More Plans

We're off to Maison KL next Tuesday, which means we're now figuring out what exactly we need to do whilst we're in residence. It strikes me that I'm quite good at making plans. But not always effective in carrying them through. Mind you, having said that, somehow The Missus and I contrive to keep the place in something like running order, which isn't easy when you consider just how much there usually is in need of repair.

I think it would be reasonable to claim that most of the things I needed to do before setting off north have been done, with one glaring exception that I'm managing not to do by posting to this Far Place when I should be doing it. Oh hum. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now considering my advanced and advancing years. But I somehow haven't.

Plenty Going On

We quite enjoy watching The Morning Show on Apple TV and got to the end of the first season yesterday. Lots going on, all of it suitably dramatic. But we got lost trying to follow the first episode of Season 2 this evening. Is this what life is like for the rich & successful? Makes me more thankful than ever for the uneventfulness that marks our passage through the world.

In Surplus

Even when I wrote that's that towards the end of yesterday's post I was half aware that that wasn't really that at all. I'd failed to mention anything about my most recent purchase from Kinokuniya, that being Conrad's novel Victory, one of the bigger gaps in my reading. And I really should have said something about the biggest gap of all: Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. So embarrassing not to have read the major work by one of my favourite novelists, and I can't honestly explain the gap, except to say I've perused so many of the key sections in excerpts it's as if I know the book already. I very nearly purchased a copy along with the Conrad but then hesitated over which translation to go with. And I've still not really settled that question despite having looked at quite a bit of the debate about current translations on-line. My plan is to buy a copy from the Kinokuniya at KLCC once we've settled into the house, and I've made inroads into the Douglass autobiography and Victory, which I'm starting on this evening.

Plus I was seriously wondering about picking up a recent Stephen King novel from the library at work when I suddenly realised that I had on my desk a brand new copy of Achebe's Things Fall Apart which I'm supposed to be teaching in the first term next year. It struck me that the King was likely to prove surplus to requirements in our time in KL given the pile I'd built up.

The thing is that I want to read all these titles at once. It's a kind of greed, I suppose. At some point I failed to develop an adult sense of self-control with regard to my reading. And it's not getting better with time.

Seeking Direction

Am trying to get my reading in some kind of order. I'm approaching the end of Video Night in Kathmandu with just the segments on Thailand and Japan to read. There's much to admire in Iyer's essays, but a certain sameness in terms of the humour of the innocent abroad. And, to be honest, I'm finding the material on the sex trade in Bangkok just a bit depressing. Surely there's more to the city than that.

I suppose that accounts for my picking up the LOA collection of Douglass's Autobiographies ahead of completing the travel book. I'll be reading the third final Life and Times when we travel to KL and have decided not to skip the opening chapters on Douglass as a slave despite the fact that much of the material from My Bondage and My Freedom is repeated verbatim. The power and integrity of the work deserve further close reading. In fact, in reading the two opening chapters I was struck by how moving I found the child's separation from his grandmother, something I'd not managed to feel before for some reason.

Sadly I've been struggling to find the same engagement in Henry Vaughan's religious poetry which I'm admiring from a distance. Some great lines here & there, and general enchantment in the music of the verse, especially through its metrical variety, but the emphasis on the worthlessness of worldly existence gets a bit much. I just don't buy into it, I'm afraid, though I'm pretty sure it's not just posturing in the poet's case.

But I do buy into Jazz: A History of America's Music which I'm enjoying in an extremely leisurely fashion - and have been for quite some time now as very occasional reading, usually just at the weekend. Lovely book; great pictures. But too heavy to take up to Malaysia with us.

And on top of all that, my read-through of Finnegans Wake continues sturdily apace. I don't understand any of it. But in my head it sounds great.

So that's that. A bit of a mess, all told.

Getting Destructive

Got on with discarding lots of the unnecessary today in line with my New Year's resolution. The supererogatory material in question occupied my laptop which now feels lighter. Metaphorically. Strange how few of the documents consigned to oblivion genuinely related to the core business of what goes in my classroom.

Still plenty left to shovel away, though, in the days ahead. A veritable mountain. Happily metaphorical in nature. Not quite real somehow. 

Personal Best

Took myself happily by surprise at this evening's session at the gym. Posted my best ever numbers on the elliptical trainer. Just a month ago I was convinced no further improvement was possible and I'm delighted to prove myself wrong. (Having said all that, the improvement is by a single digit. But I'll take the smallest of victories, thanks!)

Bothered

I don't recall feeling in any way genuinely upset when first reading Pico Iyer's Video Night in Kathmandu back in the day. The ways of life of ordinary people in the Far East seemed comically exotic to me, but perhaps I missed out then on reading the essay on his experiences in The Philippines. In this segment, at the mid-point of the work as a whole, the writer openly states how troubled he is by the poverty he encounters in Manila, and it would take the hardest of hearts not to respond to the struggles of those who scrape not so much a living as an existence at the bottom.

Reading it I couldn't help but wonder whether the young people he encountered back then survived into reasonable middle-age. It's frightening that one has to raise the question, but so easy to imagine them simply failing to cope with the extremes they deal with on a daily basis. I don't know much at all about life in that part of the world but am vaguely hopeful that the passing decades have brought some improvement. The problem is that I know full well I might be wrong in that assumption.

All Sound And Fury

Normally I have no problem watching the kind of entertainment show that Noi sometimes tunes into. The singing competitions can have a kind of gentle charm that makes for easy viewing that doesn't take itself too seriously. But tonight's episode of Gegar Vaganza has crossed a line in terms of sheer shoutiness. It seems fueled by a weird neediness, as if some fundamental desperation to impose on the viewer can't admit of contradiction.

Strangely modern in its way.

All Clear

Highlight of the day: an uneventful visit to my back doc. No pain, no problem. Did not expect this at my advanced age. I suspect that my regular trips to the gym over the last few years have paid dividends, even if each features struggle rather than fulfilment. Worth keeping this in mind the next time I wonder why I'm punishing myself on the elliptical trainer.

Second Childhood

Now reading The Red Sea Sharks - a Tintin adventure, that I received as a gift from Fafa. Loved Herge's books as a kid. And love them just as much now. Indeed, if anything I'm more appreciative of them, recognising the brilliance of the artwork. Every panel involves a treat of some kind and the more complex are jaw-dropping in their detail.

Feeling tempted to buy a lot more in the very handsome Egmont editions. But will manfully resist my inner child. For now, at least.