Gearing Up

It's surprising just how tired I feel after a straightforward enough flight out here to Bangkok. I'm now trying to get myself in gear for some real work tomorrow, and have a very comfortable hotel room in which to do so, I'm pleased to say. Mind you, I'm not exactly looking forward to braving the streets of the city to get to where I need to be. This place is lively, to say the least. Definitely happening, as I discovered just now, going out for dinner.

That Moment

It's that moment. The one when you're about to get into bed and that's it for the day. The final item on the to-do list is officially done and you're done too. You might consider reading a page or two, but it's unlikely you'll manage more than a couple of paragraphs, or a couple of stanzas. Nothing much matters anymore except for the prospect of gently, effortlessly, softly drifting away. The day's journey is over, the traveller has arrived, and all is as well as it's ever likely to be.

Worth waiting for. Coming soon.

Not Entirely Accurate

Got a letter today from the UK addressed to Singapore, Malaysia. The senders (a business) are somewhat challenged on the geographical front, methinks. Or else living in the past. Can't imagine the Post Office here was too thrilled at having to deliver the  miss-sent missive.

On The Edge

Noi's sore throat and bad cough, which had been sleeping for most of the month, awoke with a vengeance on Friday. We went to the doctor's on Saturday, to try and put an end to this particularly sticky virus. (That's my medical term for it, by the way, not the doc's.) On its return I guessed that this time I wouldn't escape, and today has seen me coping with a sore throat and mouth and, sometimes, a pounding head.

But I wouldn't yet say I was ill exactly. I seem to be on the verge of succumbing to the virus big time, but sort of fighting it off. I'm guessing that most people who encountered me in the course of the day wouldn't have guessed that I was in some sense unwell. And I'm devoutly hoping to actually not go over the edge into real illness as I need to go to Bangkok at the end of the week for some training related to the new syllabuses for English developed by the IBO. The material looks genuinely interesting, and we urgently need to develop real expertise, so I'm hoping to stay reasonably functional in the near future.

Wish me luck, and rather plentiful amounts of it!

An Example

Downloaded Macca's Egypt Station album today. The reviews suggested it would be excellent, and they were not wrong. I've only had one listen, but it's up there with the best of the solo albums - which is saying something.

Yet another old geezer producing outstanding work in his mid-seventies. And still touring. Good grief. There's just no excuse anymore for youngsters like myself to take it easy.

Something Missing

Came across a fascinating article on Dickens and his relationship with his wife over at the TLS today. The Inimitable doesn't come out of it very well but, let's face it, he treated poor Catherine abominably towards the end of their marriage and it's impossible to find any kind of excuse for his behaviour. I was horrified that he actually tried to have her admitted to an asylum, but not at all surprised. Once again we are reminded of what a strange man he was - a point made powerfully, if repetitively, in Peter Ackroyd's superb biography.

All this has made me feel like reading Ackroyd on Dickens again, something I'm not likely to do in the near future, I'm afraid, and, more to the point, it's made me feel like reading Dickens again. The thing is, though, that I've read all the novels, one or two more than once, and I'm not at all sure what to try and get on with (later in the year, possibly.) It struck me a while ago that I've never read American Notes and that's a hefty enough tome to getting on with. No real story though.

Thinking of re-reading a novel, I think I should go for the middle period, before the out and out great ones from the 1850s. Maybe The Old Curiosity Shop? I remember finding it a peculiar read in many ways, which is always a good sign. Not sure I have a copy now, though. The Penguin edition I read originally isn't on the shelves in Maison KL, I'm pretty sure. I guess somebody took it when my books were at Tony and Ann's place. Hope they enjoyed reading it.

Another Place

I think there's a new muezzin at Masjid Darussalam. I say this because the azan for today's Friday Prayers sounded so utterly fresh to me, I experienced something like a moment of shock, quickly translating into delight. The call to prayer is more often than not something to be enjoyed and occasionally relished for its beauty, but the melodic qualities of today's transported me into a new dimension. I found it so beguiling that by its end I'd sort of hypnotically zoned out and forgotten where I was.

The whole experience was perfectly timed also. I'd had a bit of an irritating and occasionally frantic morning, such that heading off to Prayers came as a relief in itself. (Odd to think that many years ago when I first began to go to the mosque on Friday it seemed like something of an imposition to do so.) It'd been a distinctly hot day as well, of the bothersome variety, but I'd found myself a comfortable spot and was enjoying the ease that comes along with being in the right place at the right time when the call began - to take me to another place entirely.

An easy way to travel. And deeply satisfactory.

Good News

Walking back from the gym yesterday evening I had the pleasure of viewing a particularly big, bright, bold moon hovering over our place of residence. And then this morning, it appeared again, its position shifting to being just above the main building whence I was heading to ply my trade. It stopped me in my tracks on both occasions, and I seriously considered taking a picture this morning, but decided not to in the certain knowledge that no picture could do justice to the hypnotically real thing.
 
And I'm not the only one who found himself enchanted. This morning's Straits Times featured our celestial companion on the front page and rightly so, I reckon. For a moon as beautiful as the one appearing over the last 24 hours is good news indeed.
 
(I'm not sure 'celestial' is an appropriate adjective here, but I'm inclined to let it stand, partly because I feel lost for words, and partly because our lunar chum glows with star quality.)

Complete Satisfaction

Just finished a plentiful helping of Noi's patented chicken curry served with bread (with which to dip in.) It's difficult to think of anything more satisfying, more completely right, more entirely appropriate to living the good life - so I just won't bother.

The Rewards

Having heard many good things over the years about Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth I thought I might give it a whirl, and I'm glad I did so. Popular fiction at its best: gripping plot, excellently researched, engaging characters (both the good guys and the villains) and lots of it at 900 pages or so. I'm around the halfway mark and keenly looking forward to finding out if Tom Builder gets to build his cathedral. Indeed, if he doesn't I'll be inclined to ask for my money back.

In contrast, each poem I read by Sylvia Plath makes sturdy demands on my concentration, and even then seems to get away from me. In almost every case I feel a distinct reluctance to move on to the next as I'm somehow letting the writer down until I achieve a full, slow, deep reading - but that doesn't always seem possible given the need to just get on with it (and find time to get back to reading The Pillars of the Earth.)

So, quite a contrast here, but I'm more than happy with it. Both ways of reading strike me as valid and sort of necessary for me as a reader. And both are extremely rewarding in their different ways.

Doing Errands

Assisting the Missus in getting some shopping done just now in the big supermarket at IMM, I got to thinking of one of the essential rites of my childhood. I'm referring to the running of errands, just around the corner. Actually a fair few weren't exactly just around the corner, they were often up the road, the up in question being a long way in that direction.

You ran errands for your Mam, of course, and sometimes for other ladies in need of assistance who didn't have kids handy to do the needful. I suppose it started around the age of ten, at which point it was a bit exciting as well as scary, and went on to the mid-teens, when it was just tedious and an intrusion on personal liberty. At that point the answer to the question, Can you run an errand for us - it's just around the corner?, often felt like being framed as, Can't you do it yourself?, but that's not something you said to your Mam, if you valued your well-being.

The main thing about running an errand was to come back with the right kind of fish (or whatever it was you'd been sent to get) and the right change. I suppose it was a good preparation for the travails of adulthood. Do kids run errands these days? I don't seem to hear the phrase, but I think they should, if only in the interests of natural justice.

That Time Of Year

Listening to Van der Graaf Generator's Do Not Disturb in the car yesterday evening I came to the conclusions that (a) it is a work of genius and (b) sometimes only VdGG can do it for me and (c) this is that county for old men. As a result, have been spinning their various platters all day, even to the point of now listening to Alt, which I can only get my head round once in every year or so. But this happens to be exactly that time of year. Essential listening.

Making A Comeback

Last week I was running through ideas for a talk I'll be doing soon on the shifting nature of language. Thinking about shifts in frequency of word use related to fashion, it struck me that the term cant (with reference to insincere, or highly clichéd and, thus, essentially meaningless language), based on my reading, seemed to have seen very frequent use in educated discourse in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dr Johnson and his ilk bandied it about readily, and it was obviously a telling put-down in that period. It occurred to me that we are subjected to vast quantities of cant these days, yet you rarely see the term in writing, and certainly you don't hear it.

Then the other day in an article I was reading about films like Groundhog Day, based on the notion of time repeating itself, I came across the rather fetching phrase inspirational cant, with reference to how such movies tend to move easily into message mode dealing with not-so-subtle implications of the need to send time wisely and live in the now and all that sort of thing. I must say, I'd like to see the word make an unlikely comeback since, as I mentioned above, there so much of it around it deserves a name.

A Difficult Woman

From what I've read of the sadly short life of Sylvia Plath and her relationship with Ted Hughes I've formed the impression that she was, in some ways, a difficult woman to deal with. Perhaps, indeed more than possibly, that's unfair and a bit too close to taking sides. To balance it I should add that TH was obviously a difficult man.

Having just reached the beginning of Plath's poems from 1958 in my sequential reading of the Collected Poems I'd have to say that almost all of what I've read has reinforced my sense of her as difficult. But in the entirely positive sense of that descriptor. The poems reflect a magnificently, exhilaratingly, tempestuously difficult writer even when the complete assurance of the later voice isn't really manifesting itself.

Even a piece consigned to the notes at the rear of the volume, Dialogue Over A Ouija Board, seems to me evidence of a talent that went beyond our conventional understanding of what it means to have a poetic gift. 

Quite Insufferable

Got back from the gym just now quietly pleased with myself on the outside and noisily pleased with myself on the inside for completing my intended stint for the evening. It occurs to me that 60 minutes of suffering allows one at least 10 minutes of gross insufferability.

Finding A Voice

Just a bit more about yesterday's play, Off Centre. The two excellent leads were the original performers of those key roles back in 1993. Apart from the fact that they've aged amazingly well to still look entirely convincing as the relatively youthful Vinod and Saloma, I think their familiarity with the characters goes a long way to explaining the remarkable inwardness of their performances, the sense they exuded of losing themselves utterly in the two characters.

And the struggles faced by the original production team as a result of the withdrawal of support by the sponsoring ministry, something Haresh Sharma addressed when he came to our school to speak last year, seem to have fuelled a powerful sense of complete belief in what the performers were doing all those years ago, and how that still lives today. Alvin Tan, the director, outlines what took place in 1993 in a quietly determined 'Message' in the programme for the show as it is being played in 2019, and I found it genuinely inspirational to read it. I'm sure it took considerable courage and determination to get Off Centre on stage at all and seeing it established as 'canonical' serves as powerful vindication of what its creators were doing.

I can't help but wonder what the various figures of authority who stood so firmly in its way now think of their attempts to deny a voice to a necessary work.

Out Of Control

Enjoyed an excellent afternoon at the Victoria Theatre this afternoon watching a revival of Haresh Sharma's Off Centre. I read the play back in 2006 when it had just been selected as an 'O' level Lit text and MOE were providing copies for schools, encouraging them to adopt it as one of the set texts for the examination. It struck me then as a powerful piece, but I found it a bit difficult to visualise how it was meant to work on stage, especially in the way the two mentally-challenged protagonists keep stepping out of character to comment on themselves. In the theatre this device works wonderfully well, especially as deployed by the excellent Abdulattif Abdullah and Sakinah Dollah playing Vinod and Saloma respectively.

I was also struck back then by a strong sense of how the drama seemed to transcend its origins as something of a thesis play dealing with specific issues relating to the treatment of those suffering mental illness. Vinod and Saloma seemed fully alive somehow, and tenderly complex. Their story wasn't predictable. And that's how it was this afternoon. Despite having read the play I had no idea how things were going to turn out.

Something else became very obvious to me this afternoon. This is one of those plays that wonderfully can't contain the energies it has tapped into, most of all the generous anger it manifests with regard to the treatment of those seen as somehow abnormal. At moments the rage was palpable in genuinely disturbing fashion. There was something going on that wasn't exactly under control and all the better for that.

No Offence

One of the many endearing qualities common to the students in this part of the world is a genuine concern that they shouldn't offend their teachers. Remarkably often I find myself accepting an apology for some offence that I have had no awareness of at all. I suppose I could point out that it's very difficult to offend me since I come from Manchester, but I doubt they'd see the humour, or the truth, in this.

Not Exactly Organised

I've been looking back over my journal from 15 years ago this evening, and have found myself reminded of a somewhat difficult time in my life with regard to work. I'd just started work at a new school and found the environment invigorating but distinctly challenging. In retrospect it was the right move at the right time, but it didn't quite feel like that in the early February of that year.

For some reason I'd been thinking in broad terms of organisations and what they do to the people within them (particularly Yours Truly) and on 8 February, 2004 this is what I wrote:

Woke up thinking about my general attitudes to work in a broad but practical philosophical sense. Some snippets: I can divide my notions of faults in the organisations in which I work into 2 levels - those that are accidental to the situation & may be usefully addressed (glitches, if you like) - those that stem from the organisational culture and which are extremely difficult to get any movement on (SEM, Wits, ESSS, assessment of teachers, the idea of quantifiable targets.) Dealing with the latter is energy sapping, time-consuming and often fruitless. I do not wish to spend my limited time in this way and since my colleagues do not make this effort there is no reason I should.

Although interested in organisations and how they work, in connection with my general interest in human behaviour, I am quite sure I haven't the kind of personality suited to organisations. This is not a put-down of those who enjoy working in organisations - we need such people to keep those aspects of our society dependent upon organisations working, even if this working is not at optimal levels. However, it is pointless to attempt to make appeals to me from an organisational perspective. I reject the very bases of these.

Many of my colleagues are stretched to the maximum, but the school, like almost any other organisation, overrides consideration of the individual and puts its aims first. As a result it will burn out the very people vital to its running. This cannot be good for the organisation in the long run. I believe this is linked to the significant attrition rate for teachers in Singapore. In personal terms my quality of life is suffering at present (as it has suffered in the past.)

It felt refreshing to read this years later. I find myself in agreement with my younger self. In fact, I'd venture to suggest I might have contributed more to organisational change by not actually trying to do so than those days when I felt I should devote some reasonable energy to trying to improve things for the good of all.

Paying The Bills

Spent a bit of time in recent days dealing with the payment of bills. I suppose this is an unusual thing to say, but I'm happy to pay them. Not happy in the sense of enjoying seeing the money go out; I take no pleasure in that. But happy in the sense that I can afford to pay and none of this is any real hardship. I'm aware that for many people real hardship is involved in dealing with matters financial, and often bills engender huge anxieties such that just coping is heroic in itself.

Too often the assumption is made that somehow such people have themselves to blame for their troubles. Sometimes yes, though why this should preclude sympathy for those that have messed up somehow, I'm not sure. But in my experience, it's rare that those struggling have only themselves to blame, if any blame at all attaches.

All I face is mild irritation when I'm settling the bills. Lucky.

The Play's The Thing

I broke off from my reading of Hamlet in the most recent Arden edition, the 2nd Quarto version, confident that it would be easy to resume. And it was! Reading Acts 3 and 4 over the last couple of days have reminded me of the extraordinariness of the play. Shakespeare was working with a degree of creative energy that it's difficult to think of any other work surpassing. Even the digressions - Hamlet's advice to the Players, for example - burn off the page. It's only when we get to Claudius dealing with the insurrection of Laertes that things let up, and even then WS is dealing with the edgiest political material possible, given the times in which he was writing.

No wonder the play doesn't hold together. It explodes as a result of its sheer intensity. There's no way any reader or viewer can explain, or come to terms with it all. There's no way Act 5 can make satisfying sense.

At least, I don't think there is. But I'm dying to read it again to find out.

Refreshed

Enjoying the break for Chinese New Year, which is even more relaxed than usual for us, since we decided to stay in our usual Far Place rather than travelling north. After attending the customary celebration concert yesterday, I managed to do little except read and fall asleep for the rest of the day. Highly satisfactory indeed. Then, after a good night's sleep and an excellent lie-in, I thought it unlikely that I'd be visiting the Land of Nod in the daylight hours today, yet I've managed a couple of power naps. I suppose this is an indication that I somehow need the sleep, but I'm not at all sure why. Perhaps I'm storing up some credit for the rigours that lie ahead?

Ways Of Escape

Finished Killing Floor today along with The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. Rather pleased at the mild incongruity of yoking the two together. But the pleasures offered by both texts were equally real, if different in kind.

Getting Popular

I recently decided that I need to read more of what might broadly be termed 'popular fiction'. One of the factors that pushed me in this direction was coming across an appreciative account, in one of the on-line literary magazines I tend to gravitate towards, of the Jack Reacher novels of Lee Child. It's a sign of just how dismissive of these novels I had been that I didn't take any real note of the article other than being a bit startled and distinctly intrigued by it. But then I read more recently a brief, equally appreciative, reference to the novels from the critic and novelist Margaret Drabble which forced upon me the realisation that I'd been snobbishly dismissive of Lee Child's work on the grounds that there were so many of his novels proliferating on the shelves in bookshops and libraries that they couldn't be any good and that the risible films featuring the Reacher character as played by Tom Cruise were so bad that the books themselves must be somehow of similar quality. And it looked like I was wrong.

I thought about buying one of the series, thus breaking my flimsy vow to abstain from purchasing more books until I'd cleared those on my shelves that I'd identified as needing to read and soon. But on realising that there are quite a few of the series in the library at work, including the first in the series, it came to me that it would be no problem at all to build some acquaintance with the work of Mr Child in an entirely trouble-free fashion.

The funny thing is that as soon as I got a battered copy of Killing Floor (Reacher's first outing) in my hands I just knew I was going to enjoy it. And that's precisely what has happened. For this reader it's the equivalent of going on holiday to somewhere like Blackpool as it used to be in the mythology of childhood and having an uncomplicatedly wonderful time. The fact that the writer is also really able to write helps considerably, of course.

Signs Of Strain

Spent an hour and twenty minutes displaying my skills on the futsal court this evening in honour of young Safiy's birthday. Will spend the next five days at least paying the price in terms of aching muscles in places I'd forgotten I had muscles.

Not Stopping

Driving across the island in the very late evening, giving Hakim & family a lift back from a birthday bash for Fafa, I was struck by just how busy the roads were at that time. Let's face it, in this part of the world, including our neighbour to the north, the roads are busy all the time. What does everyone get up to? And why don't they stop it?

Coming on the heels of a day when I felt I was trapped in my own cycle of non-stop activity, the sheer busyness of it all confirmed my deepest suspicions regarding the world we've managed to create. And those are dark suspicions indeed.