Out Of Control

Enjoyed an excellent afternoon at the Victoria Theatre this afternoon watching a revival of Haresh Sharma's Off Centre. I read the play back in 2006 when it had just been selected as an 'O' level Lit text and MOE were providing copies for schools, encouraging them to adopt it as one of the set texts for the examination. It struck me then as a powerful piece, but I found it a bit difficult to visualise how it was meant to work on stage, especially in the way the two mentally-challenged protagonists keep stepping out of character to comment on themselves. In the theatre this device works wonderfully well, especially as deployed by the excellent Abdulattif Abdullah and Sakinah Dollah playing Vinod and Saloma respectively.

I was also struck back then by a strong sense of how the drama seemed to transcend its origins as something of a thesis play dealing with specific issues relating to the treatment of those suffering mental illness. Vinod and Saloma seemed fully alive somehow, and tenderly complex. Their story wasn't predictable. And that's how it was this afternoon. Despite having read the play I had no idea how things were going to turn out.

Something else became very obvious to me this afternoon. This is one of those plays that wonderfully can't contain the energies it has tapped into, most of all the generous anger it manifests with regard to the treatment of those seen as somehow abnormal. At moments the rage was palpable in genuinely disturbing fashion. There was something going on that wasn't exactly under control and all the better for that.

No Offence

One of the many endearing qualities common to the students in this part of the world is a genuine concern that they shouldn't offend their teachers. Remarkably often I find myself accepting an apology for some offence that I have had no awareness of at all. I suppose I could point out that it's very difficult to offend me since I come from Manchester, but I doubt they'd see the humour, or the truth, in this.

Not Exactly Organised

I've been looking back over my journal from 15 years ago this evening, and have found myself reminded of a somewhat difficult time in my life with regard to work. I'd just started work at a new school and found the environment invigorating but distinctly challenging. In retrospect it was the right move at the right time, but it didn't quite feel like that in the early February of that year.

For some reason I'd been thinking in broad terms of organisations and what they do to the people within them (particularly Yours Truly) and on 8 February, 2004 this is what I wrote:

Woke up thinking about my general attitudes to work in a broad but practical philosophical sense. Some snippets: I can divide my notions of faults in the organisations in which I work into 2 levels - those that are accidental to the situation & may be usefully addressed (glitches, if you like) - those that stem from the organisational culture and which are extremely difficult to get any movement on (SEM, Wits, ESSS, assessment of teachers, the idea of quantifiable targets.) Dealing with the latter is energy sapping, time-consuming and often fruitless. I do not wish to spend my limited time in this way and since my colleagues do not make this effort there is no reason I should.

Although interested in organisations and how they work, in connection with my general interest in human behaviour, I am quite sure I haven't the kind of personality suited to organisations. This is not a put-down of those who enjoy working in organisations - we need such people to keep those aspects of our society dependent upon organisations working, even if this working is not at optimal levels. However, it is pointless to attempt to make appeals to me from an organisational perspective. I reject the very bases of these.

Many of my colleagues are stretched to the maximum, but the school, like almost any other organisation, overrides consideration of the individual and puts its aims first. As a result it will burn out the very people vital to its running. This cannot be good for the organisation in the long run. I believe this is linked to the significant attrition rate for teachers in Singapore. In personal terms my quality of life is suffering at present (as it has suffered in the past.)

It felt refreshing to read this years later. I find myself in agreement with my younger self. In fact, I'd venture to suggest I might have contributed more to organisational change by not actually trying to do so than those days when I felt I should devote some reasonable energy to trying to improve things for the good of all.

Paying The Bills

Spent a bit of time in recent days dealing with the payment of bills. I suppose this is an unusual thing to say, but I'm happy to pay them. Not happy in the sense of enjoying seeing the money go out; I take no pleasure in that. But happy in the sense that I can afford to pay and none of this is any real hardship. I'm aware that for many people real hardship is involved in dealing with matters financial, and often bills engender huge anxieties such that just coping is heroic in itself.

Too often the assumption is made that somehow such people have themselves to blame for their troubles. Sometimes yes, though why this should preclude sympathy for those that have messed up somehow, I'm not sure. But in my experience, it's rare that those struggling have only themselves to blame, if any blame at all attaches.

All I face is mild irritation when I'm settling the bills. Lucky.

The Play's The Thing

I broke off from my reading of Hamlet in the most recent Arden edition, the 2nd Quarto version, confident that it would be easy to resume. And it was! Reading Acts 3 and 4 over the last couple of days have reminded me of the extraordinariness of the play. Shakespeare was working with a degree of creative energy that it's difficult to think of any other work surpassing. Even the digressions - Hamlet's advice to the Players, for example - burn off the page. It's only when we get to Claudius dealing with the insurrection of Laertes that things let up, and even then WS is dealing with the edgiest political material possible, given the times in which he was writing.

No wonder the play doesn't hold together. It explodes as a result of its sheer intensity. There's no way any reader or viewer can explain, or come to terms with it all. There's no way Act 5 can make satisfying sense.

At least, I don't think there is. But I'm dying to read it again to find out.

Refreshed

Enjoying the break for Chinese New Year, which is even more relaxed than usual for us, since we decided to stay in our usual Far Place rather than travelling north. After attending the customary celebration concert yesterday, I managed to do little except read and fall asleep for the rest of the day. Highly satisfactory indeed. Then, after a good night's sleep and an excellent lie-in, I thought it unlikely that I'd be visiting the Land of Nod in the daylight hours today, yet I've managed a couple of power naps. I suppose this is an indication that I somehow need the sleep, but I'm not at all sure why. Perhaps I'm storing up some credit for the rigours that lie ahead?

Ways Of Escape

Finished Killing Floor today along with The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. Rather pleased at the mild incongruity of yoking the two together. But the pleasures offered by both texts were equally real, if different in kind.

Getting Popular

I recently decided that I need to read more of what might broadly be termed 'popular fiction'. One of the factors that pushed me in this direction was coming across an appreciative account, in one of the on-line literary magazines I tend to gravitate towards, of the Jack Reacher novels of Lee Child. It's a sign of just how dismissive of these novels I had been that I didn't take any real note of the article other than being a bit startled and distinctly intrigued by it. But then I read more recently a brief, equally appreciative, reference to the novels from the critic and novelist Margaret Drabble which forced upon me the realisation that I'd been snobbishly dismissive of Lee Child's work on the grounds that there were so many of his novels proliferating on the shelves in bookshops and libraries that they couldn't be any good and that the risible films featuring the Reacher character as played by Tom Cruise were so bad that the books themselves must be somehow of similar quality. And it looked like I was wrong.

I thought about buying one of the series, thus breaking my flimsy vow to abstain from purchasing more books until I'd cleared those on my shelves that I'd identified as needing to read and soon. But on realising that there are quite a few of the series in the library at work, including the first in the series, it came to me that it would be no problem at all to build some acquaintance with the work of Mr Child in an entirely trouble-free fashion.

The funny thing is that as soon as I got a battered copy of Killing Floor (Reacher's first outing) in my hands I just knew I was going to enjoy it. And that's precisely what has happened. For this reader it's the equivalent of going on holiday to somewhere like Blackpool as it used to be in the mythology of childhood and having an uncomplicatedly wonderful time. The fact that the writer is also really able to write helps considerably, of course.

Signs Of Strain

Spent an hour and twenty minutes displaying my skills on the futsal court this evening in honour of young Safiy's birthday. Will spend the next five days at least paying the price in terms of aching muscles in places I'd forgotten I had muscles.

Not Stopping

Driving across the island in the very late evening, giving Hakim & family a lift back from a birthday bash for Fafa, I was struck by just how busy the roads were at that time. Let's face it, in this part of the world, including our neighbour to the north, the roads are busy all the time. What does everyone get up to? And why don't they stop it?

Coming on the heels of a day when I felt I was trapped in my own cycle of non-stop activity, the sheer busyness of it all confirmed my deepest suspicions regarding the world we've managed to create. And those are dark suspicions indeed.