The Value Of Discomfort

Went to the gym just now thinking I was in for business as usual, only to discover the air-conditioning had failed. Mr See was there, coming towards the end of his session and he'd already checked all the fuse boxes to no avail. It seems he'd actually turned up in the early afternoon and on discovering the problem had decided it was far too hot inside to risk a workout. By the early evening he'd decided it'd cooled down enough for him to cope and I figured likewise, thus deciding to do my statutory fifty minutes on the elliptical trainer.

The first thirty minutes weren't so bad. I started off at quite a lick, in fact, I suppose based on the notion that the warmth of the environment meant I didn't need to warm-up slowly to the task. But the last twenty minutes saw me struggling, partly I think due to mild dehydration. I was, predictably, perspiring profusely. At the finish I decided not to bother doing anything on the weights, just rushing downstairs to gulp down quite a quantity of water. 

It was something of a reminder of the time I completed the Singapore Marathon, in the early 1990s, and discovered the remarkable degree to which a body could leak sweat. I wasn't quite as exhausted this evening as I had been all those years ago, but I was reminded of the value of the territory you enter when you push yourself further than you really should. On the one hand there's a faint sense of accomplishment in the fact you've kept going; on the other there's a salutary sense of just how limited you really are. Being able to cope with being in an extreme place is, I believe, a genuine sign of depth of character. I hasten to add, however, that I'm not terribly convinced I cope all that well.

The Virtues Of Laziness

It's been a lazy day, and officially so. Mind you, that didn't preclude me getting a couple of jobs done (and the Missus, for that matter.) But when you've been ultra-busy for five solid days a bit of work doesn't feel like even a bit. Oh, and I paid a work-related visit to the doctor's across the road this morning. I've reached an age when in order to convince my employers I'll actually make it through the year ahead I need to get a signed note from a physician to confirm it.

I reckon that if we improved the prospects for laziness at work I'd definitely have no problem in surviving a year, but my statements in support of useful laziness seem to fall on deaf ears. I'm not sure why people would think I'm kidding them over such a serious business, but they appear to. I know there are arguments associating hard work with virtue, and for those who need to ensure survival and a reasonable way of life it's easy to buy into those. But when it becomes difficult to see any real point in being hard-working for its own sake I think the world would be much the better a place for constructive relaxation.

It's worth considering that in my line of work there's a whole class of people whose efforts lead to more stuff to cope with for those on the receiving end, and it's difficult to see exactly how those efforts lead to young people getting educated. Now if such as those could learn to be usefully lazy the world, or my corner of it, would be a better place.

Some Disagreement

Noi wants to watch Suria, I  want to watch Sky News. It's rare we disagree over what to put on the telly since I'm rarely bothered about watching anything. However, yet another supposedly crucial vote is taking place related to Brexit and I feel a strange desire to watch my nation get absolutely nowhere on the issue yet again.

It all makes for oddly compelling, pointless viewing. (To be honest, Suria is a lot more entertaining.)

A Bit Of A Mystery

Why do manufacturers of sticky notes so often manufacture notes that don't really stick? One of Life's smaller but highly significant mysteries upon which I have spent several fruitful minutes meditating in the course of the day. (Fruitful in the sense that the meditation helped me not to lose my temper with the stupid notes and throw them into the bin.)

On Balance

On a number of different occasions Life contrived to be quite spectacularly unfair to me today. So what? In general Life manages to be more than spectacularly fair to me. And you, I suspect.

That'll do for me.

Plotting

I'm now in one of those periods in which getting any sustained reading done is a major challenge - i.e., impossible. At least I managed to get a bit of reading done last week, the highlight of which was John le Carre's The Russia House. It's obviously a fine novel with much to recommend it, but I need to make a humiliating confession with regard to my experience of reading it. Whilst I coped with the intricacies of the complex plot for the first two-thirds of the novel, I got lost in the final sequence. I just have no idea how the twist, in which the sort of hero figure double-crosses the intelligence service he's supposed to be operating on behalf of, actually worked.

I glanced at some reviews after finishing the book to see whether anyone explains what takes place but none did (rightly so, for spelling out what takes place would be a horrible spoiler) yet it was clear that other folks understood how it worked (or, at least, cleverly bluffed the world they did.) Sadly, I'm not capable of such bluffing and have to accept the grim truth that in certain ways I'm just not very bright.

A Matter Of Choice

I was originally intending to write about the grimly epic journey we experienced in getting back to our safe abode on these shores yesterday, just after midnight, thus thoroughly discombobulating myself for the first day of a new term due to a distinct lack of sleep. But I won't. Instead I'll record how wholesomely combobulated I now feel as a result of watching the splendid final of Dansa Mania just now on Suria. Very talented young people being creatively expressive and having fun, very intensely so. Best telly of the year so far. Worth a tiring journey to watch.

Something New

Posted this yesterday, in Melaka, but an iffy Internet connection meant it never saw the light of Sunday:

For years I've assumed the word loofah, as in the spongy thing you wash your pots with, was a Lancashire dialect word. My assumption was based on a teacher, one of the Brothers, actually, making fun of my use of the word on a school trip - asking where the loofah was in order to help clean a table. I assumed then that the very sound of the word should have alerted me to the fact it was non-standard English, part of the minefield of supposedly incorrect terms used at home that had no place in the classroom. I also thought I'd been dealt with in a snobbish fashion, and it obviously stung since I've remembered the rebuke to this day.

Then yesterday I saw the word on a signboard outside a rather funky little shop promoting the whole recycle & reuse culture in the rather funky new Linc shopping centre, not far from KLCC, where Rozana has her new outlet for the crockery she makes at her Bendang Studio. I was a little surprised to find a bit of South Manchester talk on a KL signboard, but then it occurred to me that loofah might just be a perfectly respectable Standard English term, and a glance at the appropriate page on dictionary.com confirmed my suspicion.

Evidence, I suppose, that you can learn something you sort of knew you knew every day. Wish I'd known that in 1969.

3 Puzzles

I've had occasion to ask myself the following questions in the course of a long day, and as the day wanes I'm afraid I have no answers:
 
Why do so many shops in Malaysia maintain a level of air-conditioning that makes the average chap (i.e. me) distinctly uncomfortable, to the point of actual shivering? Can this be cost effective in any way?
 
Why do people queue (yes, really) to gain admission to crowded shops selling bags? Expensive bags.
 
How do the emporia in this part of the world sustain their version of Capitalism when I spend so little in them? (And I hasten to add that the Missus, although a little freer with her purse, is not exactly a big spender either.)

Onwards

Noi is busy baking another set of delicious scones and ensuring she uses up all the eggs purchased the other day as we prepare to motor up to some resort near Genting Highlands to join the family (well, a number of those who can make it) for a day and night together. On my side, I've managed to get some necessary marking done and other bits and pieces of work whilst Noi has put the house in good order. I'll be packing for the journey and preparing for Friday Prayers soon, but I'm now listening to the utterly brilliant eight-man version of the Crimson King making Epitaph sound as fresh and alive as the day it was written (long ago in what seemed, in its way, the most positive decade of the twentieth century. But even then as Peter Sinfield knew too well: I fear tomorrow I'll be crying. Indeed. We may think we're moving onwards but nothing really changes.)

Well Connected

These days we're very well connected here at Maison KL. Only a very few years ago a trip here meant some degree of uncertainty with regard to getting on-line. Now we rarely if ever have a problem and with our Astro service finally restored we have Sky News, CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera, among others, to tell us what's going on in the world.

The problem is, of course, that these days it might be better not to know. For example, I watched a discussion on CNN this evening relating to the phenomenon known as Brexit and rather wished I hadn't. 

Reminds me of one of James Thurber's mordant morals to those pithy fairy-tales he used to come up with: Run, don't walk, to the nearest desert island.

Playing A Dazzler

I can think of only one sensible way to read the poems of Sylvia Plath: very slowly, and then repeat. It's the only way to do her gifts justice. Even those poems that TH tells us were completed as exercises (as opposed to being the products of some kind of inspiration in the usual sense) are invariably dazzling in parts, and often in their entireties. Earlier today I read the seven sections of Poem For A Birthday written in November 1959 and was surprised to find out it began as a pastiche of the work of Theodore Roethke, with Plath using the imitation as a way out (in TH's words; I assume he's referring to some kind of block SP was experiencing.) The poem itself seems so full of direction with an unnerving quality typical of this period - a quality even more apparent in the poems from 1960. Yet it turns out the writer was unsure even of the quality of Mushrooms, the final poem from 1959 and a stone-cold classic if ever there was one, as the editors of numerous anthologies of modern poetry will readily testify.
 
I'm now reading the poems written early in 1961, at a point when SP has clearly found her Muse, and the darkness beckons, though the fact that the year begins with You're, possibly one the loveliest, happiest poems ever written, indicates the range of which she is capable even as despair mounts. Indeed, it occurs to me that one of the reasons I've been moving through the poems so slowly is an unconscious reluctance to deal with the final reality of that despair. This is all so sad, finally. But what a gift!

A Kind Of Zone

I'm in that happy place where whatever I listen to, music-wise, seems necessary and delightful at the same time. I've been there for a week or so, and would like to stay a lot longer but I suspect my ears will dull with time. It's partly to do with having the space in which to think and listen, but more to do with simple good luck. This kind of thing just happens to me.

The last few days have confirmed for me, if confirmation were necessary, that: Paul Weller live is a source of power and grace that all good people should tap into, especially when driving; that Dylan's gospel period saw him writing great songs that simultaneously challenged and illuminated - and that he performed them greatly too; that John Adams's is responsible for some of the most exhilarating music ever written and it's tremendous fun to take a short ride in a fast machine; and that John Cage could actually compose as well as provoke. And don't even get me talking about RVW. And Papa Haydn. (About to spin The Creation, so that's all for now.)

Real Progress

Just listened to RVW's The Pilgrim's Progress. A wise choice of listening in troubled times. Would love to see this staged one day, though highly unlikely to ever be given the opportunity. But the glory of the music is more than enough.

Moments Of Cheer

We finally have our Astro service resumed in its full glory here, after several months of receiving nothing at all (and paying for this monthly.) The helpful technician who put it all to rights arrived to tell me how terrible Astro were, as if ensuring we wouldn't associate him with the vagaries of his employers. It turns out that he had to charge us for the new bits of cable and stuff required to get something on our telly since the originals had reached the end of their useful life and he knew full well that the company would have failed to properly explain this in advance of the visit even though that's the way they work. I can't say I enjoyed shelling out extra for the privilege of receiving a service I routinely pay for, but it was possible to see a kind of humour in just how badly Astro manage it all. No improvement at all after twenty-one years in the business, chortled the technician, and it was just about possible to join in.

And I forgot to mention a little bright spot on Friday's journey to this further place. When we arrived at the ARAB Café, in order to enjoy the cup that cheers and a couple of plates of Rachid's excellent roti bakar, there were two kids gleefully running around in their pyjamas. Parents taking out their children in their pyjamas in this fashion is a typical sight in these parts, a sort of unconscious symbol of a pleasantly ordinary, unthreatened way of life. It felt deeply sane to see it.

Into Darkness

We made our way up to KL yesterday afternoon, after I'd finished all I needed to do at work - and I must say how strange the journey felt. This wasn't anything to do with the journey itself, which was quite uneventful - a bit of a delay with jams at the two checkpoints, but nothing special. No, it was what preceded setting out that gave the experience its sadly, dark, unpleasant flavour.

Actually my morning and early afternoon had been highly enjoyable despite being of the non-stop, packed variety. The Friday timetable, which only goes up to 1.00 pm, sees easily my busiest day. I teach five different classes in that time and it's quite a challenge to record exactly where I'm up to with each and any admin concerns emerging from the individual lessons as I zoom around. But the teaching of itself is generally enjoyable, and so it proved yesterday. In what little time I wasn't in the classroom I found myself with important deadlines  to meet, and that also worked out well, prior to motoring off for Friday Prayers, the period of guaranteed peace on any given Friday, once I've got myself to the Clementi Mosque. On returning to the school I needed to lend my talents to some filming being done by some students from our Council. It was a bit of a rush, since I'd had to let them know of my deadline for leaving to try and beat the Friday jam, and we were outside on a hot afternoon, but a lot of fun was had mugging for the camera.

So when I got in I was in a good mood. At which point Noi told me about the shooting at the mosques in Christchurch and it was as if the day had been suddenly, incongruously stained. In fact, she started to show me a recording of some of the dreadful live-streamed video of events which one of her friends had sent her. I think I watched about thirty seconds of it, not quite grasping what it was I was seeing. It was surreally unreal yet all too definite. And then I just couldn't watch anymore.

We soon set off, happy in ourselves, yet all too aware of darkness and misery in one of our favourite parts of the world. (Again, adding to the weird sense that this couldn't be real.) On the way north we were monitoring for updates, with the death toll increasing, as it awfully does with these kind of incidents. And so a privately happy day ended seemingly forever marked by public darkness.

So often after a terrorist atrocity one is left with the feeling that one cannot imagine the scale of the pain and anguish involved. A way of protecting oneself, I suppose.

Up And Running

It's been a demanding week, but somehow I've managed to get to the gym twice. Almost heroic. (But not really.) Since we're off for a sojourn at Maison KL once I finish work tomorrow, I won't be able to work out for some nine days. I'll sort of miss doing so, but will enjoy the break at the same time. Hope to come back refreshed - possibly, even relaxed.

A Jolly Good Time

Found myself at the cinema this evening, along with a number of the guys in Hall, watching A Dog's Journey. (I think that was the title; I've seen another in various reviews.) Very sentimental, cutesy and basically for kids, coming with mixed reviews, I shouldn't have enjoyed it at all, I suppose. But I had a great time and loved every minute. There's no telling, is there?

Ahead

Busily keeping my head above the water, but able to look ahead to the approaching weekend and vacation with happy expectations. Now formulating a list of what to take with me to KL to lend an ear to. Just thinking of the pleasure of having the time for a bit of focused listening is a pleasure in itself.

For some reason everyone's favourite American Minimalist, John Adams (sort of, with Steve Reich a very close second, and ignoring Philip Glass, which is more than a bit unfair) has got his name at the top of the list. There's just no accounting for taste, eh? Especially mine, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, excellent.

Making It Up

Just watched Dansa Mania, which has become the favourite programme of this household, for the time being at least. It's obvious that the young dancers involved are as much concerned with putting together their routines to dazzle their audiences as with the tedious business of winning and losing, which is as it should be.

Is there anything quite as joyful as making something that's really fun and beautiful all at once? I doubt it. And as anyone who's ever enjoyed being on stage knows: it's being in the moment of making it come to life that the whole point of what's being created lies.

A Lot To Take In

We visited the National Gallery today to view some of the artworks therein. We've been in the building before and seen the kids' gallery on the first floor, but this was our first time really exploring. It's definitely worth a visit for the building alone - the old City Hall and Supreme Court. All very grand, and nicely democratised through adaptation to art for the common folk.

As for the art, as I suspected there was a bit too much of it for me. I'm someone who can spend a long time in front of a single canvas, not so much having deep thoughts about what I'm viewing as just in a sort of relaxed, half-meditative stupor. There were lots of opportunities for such states today with a lot of colourful stuff, generally easy on the eye.

Generally I was most taken with the work out of Vietnam. The overtly political pieces, especially those relating to the war for independence, spoke with intensity and conviction in a bracing manner. Indeed, the anti-colonial slant of so much of what was on display was a reminder of tormented, twisted histories made palpable through the often highly individual works of the various artists. Again, I felt an uneasy sense that I just don't know enough about the area of the world in which I'm fortunate to be able to make a home.

Off And On

It's been difficult to find time to read over the last couple of weeks. I thought my three days in Bangkok might see me making significant progress in Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, which I took along with me for whatever spare moments presented themselves, but it wasn't to be. I stayed in touch with the narrative with a bit of late night reading, but I'm talking about just three or four pages each time at best.

Having said that, I was gripped enough by the story to want to read on, and I'm now moving into the last 200 pages. Happily, I haven't a clue how it will all turn out, except being reasonably sure the bad guys (of whom there are more than a few) will get their comeuppance. But I'm not sure that the good guys will live happily ever after, even in the mildest sense. Or that any cathedral will actually get built.

Elsewhere

Excellent sight of the day: a little lad, not much bigger than the trousers he was wearing, with his head stuck in of the chunky volumes from George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series. He looked to be about halfway through the book, and he was entirely unaware of anything going on around him in the SAC, shutting out a torrent of noise to be somewhere elsewhere. Gosh, I envied him his escape.

In Delay Lies Some Plenty

I know all about procrastination. As a teenager I was an expert - in the most debilitating sense. Anything of importance, especially of the academic variety, I could leave and did leave to the last possible moment, at the cost of not really fully enjoying any of the stolen minutes leading up to the inevitable. And in my first year as a teacher I found myself doing something similar, until it occurred to me that if I continued I simply couldn't function in the job - so I sort of grew out of it.

But now I find I've discovered the positive side of purposeful procrastination. A fair amount of my work these days is of the utterly pointless variety and I find real pleasure in delaying the most pointless of it all to the absolute final moment, and then getting it done in rigorously mindless fashion. Of course, this means it isn't done well, but then the sheer pointlessness of it means it makes no difference to anyone at all. In order to facilitate the delay I find myself doing stuff that has at least some importance, which then feels almost effortless since it's helpfully preventing me doing the stuff I can't stand.

I offer the above to all connoisseurs of elegantly twisted logic. 

(Not) On The Streets

Didn't see any beggars at all on the streets of Bangkok on my recent visit. This in contrast to when I first went there in the early 1990s when there were quite a few around. Hope this is a sign of genuine progress and they haven't just been 'moved' conveniently elsewhere.

In ironic contrast, it strikes me that when I was a kid you didn't see beggars anywhere around Manchester and environs. The appearance of a tramp in the locality seemed rather exotic. They were characters in stories and novels; not part of the real world. Now you can't miss them in any urban centre in the UK.

Two Truths

I was reminded of two simple truths in the course of the day.

Truth Number 1: It isn't wise to teach on just three hours sleep. That's how much I achieved last night due to our late flight from Thailand, and didn't I know it!

Truth Number 2: The sort of dance young people do these days is so much more creative and accomplished than the sort that dominated in my youth that it's quite embarrassing to note the difference in quality. I was reminded of this watching Dansa Mania on Suria just now. Nine teams were dancing to make progress in a competition, and I would have gladly voted for them all. The wonderful thing is that when they claim they're all having a great time it's obviously true.

Name That Tune

Being away from my music for a few days has a predictable effect on me. I invariably develop an ear-worm to enjoy (or even two) and today I've been happily finding myself running through a fair chunk of Van der Graaf's Aloft from Do Not Disturb. Now can't wait to get back to the real, solid thing. Not sure this is what I should be reflecting on in the middle of a serious discussion of educational possibilities, but one can't stay on task all the time, can one?

At The High End

After another very packed day reflecting upon, enjoying, struggling with, and generally juggling all sorts of new (and sometimes, old) ideas, I found myself at a distinctly high end shopping mall one train station up the road from our hotel. I think it was called Em Quartier and it was impressive in an icily antiseptic fashion. I think I prefer the ordinary life of the street, but it was pleasant to find myself with lots of space to wander in for an hour or so in the evening.

Spent most of my time there in a branch of Kinokuniya Books. Good to see lots of books available in Thai, and I enjoyed browsing in the English section. I suppose I also enjoyed not buying anything at all in the mall, but that's just me being perversely radical.

All Geared Up

Quite an intense day spent discussing aspects of the new syllabus, followed by an intense time on the trains here. Crowded would be an understatement. But all worthwhile, especially in the light of an excellent dinner; definitely, well worth travelling for.