Home At Last

Came back just now from a late-evening duty. Opened the door to find the apartment smelled of porridge. It really felt like home.

(And if you've never heard the mighty Dan bring it home, here's how it's done.)

Living In Hope

I hardly feel involved in the World Cup at all. Just following the results and checking the highlights, but haven't watched anything live. Happy to see England top their group and progress to the knock-out stages, and relieved they're not meeting Senegal. (Had a bad feeling about the prospect.) But also have a feeling that Congo might just surprise.

Actually the really entertaining thing these days is reading the comments below the match reports. It's astonishing how sure the various writers are of their opinions. Helps in understanding how Gareth Southgate was seen as some kind of failure despite his consistent success in creating squads that genuinely competed at the highest levels.

Heat

I've been reading reports of scorching temperatures in Europe in the last few days, especially concerning the UK and France. Not sure how climate change denialists deal with such regular reports of records being broken. I know that I'd be more than happy to support any politician who genuinely tried to deliver net zero emissions or any initiative that sought to do away with our reliance on plastics. It all looks very urgent to me.

In the meantime it's a matter of just getting on with what can be done even when temperatures soar. Today it's 31C here and feels hotter, I think due to the overwhelming humidity. So the idea of cleaning our bookshelves wasn't such an attractive one. But I managed to get on with it, at the cost of a very wet t-shirt, once I decided enough was enough. Actually, the enough wasn't enough and I'm all set to get ferociously sweaty again tomorrow.

In Sickness

We were intending to eat dinner at Aziz's place on Tuesday when we were in Alor Gajah. On arrival in the early evening we were a bit surprised and disappointed to find his eatery closed with no sign of life at all. And shortly after that we got a text that Aziz wasn't well, with a worrying reference to a heart attack.

Much to our relief we found out next day that the reference to a heart problem was misleading and that the pain Aziz had experienced and which had sent him to the doctor was due to a kidney stone. An operation was necessary, but nothing life-threatening was involved, thank goodness. However, he couldn't be operated on immediately as he was suffering from jaundice and needed further monitoring.

Which is why we found ourselves in the main hospital in Melaka yesterday afternoon, visiting the sick patient before making our way along the North-South Highway. It was good to see Aziz looking pretty well and not complaining about being in pain, but I can't imagine that his surroundings were conducive to striving for full health. It's an old hospital and, despite some heroic efforts to make it look cheerful, it has a sense that the wear and tear of time is now deeply ingrained in its fabric. I wouldn't have wanted to spend a night there, and I'm not the sort who's overly fastidious about these things.

Funnily enough the visit helped put the journey back into perspective. Better on the road and feeling well than being stuck in a hospital bed waiting to get back to the joys of just being normal.

Getting Moving

Today I decided to take the pills prescribed by my back doc since my left side is feeling distinctly cranky. I'm doing so with some reluctance as I much prefer to let my body take care of itself. But since I paid for the medication I figure I might as well experiment and see if it helps in a decisive way. If it doesn't, I'll discontinue the experiment and let nature take its course.

Actually I suspect the crankiness is related to a glaring lack of genuine physical exercise on my part after arriving in Malaysia. I've repeatedly failed to establish any kind of regimen in these parts, even simply walking. So, somewhat counter-intuitively, I'm looking forward to getting back to my old routines as these featured lots of healthily moving around. Since we're heading south later today it could be that I'll be back in the gym tomorrow, which I suspect will prove efficacious. I'll be more than happy to put the pills back into storage.

Wise Words

Hamzah was in fine form when we went out for dinner with him, and Aiman & Aziqah, on Monday evening. Two particularly resonant observations have remained with me: Better to follow your heart than your mind, and There are more angels than devils. He applied these to the very practical matter of surviving in the jungle when completely lost and did so in a most down-to-earth fashion, by the way, so nothing overly esoteric going on here, despite appearances.

Not Meeting Expectations

I had quite a clear picture of how I was going to spend the day before dutifully checking my email in the early afternoon. I was all set for some complete relaxation. Then everything abruptly changed.

I found myself staring disconsolately at a message from an Assessment Operations Analysist from IB informing me I'd been allotted more marking of the 'at risk' variety - essentially a kind of double-check on other examiners' initial marking. I've done this before, but what took me by surprise was a screenshot showing how to access the new scripts which suggested a significant number needed to be re-assessed fairly urgently, this number being well in excess of what I've tackled in previous years.

It turned out that the screenshot wasn't related specifically to my own load. The number I'd actually been allotted was even greater. But the urgency was definite, as indicated by an equally unforgiving deadline as in the illustration. So I was not in any way, shape or form a happy soldier.

But, having no wriggle room at all on this one, I put my shoulder to the wheel - which entailed firing up the old brain cells to move back into marking mode and forcing myself to full-on concentrate and do justice to the efforts of the students whose scores were in doubt. I managed some three hours of this today, and there's more to come tomorrow & onwards.

It's not exactly a fulfilling way to spend the final days of a holiday, but at least it keeps me off the streets. 

On Our Way Again

Our June sojourn at Maison KL is rapidly approaching its end. As usual this is signaled by Noi impressively vacuuming & mopping & brushing to ensure the place looks spick & span, ready for our next visit, whenever that might be. And I'm now starting to put together all those bits & pieces that of necessity accompany us on our travels.

Real life is beckoning, but only gets going in earnest this time next week, when I'll be back at work. In the meantime we will be holidaying on with a visit to Hamzah & family later in the day, followed by a couple of days at Mak's house. So the sadness of leaving is balanced by the cheerfulness of arrival, as ever. And another ending balanced by beginning again. 

Holiday Reading

After I'd finished cleaning the bookshelves here earlier in the week I took down one of several novels and short-story collections by P.G. Wodehouse residing thereon, Jeeves in the Offing. Much as I'm enjoying Zola's Germinal I felt the need for something lighter in mood, and Wodehouse, of course, is just the ticket in such circumstances. I could have raced through Bertie's adventures at Brinkley Court - the first time I read it was in a single sitting on a flight back to the UK in the 1990s. But I decided to take it slowly and relish the wonderful craft of Wodehouse's creation of Bertie's voice, and that unhurriedness proved wise, adding to the sense of happy holiday enjoyment. 

So much that is seen as humorous these days is possessed of a kind of cruel delight in man's folly. (And woman's, I hasten to add.) But Wodehouse somehow pulls off a supremely charitable, good-natured kind of comedy, which strikes me as utterly sui generis. The reader is led to see the world as, not exactly a better place, but somewhere a lot funnier than it usually appears to be.

Stormy Weather

Am gazing out upon a distinctly righteous storm that hit Bukit Antarabangsa some thirty minutes ago. It began fiercely and has kept up its intensity. When it suddenly broke our excellent gardener-cum-termite-treatment-guy-cum-general-helper-out Devan was doing his thing in the garden, but he's now set off home, having borrowed an umbrella from us so he could get back to his car without looking like he's been wading through a river. Not sure how the monkeys are faring in all this. Presumably they consider the sudden flood all part of life's rich tapestry even when they're stuck out in the foliage taking cover.

Of course, it's easy for us to contemplate the rich tapestry of it all, being as we are delightfully dry in the shelter of the house. Life here has proved wonderfully easy over the last couple of weeks and it's going to be difficult to break the spell when work starts again. When your fridge & oven & air-conditioning & solar panels & lights & stuff are all working and no leaks are being sprung, it's worth celebrating a bit on the inside, and a storm somehow seems an appropriate time to do so.