That's Entertainment

Squad strength has now increased to four with the arrival of two little ones from Singapore in the company of their mother, an old friend of Noi’s who’s come on an unexpected visit. We picked them up from Jalan Ampang, where their coach had dropped them, late last night. We’re now planning how to occupy and entertain the troops at least for today.

We recovered from yesterday’s disappointment over swimming, or rather not swimming, by taking the kids to Times Square. This is undoubtedly one of the bleakest shopping malls in this neck of the woods. Occupying a massive ten floors, it’s simply too big. By the sixth floor big empty, echoing spaces start to appear and by the tenth you can begin to feel distinctly, incongruously, lonely. But it does house an indoor amusement park which youngsters clearly love to death, and that’s where we were able to leave Fafa and Ayu to play for a couple of hours.

Question: why is it that a child who has thrown up twice in the car simply because we’ve been stuck in a traffic jam can happily be whirled and bounced around at high speed for ten minutes at a time, suffering no ill effects – in fact, positively relishing the experience?

And another, completely unrelated question: how did Tolstoy know exactly what was going on in the minds of Anna, Vronsky and Karenin at the horse-race? Every word rings with absolute truth. My guess is, he’s got a pretty good idea of what even the horses were thinking. Surely he’s the absolute master of this kind of set piece?