Happy Days

Fuad and I went to Friday Prayers at the big mosque in Alor Gajah today. On the way there we were talking about our general good luck in being able to enjoy our Friday here and, indeed, life in general - always helpful thoughts to have ahead of prayers. Indeed, I'd just enjoyed the annual exchange of cards with Noi marking the single best thing I've ever done in my life. Quite overwhelming in its way to consider all that has stemmed from that act, though that doesn't seem like the right word for something that seemed so natural and inevitable.

Back On The Road

Now making semi-frantic preparations for our journey north. We're staying over at Alor Gajah for a couple of days, then it's onwards to Maison KL for house repairs. I'm hoping for some rest and recuperation, but also suspecting that the next three weeks will turn out busy, busy, busy. Much like the last three weeks. So not much change there, despite the new location(s).

Expectations

Why do we expect people to behave in a sensible manner when we know it's an entirely unreasonable assumption that they will do so? Hope springs eternal, I suppose, but it's always likely to be disappointed. On the other hand, if we assume the worst and things turn out to be not quite so bad as they might well have been, then life seems distinctly sunnier.

With that in mind, I have decided to maintain low expectations for the foreseeable future.

Learning Something

I acquired a certificate in First Aid today. This is related to the on-line course I was moaning about not being able to access last Thursday. Eventually I was able to get in and do the necessary, and today I cleared the practical stuff in 'real life', like bandaging and using an AED. Unexpectedly I turned out to be a dab hand at CPR, getting it right the first time as if born to the manner. Since I'm normally more than a touch cack-handed when it comes to practical stuff that was quite a relief.

So the world is a very little bit safer than of old now I know a bit about what to do in a crisis. Mind you, it is definitely just a bit - and somewhat late in life for the knowledge, if you ask me, though I've never actually faced an out and out crisis in which I was left on my own. Luck, I suppose.

Something Fresh

Got going on a reread of Frank Herbert's Dune today. It's been some five decades since I got involved in Herbert's world building and it strikes me as just as fresh and imaginatively compelling. Fortunately I've pretty much forgotten every aspect of the plot so that helps considerably on the freshness front.

Maybe this time I'll delve further into the series. Not sure why it didn't occur to me to do so way back when. Probably a lack of time - a perennial problem. Though Herbert certainly carved out time somehow for all his imaginings.

Not sure how writers do this. Though the fact that I have no real imagination at all makes it a moot point in my case.

And Found Again

All day I've been trying to restrain myself from crowing over United's astonishing FA Cup victory over the noisy neighbours. But then I thought there was little point in not thoroughly enjoying this one glorious moment to relish after a miserable season. This time last year I honestly thought our name would be on the trophy. And this year I was close to certain it wouldn't be. But what do I (and pretty much the whole of the rest of the football world) know, eh?

Hah!!! 😁😁😁

Lost And Found

First day of the June vacation (ironically in May) and I've been doubly ironically busy. (And will continue to be so for quite a few days. Just saying.) But broke things up with a visit to my back doc this morning and a cuppa afterwards with the The Missus. The doc reckons my muscles are on the stiff side and I know he's right because that's exactly how they feel. Being hunched over getting stuff done doesn't help - but enough of this moaning.

Which is what I said to myself roughly half an hour ago when it struck me as a good idea to search out RVW's Concerto for Bass Tuba. It's been years since I listened to it, having once possessed a very fine recording by Andre Previn with the LSO and a fabulous soloist, John Fletcher. I sort of half-remembered it as a very fine piece and, playing it again just now, having found the same recording on YouTube, I realised that I'd underestimated just how very, very fine indeed it is.

The day has taken on an entirely fresh complexion. Helped also by a tasty chunk of Noi's patented shepherd's pie. But I must say the tuba concerto would have done the job on its own.

Drifting

Sometimes it's good to become unmoored. Three times today I drifted away into a friendly nowhere, nomatter, noworry space, only to come back down to earth abruptly. The few minutes of escape felt necessary.

And now I'm hoping to spend a few hours there before anchoring myself to the necessity of the time and space I'm forced to occupy to get things done. 

Getting Going

Recovered enough to get myself to work. Got some stuff done, but not as much as I would have liked, especially having been shut out of an on-line course I'm supposed to access. I seem to recall once being told (around the last decade of the previous century) that what was then new technology would make my life easier. Odd that it didn't exactly work out that way.

Still Flat

Have been feeling less than tickety-boo all day. Took a good hour and a half to shake off the grogginess once I emerged from my bed and since then I've been either marking scripts at the table or lying on the floor, recovering from the trauma of the marking. Well, at least I got something done.

Now about to prepare for a tomorrow I hope doesn't arrive too soon.

Flat

Had to dig deep today to keep going. A bit of a fever - just under the critical temperature at which we used to send kids home once exceeded - a scratchy throat & sniffles. Oh, and an aching head. Nothing terrible, but enough to count. Wore a mask all day to protect others, but by the time I left work the sniffling nose was cascading and I realised I wouldn't have been able to cope if that had happened earlier. By great good fortune tomorrow is a public holiday, for Vesak Day, and I might just recover if past experience of this kind of thing is anything to go by.

And all this when I can't afford to stop going in terms of the demands of the toad, Work. Poor me, eh!? - It's a good job I have a talent for feeling sorry for myself. It comes in useful sometimes.

Going Visual

As my poor students know, I rate my tastes in literature and music pretty highly. Sadly I cannot say the same of my tastes in visual art. I know what I like, and I like what I know, and that's about it. Oh, and I can't explain why I like what I like, regardless of my usual facility with words.

So I have no idea why I like Jonathan Yeo's recently unveiled portrait of Charles III. I mean, I don't particularly like the subject of the painting, though I have nothing personal against him, never having met the geezer. I just think it's a pretty good painting to stare at for a while. 

Mind you, one of the art critic chappies at the Graun does not agree and has written a cheerfully coruscating review to say so. The funny thing is, I really enjoyed reading the review even though it tears my superficial opinions to shreds.

One thing Sir Alex Ferguson never said, so I'll say it for him: Art, bloody hell, eh?

Sweet Sounds

When I was having a bit of a moan yesterday about people arriving late for concerts it was deeply remiss of me not to say that the concert I was in attendance at was first rate in every way. The level of playing of our Philharmonic Orchestra is quite astonishing and I was particularly enthused by their rendition of Saint Saen's Le Carnival des animaux. I'm so familiar with the suite from various recordings that it came as some surprise that I've never before encountered it live, and I'm very glad it was Saturday evening's rendition that I had the pleasure of enjoying. Somehow our students conveyed the sheer joie de vivre of it all. (I'm using a bit of French since the piece is so quintessentially of that nation.)

In fact, hearing it in sequence in the concert hall made me aware of how off-beat it really is. So modern, for want of a better word. Challenging in its way, once you get beyond the simple jokes in sound. Aquarium particularly sounded strangely gorgeous. Oh, and the cello in Le Cygne was from another, better, world.

On Time

I've always found the way that people seem to find it difficult to arrive on time for concerts & shows & the like to be a bit puzzling, and more than a little irritating. But I don't think I've ever seen quite as many folk as I did this evening unable to arrive on time for a concert beginning at 7.30 pm. And I seriously wonder if arriving at 8.13 (about 7 minutes before the interval) might be some kind of record.

Paying Further Attention

Meant to listen yesterday to the noise of the natural world on my way into work - and forgot. Was distracted by thinking of stuff I needed to do. Kept my ears open this morning though, just to see if the glorious racket I became aware of on Wednesday morning had been an odd exception. Realised it hadn't as the soundscape at 6.45 am today was just as richly layered. Felt like recording it but felt that would be somehow silly.

A free streaming service on the doorstep, eh?

All Very Interesting

I'm in that odd state of mind in which everything I read is really interesting. It's a good place to be, but it means that it takes a while to actually finish anything since that anything demands slow reading and painstaking attentiveness.

Case in point: I'm only about a third of the way through the Christmas Double Issue of the Literary Review from 2023, despite it having resided on the shelf for mags since late January. And every article so far has exercised its fascination. Here's the sequence of topics, if you're interested in what I find interesting: the rulers of the 'princely states' of India in the 20th century ⇒ history of Renaissance paintings ⇒ Oliver Cromwell, his writing ⇒ the doctrine of papal infallibility, and how it got started ⇒ how 'ordinary' Germans functioned as bystanders in the Holocaust ⇒ the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya ⇒ the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz ⇒ J.G. Ballard's non-fiction ⇒ elegiac poetry written in English ⇒ a practical joke played by the writer Virginia Woolf & some of her cronies ⇒ the fraudster and forger (of books) Thomas James Wise ⇒ the development of the female body in evolutionary terms ⇒ how twins are regarded across various cultures, and periods of history.

I suppose I sound quite learned in referencing the above. But the opposite is the case. It's all stuff I'd like to know a lot more about but can only get a taste of.

Paying Attention

Captivated by the clouds as I walked across to work this morning. Not sure why. They seemed etched with unusual precision against the blue beyond. For a few moments I was outside myself. And simultaneously I realised how very noisy the silence was, or, rather, wasn't. Discordant birdsong and insectile chirring.

I suppose it's like this every morning, and, locked into the prison of the self, I just don't notice. Nice to be set free, if only on probation.

The Human Touch

I was just accessing a website I need to use related to work I do for examinations when I got the message: Verifying You Are Human. There was a short pause, just a few seconds, and then I got in to do the needful. But what I want to know is this: How exactly was I being verified? And, How do they know they got it right?

I feel like something out of Blade Runner, and I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing. But it is a Thing.

(Must say, I'm very happy indeed I didn't need to do one of those weird 'catcha' things I always manage to fail at.)

Far From Overboard

Don't go overboard, cautioned The Missus as I set off for the gym in the late afternoon. Fat chance of that, I thought. Far from going heavily overboard my problem was likely to be summoning enough energy to get on board at all. And so it proved. For the first 10 minutes on the elliptical trainer I was, as usual, seriously considering whether I'd be able to keep going for a quarter an hour, never mind the hour I had in mind.

And, as usual, I found I could dig deep enough to find the energy to accomplish the full 60 minutes, but it was never going to be with anything like the enthusiasm required for a leap overboard. That's the advantage of a fairly regular attendance at the gym - it all becomes a bit routine and that helps in getting to know exactly how much you can accomplish on any single occasion.

The pay-off occurs when it's all been done, in the quiet satisfaction of knowing that something valuable has been accomplished, some kind of care has been taken, and some kind of acknowledgement has been made of being embodied, no matter how weak & fragile that body is.

Something Bright

I would never have read Ng Ziqin's Every School a Good School had I not been given it as a birthday present, but I'm happy to say I'm glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've always had a soft spot for lit for kids and I suppose as a self-described YA novel that's what Ms Ng's tale of her two likable protagonists who swop schools as a sort of sociological experiment is.

It's a bit heavy on the exposition and might have usefully lost eighty pages or so in editing, but the novel is engagingly bright, breezy and basically good-hearted. It's possessed of a naive charm that's really quite touching but does manage to say some perspicacious things about the education system here and, from my perspective as a teacher, is quite revealing in terms of giving insights into what some, possibly most, kids think about schools here.

Actually I was a little bit surprised as to how many stereotypes the writer seems to buy into whilst intelligently questioning the whole notion of stereotyping, but I suppose that just goes to show the success of schools here in getting folks to accept their mythologies. On the other hand, I suppose the fact that kids have no choice but to live out the myths, since that's what they're stuck with, is something I need to more readily recognise.

Anyway, if a young writer as talented as Ng Ziqin is a product of the system I suppose that gives me some room to be a little bit cheerful about being a part of it myself.

Lights Out

Wednesday marked the end of Syawal, the twenty-ninth day, and so our fairy lights are now sadly redundant. Resisting the temptation to switch them on again. Yes, they're pretty but there's a time & place. However, they will remain where they are for a reprise come Hari Raya Haji.

At one time I wouldn't have cared about such things. But I'm wiser now.

Not Exactly Inspirational

This poster in the library at work. It took me by surprise yesterday. I don't normally look overly closely at posters and the like intended for the kids. But for some reason I gave this one more than a passing glance, and wished I hadn't. It left me mildly traumatised.

It was about inspirational leadership and featured photos of famous folks the designer considered of that ilk. Three of them I wouldn't have quarreled with: Lee Kwan Yew, Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama. I mean, I wouldn't consider all three my cup of tea, but I can understand others thinking of them as the bee's knees. (President Mandala is the one I'm entirely comfortable with, in case you're wondering.)

But then there were the two Brits. One was the late queen. Not exactly my idea of someone to look up to given the massively dysfunctional apology for a family she presided over when she was with us. But, okay, I could live with her staring out at yours truly. Unfortunately the other one was Margaret Thatcher, and that was going way too far. Good job Mum isn't around to hear me tell this tale. At least I've spared you any ranting, not something the old lady could ever do when the ex-PM got a mention, especially an admiring one. (I consider myself a fairly broad minded chap, but I still can't wrap my head around the idea that anyone at anytime actually thought highly of her.)

Piling Up

Popped into the library at work today in a spare moment just to pawm around - and ended up taking three books out to read (by August.) I'm now adding these to the small pile I accumulated for my birthday when The Missus decided it was time to break my book-buying fast by gifting me no fewer than three tomes from local publishers Epigram. Oh, and a kind colleague bought me Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others which he reckons makes him 'think'. Since the author seems to be regarded as 'a science fiction genius' (according to the blurb) I'm hoping it does the same for me. I can't remember the last time I had something like an original thought, though I suppose being prompted to think the thoughts originated by a genius in his genre doesn't exactly count as originality.

So that's seven books so far, and I have to add to that the chunky Collected Poems of Robert Lowell which I'm still going on with. Plus I made a list of books on my shelves that are in deep need of an immediate re-read, or complete read-through with me having dipped in extensively but never quite gone cover to cover. The four on that list means the pile is twelve tomes high. Quite enough for now. Possibly for the rest of the year.

And the funny thing is that I get just as excited over the idea of reading all the books in the months ahead as I would have done with an equivalent list of books from the library when I was a little lad.

Time For Bed

There are few feelings more absolutely right than getting to the end of an endlessly busy day and knowing that it's officially over and out. Good night and sleep tight! (I know I will.)

[Weary Postscript: Woke around 1.30 am with a savagely cramped left leg. Note to self - avoid asinine predictions in future.]

On The Plus Side

Just went out to check that some rooms used for classes this evening were in reasonable shape and chanced upon two students hammering out Bach's double violin concerto on a dingy corridor. (I mean the solo violin lines, not the thing in its entirety.) A glorious noise. Made me feel a whole lot better about education and its purposes.

And the fact that the rooms I checked were in good nick helped me sustain the feeling. Sometimes schools do get things right.

Lost

Just finished reading Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence. To be honest the second part of Silver on the Tree didn't work for me. I suppose it might be classified as 'high fantasy', and I mean the very highest of all. A reader in love with the 'matter of England' would have a great time, but I left all that behind long ago. I found much to admire in the poetry of it all, but I needed to make myself keep going to the final page, which is never a good sign. It can be good to lose ourselves in fictions, I know, but not when we start to feel lost.

And, for the now, that's as much fantasy as I can take. I'm leaving symbolism behind me and stooping to reality for at least a year or so. 

On Being Still

Ten years ago to the day I was thinking about the importance of stillness. And it's still a concern a decade later. I know I've got better at it, but I'm also keenly aware that it takes very little to disturb whatever equilibrium I achieve.

At best I can freeze a moment now and then to protect it from time's turbulence. I suppose I'm doing that now in a very, very small way that, if I'm extraordinarily lucky, I'll recall ten years from now.

On Being Connected

A strange day yesterday, one of contrasts. I came unstuck at work for most of the day due to 'connectivity issues' with my laptop. How did I become so reliant on the thing? Why is it necessary to send out so many messages just to keep up with the ebb and flow? What has any of this got to do with actual teaching? Frustrating, much. 

And then it was off to watch the musical Hamilton as performed at the theatre at Marina Bay Sands, in completely the wrong frame of mind. Having got myself there doing my man of the people thing on the bus, with Saravanan for company, I wasn't exactly looking forward to three hours of musical theatre up to 11.00 pm and severely doubted that I'd be able to get into the show.

Gentle Reader, I was wrong. The three hours were up there with the very best I've ever spent in a theatre anywhere. Relentlessly astonishing stuff. Glorious. Just ridiculously brilliant.

On Being Embodied

There aren't many things of a positive nature to say about suffering from a cranky back. Mine feels okay now, in case you were wondering, but last weekend was generally rendered pretty bleak on account of unpleasant stuff happening to the muscles in my back. At least, I think that was the problem, but I'm no doctor so I really don't know (and I suspect most doctors are equally ignorant.)

But looking back over some thirty years of patches of discomfort I can see one positive, apart from how good it feels when all is 'normal'. Being reminded of the fact that we are, for the most part, bodies rather than minds serves to ground one in a sort of ultimate reality which would otherwise be so easy to forget. Of course, it's easy to think of ways in which transcending the dictates of biology is a good idea - just so long as we don't fool ourselves into thinking we can somehow rise above our status as rather clumsy animals.