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 & light & 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.

Epically Failing

Engaged in some pointless browsing of YouTube videos earlier today, I was struck by the number that enjoy pointing out major failures, ranging from individuals screwing up at the personal level to corporations getting it wrong on a scale that can transcend all reasonable sense of value. I suppose there's a sardonic comfort to be gained from the realisation that others are, astonishingly, even more idiotic than oneself, but it's also more than a bit depressing to be given a handle on how much we are able to waste of our resources.

Prominent in my earlier viewing were videos detailing the catastrophic demise of what was known as the metaverse. Funnily enough this sad tale was something I had some awareness of. I was involved in a visit to the Meta headquarters in Singapore back in March 2023 as one of those odd 'learning journeys' my employers think do me some good. This would have been a few months after Facebook's big announcement of its virtual reality world as detailed in the link above. I sort of enjoyed the trip simply because it was so obvious to me (and, I think, to all in attendance) that the concept just wasn't going to work. Even the guys tasked to introduce to their visitors the Horizon World (I think it was) clearly thought it didn't stand any chance of success such that they won sympathy by manfully covering up their doubts.

In its way it feels good to know that my scepticism was entirely warranted. But the sort of sadness of all the wasted talent & effort involved makes it difficult to laugh too loud even at the funniest of the videos that take delight in celebrating the off-the-scale-stupidity of it all. Though I must say the narrator of How Did The Metaverse Fail So Badly? elicited more than a few guffaws, to emerge as my favourite of the bunch.

Just hope all the folks we met back in March 2023 who got retrenched later, were able to get decent jobs after being sent on their ways doing something that actually benefits people.

That's Entertainment

We are definitely getting value for money out of the telly we brought for Maison KL last December. The only streaming service we've got is Apple tv, but that's quite enough for our needs, thank you. Having completed all four seasons of the increasingly unlikely but highly entertaining The Morning Show we embarked this week on Down Cemetery Road which has a high enough body count to keep us interested. Not sure I follow the plot, but that's been true of almost everything I've watched over the last decade. I've come to assume that not really grasping what's going on is the point of most tv dramas these days and I'm quite okay with that as long as no one expects me to take the contents seriously.

I suppose the programmes we watch these days hold up a mirror to nature as it manifests itself somewhere in the world, but it's not the sort of quiet, easy-going, uneventful nature we spend our lives coming into contact with. 

Distinctly Aching

I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to set about cleaning all the downstairs windows at the homestead this afternoon (of which there are plenty.) I managed to complete the job by the late afternoon, at which point I knew it wasn't a good idea at all. Of course, the fact that the windows are now clear and sparkly in a quiet way is a distinct positive. But not as distinct as the aching of this frail old body of mine, an aching that is at this point in time wholly negative, with nothing remotely sparkly about it. Sparkly, I'm afraid, is over for me.

I really need to remember just how demanding these household tasks are and how I've reached an age when it's best to parcel them out over time.

Plodding On

Bloomsday

Thought I'd read a slab of the greatest novel of the twentieth century in view of this being a special day in the calendar. Chose the Eumaeus episode. At a superficial level it's easy to follow (especially after the fireworks of Nighttown) and if you enjoy ponderous cliché - and I do - it's hilarious and sort of addictive.

Also a suitable reminder of Joyce's concern with the ordinariness of it all, with his mock-heroes plodding towards whatever apotheosis Number 7 Eccles Street has to offer.

Under Protest

Forced myself to start cleaning the bookshelves here at Maison KL. This is the  best way I know to shake off the heavy lethargy that descends on my shoulders during vacations. Apart from the practical usefulness of helping keep the homestead clean it serves as a reminder of fruitful hours of reading in the past. The implication being that I'd better keep things up in the (possible) years ahead. 

The problem is the increasing feeling that it would be so easy just not to bother doing much of anything. A sort of anomie of the aged.

Not Exactly On The Ball

Am trying to muster some kind of enthusiasm for the World Cup, but failing miserably. Odd really since the 3 Lions came so close in Euro 2024 and the squad has done so well in qualifying for these finals. I've got a feeling that if the team really plays at the group stage I'll stir myself to take an interest. Not sure I'll be bothering about securing any tv coverage as things stand though.

All this seems mysteriously connected to my cynicism regarding Modern Life in general. Once you've decided It All Sucks it's tricky to garner enthusiasm for anything outside the joys of domesticity.

Visitors

15.54

We're playing host to Hamzah et al later this afternoon. Noi is busy making sure that our guests will be well fed and I'm endeavoring to free myself from the pleasant torpor that has gripped me for the past week or so. It will be good to get back fully to the land of the living.

12.00 midnight & beyond

Our guests are, happily, in no hurry to leave. Just enjoyed a pot of teh tarik with Hamzah along with on-going discussion on the state of the Malaysian economy and the changes therein being wrought by developments in AI. All the young people in the household have expressed considerable scepticism as to whether those developments will prove positive. My guess is that you'd get similar conversations in any household on the planet at this point in time. It's exciting to still be around to witness all this. But exciting in all the wrong ways.

The Wretched Of The Earth

Even as I was indulging in my bit of a moan yesterday about the stresses of home ownership I was experiencing a deeply nagging sense of guilt at doing so. This had its considerable roots in the fact that I'd been reading the opening chapters of Zola's Germinal and couldn't help but be aware of the deep disconnect between the luxury of my life here and the utter misery of that of the workers in and around the Mountsou mine that the novelist painstakingly itemises in Part One of his novel.

Zola takes his readers so fully inside the mine in terms of everyday agonising detail as to engender a painful claustrophobia. And does so in what seems to me an almost flat style, a kind of journalistic recording of the facts as they are: The mine never lay idle; night and day human insects were always down there burrowing into the rock six hundred metres beneath the fields of beet. You are forced to witness that burrowing in inescapable close-up, right next to one of the insects involved. And it's painful. In fact, more than one; making it relentless also.

Should the suffering of those working down French mines in 1866 impinge upon a twenty-first century consciousness? Well, Zola leaves the reader in no doubt of the reality of that suffering and the fact that it called for some kind of attention. And it doesn't take much to draw parallels with the equally real experiences in our time of those whose lot is similar exploitation. So I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that I have at least some awareness of my own inadequacies as a citizen of the world.

Home Improvements

Today we've had a couple of workmen around: one to install an updated filtration system for the water; the other to get Noi's oven working again. Both endeavours seem to have been successful, though it's generally best to wait for a year or so, I find, before a final declaration on this front. By which time a couple more things will have managed to go wrong about the house. As always I remind myself we're lucky to have what we've got and as long as the place remains livable there's not much point in moaning.

And perhaps I should be even more positive than that. The fact that the old fridge has kept going since we last repaired it is surely cause for great celebration. The first attempt at putting in the spare part required didn't go well and I thought we'd need to find somewhere to dump the old model and buy a new one. But it's functioned perfectly since the second attempt. Indeed, the guy who came to repair our oven remarked that we were lucky to have it since this make is no longer available despite it being known to be an excellent refrigerator. Odd that - a manufacturer discontinuing a line on the grounds that it's so good at what it does.