And yet another show. Tonight we're off to Wild Rice@ Funan for Tunggu Sekejap: The P. Ramlee Suite and I'm looking forward to more than a few good tunes. A nice way to round off what has been quite a celebratory day in its way.
Its the start of the June vacation, for one. And I got a clean bill of health from my back doc this morning, for two. And, for three, Noi and I are happily recalling 31 May, 1997. The start of something special.
The show I watched on Wednesday night was Phantom of the Opera, accompanying some classes who were attending. I got the impression that the students were impressed, and rightly so, given the stellar production values. But it left me cold for some reason. I suppose the fact I've seen it twice before and knew what to expect didn't help. And I've never really bought into the storyline. The first time I saw it I remember thinking that it would have been a good idea if the phantom did away with the good guy instead of the entirely predictable ending we got. The thinking man's musical it isn't.
But the first time round I enjoyed the music, with which I was pretty familiar from recordings owned by friends like Tony. I was impressed by the seemingly effortless flow of memorable, lush melodies. And I went on Wednesday determined to listen closely to details of the musical arrangements. Only to find it all somewhat banal, a bit flat, more than a bit predictable.
Something's changed. My ears, I suppose.
I once surprised an ex-student when I told him that the thing I thought was most important in a teacher was the capacity to keep going regardless. Some years later I find I haven't changed my mind. The thing I did best today was unheroically to just keep going. That meant hitting my target for marking at 9.30 pm. Happy to say I got there in the end.
It's very odd for me to be out on a Wednesday night in the middle of the working week; and even odder for me to be at the theatre watching a show, without Noi next to me. She was, and is, at the airport, seeing off one of her chums.
And another odd thing: I can't really say I had a great time watching the show in question, well-crafted and well-performed as it was. But it was good to see a lot of people around me, young ones at that, clearly having a good time. Which is all that matters, really.
Noi got back from Melaka, where she'd spent last night and the morning, in time for the Maghrib Prayer and then we chatted about stuff, as usual, ate together, as usual, and watched a bit of the telly, as usual. So a perfect evening, as usual.
As I mentioned a couple of days back, I enjoyed reading Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet - a novel of the plague, about the death of Shakespeare's son (sorry, no spoiler alert, but it's obvious) whilst basking in the weekend sun. But, in truth, I've been enjoying reading it whatever the circumstances since it's just so very, very good. How does the writer know so much about what everyone back then was thinking and what really happened? It's magic - but sleight of hand magic, not the real thing (as practised by Agnes - Ann Hathaway, that is) in the book. She doesn't know (Ms O'Farrell, that is), she couldn't know, but she does. And now, so do I.
What she could know, of course, are the details of daily life in the England, the Stratford, of 1580-ish to 1596 (I think.) She'll have done her research, I guess, but magically it doesn't read like research.
Literature = magic that works. (Like Science, but better in terms of actual spell-casting.)
14.40
It's hot here, very. And I mean hot in that uncompromisingly saturating way that marks High Summer in a Place that has no real seasons. I'm sure most folks are grumbling about the sweatiness of it all. But I love it. Must be my reptilian blood. I can see no other explanation.
Walked across around noon to my workplace and then over the road for a cuppa and a read at the eatery there. Soaked in the warmth gleefully.
18.15
And it was not exactly cool in the gym just now, despite the air-conditioning. Struggled to get a super-sticky t-shirt off after getting back. And now struggling to get another couple of hours of work done to ensure I hit the ground running for the week ahead. But I'm not complaining. (Well, I am, to be honest, but too loudly, I hope.)
20.40
Cheese and tomato sandwiches appropriate for a warm evening now being addressed. Decided to stay cool by listening to Allen Toussaint laying down some New Orleans funk. Loudly. (Good job The Missus is not around to give feedback, eh?)
Made my way up to Holland Village in the middle of the day, in between bouts of marking of the international variety. A good way to shake out the cobwebs.
And it looks like the cobwebs are being shaken around at the village with a new shopping precinct opened now at the back of the old hawker centre. As usual it features the same outlets you see in every mall. Lots of coffee shops. So I took a perverse delight in supping on the cheap stuff from one of the old hawker stalls. Enjoyed reading my book there - Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, in case you are curious - and generally not being part of the crowd.
Now back in my very comfortable, though slightly lonely, homestead and just played a touchingly late version by a very elderly crowd of Pogues of a great song of exile. Suits my outsider mood. Just temporary (the mood) as are all things.
Noi has travelled north to Maison KL with her chum Rohana, leaving me to get on with negotiating the final days of the term. I'm guessing that Rohana makes for better company than myself, weighed down as I am with the Toad, work. So good for Noi!
And not too bad for me, thank you, as she's left me with more than ample provisions and an unstirred silence in which to work - and occasionally fill with varieties of splendid noise.
And now I'm off to munch on a delectable shepherd's pie. Not bad, eh?!
My latest stint as a marker for the International Baccalaureate Organisation is now underway. And I'm reminded right away of what a small world it is in terms of reaching to help colleagues in various nations deal with the vicissitudes of maintaining the same standards when grading essays; and what a big world it is in terms of everyone being in their own time zones. Not easy to keep up a dialogue in such circumstances.
I've done a lot of thinking over the years about the nature of Art and its place in our lives. I'm not saying my thoughts have had any great depth and, to be honest, they've usually been the thoughts of others that I've temporarily purloined and played around with. But there has been a lot of them.
What I've never really addressed though is the relation of Art to Beauty. In fact, for years I've been entirely content with Joyce's alter-ego Stephen's exposition of Aquinian aesthetics to poor Lynch on that long-ago night in Dublin. Wonderful, compelling stuff, but not exactly developed at any length and cogent in a more poetic than philosophical sense. But for the last two or three years as the concept of Beauty has become more important to me in a religious context I've felt the need to do some serious reading and thinking (second-hand as that thinking is likely to be) on the subject.
So it felt like a more than fortuitous coincidence that on my recent foray to Wardah Books I spotted Roger Scruton's Beauty - A Very Short Introduction on the shelves. Scruton is a thinker I have enormous respect for, and have learned a great deal from, despite my fundamental disagreement with his politics. I snaffled the rather handsome looking volume and have been reading it enthusiastically for the last week. It's obviously brilliant; indeed, so good that I'm reading it too fast and intend a slow reread in June when I have time to follow his arguments closely. I suspect I'm likely to emerge a true believer, despite the fact that Joyce hasn't been referenced yet. Or Aquinas, if I remember rightly.
Still, with around 30 pages left, there's time.
Suddenly felt a powerful impulse to reread Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu the other day. Similar to the impulse to reread Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Irresistible. But delaying until retirement when I'll want to read everything I've ever read all over again.
I usually don't think of myself as a particularly greedy person. But I am.
We watched Episodes 2, 3 and 4 from the fourth season of the explosive spy thriller Slow Horses over last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. One episode per day is as much excitement as I can take at my age. And now I need a break of at least a week to get into shape for the end of the drama. Thankfully my life isn't remotely as exciting as that of the denizens of Slough House. I might have made a reasonable detective. But never a spook.
Just got back from the gym feeling rather pleased with myself for getting in a session during what's proving to be a very busy period in relation to the Toad, work. In fact, this is the best time of year for reflecting on how much balance I'm achieving in my life since it is so busy. If I can reasonably claim to be achieving a modicum of balance in the second half of May, then things can't be all bad.
I think I can claim something like complete success in integrating physical activity into what might be termed my 'schedule' in recent years. I aim to get to the gym three times a week, for a solid hour on the elliptical trainer, and I've kept that up for pretty much a year and a half. I'm no longer thinking in terms of extending the number of minutes I spend peddling away now that I'm regularly hitting the weights, following the cardio bit. Rather I'm looking to increase the intensity of the work-out using the weights, having read a lot of late about how we old folks need to be focused on weight-training.
Anyway, all is well on that front. Now whether I'm achieving the balance I want in terms of exercising the old grey cells is another question. The answer is that I'm not. But I am managing to keep some kind of life of the mind going even now, and things will get better in June, and were a lot better in the early months of the year. Comparing how things are in May 2025 to the average for May in the pre-pandemic years suggests I'm getting something right. I just need to build on it, once I'm clear as to what it is.
After months of trying, and getting closer and closer, we finally have an appointment to pick up whatever it is they give you to show you have a VEP to get entry for our car into Malaysia. Oh, and we've paid for it as well. It says so on the receipt. Surely nothing can go wrong at this stage?
It speaks little for my character that I'm fairly sure it can.
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 screens 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.
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.
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 Pastorale, Music for Quiet Moments 1. Glad I did.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
