Houseguest 2

The little guy is now sleeping. A state for which there is much to be said.

Matters Of Faith

Quite an eventful afternoon. Initially I thought my trip to the mosque would be purely routine. Certainly it was business as usual going in. But things got a bit more complicated on the way out. It had begun to rain, despite the beautifully clear skies we had enjoyed all morning, about midway through proceedings, and it was coming down hard as I exited. And then I discovered that someone had decided to help themselves to my footwear before I could get to them. I was then faced with a bit of an ethical dilemma, and I'm not going to say how I solved it, basically because I don't know that I did. Ethically, that is.

Then it was off to Orchard Road with Noi and Afnan so they could entertain themselves in Toyareus (or whatever it's called) whilst I enjoyed a cuppa and chinwag with Tony (Jamal) Green, my opportunity to tell him how much I enjoyed the manuscript he'd passed me at the beginning of the month and attempt some constructive criticism. I must say, nothing has changed my mind that if this were published it stands a real chance of bestsellerdom.

Mind you, achieving such a state might not necessarily be an entirely good thing. One subject we touched upon in the course of our conversation was the difficulty of combining money and religion. Take it from me, they are not entirely incompatible, but essentially they don't mix too well.

Sheer Pleasure

What with work and the attentions of our houseguest I haven't really settled into any reading since coming back from Malaysia. Whilst we were there I found myself enjoying whatever came to hand and having to stop myself from reading too quickly. I zoomed through Alfian Sa'at's Malay Sketches, completing the vignettes therein in just a couple of days, for example. In fact, I'm intending to buy a couple more copies to give to Karen & Rozita. More people should read this.

And then there was my happy discovery of a number of Chesterton's Father Brown stories I'd forgotten I owned. Funnily enough I had happened to listen to one of the stories on the plane coming back from England in April and was thinking then how I needed to renew my acquaintance. The least realistic detective stories ever written, but possibly among the most perceptive. Certainly up there amongst the most entertaining.

I also cleared my back copies of the Times Literary Supplement (just one, that I bought whilst back in England) and the New York Review of Books (which I now get cheaper than I used to from Holland Village.) Time well spent, I reckon - busy doing not very much.

Sonneteering

Now up to Sonnet 41 on the 2012 Shakespeare Sonnet read-through, and very pleased with myself for having discovered this way of approaching the Bard at his most personal. (As a result of Don Paterson's persuasiveness on this matter, I have to regard the sequence as definitely a personal outpouring rather than a kind of poetic drama enacted at arm's length, as it were.)

It's chastening to realise just how little I really knew the sonnets as a sequence, but it's as a sequence they need to be read, just as a really great album needs to be listened to in the sequence finally agreed upon by its makers (in the days when such things counted.) Sonnet 18, always a personal favourite, comes even more blazingly to life, for example, as it goes in a new direction from the first seventeen. Suddenly it's not just beautiful in itself, but a breakthrough into the previously unthinkable - and it thrills.

Houseguest 1

The latest addition to our household doesn't seem terribly impressed with the household. Hence the rather serious expressions above. But on the whole we are coping. Or, rather, the Missus is. I'm just taking pictures.

Family Concerns

We've just got back from visiting the cemetery in which Abah and Nenek are buried, and then arranging for Aziz to get a hard mattress to lie on when he comes out of hospital. We visited him yesterday in the main hospital at Melaka where he's lying with what looks to me, speaking from bitter experience, as a slipped disk. When we saw him at the shop on Thursday he was complaining of a back problem and it's obviously escalated since then. Now he can barely sit up, poor guy.

And later it seems we will be taking back to Singapore with us a houseguest, in the shape of Rozaidah's little one, Afnan, who'll need to stay with us - assuming the arrangement works - whilst his mother is hospitalised to ensure the safe development of her second pregnancy. Just how the child reacts to being taken away by two strangers, almost, remains to be seen. I'm cheerfully confident Noi will find a way to cope, even if I can't.

The Perils Of Sincerity

The fact that I was drawn back for a small part of the day to the kind of nasty commentary various bloggers and others who post on the Internet indulge in, of the sort I criticised yesterday, may well represent an unpleasant failing of my personality. But I've found myself trying to concoct at least some justification for looking at this stuff, possibly just to salvage a little self respect, and this is what I've managed: reading such material is a way of learning about the nature of our species.

And what have I learnt, apart from the obvious, that as a species we are generally not very nice?

Well one thing I've noticed is the frequency with which posters ill-disposed towards each other attribute motives to their opponents (not very admirable ones) for the claims they are making, as a way of undercutting such claims. Now ad hominem attacks can be recognised by anyone, but my (I hope) deeper point is that those making the accusations often clearly believe what they are saying and see themselves as performing some kind of public duty in exposing the truth about the opposition. It's their sincerity that's driving them to be nasty. From the particular imbroglio I have been perusing of late I'll mention two such revelations about the opposition (one from each rather grey side of the fracas.)

1) S/he claims to be defending women but is an attention seeker who makes controversial comments to garner popularity with those likely to agree with such comments.

2) S/he claims to be defending women but is unaware of being in thrall to a patriarchal system in a way that invalidates all such 'defences' rendering them entirely spurious.

Now I have a suggestion to make (to myself, really, as much as anyone else) that I think can be helpful in life. In most cases it's a good idea to accept people at face value with regard to the motives they claim to be the basis of their behaviour. This is quite a tricky thing to do, especially when you are pretty sure they are deceiving you or themselves or both, but it can pay dividends in establishing a sense of civility. And once you are on civil terms it's surprising how often you can genuinely make progress in actually dealing with whatever it is that needs to be dealt with.

We're so used to regarding people as essentially ignoble (for very good reasons, alas) we ignore the possibility of eliciting nobility through a kind of cunning. And if you are assuming I am advocating a degree of insincerity in one's personal dealings, well, yes, I rather think I am. More than a degree, I reckon.

Contrasts

Spent some part of the afternoon aimlessly reading all sorts of unpleasantly vituperous material on various blogs from folk who one might consider reasonably intelligent. Gosh, people can be quite extraordinarily nasty to each other, especially from the safety of an Internet connection. Then picked up William James's civilised, genuinely intelligent Pragmatism with an enormous sense of relief, simply related to reading something that didn't feel like mental pollution.

That old saying, You'll be known by the company you keep, suddenly seemed peculiarly applicable.

In The Night Kitchen

Spent the evening at Chez Aziz, peacefully, somewhere off the beaten track. A good place to be.

Still Wild

Ah Seng was here again today, with a little team, to do a bit of repair work to our roof. The main purpose of this is to seal a hole that Noi thought some birds had been using to gain ingress in order to make a nest up there. Her suspicions had been roused by odd bits of twigs appearing on the patio, and they proved to be justified. The nest has now been cleared, leaving me feeling slightly guilty for dealing so ruthlessly with our little uninvited guests.

Noi also put me right on the gender of the leader of the musang (or musangs? - does it take this plural?) we encountered the other day. She reckons it was a mother leading out her family and I'm happy to bow to her superior reasoning on this.

Anyway, we'll be leaving our wild friends behind as we're setting off for Melaka soon. Mind you, we've seen wild pigs there, at the back of Mak's house, so with luck our wild encounters will continue.