household. Not quite solved everything yet, but achieved a reasonably steady state. Stayed on the hill; a deliberately quiet, unadventurous day was in order and we've been enjoying it.

On The Move

18.06

A grey day. A lazy day. A sleepy day. A snuggling day. Neat descriptions from The Missus. And we’re on the road. So far, so good. Now supping tea at Ayer Keroh.

20.15

Now munching dinner on the hill after one of the easiest passages north we’ve ever experienced. Talk about smooth-sailing!

22.23

Now installed in Maison KL with most things working. Will be able to stop moving soon!

22.45

Spoke far too soon. Sudden blackout meant we needed to deal with dicey things going on in the main fuse-box. Now celebrating the equivocal joys of home-ownership as things remain dicey. But grateful for a roof over our heads.

Covering Up

Spoiler alert: more first world moaning ahead.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling increasingly out of sorts with the barrage of advertising I encounter online. Somebody somewhere seems to think I need to subscribe to a course in tai chi for the elderly and interrupts every video I'm watching to tell me so. I'm never going to subscribe to any such course, largely on account of the fact I find the ads so irritating. And weirdly patronising. As are the ads for the six month course in AI that I'll never get involved in.

And why is that every story in the Graun online gets covered up with ads as I'm reading along, often meaning I lose track of where I'm up to? I'm used to the idea of reading as a reasonably soothing activity. Now the online version of the activity is usually mildly unsettling and occasionally feels impossibly fragmented.

The irony of it all is I never buy anything advertised, so if I'm being tracked by the surveillance capitalism they talk about, why don't the capitalists give up on me as a sad loss? I won't mind at all.

More Plans

We're off to Maison KL next Tuesday, which means we're now figuring out what exactly we need to do whilst we're in residence. It strikes me that I'm quite good at making plans. But not always effective in carrying them through. Mind you, having said that, somehow The Missus and I contrive to keep the place in something like running order, which isn't easy when you consider just how much there usually is in need of repair.

I think it would be reasonable to claim that most of the things I needed to do before setting off north have been done, with one glaring exception that I'm managing not to do by posting to this Far Place when I should be doing it. Oh hum. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now considering my advanced and advancing years. But I somehow haven't.

Plenty Going On

We quite enjoy watching The Morning Show on Apple TV and got to the end of the first season yesterday. Lots going on, all of it suitably dramatic. But we got lost trying to follow the first episode of Season 2 this evening. Is this what life is like for the rich & successful? Makes me more thankful than ever for the uneventfulness that marks our passage through the world.

In Surplus

Even when I wrote that's that towards the end of yesterday's post I was half aware that that wasn't really that at all. I'd failed to mention anything about my most recent purchase from Kinokuniya, that being Conrad's novel Victory, one of the bigger gaps in my reading. And I really should have said something about the biggest gap of all: Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. So embarrassing not to have read the major work by one of my favourite novelists, and I can't honestly explain the gap, except to say I've perused so many of the key sections in excerpts it's as if I know the book already. I very nearly purchased a copy along with the Conrad but then hesitated over which translation to go with. And I've still not really settled that question despite having looked at quite a bit of the debate about current translations on-line. My plan is to buy a copy from the Kinokuniya at KLCC once we've settled into the house, and I've made inroads into the Douglass autobiography and Victory, which I'm starting on this evening.

Plus I was seriously wondering about picking up a recent Stephen King novel from the library at work when I suddenly realised that I had on my desk a brand new copy of Achebe's Things Fall Apart which I'm supposed to be teaching in the first term next year. It struck me that the King was likely to prove surplus to requirements in our time in KL given the pile I'd built up.

The thing is that I want to read all these titles at once. It's a kind of greed, I suppose. At some point I failed to develop an adult sense of self-control with regard to my reading. And it's not getting better with time.

Seeking Direction

Am trying to get my reading in some kind of order. I'm approaching the end of Video Night in Kathmandu with just the segments on Thailand and Japan to read. There's much to admire in Iyer's essays, but a certain sameness in terms of the humour of the innocent abroad. And, to be honest, I'm finding the material on the sex trade in Bangkok just a bit depressing. Surely there's more to the city than that.

I suppose that accounts for my picking up the LOA collection of Douglass's Autobiographies ahead of completing the travel book. I'll be reading the third final Life and Times when we travel to KL and have decided not to skip the opening chapters on Douglass as a slave despite the fact that much of the material from My Bondage and My Freedom is repeated verbatim. The power and integrity of the work deserve further close reading. In fact, in reading the two opening chapters I was struck by how moving I found the child's separation from his grandmother, something I'd not managed to feel before for some reason.

Sadly I've been struggling to find the same engagement in Henry Vaughan's religious poetry which I'm admiring from a distance. Some great lines here & there, and general enchantment in the music of the verse, especially through its metrical variety, but the emphasis on the worthlessness of worldly existence gets a bit much. I just don't buy into it, I'm afraid, though I'm pretty sure it's not just posturing in the poet's case.

But I do buy into Jazz: A History of America's Music which I'm enjoying in an extremely leisurely fashion - and have been for quite some time now as very occasional reading, usually just at the weekend. Lovely book; great pictures. But too heavy to take up to Malaysia with us.

And on top of all that, my read-through of Finnegans Wake continues sturdily apace. I don't understand any of it. But in my head it sounds great.

So that's that. A bit of a mess, all told.

Getting Destructive

Got on with discarding lots of the unnecessary today in line with my New Year's resolution. The supererogatory material in question occupied my laptop which now feels lighter. Metaphorically. Strange how few of the documents consigned to oblivion genuinely related to the core business of what goes in my classroom.

Still plenty left to shovel away, though, in the days ahead. A veritable mountain. Happily metaphorical in nature. Not quite real somehow. 

Personal Best

Took myself happily by surprise at this evening's session at the gym. Posted my best ever numbers on the elliptical trainer. Just a month ago I was convinced no further improvement was possible and I'm delighted to prove myself wrong. (Having said all that, the improvement is by a single digit. But I'll take the smallest of victories, thanks!)