On The Inside

Got talking to Hamzah last night about the work he does in prisons. His company provide the software that helps integrate some of the security features in one or two jails over here and I gather he's hoping to expand this provision in the future having established a good track record over the last few years in projects in which his firm has led the way. Since this work involves him actually going into the various premises to install and service the hardware he's accumulated quite a range of experience of life on the inside and it's striking just how positive his impression of the prison system is as a whole.

Since the nation might reasonably classified as still very much developing, this isn't something that you can take for granted. Let's face it, it's not difficult to think of prisons in the UK and the US (especially!) where no one would want to be banged up. But I got the sense that the prospect of doing time in the average Malaysian prison isn't necessarily a frightening one and that the authorities have a genuine desire to rehabilitate rather than simply punish.

It was, however, disheartening to learn of just how many are put inside for drug-related offences. You'd think that the draconian laws in place might help prevent damage on the scale we see in the UK and the US (to name but two) but it looks like it makes little difference.

Making An Effort

Biggest effort of the day so far, cleaning a few of the many downstairs windows which allow us so much light on the world.

Next biggest effort, except no real effort was involved, finishing Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City, which I foolishly mistitled simply Istanbul in an earlier post. This is one of those rare cases in which only the full title does justice to the text which is as much about the working of memory as it is about the city.

Next effort, getting ready to drive over to Hamzah & Sharifah's place with a cake for Aziqah's birthday. Noi tells me she's twenty-nine which can't be right because she was just nine years old the other day and excitedly reading Harry Potter.

Getting Going

The temptation to do absolutely, gloriously, nothing is always a strong one here at Maison KL. At least, it is for me. Noi invariably gets stuck into the household tasks on a grand scale, the reason above all reasons why the house is so comfortable.

This time round I've successfully managed to put temptation almost completely to one side and actually got things done. I've dealt with all the bookshelves and cleaned the fans and, on the virtual front, cleared a very messy desktop and deleted numerous highly deletable documents and files which should have seen the inside of a recycle bin a long time ago.

Partly this mighty effort has been inspired by how much I enjoyed clearing my place at work early this month when the powers-that-be decided our staffroom needed to be shut down to be remodelled. It struck me as a great opportunity to cast off a lot of accumulated gunk and cast it off I did with some exuberance. There are those who cling to the past; I'm not one of them, I'm happy to say. Or, at least, I'm trying not to be.

High Energy

Continuing to make cosily unhurried progress on Pamuk's memoir of growing up in Istanbul. In contrast found myself rushing through Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul at a gallop, finishing it today. I think I understand Jamilah's enthusiasm for the novelist. She writes with verve, imagination, wit and heart, and does so in quite unpredictable ways. I really had little to no idea where she was leading me, but was happy to go there.

Given the humour of the opening segments of the novel and its almost relentlessly breezy tone the later head-on treatment of the sufferings of the Armenians in 1915 was sort of unexpected, yet seemed to work, as did the unveiling of the dark family secrets and their repercussions in the final stretch of the novel. It's as if Ms Shafak felt the need to ram these disparate worlds together as they present themselves in lived experience. But I must say that I suspect a close analysis of the novel, free of its narrative grip, might point to quite a few loose threads.

My guess is that this is the kind of writer whose fans will forgive almost everything. And, I suspect, rightly so.

Monkeying Around

Highlight of the day: over a late breakfast we caught sight of a couple of monkeys in the distance, walking along the top of the newish fence on the hillside going down to KL. They pursued their monkey business up to the gazebo near the house, then the bigger of the two sauntered over to our garden fence, the outer one, just in time for the Missus to notice and announce, loudly, his approach. Then, as I scooted over to the French windows to shut them, he lifted himself up onto the top of the inner fence, and then onto our roof. I went upstairs to check if he'd got onto one of the balconies, but there was no sign of the intruder.

About ten minutes later he came down from the roof at the same spot and was out of the garden in a few seconds. He'd obviously had lots of practice.

It was striking just how utterly self-contained the fellow was. Despite the fact we were just a few feet from one another he showed no awareness of my presence at all. Ironic, isn't it? The actual householder being held in complete contempt by our simian chum. I can never figure out why people consider monkeys 'cute' in any sense. I stand in awe of their complete and wonderful arrogance.

Sheer Laziness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A day of sterling non-achievement. A day of several snoozes. A day of melancholy rain, amplified by the self-indulgent sadness of Orhan Pamuk mixed in with Mozart's D Minor Fantasia for piano. A very fine day indeed, in other words.

The Road About To Be Taken

10.04
Now contemplating, with a reasonable degree of equanimity, the road ahead to the Malaysian capital, to be taken once I get back from Friday Prayers. Whether that equanimity remains in place once we're actually on that road remains to be seen.

22.52
Main highlight of the journey was a gorgeous rainbow which manifested itself in spectacular fashion after some rain around the Pagoh area. Unfortunately the rainbow appeared in the south and we were driving north, but I got a decent enough view from my side mirrors to feel reasonably elevated. Second place highlight was the tea and toasted bread at the ARAB Café at Ayer Keroh.

There were several lowlights, but since these were eminently forgettable, generally involving slow-moving traffic, of which there is a plenitude in Malaysia, I have forgotten them

A La Turka

Making excellently slow progress on Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. Since his memoir sees the Nobel Laureate at his most melancholic and Proustian, then slow reading is the only way to go. In contrast I fairly shot through Stephen Kinzer's Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds which Jamilah very kindly leant to me, expressing much enthusiasm for the text. I could see why. It's very informative indeed on Turkish history and culture in general, especially the Ataturk era and its legacy. Kinzer has very clear views on where Turkey needs to go in future - towards the EU and democracy - and is a tad patronising and simplistic at times, but his heart is in the right place and he clearly knows a lot about Turkey, which he conveys in a thoroughly engaging manner.

Jamilah also passed me a novel by Elif Shafak, about whom she was even more enthusiastic than she was about Mr Kinzer. So at the moment there's no escape from Turkey for me, a very welcome state indeed.

The Place Of Magic

Initially I was a wee bit disappointed by Collected Grimm Tales. Since it's advertised as containing the dramatisation for the stage by Tim Supple and the Young Vic Company I thought I'd be reading some fairly detailed scripts, but this was not the case. It's very difficult indeed to figure out how exactly the Tales worked on stage, as the script given is pretty much the translations/adaptations from the Brothers Grimm by Carol Ann Duffy divided up for voices with very little in the way of explanations of how the words were 'played' on stage. However, I soon got over whatever disappointment I felt in the simple pleasure of reading the texts.

The poet's rendering of the stories is stark and to the point, exactly what's needed to bring them to rumbustious life. I was struck by the sheer simple energy of the tales, how pure they are in terms of reducing everything to bare story, yet how genuinely magical they are in their pragmatic acceptance of the unlikeliness of the events involved. No worries here about characterisation. The characters just are: they do what they need to do and leave the listener to catch up with them.

I was particularly struck by just how dark the tales could be, especially in terms of the vicious relish with which the fates of the 'villains' was rendered. I don't think I'd ever encountered the notion of the step-mother of Snow White being forced to wear red hot shoes and dance to her death at her step-daughter's marriage feast, but it's an image that will stay with me.

My favourite of all the stories was Rumpelstiltskin, a tale I loved as a child and which I don't think I'd read since. Carol Ann Duffy's retelling seemed exactly the same as what I'd heard as a nipper. The titular character's rage at the end, tearing himself in two, seemed just as impressive to me as an old geezer as it did all those years ago. Not sure how you'd put that on stage!

To Some Effect

It takes about a minute of my being on the elliptical trainer to realise just how much I don't enjoy the experience. This is so different from the days I used to go running when I'd enjoy almost every moment of the exercise. Wherein lies the difference? Well in the old days I was running somewhere and the rewarding sense of being out in the rich and varied world was  integral to the experience. On the trainer I go nowhere fast - or, rather, quite slowly, since I set the resistance to make it an uphill task. In the old days I took some pride in never breathing too heavily and trying to look reasonably comfortable as I ran. Now I find myself blowing like a beached whale and contorting my face in a version of something close to agony.

It isn't that I'm terribly unfit now - at least, I don't think this is the case. Rather, I think I'm pushing myself to the limit since there's really not much else to do when I'm on the machine and staring at the numbers. But there's a positive side to all this. Strangely I don't find myself in any way reluctant to get to the gym - far from it, in fact. And when I come away it feels just as good as it always did.

And slowly but surely, over time, I've definitely got fitter, which was something I doubted would happen a couple of years back when I discovered the joys of my machine of choice. Last Tuesday I posted my best ever numbers, and felt strong doing so. Of course, I'd still much rather be running out on the streets and sometimes fantasise about doing so, but I'll happily settle for the next-best thing if it means I can exercise reasonably regularly and escape injury in doing so.