Friday, May 16, 2025

Worth Listening To

A restful Friday Prayers was the highlight of a busy day - not an infrequent occurrence at the end of the week. Today was particularly memorable for a striking khutba, which was easy for me to follow in translation since I found myself positioned right under one of the screen giving a translation from the Malay.

Some excellent advice on Preserving Marital Bonds. Like all the best advice the points sound cliched. Deep down, we all know this stuff. But putting it into practice is where the challenge lies.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Good News

Nice article in today's Straits Times about the launching of Bookshop.sg. Very much hope these guys are successful. My intuition tells me this is of greater importance to the future of this Far Place than many of its citizens might realise.

On the whole I'm a cynic when it comes to the world of business. But this strikes me as business at its best.

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

The Start Of Something

Back in the deeply dark days of the pandemic Robert Fripp released, through You Tube, a series of very beautiful soundscapes, one a week, for fifty weeks. It struck me then as an act of extraordinary imaginative generosity. A practical way of making the world a better place. Now, some five years later, that seems to me even more the case. 

Today I listened again to the opening PastoraleMusic for Quiet Moments 1. Glad I did.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

More Rubbish

Spent a very satisfactory few hours at the Choa Chu Kang Sports Centre in the early afternoon, the highlight of my visit being watching our guys play out another solid victory in the quarter-finals for Basketball. But generally it was good to see a lot of youngsters from various schools having a jolly good time showing off their talents and letting off steam. 

One downside though, and do excuse me for being unbearably petty. I really need to ask: Who thought it was a good idea to make all the drinks machines at the location cashless? I ask this since I'm afraid I failed to get the drink I sorely needed in the humid centre, when I would have succeeded had simple cash been acceptable. Actually I paid my $2.50 for the drink I fancied through Pay Now, but it took so long to arrange the payment that it seems the machine cancelled my order and refused to give me access to the bottle I'd paid for. And there was no one to make a protest to regarding this injustice.

Let's face it: Modern life is rubbish.

(And, on another related note, we still can't register an appointment for the VEP thing despite remorselessly uploading everything the system asks for.)

Monday, May 12, 2025

Not Close Enough

It was just a week ago that I thought we were on the verge of getting an appointment with those who know about these things in Malaysia to install the device thingamajig that would signal our possession of a Vehicle Entry Permit for our motorcar. We had downloaded a Vehicle Registration Confirmation Slip and just needed to do something fiddly with a TouchNGo eWallet and that was it. Except it wasn't.

We did the necessary with the eWallet and actually put some money in it. But the website for the VEP kept telling us we still needed to do this. Then, after a couple of days, the website appeared to accept the fact we had an eWallet. Unfortunately it then informed us that we had failed to register the vehicle, despite the fact we had the confirmation slip. It seems we hadn't uploaded an insurance document, even though Faris had done this for us. Or, rather, that we needed to upload a pdf version. Which we have now done. But we still can't get an appointment as they need a copy of my passport and ID. Which we uploaded more than a week ago.

This is all quite exhausting in its way but, fortunately, doesn't count for much of anything at all since vehicles are being allowed into our neighbour without the entry permit since to all intents and purposes the Immigration Authorities at Tuas don't care.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Passion Play

Completed another excellent book today, and another disturbing read. I've been aware for some years now of the broad outline of the events which led to the tragedy of Karbala and the dreadful death of Hussein, the grandson of The Prophet (may peace be upon him.) Now I know a good deal more of the details, and I'm not sure that such knowledge is necessarily a good thing, though it's certainly a necessary thing. Lesley Hazleton's clear and compelling account of what took place in the years 632 - 680 AD in After the Prophet proved easy to read yet painfully so. I finished it at Holland Village outside the Tiong Bahru Bakery at 4.00 pm feeling dangerously, publicly moved.

She makes a case for equating the story with that of the Christian passion in terms of its deep and abiding power. And, now in some sense 'knowing' both, I cannot but agree. 

Saturday, May 10, 2025

At An Extreme

I wondered last weekend whether I might finish Yan Lianke's The Four Books before the working week began. It was proving a fascinating read. I wasn't at all sure I had a solid grasp on the allegorical elements of Yan's account of the years of the Great Leap Forward, but the broad outline seemed clear enough and the surreal power of the plights of the various characters stuck in the Re-Ed camp by the Yellow River was clear enough. The novel won the Franz Kafka Prize in 2014 and that was obviously a fitting award.

Up to the final seventy or so pages I'd found Yan's story easy enough to read in the sense of not being too overwhelming in its sense of outrage over the historical events involved. I suppose I'd been half-expecting something along the lines of Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle and was a touch relieved to avoid that level of intensity. But what started to slow my reading down last weekend was the advent of the famine resulting from the insane agricultural practices that the second half of the work turns its attention to; quite simply, I found it difficult to deal with pages evoking the grim reality of starvation on a grand scale.

So I've spent the week dipping into the ensuing horrors attendant upon people starving to death, finishing the novel today negotiating depictions of cannibalism made all the more horrendous due to the deliberate blandness of the descriptions thereof.

I've never read anything quite like this before. Brilliant stuff. But close to unbearable.

Friday, May 9, 2025

A Wonderful Secret

In my early teens the director Ken Russell was a big name in cinema, for the Brits at least. It's a lasting regret of mine that I've never seen his highly controversial movie The Devils since I loved Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon on which it was based. Thinking back, I was too young to get in the cinema to see it when it first came out and I don't think it ever made it to the goggle box. But Russell's wonderful films based on the lives of various composers were usually repeated on the Beeb and, in that sense, easily available.

Now, of course, the wonders of modern technology mean that we're just a couple of clicks away from being able to watch nearly every single music-themed offering from Russell on our personal devices (though The Devils remains, probably sensibly, out of reach.) And just today I discovered there are more such films than I realised when The Secret Life of Arnold Bax popped up in my YouTube feed.

For once the algorithm got it right. Glorious stuff.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

One Of Those Moments

I'm writing this in the brief pause between two bowls of porridge. Consuming them, I mean. The Missus asked if I wanted more after I dispatched the first hot, supremely tasty, bowl and, nothing loath, I readily assented to seconds.

What's not to like, eh?!

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

A Bit Of A Risk

I'm glad I've never been placed in any position in which I've had to make genuinely momentous decisions. In general I think I get a lot of things right; but I'm keenly aware this leaves room for getting a fair number of things wrong.

I'm pretty sure that if I had things my way as dictator of the world I'd prohibit the ownership and possession of smartphones for anyone fourteen or under. An article relating to such a ban appeared in The Graun today, and confirmed me in this belief. Must say, even if I knew this was likely to turn out to be a wrong-headed decision, I reckon I'd still go ahead and make it. The glimpse afforded of a saner, safer world would be worth the opprobrium likely to descend on my old grey head.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Convinced

Zoomed through Ibrahim Abdul-Matin's Green Deen over the weekend. Not quite what I expected. I assumed I'd be getting a fairly systematic exposition of the case for a sort of environmentalist view of Islam and was given no such thing. The writer makes the assumption that there's no real case to make as the fundamentally 'green' outlook of Islam is obvious, a no-brainer, if you like. And he's right. 

What we get is a simple, deliberately, relentlessly repeated sequence of ideas revolving around the key terms: tawhid, ayat, khalifah, amanah, adl, mazin to hammer the obvious home. And this works brilliantly, such that the reader is more than happy to then read of the practical applications of real environmental action as seen in the writer's country, the USA, with a few supplementary examples from other nations.

So the book turns out to be a kind of inspirational yet practical manual of how to get green stuff done. For this reader that seems to be exactly what is needed in his life, in which he's well short of doing anything significant. So far he's just been paying lip service to an area of his life that demands far more.

Monday, May 5, 2025

A Very Minor Triumph

It is with some small astonishment that I herein record I have very nearly managed to do the necessary regarding the infamous VEP (Vehicle Entry Permit) for our journeys to Malaysia. We had dutifully got our VEP prior to the pandemic, but at that point never had to make use of it. When we were told around the middle of last year that the whole thing would have to be re-done in order for us to be allowed entry by November 2024 we suffered a mild panic, like most drivers here did, knowing that the process was likely to be difficult. In the event the process proved pretty much impossible for us since actually having recorded the data for our vehicle under the old system turned out to be a major obstacle for obtaining a ‘new’ VEP due to the software systems involved turning out to be spectacularly incompatible. But, happily, entry to Malaysia without the VEP has been easy since the Immigration there just seem to ignore it, so it’s been business as usual.

However, we are nothing if not persistent and when Noi suggested we ask Sanusi to have a go getting the VEP for us it struck me as a reasonable strategy. So last Saturday we were pleased to host not Sanusi himself but his son and daughter, Faris & Idora, and Idora’s husband. Amazingly they were able, after a couple of hours' work, to get us registered for the thing, though an important step involving something called a TouchNGo eWallet proved beyond their considerable powers. And then today, against all odds, I got the wallet thing to work.

We haven’t actually got the device to stick on our car that we need to acquire yet, but it’s close. So close.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Another Walk In The Park



Spent a highly agreeable morning at West Coast Park, followed by a rather jolly cuppa & prata at our favourite eatery on Clementi Road. Lots to appreciate in the park, including an unusual profusion of chickens & their chicks. And a fairly recent phenomenon: the fascination of watching folk who appear to be filming themselves for what I believe is known as 'social media'. One young lady, dressed to the nines, seemed to think she was performing on the catwalk of an expensive and expansive fashion show. Highly expressive.

Saturday, May 3, 2025

Election Fever

We're sort of watching the coverage of the GE here on the goggle box as I write with a reasonable amount of interest. I don't think there are any big shocks but I don't know enough of the details to know what exactly might constitute a shock. When one considers the out and out idiocy of some recent results in supposedly politically sophisticated nations, it feels reassuring to be located in a Place that a sort of healthy if unexciting rationality holds sway.

Actually the best result of the day for me has been the numbers I posted at the gym when I visited just after mid-day. It seems I'm fitter at this grand old age than at any time in the last twenty or so years. A bit selfish of me to be more concerned with this than national affairs - but just keeping it real.

Friday, May 2, 2025

On The List

I've slimmed my list of current reading to just four tomes, and one of these is a long term project, this being Finnegans Wake. (I might finish Joyce's final masterpiece/folly in around five years based on current progress. I'm in no hurry.) I'm also resigned to sticking with Henry Vaughan: The Collected Poems, finding enough pleasure here & there in the early stuff to make it worthwhile, despite the temptations offered by John Clare (and others.)

And now I've got Sherlock Holmes out of the way I'm full on with The Four Books by Yan Lianke. I'd not heard of one of China's most acclaimed writers before which is deeply embarrassing. He's good! Very readable. But I still wanted to make room for some non-fiction running parallel to my main read and settled on Ibrahim Abdul-Matin's Green Deen which I picked up at Wardah Books the other day. Very clear and, again, eminently readable - and, deeply practical; possibly a necessary book for me at this stage in my life.

So lots to occupy me over the long weekend. And beyond.

Thursday, May 1, 2025

Ups And Downs

What an odd concoction as a writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was. Genuinely gifted and splendidly clumsy. I'm not at all sure he had any real awareness of his considerable strengths and alarming weaknesses. In his brief Preface to The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, his final and very mixed offering of tales concerning Holmes & Watson, he refers to his more serious literary work, as if convinced of his having some kind of genuine status in the world of letters beyond the brilliance of his creation of the mythic pair. (Astonishingly he chooses to write two of the tales in The Case Book with Holmes as the narrator, when even the most obtuse of readers would be able to tell the writer that's two too many.) Indeed, the poor man lists his works in history, poetry, historical novels, psychic research and the drama in the sad belief that his stuff would somehow survive the ravages of time. As a youngster I really enjoyed The Adventures of Gerard and, I suppose, thought the tales were as well established as those of the Great Detective, and much funnier, but even those are pretty much out of print these days.

Since I finished the beefy Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes today I thought it might be appropriate to say something of the writer at his best, and worst, with a single example of each. Actually I was a bit surprised at just how much I enjoyed the tales in the final collection considering what a poor reputation they have amongst the Holmesian cognoscenti. I've got a feeling that The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger isn't highly thought of, never having seen an adaptation on telly and being aware in reading it that as far as I can tell there's little actual mystery for Holmes to solve. But I loved the evocation of the circus milieu at the centre of the story and the mythic power (there I go again!) behind the characterisation of the titular heroine. I found myself watching my own cinematic adaptation in my mind and knowing the tale could be made to work on screen. Very jolly stuff, indeed!

In stark contrast I was taken aback by the virulence of Conan Doyle's racism in his portrayal of the negro boxer, Steve, in The Adventure of the Three Gables. I think it's a reasonable argument to note that the writer's racist essentialism is never exactly far from the surface in his writing, but the ghastliness of the descriptions of this entirely minor character took me aback, and I'm not claiming the moral high ground of twenty-first century political correctness cum wokeness here. I've never read anything close to just how bad this is in, say, Kipling or Conrad. The good doctor had a deep personal problem, I'm afraid, and it tarnishes his work.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Radically Cool

I'm sure that at some point in the not so distant past I posted something in this Far Place related to how the wonderful Stevie Wonder (see what I did there?) embodied the notion of cool musically, and in various other ways, in the long ago and far away 1970s. Fortunately for me, and you Gentle Reader, that sense of cool is still in evidence on the WWW in terms of various musically informed coves posting some of his great live performances of the period.

So I'm more than happy to repeat my praise for the Great Man and provide a link to a transcendent take on Living For The City which I reckon is better than that on the album. Much as I love Stevie's own drumming on the original, the guy in the video (whom I can't identify, I'm afraid) blows it out of the park, as they say.

And the back-up singers are seriously to die for.

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Not So Good

Heard some bad news about a former colleague in relation to her severe health problems this afternoon. I remember some years back seeing her with some frequency in the gym at work, trying to put into action what her doctor had then recommended, and doing so with some success. A pity it wasn't enough to put all to rights, but that's how it is. Life is deeply unpredictable.

We are left, as so often is the case, with prayer. Part of its necessary power.

Monday, April 28, 2025

Lights Out

Another very busy day. And a highly satisfying one. It helps a lot when the team you're supporting clinches a national championship. (I'm not talking Liverpool here, by the way, just in case you think I've lost my usual sense of grounded rationality.) 

Sadly, though, it's the final day of Syawal & we'll putting away the twinkling lights for another eleven months or thereabouts. But best to look ahead at the year in store than dwell on former glories, eh?

Sunday, April 27, 2025

Cause For Good Cheer






An entirely splendid sort of day so far, with a prata dinner treat still to come! 😁

Must say, I'm more than a bit stoked by the birthday books. A few weeks or months of deep reading pleasure guaranteed therein.

Apologies over the legs above. Not my fault.

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Back Again

We made our way to Arab Street this afternoon for the second time in two days, and I found myself back in Masjid Sultan for the Asr Prayer, still enjoying the carpet therein. Actually the main purpose of our visit wasn't really to pray at the mosque, enjoyable though that was, but to pay a visit to the rather splendid Wardah Books on Bussorah Street. (After quaffing the cup that cheers, that is.)

Happily the shop appears to be thriving, with a new space opened upstairs and a generally more spacious feel than the last time I was there. I've been avoiding going there for some little while now. It's just too tempting in a way that the much larger Kinokuniya outlet at Takashimaya somehow doesn't manage to be. But after passing it the other day my resistance crumbled and I just knew I needed to browse there for an hour or so on the morrow, which I did most profitably. The owners seem to know exactly what will appeal to me, both in terms of the Islamically-themed stock (the majority of the books) and the more general stuff.

The recent announcement of a new branch of Kinokuniya hasn't convinced me that they intend to expand. I suspect we might be in for the closure of the larger pre-existing outlet some time next year, which will mean the city being reduced to just two bookshops. Quite an embarrassment really. But as long as Wardah is around it will help considerably to reduce the pain.

Friday, April 25, 2025

Sitting Still

A day of motion with an hour of stillness, spent in Masjid Sultan, at its centre. Nice sense of diurnal symmetry. Suddenly realised when in the mosque that it was my first time there for Friday Prayers and decided to make the journey more often. The lovely carpet alone would make it worthwhile.

Thursday, April 24, 2025

More Wonders

Another unreasonably busy day. But luckily my little world kept spinning equitably, despite turning a little too quickly for comfort. In fact, it slowed down very nicely in the mid-afternoon to accommodate a lovely cup of tea with The Missus followed immediately by a highly satisfactory game of basketball. (It helps when your favoured team win, and win well, doesn't it?) 

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

World Of Wonders

Carol Rumens has managed it yet again at her wonderful Poem of the Week feature in The Graun. She's picked an absolute belter from the peasant poet, and for some reason I can't figure out the poem in question, which I'll title The Old Pond, though it hasn't really got a title, is entirely unfamiliar to me despite the fact that some of the comments BTL suggest it's well-known. Mind you, it being unfamiliar is quite wonderful in its way since it meant that on Tuesday I could genuinely experience that full-on utterly enchanted and blown away feeling I plugged into so regularly as a teenager.

But here comes the problem, which I seem to remember outlining in a previous post centred on another gem from Clare. I now really, really, really want to get stuck into the closest thing I've got to a Clare Collected, but am committed to reading my Henry Vaughan: The Complete Poems. And that's chugging along nicely, but it's not exactly inspiring since I'm diligently working my way through the early derivative stuff and work in translation which is good in an average sort of way as opposed to the wonderful 'metaphysical' religious poems which are, as stated, wonderful.

Isn't it extraordinary to have so much to wonder at? But, in its way, not such a bad thing to delay gratification and settle for enjoying something craftily put together? Yep, I'll stick with HV for now. I think.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Footsore

It's a bit petty to moan about sore feet, regardless of the fact we have little choice but to stand on them, walk on them, run on them, etc. If feet aren't foundational, I don't know what is. But, as I said, no one likes to hear someone moaning about their feet.

And, in my case, the situation is even sadder. It's not so much my feet as the toes on the end of them, and, more specifically the three toes in the middle of my left foot that I've come here to moan about. They've been sore for ages and I reckon they're going to stay that way. My feet are just too wide, to the point of looking deformed as The Missus has rightly pointed out, and they've been that way since I was a little lad, who needed a special fitting of shoes on account of this. But now, in age, the toes seem to be unnaturally rubbing against each other a lot of the time, especially if I'm walking at speed, and they're continually sore in an unpleasantly burning manner. 

Fortunately when I'm completely focused on something else - rushing to a classroom, keeping going on the elliptical trainer, shouting on the touchline - the pain fades, forgotten. But, unfortunately, it always comes back. Pretty glum, I suppose. Except for one saving detail. Pain that's peripheral, on the end of one's foot, can hurt like crazy, but it remains on the edge, almost as if it's an afterthought, something that doesn't quite belong to the body. In stark contrast, internal pain (I imagine, never, thankfully, having really suffered such except for the odd really bad aching stomach) is somehow at the centre of the self, powerfully destablising.

So, a bit of comfort there, cold in nature, but enough for now.

Monday, April 21, 2025

Wise Words

A very great man once said: Football, bloody hell, eh?!

Today a not-so-great man said: Basketball, bloody hell, eh?!!!

Just saying.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Top Notch

I've been cheerfully startled at the quality of the stories in Yusuf Idris's The Cheapest Nights. For quite a few years now I've naively assumed that Egyptian lit starts and ends with the brilliant Naguib Mafouz, with Nawal El Saadawi offering a powerful by-way into particularly feminist concerns. It turns out I'm definitely wrong on the first count (and most likely patronisingly all over the place on the second.)

There are fifteen short stories in the collection from Yusuf Idris and they are all beautifully crafted, but at least five strike me as absolute classics of the genre, up there with Joyce, Chekov, Hemingway and the like. If I were pushed I'd say that The Dregs of the City, in its evocation of the hopelessness of the poor quarter at the back of the mosque of Al Azhar, comprises in its 40 or so pages an urgent social critique that outdoes that of any equivalent writer from the west. The thing is that somehow he makes us understand that the denizens of the neighborhood in question are not hopeless at all because Shohrat, the servant and unwilling lover of Judge Abdallah, who journeys into that forbidden territory in search of her and his missing wristwatch, is more than a match for him, despite the degradation he visits upon her. The tale escapes summary and easy understanding, a notable characteristic of so much that is in this slim volume.

I suppose I think of Naguib Mafouz as a writer in the tradition of Dickens, considering the sense of The Cairo Trilogy as a sprawling epic featuring real 'characters' in the old-fashioned, but eminently valid, sense of the word. Yusuf Idris strikes me as his antithesis, based on what I've read so far: brutally focused and, somehow, cold in his analysis, yet wonderfully non-judgmental. I'd love to read more, but I've got a feeling that not much of his stuff is available in English translation.

Oh, and by the by, I'm guessing Wadida Wassef's translation for the Penguin Classics edition is excellent since it reads so well.

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Visiting Hours

Spent a few hours out today engaged in visits for Raya. Actually we only went to Kak Kiah's and then dropped Hakim off at his new place, where we scoffed some pizza, but it still felt like a typical busy day in Syawal. A lot of fun in its own way. Better than work, I must say. But then most things are.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Bad Boys

I find myself thinking more and more of the days of my youth, often in the late evening and if I wake in the middle of the night. The period around 1970 tends to dominate, I find, in terms of the deep resonance that much of the quality music of that period held for me. I was finding my way as a callow teenager and beginning to form actual tastes, with a sense of excitement in my self-awareness that I was doing so.

Spurred on by a sudden memory last week of hearing Pete Townshend's The Seeker for the first time I recently listened to it again and was struck by just how obviously wonderful The Who were in their considerable heyday. It seemed axiomatic to me and my mates back then that Townshend represented the best of pop/rock and needed to be looked up to, as did The Who in general. And since I think exactly the same today this does seem to point towards the wisdom of youth. To be honest, it wasn't exactly an opinion I had conjured for myself. I soaked it in from all around me.

Just after enjoying replaying the song and video (which I don't recall ever seeing at that time) I got to thinking of a curious sort of coincidence. All the Big Four British pop/rock bands of the 60's had their Bad Boy sort of creative-thinker-cum-guru figure, in their own way. Townshend for The Who. Ray Davies for The Kinks - with the bad-boy-ness sort of split, Oasis-style, between Ray & brother Dave. John Lennon for The Beatles - with the creativity bit divided between him and Paul, but not the bad-boy-ness. And who exactly for The Stones? Well, initially Brian Jones, I suppose. But then it's Jagger and Richards - and, in the final analysis, I reckon it's Keef on his own, Mick being fundamentally the conventional capitalist, despite appearances. And, if I'm not mistaken, Peter, Ray, John and Keith all attended art school. (Though I might be wrong about that. I'm too lazy to verify, and it's a nice thought anyway.)

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Real News

Very much enjoyed seeing a story relating to life beyond our solar system making it to the top of the news in the Graun today - the online version. It would nice to think it was the headline story in the print edition, but I doubt it would have pushed to one side the depressing stuff that passes itself off as international politics these days.

Must say, if there is Life on Mars, as a very great man once memorably asked in the days of my youth, they must be looking at us and thinking what a god awful small affair we've made of it all down here.

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Conspiracy Theory

For the last two days for some reason best known to itself The Universe has been conspiring against me. Every time I've tried to get on with my marking, trying to hit tight, unforgiving deadlines, a minor crisis here and a slightly less minor one there has derailed me for long enough to build a sweat. Not sure what it's got against me. The Universe, I mean.

I explained the situation to The Missus earlier and even she nodded in sympathy, rather than subjecting me to her usual scepticism regarding my wilder knowledge claims. Mind you, she was sort of grinning as well. Odd, that.

Monday, April 14, 2025

Fullness

15 Syawal, 1446

Thought I'd put today's date according to the Islamic calendar as a reminder that we're at the halfway point of the month following Ramadhan and, in terms of the lunar month, that entails a full moon. It certainly looked full to bursting this morning, amiably glowing above my place of work, almost lighting the way. (I'm positively waxing poetic, eh?)

Anyway, it looked good to me. Just saying.

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Yearnings

Reading in the news this morning that reggae singer Max Romeo has died triggered an odd reaction in me. It took me back to disco night at Hyde Town Hall in 1969, listening to what was then the singer's notorious banned single Wet Dream, only played twice on the BBC before their ban on it, and watching a line of very young ladies (probably around my own age, maybe a year or so older) dance to it in a very sprightly manner.

I don't think that up to that time I'd ever heard anything quite so explicit, and found it very edgy indeed. The fact that the girls dancing seemed to react with a kind of rhythmically engaged indifference added to the odd power of my feelings: sort of excited, perplexed, disturbed and a bit frightened by it all. I can actually conjure a vivid image of the moment & the dance even now; but today, this morning, as I did so, it all seemed just a bit sad and very charming.

And the same is true to some degree of what I felt on reading All On a Summer's Night by Yusuf Idris from the collection The Cheapest Nights which I referenced yesterday. Except beyond evoking sadness and charm the brilliantly crafted story had a most powerful impact on me in other ways when I read it this morning, just before reading the news. At one point, indeed, I thought it might take a turn towards brutal horror when the group of young fellahin on which it focuses are denied any release of the sexual urges that torment them and turn on their companion for setting them on fire with his entirely false account of an encounter with a very generous lady in a near-by town. But they hold themselves back, just, from beating him to death. And the story is as comical as it is sad. Inevitably so, I suppose, when dealing with the yearnings of very young men.

So, an odd parallel, though the young Brian was dealing with his inchoate urges at just thirteen years old (if I've got my sums right) and Idris's young men are clearly just that - men - and deeply confused, deprived and dangerous ones.

By the way, since my bit of reading in the early morning it's actually been a day of almost non-stop work, which I suppose is no bad thing when you consider the dark places music and fiction can take you to.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Not Much Choice

Am attempting valiantly, but somewhat vainly, to kickstart my reading of fiction over the weekend having stalled over the last week or so. But I'm a bit stuck as to whether to devote my full attention to the short stories in Yusuf Idris's The Cheapest Nights or get moving into the twelve tales in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, having now completed His Last Bow. Must say, I enjoyed the last two adventures in Conan Doyle's penultimate collection which seemed to me a fitting conclusion in aesthetic terms to his saga of the great detective. The shift to the third person narrative in the titular tale works really well and the valedictory tone created is genuinely satisfying. But I suppose that the aesthetics of it all had little to do with keeping a popular readership satisfied and it was inevitable that the stories would keep being churned out long after the edge had been well and truly blunted.

On the other hand the six stories I've read so far from Yusuf Idris being entirely fresh to me - never even having heard of the writer until I was given the volume as a gift a few months back - are all 'edge' as far as I'm concerned. But it's a bleakly uncomfortable kind of edge such that finishing one harsh little parable leaves me with little in the way of excitement to get on with the next, despite the obvious quality of the material. I wonder if the stories are popular in Egypt? The blurb tells me the writer is acclaimed and well-known in his native land and I think I can see why from what I've read so far.

Perhaps I'll just keep ping-ponging between the two writers. There's a kind of entertainment value to be found in doing that sometimes.

Friday, April 11, 2025

Something Wise


Received a message and picture in the very early morning, before doing the Dawn Prayer, concerning our feathered friend above, a wild owl, having found its way into our premises. Was hoping to see it for myself once I set out to work, but by then it was raining heavily, so that put an end to that project. Sorry to have missed it, but glad it was here. A blessing of sorts.

Thursday, April 10, 2025

In Surplus

On days when I feel swamped I sometimes get to wondering - only briefly, if I have time - whether our Tech Overlords realised that the fruits of their work were likely to be poisoned; that too much information isn't terribly healthy for our pitifully limited species. If they did, then that tends to suggest they are really rather wicked; if they didn't, that suggests they are more than a little foolish. Either way, it's not such a good look.

Luckily I don't have too much time to dwell on the unpalatable. And now I'm off to get back to the toad, Work, on another less than profitable information-related task.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

High Energy

I was feeling a bit listless around 8.00 this morning. That was a bit odd as a meeting I'd been scheduled to attend was canceled leaving me with some unexpectedly free time. Normally I'd have been happily celebrating, but then came this mild slump. I tried the reliable remedy of a cup of hot, sweet tea and that certainly brought some cheer, but didn't really deal with the energy deficit, if you know what I mean.

Then I found the solution. All it took was 4 minutes and 30 seconds of The Clash blasting out a thunderous Clampdown live at the Lewisham Odeon and normal service was restored. It kept me going for the rest of the day, in fact. Everyone should try it!

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

While It Lasts

I reckon I got thinking about Dad's lack of attendance of football matches in his middle age yesterday because somewhere in the back of my mind was the fact that today is the anniversary of Mum's death. She lived almost four decades longer than her husband (sounds odd to me, thinking of Dad in that way) but I don't think she ever got over losing him - though she did find plenty to enjoy in those years.

I'm guessing she really enjoyed her final job, as a barmaid at Denton Working's Club, for example. She only started that job after his death, actually partly as a way of being allowed into an exclusively 'men's club', where a lady had to be in the company of her spouse to get in. Part of her enjoyment was being good at the job - a natural for the banter at the bar and brilliant at serving quickly, and working out the cost of a complicated round at high speed. I watched her in action more than once and was impressed.

And another thing. I think she got a kick out of being a very senior barmaid in terms of her actual age, being aware that nearly all those customers who didn't know her well, and hadn't known Dad, thought she was a lot younger than she was. If my calculations are correct, she worked until at least 70-years-old. Possibly longer. She once told me about joining in gleefully with some fellows at the bar in praise of a lady, who was younger than her, as 'wonderful for her age'.

Sad, but inevitable, that age caught up with her eventually. At some point the job just became too much for her, I think. But it was good while it lasted.

Monday, April 7, 2025

A Puzzle

Enjoyed an excellent game of rugby in the afternoon at the National Stadium. Also managed to enjoy a coffee & tea as I watched, which is a lot more than I managed to get hold of watching Stockport County back in December in the bracing cold of Manchester.

Meditating on my experiences watching footy & cricket & rugby over the years has brought a perplexing question to my mind. It has occurred to me, rather suddenly today, that Dad never took me to any of United’s games when I was a kid, though he was a big fan. In fact, I can’t remember him going at all to games, though he would have only been in his early forties in the period I’m thinking about. And that's the age when Saturdays are often set aside for the Big Game.

I remember him going to a match (I assume involving Man Utd, though I'm not sure) with a couple of my uncles when we were on holiday in Blackpool once and Mum and various aunties not approving. The men played a bit of prank when they got back, pretending one had incurred a black eye in a fight, and fell about laughing at the ladies when they were being rebuked, suddenly revealing they’d made up the whole thing, and the ‘injury’, which they neatly faked, wasn’t real. But that’s the only time I can recall him actually going to a game.

So what was stopping him?

I sort of took it all for granted back then as just the way things were. But age can do strange things to you, I find. You start questioning the 'obvious' of all those years ago. At least, that's what I'm finding myself increasingly doing.

Sunday, April 6, 2025

At A Cost

Reading an excellent piece today on the environmental costs of generative AI on the Channel News Asia website has made me a bit guilty about posting that rather funky, if unflattering, portrait of myself yesterday at this Far Place, since, as you may have guessed, some version of AI played a considerable part in its making. I'm not sure that the fun involved was worth adding to the pace of climate change, even if it only involved the teeny-weenyest bit of speeding up of what now feels an inevitable process. It's the sense of complicity in destroying the planet that's worrying, but, then, that's true of pretty much every aspect of my (and yours) over-privileged existence.

This all put me in mind of a talk I attended last year related to the wonders of AI in general by some professor chappie who knew an awful lot about how AI actually works. Early in the talk he spelled out the environmental costs - not quite as brutally as in the article, but still in a stark manner. This was something I had no inkling of then, and wish I still didn't now. But having referenced the costs his obvious enthusiasm regarding the possibilities of AI took over, and he appeared to overlook the problem. (Sad to say, the talk didn't stand out in terms of joined-together thinking.) And finally things took another turn in the Q & A following his concluding points as he pointed out that the plans for a new data centre in Singapore doing the business related to artificial intelligence will means it functions as part of some kind of virtuous cycle of energy such that nothing really gets lost, somehow or other. The thing is, though, that there wasn't time for him to expand on that since his talk had overrun. And I can't see any real reference to this development in the article. But maybe I misunderstood the prof, or don't really grasp the details in the CNA piece.

To be honest, the prospects for mitigating the ill-effects of the use of generative AI in terms of the environmental costs look pretty bleak, even though folks who know about this stuff appear to be trying to do something. I just can't see that that something will be anything like enough of a something to be meaningful.

Saturday, April 5, 2025

A Portrait Of The Teacher As An Old Man


The not terribly flattering representation of my good self above was captured & created by its makers last Wednesday at our Professional Learning Day. Must say, I look to be engaged in a great deal of learning judging by my expression of severely rapt concentration, I'm sure you'll agree.

By the way, the wording represented on my rather spiffy hoodie is entirely incorrect, a sign that at least one of the creators of the image must have been hallucinating. The letters should (obviously) read MUFC. And the 'Old' place is 'Trafford', not some ancient 'university'.

Friday, April 4, 2025

Something Missing

Got a lot done today, including managing to find time for a conversation about Joyce's Ulysses. That alone made it feel like time well spent. But a pity I didn't carve out a space to read a page or three. Still, can't have everything, eh?

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Living Dangerously (Sort Of)

I'm in one of those periods when I enact my rather pitiful version of living dangerously. How so? Let me give you two 'real life' illustrations, Gentle Reader.

Number One: At one point today I found myself moving particularly quickly to get to an important 'event' on time. This involved moving down some stairs. Fortunately I had the wherewithal to remind myself that, within recent memory, I've come pretty close to losing my footing doing the same thing and was lucky not to have taken a pretty significant tumble. I happened to chat with a colleague about this a few weeks back who referred to having done something similar and he was telling me that with age we can have problems with what is termed 'depth perception' by those who know these things. His advice to me, and mine to him, was to keep hold of the nearest available handrail when we feel we have no choice but to move at speed. Today I took my own, and my colleague's, advice and all was well.

Number Two: In the early evening I discovered that I'd somehow failed to take note of an important event (not in inverted commas this time as it really is an event in the usual meaning of the term) taking place over the weekend at which my presence is a must. As I get older I'm increasingly forgetful, which can have its advantages in terms of not worrying overmuch over stuff, but has the built-in disadvantage of being professionally a bit risky. Anyway, said event is now noted and I'll be there, God willing.

So there it is, my version of living on the edge. Nothing really happened, but it was exciting in its way, as you may agree. (But do feel free to disagree. I won't take offence.)

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Normal Service Resumed

I went back to reading The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes after Ramadhan reached its happy conclusion and now have around fifteen tales left to go before I can say I have completed the canon. Unfortunately there's something of a critical consensus that by the last couple of collections, His Last Bow and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle had run out of steam - and, possibly, real interest in his creations - and was running on empty. I'm five stories into the penultimate collection and I can see what the critics mean.

But having said that I must say that the fourth of the novellas featuring the Great Detective, The Valley of Fear, which I read back in February, struck me as being the best of the bunch. This is despite the fact that like A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four it features the clumsy telling of an extended back-story after Holmes has solved the initial mystery. In this case, though, there's a genuine puzzle as to how exactly the characters in the back-story relate to those in the first half of the murder mystery, and the pay-off of the ending is strong and satisfying. Plus the writer invests his fearful valley in the United States, which features in the second half, with real menace such that the reader doesn't miss Holmes & Watson (who aren't there, of course) at all.

I suspect I won't really miss them either once I get to the end of the clunky, chunky Complete. I seem to have been reading it forever, even though it's been only some seven months (with two month-long breaks, I hasten to add.)

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

No Fooling

Lots to do, so essentially a serious day. Was witness to the usual kind of folly encountered in my line of work. So managed a smile here & there. But not enough to provoke actual laughter.

Funny how, as a child, one spent a fair amount of time just laughing. Funny that nothing is quite so funny any more.

Monday, March 31, 2025

O Happy Day

Hari Raya Puasa, Eid ul-Fitr; 1 Syawal, 1446

06.55

Just completed the Dawn Prayer after donning my baju raya. Now sipping on a milo, which feels happily transgressive somehow, even though it very happily isn't. Will be on our way to the second session for Hari Raya Prayers at Masjid Darussalam quite soon - but should happily have time for a big coffee - my first for a month - ahead of that.

10.00





Now back from the masjid. A beautiful morning - overcast, with just the slightest touch of drizzling rain now & then, enough to cool and refresh. Noi is about to continue her preparations for our guests this afternoon. And I'll get a bit of work done. And I mean a 'bit'.

14.05

Noi has just invited one or two other folk around, beyond the expected guests from family. She advised Boon to bring a container. Sounds like she's been cooking on an epic scale. But since she stayed up all night doing 'stuff' - as she is wont to do every year on the eve of Raya - this is not exactly news.

17.50

Our first tranche of guests have been sent happily on their way(s). Now preparing for Part 2 of the proceedings. It's all go!

22.06
And having said farewell to the second tranche of well-fed visitors there's just time to wish everyone everywhere Eid Mubarak! and we're off to a brief sojourn in the Land of Nod.

Sunday, March 30, 2025

A Bit Of A Diversion

29 Ramadhan, 1446

During the vacation week, some fourteen days ago, I realised I would be easily able to complete the reading I'd planned for Fasting Month. Isa Kamari's Pilgrimage was proving an easy, quick read, and, if anything, I needed to slow myself down in my second encounter with Ziauddin Sardar's fascinating Reading The Qur'an in order to have time to genuinely reflect on ideas that powerfully resonated with me. I deliberately spun out my reading, finishing the book yesterday, happily musing upon its interpretation in its final sections of the role of Science and the Arts in Islamic thought. But this meant I had ample time to get on with something else of reasonable substance over the second half of the month - and I wondered whether to simply get back to my 'on-going' reading of fiction (which meant resuming my chunky The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes.)

In the event I hit upon a neat solution to this mild dilemma. It struck me that having come to  the conclusion some time back that I could more than happily buy into the proofs for the existence of God offered by Prof Ed Feser, I wasn't capable of explaining any of the proofs in genuine detail to anyone who might be foolhardy enough to ask me to do so. Basically this reflected lazy thinking on my part. Having completely accepted Aristotelean metaphysics - indeed, having felt their illuminating power - I couldn't give a coherent outline of Aristotle's system even to myself.

So it was that I decided a reread of Prof Feser's The Last Superstition was in order. In addition to providing the exposition of Aristotelean ideas I needed to reacquaint myself with and thoroughly take on board, I thought I might enjoy the writer's indulgence in what is often a bracingly funny polemic against the self-styled New Atheists who were so vocal and full of themselves at the onset of this century. In the event I thoroughly enjoyed re-visiting all the jokes and, this time round, I reckon I have a good chance of really internalising the key ideas that kept escaping me. And just to make sure they lodge in this tired old brain of mine I've decided to reread the other two key works by the prof that sit on my shelves ahead of Ramadhan 1447, insy'allah. 

Saturday, March 29, 2025

The Bigger Picture

28 Ramadhan, 1446

We enjoyed an excellent natter with John & Jeanette last Sunday, gainfully zooming in across the miles. In the course of our less-than-in-depth discussion of issues of a geo-political colouring it emerged that the Simpsons and their social circles are finding it difficult to avoid reference to the current POTUS, even though nobody wants to go there (to the issues, I mean, as opposed to the actual place. Though I don't think anyone's particularly keen to fly the Atlantic as things stand.) They were wondering if that's the way of things in this Far Place and, yes, I reckon it is. Reference to the craziness of the governing regime is sparing, since it's deeply depressing, but ultimately irresistible, since its's deeply real.

So even as I seek to cultivate my spiritual garden in Fasting Month I can't help but expose myself to Trump news at a glance. And then wish I hadn't.

Friday, March 28, 2025

In Production

27 Ramadhan, 1446









Readers familiar with the musings featured in this Far Place will know that the final days of the Fasting Month see heightened activity in this household. Not from Yours Truly, I hasten to add, but from The Missus who dedicates her remarkable energy and talents to putting the house in order whilst simultaneously magicking up lots of festive goodies. Some of these are intended for consumption within the premises, but most are sold to those who've been made aware of the magic involved. These now constitute quite a number.

There's something strangely comforting about being surrounded by biscuits & cakes & the like even when you're not actually munching on them.

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Keeping It Fresh

26 Ramadhan, 1446

For the last couple of years my choices of Islamic-themed materials for reading in the Holy Month have gone well. I'm on track for finishing Ziauddin Sardar's excellent Reading The Qur'an ahead of Eid. There's been at least one penetrating idea on every page and often more. It's another example of my re-reading of a text I thought I knew quite well being quite startling in terms of the 'freshness' of the experience.

And I found reading Isa Kamari's Pilgrimage, an English translation of a selection of his poems related to his experience of the Haj in 2001, equally fulfilling - and helpful in my appreciation of the Malay language as the originals are published alongside Harry Aveling's deft translations. In this case I wouldn't characterise the poems as 'penetrating' in their evocations of what it's like to fulfil the demands of Haj; rather their lean simplicity and sincerity conjure that singular yet shared experience in a way I found deeply sympathetic to my own rather less articulated feelings.

And now I'm off to do some actual reading as opposed to just prattling about it.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Enlightenment

25 Ramadhan, 1446




When you're seeking for illumination sometimes just a little light is enough.

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Weakness

24 Ramadhan, 1446

When I suffered my breakdown back in September 2022 I learnt a deep lesson about vulnerability. Quite a simple, indeed, obvious one, but a lesson that's easy to forget - certainly for myself, and I suspect for most people. Here's a simple statement of that lesson: We are all painfully vulnerable, and wisdom lies in understanding how easily we, and our little worlds, can fall apart. I think I'm a bit wiser now for cultivating that awareness and part of the wisdom of the Fasting Month is getting in touch head-on with that vulnerability. Weakness is written into the fabric of the human condition, and an awareness that there have been more than a few moments in which I have not handled the demands of the month in an entirely robust manner is a reminder of that essential, unavoidable truth.

When I come to celebrate getting through the month (as, God willing, I hope I'll be able to do in just a few days) I'll be reminding myself that any celebration should be of just getting through. And not triumphantly so. Just keeping going. Holding on.

Just keeping it real.

Monday, March 24, 2025

Distinctly Uneasy

23 Ramadhan, 1446

Some days are better than others. This one wasn't. 

But I'll be breaking my fast in roughly an hour from now. Which puts everything in proportion.

Sunday, March 23, 2025

No Longer At Ease

22 Ramadhan, 1446

I've been enjoying a typically fairly lazy day of fasting, but this marks the final day of the vacation week, which means I need to get back in gear for work tomorrow. It isn't that I've been entirely neglecting the demands of my job over the last few days, but I have enjoyed relaxing more than somewhat, especially in terms of being able to nod off pretty much as and when I've felt the need to. Which has been often.

That luxury is about to be denied to me, I'm afraid. Still, good to finish the month being really tested.

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Accepting My Limitations

21 Ramadhan, 1446

I know that I'm prone to think too much of numbers and targets. It can be useful to do so, to a reasonable degree, but over-thinking these things becomes tediously wearing. There's really not much point in counting the days of fasting. It won't speed up the month. And the whole point is to slow things down anyway.

Another number I found haunting me just now was the 50 minutes I spent on the elliptical trainer prior to breaking the fast. I'm perfectly okay with that number, but in the initial phases of my work-out I'd been seriously wondering about pushing up to 55 minutes and had pretty much developed the intention to do so by the 30 minute mark. The problem was that at 40 minutes I knew I was running out of the necessary reserves fast and it would be foolhardy to push it too hard just for the sake of a number.

In the event I gratefully, and wisely, stopped at 50 minutes; but I'm still just that little bit irritated by what now seems a bit of a failure. Following my own logic I can see I need to translate that irritation into a useful target for the future. As ever, the necessary wisdom of patience comes in more than handy.

Friday, March 21, 2025

Within Limitations

20 Ramadhan, 1446

Part of the fascination of the Fasting Month for me is how the discipline of not eating and drinking in the hours of daylight translates into the wonder of being able to do so once Maghrib signals its arrival. I've just finished a wondrously tasty confection of chicken & potatoes and it felt positively princely to do so.

Without the struggle the reward would be severely diminished.

We benefit immeasurably from our recognition of limits.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Further Limitations

19 Ramadhan, 1446

I'm looking at a reading list that my cousin John passed to me back in December. It's headed Beer, Blokes N' Books and features the titles of some 70+ novels his informal reading 'club' have tackled over the last couple of years (or possibly longer, I'm not too sure.) What I'm struck by is the sheer range of material they've engaged in, including a few meaty classics, with Middlemarch scoring particularly well. John explained to me how the ratings applied to each book were worked out, but I can't recall the process. I just know it sounded remarkably thorough for a group of blokes presumably reading just for the heck of it.

The thing is that John showed me the list almost deferentially, as if half-apologising for intruding on my territory. Yet the list puts my limited reading of the last couple of years to shame. I'd not even heard of their highest ranked tome, Kate Grenville's The Secret River, and had to google it just now. So much for my area of expertise, eh?

Ziauddin Sardar makes a big deal of The Holy Qur'an's call for humility, and rightly so. I interpret it as simply a recognition of the reality of our place in the vastness of it all. We're not up to very much, I'm afraid. But that can't be an excuse for not trying. And good on the blokes for giving it more than a go on the fiction front.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Limitations

18 Ramadhan, 1446

Ziauddin Sardar's Reading The Qur'an is in many ways inspirational, but can also weigh upon one. He wonderfully spells out what being a Muslim is about in terms of the expectations upon followers of the faith and evokes a deep desire in this reader to live up to those expectations. But he also ruefully acknowledges the ways in which the community has fallen, and continues to fall short. And the individual has to feel that failure.

Case in point: his pages dealing with Nature and the Environment comprise a stirring exposition upon the ecological message of the Holy Book, and the unequivocal nature of that message and our duties attendant upon it could not be clearer. All creation is sacred. Yes. And an awesome responsibility. So easy to neglect.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Half A Century Later

17 Ramadhan, 1446.

It's been a few years since I zoned out listening to synth-meisters Tangerine Dream. But I managed to do so before breaking the fast today. I must say, Phaedra sounds as good, if not better, than ever. And it felt good to get back in touch with the 18-year-old hippy quietly resident within. 

Monday, March 17, 2025

The Final Stretch

16 Ramadhan, 1446

Time has a way of slowing down in the last hour before breaking the fast. Today is no exception. And it contrives to move at quite some pace after Maghrib, as it will no doubt manage to do later in the evening.

Acceptance of its essential slipperiness is wise, but not mandatory.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Gifts

15 Ramadhan, 1446

11.40

A small highlight early in the day. Just read a gently moving article about a father and his autistic son and the healing-cum-expressive power of music. Amongst other things it manages to capture the magical power of the Beatles, a reminder of the gifts abundantly afforded us even in times of deprivation.

23.15

Got back about half an hour ago from an outing to Geylang. We were there partly to pay the last of our zakat, but mainly to enjoy the bazaar for Ramadhan. Lots of light & noise & energy, but not necessarily coming from us. The usual abundance. We live in a fortunate place enjoying fortunate times. For now, that is.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Off Guard

14 Ramadhan, 1446

Exiting the gym, having concluded a pre-buka stint, for the briefest of moments I found myself imagining drinking at the water fountain downstairs, as I would have been about to do at any time outside the Fasting Month. The picture in my mind didn't last long enough, however, to create anything like a genuine sense of longing, and I was able to let it fade with no sense of regret at all. But the moment served as a reminder of what a creature of habit I am, and how the experience of the fast teaches one to be on guard against the taken-for-granted, the thoughtlessly habitual.

I was reminded of how destabilising such moments are in the first couple of days of fasting when they last long enough to create that horrible sense of expectation leading to a kind of crushing regret. Fasting gets easier for most of us, I think, simply because of learning to keep those moments of yearning under control, and learning that the monkey mind can be re-progammed (to horribly mix a metaphor.)

I also found myself mulling over another aspect of my experience of fasting that I've found puzzling over the years. On those occasions when I've been fasting for a single day (as in the day prior to Hari Raya Haji, which is not a compulsory fast) I've never really been troubled by those off guard moments. Perhaps this is because I'm more single-mindedly focused on the single day fasts, whilst beginning a long fast involves a somewhat more diffused consciousness stemming from the awareness that there will be time ahead to change a number of aspects of the self.

It's all about intentionality, and the development thereof - a simple yet profoundly important notion, enshrined in the Islamic insistence on establishing one's niat for the fast on each and every day.

Friday, March 14, 2025

Gathering

13 Ramadhan, 1446

17.45

We're off down town in a few minutes to join some of my Muslim colleagues for our annual Iftar at an eatery in Arab Street. A sign that our experience of the month is starting to expand beyond the confines of the domestic experience. As ever Ramadhan contrives to blend the deeply personal with the inclusively public.

22.55


There's a lot to be said for keeping things bright & cheerful, as in the photo above. That's how Kampong Glam looks (bright & cheerful, I mean), and it proved well worth a visit.

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Losing Oneself

12 Ramadhan, 1446

Lost myself just now in a trip to the gym. In two ways.

First of all, the 50 minutes I spent on the elliptical trainer passed almost effortlessly, after the first clumsy 10 minutes or so. I double-checked with my diary of last year a couple of days ago and realised that I'd reduced my work-outs back then from the usual one hour of cardio in view of the general demands of the month and this proved efficacious. So that's what I'm doing this year and tonight the strategy bore fruit. I lost all awareness of the sweaty self peddling away, going up that imaginary hill, and got lost thinking of other stuff - especially what I'll be doing in lessons early next term.

And then, walking back after completing the session, I encountered a gorgeous moon, not quite full, but nearly there as the lunar month moves to its mid-point. There're few better ways of annihilating one's personal concerns than soaking in impersonal beauty.


Postscript: Just thought of a third way in which the essential me was lost. After stepping off the elliptical trainer Face ID completely failed to recognise me. I assume I must have aged sufficiently through the exercise to be rendered unrecognisable. It's coming to something when even your i-phone doesn't know who you are, eh?

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Anger Management

11 Ramadhan, 1446

I'm very prone to lose sight of the fact that the fast is not just about abstaining from food and drink. There's much else to exercise restraint over, especially in terms of excessive emotion. Given the peculiarities of my character that involves taking care not to get unreasonably angry.

Fortunately the natural process of aging has served to calm my propensity to explosive outbursts of rage. But I'm aware of a kind of low-lying irritability over the more debilitatingly foolish aspects of my life, especially in relation to the toad, Work. The value of fasting in relation to this problematic feature of my character is that I'm forced to keep things in proportion, and avoid harping upon the silliness-cum-unfairness of it all. Indeed, I have no choice but to laugh it all off, which brings considerable ease.

Sometimes you need to do something radical simply to achieve equilibrium.

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

A Prediction

10 Ramadhan, 1446

At some point in the next two or three days Noi will say something to the effect that we're already one-third of the way through the fast and it's passing so quickly. And I will agree, because I will genuinely feel the same way in that moment. But part of me will be thinking that time is passing very slowly indeed.

And another part will enjoy the paradoxical nature of all this, and think it so typical of the month. All very predictable yet freshly experienced and understood.

Monday, March 10, 2025

Testing Times

9 Ramadhan, 1446

After an enjoyably relaxing weekend with no deadlines in sight, today felt very different. Very long. A bit of a test. I recall checking the time around 10.45 am and thinking it really should be later in the day, but it wasn't. And the day took its time reaching the magic 7.20 pm, since when it has decided to speed up.

But it's a funny thing about such difficult days in Fasting Month. They remind you of what it's about. Without the struggle there would be no point. Restraint is a hard won virtue. But it makes itself available to the unlikeliest subjects.

Sunday, March 9, 2025

A New Routine

8 Ramadhan, 1446

Glancing through some of my posts from this time last year I realised that I'd managed to get in some sessions at the gym ahead of breaking the fast, to no ill effect. Funnily enough I couldn't recall what that felt like in reality, but decided to give it a go today and see if it was a viable option for this year's Ramadhan.

It was a bit tough, let me tell you, but I managed. I set out to see if a full 60 minute stint on the elliptical trainer was possible, and up to the half hour mark I wouldn't have ruled it out. But 10 minutes later it was obvious I was struggling big-time to keep the wheels turning at anything like a reasonable rate, so I was happy to conclude proceedings after 50 minutes. Mind you, I followed this with my full routine on the weights without too much of a struggle, so the experiment turned out a success in my eyes. Now I'm keen to check my day-to-day diary from last year to see exactly how long I lasted then.

Actually breaking the fast after all this came as a considerable relief, but a pleasant one, so I'll be replaying the routine sometime soon.

Saturday, March 8, 2025

Crashing And Communing

7 Ramadhan, 1446

The Missus saw fit to comment earlier in the day that I seemed very weak, and she was not wrong. I found it difficult to stay awake from the moment I got out of bed. I'd intended to get a good deal of reading done and some focused listening to sweet sounds, but spent a good deal of time dozing. Happily, enough. But lazily so in retrospect.

It was a good thing, then, that we'd arranged a meet-up with the gang at Woodlands to break the fast. The evening turned out suitably lively, in some part making up for the lack of direction of the rest of the day. And now I'm making ready for bed, intending to do a bit of reading to make up for the lack thereof during the hours of daylight.

I'm pretty sure, by the way, that I'll sleep well. My body is telling me I very much needed to catch-up on the zzzzzs, a sign that the day has not exactly been wasted after all.

Friday, March 7, 2025

Illuminations

6 Ramadhan, 1446

Whilst I've been galloping through his Muhammad For Beginners, my progress through Ziauddin Sardar's Reading the Qur'an: The Contemporary Relevance of the Sacred Text of Islam has been a good deal more leisurely and even more rewarding. When I first read it, probably a decade ago at a guess, I found myself very much in agreement with its basic positions on quite a few issues. But I didn't then grasp quite how deeply illuminating Sardar's analysis of the faith is. On this reading I find myself gripped by the explanatory power of his readings, and the precision of detail involved.

In his reading of the opening passage of Sura Al-Baqara, for example, his observation on what he terms the distributive nature of the Islamic worldview, in relation to the phrase spend of what We have provided them and the subsequent reference to prospering captures the essence of what the sacred text brings us to understand of a healthy relationship with money. The notion of a sense of generosity being central to the genuine prosperity of a person or nation is deeply sane, yet undercuts entirely the shabby paradigms concerning wealth that imprison us.