Wisdom Of The Ages

The irritating thing about kids is the way they keep busily being themselves when you want them to be someone else. Also part of their charm, of course.

For Free

Forgot to mention the other day that it turned out the Rugby was actually available free, buckshee & gratis on Astro and I could have watched England vs the All Blacks live had I known. However, I was ultra busy at that point on Saturday so it was a good thing I didn't know as I avoided a major quandary. Watched a replay of the game late in the evening and marvelled at just how good England were. I mean, they made the brilliant All Blacks look almost ordinary. Astounding.

Managed to watch most of Wales vs South Africa live the next day. Dour but fascinatingly so. Peter reckons Wales would have made more worrying opponents in the final simply because they're Wales. He's very sanguine about us beating the Springboks and I readily (hopefully) bow to his definitely superior wisdom.

Will be in Melaka for the final next weekend and am figuring out if there's a way to try and make sure I can watch the final. Problem is I'm not at all sure anyone else there will be in the slightest bit interested.

A Bit Tricky

Reviewing our time in KL just now, I felt more than a little pleased with myself for getting all the necessary done. Then I looked at what lies ahead, and ended up feeling more than a little sorry for myself at the full range of what's necessary before I reach next weekend.

The trick is to live in the moment and forget about the self. Wish I could master it.

Vulnerability

Just back from visiting Hamza & Sharifah & family. My brother-in-law sustained a very nasty head injury last Monday after slipping on a wet floor in his masjid and falling backwards. A scan showed some bleeding on the brain, fortunately relatively minor, but enough to require close care for the next three months. Initially we thought we'd be visiting him in hospital but he was given a reasonably clean bill of health and allowed home - but is not allowed to drive and such and is being forced to rest.

It was good to see him looking like his usual self, but it wasn't difficult to notice signs of frailty now and again. He impressed on me more than once the need for guys of our age to take care, clearly still taken aback by how close he'd come to a very bad place indeed. Excellent advice, of course, for those of any age, but, let's face it, especially ours.

Something Missed

Was discussing with Peter some four weeks ago whether it would be worth shelling out for the World Cup Rugby package on Starhub. Decided not to on the grounds I was going to be so busy I'd struggle to watch most of the games. For some reason I also didn't fancy England's chances whereas Peter was distinctly hopeful - and sensibly went for the package. I've been regretting my decision ever since, though, oddly enough, not today, even though victory over the brilliant All Blacks is particularly sweet. The reason is simple, even with the game available for viewing in our usual Far Place, I'd have had to come over here and miss it anyway.

As it is I'll keep reading the reports on the game over and over until I can catch up with a recording somewhere. Looking forward to seeing Brian John Chirnside on Tuesday - but not to rub it in.  Like most NZ citizens he's incredibly sporting. Actually I'll be genuinely commiserating with him. On that note, it was fascinating to read the BTL comments on the game in two or three of the reports I've looked at. All sounded genuinely appreciative of both teams in today's game, and of the nations in the competition generally. Nice!

All Accounted For

We travelled up to KL this afternoon, setting off after I got back from Prayers and arriving on the hill around 9.00, which is not bad going for a Friday. The traffic in the city here was ferociously busy and typically crazy, so we were happy to touch down without incident. It's a bit unusual for us to travel up at this time of year. I've got a long weekend, with a holiday on Monday for Deepavali, but I'd rather have stayed where I was and got on with marking and bits & pieces. Of course, I'll be able to do plenty of that here, but the time spent on the road, and the nervous energy used up, might really have been better spent getting on with the usual.

The problem is that my time is so much accounted for in the weeks ahead that this will be the only chance I get to spend time in Maison KL before the end of the year and there're a few things I need to accomplish here before we say goodbye to 2019. So I'll be making an early start tomorrow so that none of the weekend is wasted. Quite how my time got to be so valuable I can't figure out, but that's the way it is for now. Nice to have a purpose, I suppose.

Transformational

Was feeling a wee bit run down in the middle of day and took a bit of a break, thinking it would be a good scheme to see if anyone had recently uploaded anything in live performance by His Bobness on youtube. Fortunately they had and I enjoyed 4 or so minutes of musical paradise. Went back about my business completely recharged.

True Royalty

Very good Long Read in the Grauniad on-line today about the wondrous Sir David Attenborough. If Britain must have a King why not elect him to the position, say I.

Part of the strength of Patrick Barkham's highly informative article is the way it tempers a measured but real adulation with an intelligent critical sense - and it's clear, by the way, that Sir David is more than capable of recognising the truth of the best of that criticism. Barkham's tracing of the development of our hero into the eco-campaigner of today is astutely sympathetic. And I must say, it's this version of the Great Man that is, possibly, the most inspirational of all. As I pointed out to Noi just now, it's going to be difficult to leave the air-conditioning pointlessly running when someone says to you, But David Attenborough isn't going to be at all happy about that.

Splendid Ignorance

Still not sure why John seemed so upset about Prince Harry the other day. Saw a short article related to the P and his wife complaining about the coverage they are getting in the British tabloids but nothing in it was the kind of thing to upset a brother-in-law, no matter how irascible he might be. I imagine it was something in one of the tabloids in question that must have set him off - John, that is, not the Royal in question.

But it all got me wondering as to why anyone would bother to get upset about what gets said in the press about them, or on various social media platforms for that matter. I suppose such things count if one feels it important to make a good impression in such places, especially if job-related, and I suppose being a Royal is a form of employment. But I reckon a sensible approach to the whole media circus is to just ignore it. After all, it's not really 'there' unless one acknowledges it, and the kind of friends who might acknowledge it, and one might lose due to iffy coverage, are the ones worth losing.

Anyway, that's my plan for when the scandalous stuff about me finally gets out there. (Not that I can think of anything terribly scandalous for now, which, sadly, makes me sound pretty boring all round.)

Much To Complain About

Just phoned John, hoping for the best, fearing the worst. More of the latter than the former, I'm afraid. Maureen is blind in one eye at present due to a lens going out of position. It doesn't sound too much like she's in a fit state to have this put right. John at least had some energy, railing about just about everybody and everything, especially the National Health Service. He proudly announced that he's never voted for anybody in his life.
 
Also it seems he's not happy with Prince Harry and his missus for some reason. Not quite sure what it was, but seems related to South Africa. I can't remember him targeting the Royals before, but the fierce republican within me quite enjoyed that bit of the rant.

Out

Intense marking, cake and exercise have left me tired. Very. But it feels good.

Over and well out.

Hard Listening

Drove across to a busy Serangoon Road earlier this evening, playing VdGG's Do Not Disturb as I went. When I first heard the 13th studio album by Messers Hammill, Banton & Evans I knew it was great, but the odd twists and turns in every song also signalled the fact it would take a while to assimilate. Well, it's been a while, just short of a couple of years, and now every piece sounds like that's the only way it possibly could be.

To think that the trio were all rising seventy when they put this together. Younger chaps like myself really have no excuse but to just get on with it and find some way to stay equally aloft.

A Bit Of A Panic

I hate the feeling of panicking, that debilitating sense of knowing you might be messing up on a grand scale and not having the wherewithal to control the situation. I was viscerally reminded of this truth when I found myself in a minor crisis at 11.45 am today. The state lasted until 12.25 pm but coloured the day.

I won't go into the tawdry, trivial details, but these involved the need to figure out and generate a list of names based on some quite complex data requiring a bit of nifty work on the IT front - and do it in less than 40 minutes. And then send out the list to colleagues who needed it for reasons that had not been explained to me, but sounded pretty desperate. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure of exactly who needed it. I'm not terribly good at anything involving computers but can just about cope in an emergency, which is what I did.

Actually I'm still not entirely sure my work was accurate, but since no one has got back to me to tell me otherwise, things are okay for now. And I've got time to recheck the data which I originally assumed would only be needed early next week. So it seems there's no harm done and a quartet of valuable reminders to self. 1) Expect the unexpected just at the time you don't expect it. 2) Remember how bad it feels to panic unnecessarily and do as much as possible to avoid circumstances in which this can happen, knowing full well it will happen anyway. 3) Avoid inflicting such situations on others, remembering how bad it feels to be one of the afflicted. 4) Don't worry; be happy.

Time For A Change

Many, many years ago, when I was learning my trade as a teacher, things didn't really change much from one year to another. That sense of predictability was hugely important to me. There was a frame within which it was possible to try new things and, simply put, get better at the job. Generally speaking, I thought I knew what was going on and what would be going on, and that gave rise to a feeling of being in control, almost a sense of mastery.

How things have changed. At this point in time everything about next year seems to be in flux. Which is also the case with regard to the end of this year. It's less and less possible to rely on routines as there seem to be none left. Fortunately I've been in the business so long now that, whilst this is troublesome, it's really no more than an irritant. But I look at younger colleagues and wonder how they feel about the shifting playing field. My guess is, none too good. I know I wouldn't.

Getting It Done

After yesterday's evening's uncertainties regarding whether Noi and I would wake to a day of relative wellness, I'm happy to report we remain on the ticketty-boo side of things. Our health if not exactly rude might reasonably be described as fairly vulgar. And to celebrate such I got myself off to the gym earlier this evening.

I can't honestly say I enjoy physical exercise these days - in sharp contrast to my running days when I invariably felt good pounding the pavements. But I'll tell you what does feel good: when I'm able to think to myself, even on a day when I feel a bit low, well at least I'm clocking up some form of physical exercise, even if nothing else is going too well.

There's something real, something definite, something certain about working up a sweat. In an uncertain world it's nice to know that.

Good Health

Noi just mentioned to me that she feels like she's on the edge of some kind of illness, like a mild flu. But so far, so good, and there's no outward sign of anything obviously wrong. I'm reminded that I've had the same feeling a couple of times this year and managed not to succumb (except to the bout of sciatica that messed up the end of the June vacation.)

I suppose we're both a bit hypochondriac in this respect, but models of good health with regard to the happy fact that we rarely find ourselves actually ill. Long may this continue! But we are neither of us foolish enough to think there are any guarantees related to exactly how long that might be.

The Height Of Smooth

If memory serves me well Philip Glass was the first contemporary composer of 'serious' music I listened to. I bought Satyagraha on vinyl after reading a stellar review in Gramophone and thought myself very cool for doing so. But by the time I brought Akhnaten on CD I'd come to think that Glass wasn't as daring as I first assumed. It all sounded a wee bit too smooth, a wee bit the same.

So the later opera never got quite the same play as it deserved. I realised that when I gave it a spin today. Yes, it sounds smooth, but gorgeously so, and that hypnotic smoothness is entirely appropriate to its dream-like subject matter. This is another of those works that really cries out to be experienced in its theatrical context, and I don't think I'll ever get the chance to see it performed in the opera house. But letting its sound world envelop me is the next best thing, and to be soundly recommended.

Getting Away

Now approaching the end of The Portable Nietzsche. Basically just the  brief Nietzsche Contra Wagner to read and a smattering of the letters that preceded FN's mental breakdown. There's a kind of oddly mounting excitement in the final sequence of works that seems to foreshadow that breakdown. Brilliant de-stabilising yet repetitive ideas are fired off in an oddly random manner. I'm glad I got so close to the thinker through Kaufmann's selection but I'll be happy to get away from him.

Still Useless

Back in 2013 I posted something related to the great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Today I happened to be introducing a Japanese novel (Kawabata's luscious Snow Country) to a class and it seemed like a good idea to goof off ahead of the lesson, in a spare 30 minutes, into the piece I referred to back then, From me flows what you call Time. And a good idea it most certainly was.

I'm trying to think of something as hypnotically beautiful and, in this frozen moment in the flow of time, I just can't.

Good Judgment

Reading my journal from a decade and a half ago made me realise it's exactly fifteen years to the day that we got rid of the guy who was supposed to be looking after our little garden in KL - he was quite happy to give up the job, by the way - and hired Devan who'd been treating the house for termites but seemed keen to do whatever work came his way. I noted then that he seemed a reliable sort, and how right I was. The fact we've had him keeping an eye on the place for us for all these years, and doing a great job keeping the garden in order to boot, has considerably reduced our anxieties about owning a place that's so far away. A reminder, if we needed one, of just how reliant on others we are, no matter how independent we think ourselves.

Something Old, Something New

In a quiet sort of way I suppose I regard myself as a bit of an expert on the progressive music scene of the early 70's. So why is it that, whilst having heard of Magma and having some sense of what kind of band they were (and are) I'd never actually heard any music from them until today? I suppose the fact that I didn't have much money at that time in my life played some part in the formation of this rather alarming gap - it certainly limited the range of what I could afford to purchase. And possibly the way in which my tastes turned away from the weirder edges of the music scene as I grew out of adolescence, such that by the time I did have a bit of spare cash I wasn't going to spend it on anything quite so arcane.

But listening to the band in question performing one of their most well-regarded pieces today, I have to say I feel a bit of fool for not listening to them before. Weird, yes, but in the best of ways. They're simply brilliant.

Odd to be discovering something that was always there for me, at my age.

The Way Things Are

There's been some excellent reporting in The Guardian of late regarding the exploitation of low-paid workers in the construction industry in Qatar. It's going to be difficult to watch the World Cup scheduled for that country in 2022 knowing of the extraordinary number of deaths related to heat exhaustion suffered by the migrant workers employed to build the stadiums, roads and hotels needed. And it comes as no real surprise to read of how the fatalities are being covered up.

I grew up with some understanding of the need for unions to protect workers. It puzzles me enormously that perfectly decent people are sometimes blind to this necessity, seeming to believe that a laissez-faire approach to labour relations will somehow produce fair systems in which workers are decently treated. What's going on in Qatar seems to me related to a simple truth of history, of the human condition: Those at the bottom will be ruthlessly exploited if their rights are not firmly protected; it's criminally naïve to assume otherwise.

A Step In The Wrong Direction

Went to a wedding today and stepped on a fork. Yes really. Now feeling the discomfort in my left foot where the prong went in. Don't ask me how; frankly, I don't know. Other than that it was a lovely do.

A Bit Of Cheer

It's strange how location can change one's perspective on what one is reading. Case in point: this morning, in a break to grab a coffee I was reading a paragraph or two of Nietzsche - Twilight of the Idols - with the old chap waxing lyrical on the greatness of Rome & Venice: Those large hothouses for the strong - for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known - and all that kind of thing. Now, I suppose if I'd been reading this somewhere alone in the mountains, or in some dire accommodation in Manchester or New York or Moscow, it might have possessed some resonance for me. But there I was in a nice little café in Jurong Regional Library on a sunny weekend morning, and it all just seemed a bit sad.

I reckon it would have cheered FN considerably if he'd have had the chance to come and see the one and only performance of our No Parking v2, which took place this very morning in the Programme Zone of the afore-mentioned library. Apart from enjoying a few good gags and the obvious enjoyment of those performing (a strange, almost magical, thing theatrical reciprocity) he'd have been forced to empathise with the little man, for once. I think it would have done him a lot of good.

It certainly made for a splendid morning for myself. Everything felt just so right, if you know what I mean. Oddly enough, the piece actually looked as if it had been planned for the performing space, it fitted so neatly and looked so good. 

Mending

Made up for the mistakes of yesterday, getting all yesterday evening's intended tasks done in the course of the day. Also got to the gym in the evening and somehow kept going when I didn't really want to. Still avoiding doing anything with weights due to my aching neck, but the debilitating pain I had to deal with last week has largely faded. So, all in all, I'm on the mend. Always a good place to be.

Messing Up

I was busy in a happily productive sort of way this morning at work, actually doing some real teaching for the first time for quite a while. It certainly beats invigilating exams and marking scripts. And then in the late afternoon Noi and I visited Intan's mum who's not been too well lately. In fact, she was admitted to ICU just last weekend, but we didn't try to see her then since we knew she'd be deluged with visitors. It was good to see her looking a lot better than you might expect of someone just out of hospital. So, all in all, it was a good day up until around 7.30 pm.

After that point nothing went well - on the work front, that is. I came back intending to get on and force myself to do three different admin tasks. The first I had to abandon, losing a recommendation I'd written for a colleague, as the on-line form was one of those all or nothing types where if you didn't submit the whole thing it couldn't be kept  as a draft anywhere. Since I was lacking some necessary info for the final box, I lost the lot. The second involved uploading stuff already written to a website that resolutely refused to let me upload anything. And then, to put the tin hat on it, (as they say, or, at least, used to say, in Manchester) I managed to delete and lose an entire document I'd worked on for a good three hours a few weeks back before uploading it to where it needed to go in yet another system. 

That last one was the really painful one. It actually created a lot more work for no reason, which meant that all my efforts to get things done had achieved genuinely negative results. And worse, my own stupidity was entirely to blame, so I didn't even get moaning rights about other people's stupid systems. Funnily enough, I thought writing about this might make me feel better. But it doesn't. Grrgh.

The Real Thing

It's been quite a dramatic week so far. Monday and Tuesday were largely occupied with a Camp for our drama guys, centred around rehearsing for a performance coming this Saturday at Jurong Library. We're doing a sort of repeat of No Parking On Odd Days, which comprised half of our July show, but with quite a few changes in the ensemble. We're also dumbing it down somewhat, aiming for a sort of children-friendly version since we often get kids in our Library audiences.

Rehearsals continued this afternoon and we'll be putting the finishing touches to No Parking v2 on Friday afternoon. And here's the thing: wouldn't you think you'd get a bit bored of working on something like this for as long as we have? Yet I find myself utterly engrossed in every run of the piece we do, despite knowing exactly what to expect.

But there's the rub, of course. It's never the same. The differences are not necessarily particularly marked ones, and casual viewers might feel it is the same, time after time. But when you're as close to the play as we are, in a kind of absolute focus, a difference in intonation, a new rhythm to a line, a gesture that wasn't there before, a facial expression that's somehow more right than what you've become used to, and it all seems to change.

Much as I enjoy watching great acting in movies or on the telly, it seems so limited compared to the real, live, vulnerable, thing.

Not Quite Good Enough

Read of someone describing himself as a personal optimisation advisor the other day. Nice work, if you can get it.

Must say, I'm doubtful of the good sense of anyone striving for personal optimisation. Sounds like a recipe for a life undercut by a permanent sense of anxiety. Not what I'd call optimal.