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.

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.