Limping Along

I picked up Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel today for the first time in over a week, resuming proceedings with some fascinating insights into the differences between tribes and states and why one can become the other. The realisation that this was my first genuine reading - in terms of my reading as opposed to reading for work - came with a fair amount of gloom, but also a kind of jaded realism that this, after all, comes with the territory. The toad Work can squat disproportionally upon one's life, like it or not.

In truth, January was not so bad in this regard. I even managed to adhere to my private Learn Malay campaign with a reasonable degree of success. Alas, not so since then - in fact since 31 January to be precise. But since I've hacked out a little breathing space this weekend I'm aiming to resume said campaign in the next hour or so.

The only real reading I managed in Hong Kong, by the way, in case you're wondering, centred on The New York Review of Books and even then I completed only a couple of articles, which made all the recommending of interesting books that went on seem oddly superfluous. At times like that I feel like a kind of charlatan.

Let's hope March gives a little more room for real life to be lived, eh?