Real Class

Treated myself to a close listen to some Duke Ellington over the weekend (Money Jungle, featuring the Duke in a trio with Charlie Mingus and Max Roach) and decided I've not been listening to enough of the great man lately. I thought it might be a good idea to seek out live performances by Ellington with his big band on YouTube, and I was right. It was an excellent idea. Their 1958 performance at Monterey provides more than ample evidence of that rightness, and demonstrates the world can be a better place.

Out And About

Just got back from an evening at the IMM shopping centre. It's not exactly my favourite place to spend time since it's usually ultra-busy, but the Missus needed to go there to bring back some suitcases from the storage centre we use there which she'll need to employ for her next visit to the homestead at Alor Gajah and a trip she's making to Jakarta (coming soon!) I also needed to buy some running shoes to replace my old pair which are happily falling apart and there are quite a few sports outlets in the mall.

The funny thing is that I almost enjoyed the visit, basically because on Monday evenings the crowds seem to disappear, presumably having better things to do than wander round a shopping mall after the weekend. I was vaguely reminded of how curiously relaxing shopping was at the height of the pandemic when there were so few folk around. I suppose I have to class myself as deeply anti-social. Which suits me fine.

Under Scrutiny

I'm making oddly intermittent progress in Archie's Ammons's Glare, his long poem from 1997 which I'm now undertaking as part of my read-through of the second volume of the Complete Poems. It's a wonderfully engaging work, generally even looser in its construction than the equally engaging Garbage from four years earlier and, possibly, funnier. But I'm finding that I tend not to pick it up on a daily basis. Rather I reserve it for weekends and tackle long stretches in single readings, as I did today. And I find myself reading it at quite a lick, faster I think than when I first read it as a single volume some years back. A fast-paced reading works well, I think, in keeping somehow with the improvisational spontaneity of the verse.

In addition I've got a novel on the go, this being Mary Durack's Keep Him My Country, passed to me by Angela who picked it up on a trip to Australia - I think, since it's very much an Australian novel. The nice thing about reading novels that someone else passes on is the sense of expanding one's horizons in that these are rarely things one would have chosen to read oneself. I'd never heard of Ms Durack and this work from 1955 but, judging from the introductory chapters, she's a talented writer and I'm finding myself happily engrossed in the harsh terrain of northern Australia, a land of which I know next to nothing. 

In Anticipation

We're roughly a month away from Ramadhan for 2023 - starting 23 March - and I'm engaged in the usual mental preparation to help prepare for the challenge ahead, and its attendant satisfactions. To be honest, in the early stages of recovery from my recent illness I wasn't at all sure I'd be able to handle the demands of fasting and working at the same time, but now I'm looking forward to the experience. With some trepidation, certainly, but looking ahead all the same.

Interesting that a number of websites and the like dedicated to the theme of staving off dementia recommend fasting. Not intuitively obvious, is it? But a welcome note to someone a bit concerned about the healthy functioning of his grey matter.

On The Go

Today marked my first genuinely frantic day of work for the year: back-to-back lessons, followed by a rush to get to NUH for a scan of my lungs, followed by a rush to Prayers, followed by a rush to get back to our drama guys. And then an evening dinner at Kampong Glam with the usual gang. Oh, and I got up a bit earlier than usual to give myself more planning time to handle the logistics of it all.

It strikes me that the feeling of pressure, mild but distinct, accompanying all this was due to the need to remember all the little fiddly things that characterise so much of working life - where and when to obtain the keys to open particular rooms; what needs to be collected and who isn't around to collect from; what emails require immediate answers or actions, and which can be dealt with later, but must on no account be forgotten; and so on, and so on, and so on.

Fortunately I've learnt how to carve out time for a necessary cuppa even when there isn't time, and that was enough to save the day.

Locked Out

Why is it that the wonderful world of high tech brings with it so many irritations? I don't mind submitting references for students for university applications and the like through the various portals (or what ever they call them) that the institutions employ, but when you get messages like: An Error has occurred. Please contact the System Administrator or IT support team, and there's no way to submit anything at all, it doesn't make for the happiest of evenings. Especially when no contact at all is provided for the system administrator or team, assuming these people actually exist. Grrrrrrrr!

Chilling Times

Enjoyed a spiffing morning and early afternoon out at East Coast Park with my class. After which the good times rolled on with the arrival of the Missus and further pawming around the environs. (Evidence above.) Eventually we found ourselves at Parkway Parade, contemplating just how unrecognisable our old stomping grounds had become - though a visit to the Scoops shop there, selling all sorts of healthy nuts & berries & the like, did much to ease the pain of negotiating the transition to the current era. 

The evening featured a trip to the gym, relaxing in a strenuous kind of way, followed by immersion in Noi's patented lentil soup (with bread!) for total relaxation of every fibre of being.

All told an exceptionally chillin' day, as I'm told young people say these days, though they probably don't.

What's In A Name?

Spent the early part of the evening writing down name-lists for classes I'll soon be teaching in a spectacularly old-fashioned mark book. Sort of odd to think I've been doing this for more than four decades around this time of year, or earlier usually. I used to find it extremely laborious, but now it doesn't bother me at all. I experience a feeling of expectation when I note a name, wondering what's in store from the complex individual hiding behind their title, signifier, cognomen, whatever.

I'm guessing that most of my colleagues don't bother with the kind of handwritten lists I employ. But I think they're missing something. I'm just not sure what.

Top Draw

I'd intended to draw out my reading of Alice Munro's The Beggar Maid since I was enjoying it so much. But I couldn't stop myself from reading the second half of the collection today and finishing all ten stories by the evening. 

To be honest I thought the stories dealing with Rose's marriage and love life in the second half of the volume lacked the verve of the earlier stories dealing largely with her childhood in Hanratty, but Munro was still fascinating on the messiness of her relationships - and fascinating on how the life of an individual can encompass so many changes related to their socio-economic background. And the final two stories, returning to Flo and the past, though dealing with Rose's present, were triumphant in their rightness as a conclusion to the whole. 

No surprise she won the Nobel.

Coming Alive

I've never been completely comfortable with the production of Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, despite loving the songs on the album. So I was the perfect audience for the compilation Time Out Of Mind Live (Better than the album!) which I chanced upon this afternoon. It put me in heaven for over an hour. Evidence, if it were needed, for His Bobness as transcendent genius.