Digging Deep

Left the gym just now nursing a deep & abiding thirst, a sign I'd been pushing it a bit, effort wise. Except I hadn't really, it was just that my body had been heavy & out of sorts prior to setting out and it's been a heavily hot day and I'm just that little bit frazzled on account of a week of work that stretched these elderly sinews. And now, with several glasses of chilled water down my gullet and time to recover I still feel like I could down a gallon of juice and nod off for three and a half days without stirring.

All signs I must be doing something right, I suppose.

Concluding

Approaching the end of Syawal, so only one night left for the twinkling lights to serve their tour of duty. And we've been concluding visiting family & friends by having a good time this evening at Nahar & Yati's. A wide range of comestibles (of course) have left us happily thinking of spending tomorrow at home with a simple sandwich to round off the month. It's all highly satisfactory, I must say with a happy, if irritating, complacency.

In A Great Moment

I'm all for living in the moment, zen-mindfulness style, but lousy at actually doing so. Easily distracted, as they say, or used to say, in school reports. Not sure if anyone in teaching is allowed to be that honest now. But generally I try, if given the space, to launch a quick review of great moments of the day. It's sometimes quite surprising how many one can salvage even from a pretty rotten span of hours.

So today involved a fair amount of running about like a maniac. But more than the usual number of distinctly bright spots. And here's the winner, by a short head:

I chanced upon a sensational five and a half minutes of the latest incarnation of Cardiacs live in Manchester of all places. And promptly lost myself, having a minor out-of-body experience in SAC (also, of all places.) If someone had told me they could play Fiery Gun Hand note perfect on stage - making it look effortless - I would have questioned their sanity. But no longer.

And it doesn't stop there. Just after I finished (ready to buzz off to a lesson) I realised that the entire concert!!!!!! is up there on YouTube waiting for me to blow my mind to. Well, that's my entertainment for the weekend fixed!

Re-charging

Another long one! (Day, that is.) But quite a bit of fun here & there.

And now run-down. Like my phone, which is plugged in and re-charging in what looks like a passively, easy, relaxed kind of way. I, in contrast, need to eat & drink the various bits & pieces cunningly provided by The Missus. 

I think I know who gets the better deal between me and my phone. And it's not the phone! Hah!

Long Day's Journey

Gosh it's been a long day. And I still need roughly four extra hours to get done all that needs to be done. Oh dear.

Clarity Of Thought

In troubled times it's comforting to be able to read material of such clarity of thought and expression that it offers hope for our benighted species. For some time now I've found that especially true of my favourite right-wing, conservatively Catholic philosopher Ed Feser, whose political views, on paper, might to be some degree be seen as diametrically opposed to my own. So it's no surprise that he's taken a typically principled position on the notion of a just war.

And a more recent post outlining his ideas on the nature of various addictions struck me as being one of the most insightful things I've ever read on a particularly difficult topic. Funnily enough it draws on the ideas of another philosopher that in terms of political affiliations I really should have no time for at all, and yet invariably read with gratitude for what he has helped me understand. The two passages Prof Feser quotes from Scruton's excellent little book on Beauty struck me as very interesting when I first read them back at the end of last year (if memory serves me well.) Rereading them makes me realise just how deeply insightful they are.

All this reminds me that I need to consciously read outside what I'm comfortable with socially & politically at least 20% of the time - advice I freely offer to all.

In Preparation

Had a brief but jolly time at the Tekka Centre at Serangoon in the early afternoon hunting down the right kind of bones for Noi's patented Sup Tulang Special. She's now doing wonderful things to said bones ahead of a bit of a do scheduled at Fafa's place on the morrow. I for one intend to grab more than my fair share of the pickings.

After purchasing the bones and chicken pieces and potatoes and carrots and spices and whatnot we proceeded to enjoy a cuppa and appropriate comestibles - samosas for myself and prata for The Missus. Pretty much the perfect outing, I reckon, and I have the evidence to prove it:

In Denial

I contrived to be impressively forgetful over the last 24 hours. My attendance is required for an 'event' at work which will eat up most of tomorrow morning. It involves a not particularly onerous duty, so that isn't a problem. But it means there will be no Saturday morning lie-in and no possibility of an uninterrupted 3 hours or so to get with with some urgent marking. But somehow, despite being entirely aware of said event for at least a couple of months, late yesterday I'd entirely forgotten that the morning had been wiped out, until I suddenly remembered on going to bed.

And then the duty again dropped entirely out of sight for me this morning, until I glanced at my appointments diary over a cuppa. And, finally, by the early afternoon I was considering what music to play on my 'free' morning when the painful reality once more intruded into my day-dreaming. 

Of course, all this might just be a sign of aging, and I'm okay with that. But part of me suspects the truth is that some part of what passes for my mind these days decided denial was the appropriate strategy in ensuring I wouldn't get overly irritated by thoughts of going into work on a weekend. And, I must say, I commend that part for a job well done.

Not Mincing Her Words

Difficult to take in the idea that Mum left us on this date a full fourteen years ago. For some reason I was thinking earlier today of one of her epic anti-Thatcher rants when it occurred to me it's a good job she didn't live to witness the ascent of the current POTUS. Difficult to imagine the kind of outpouring he might have triggered, except for the fact it would have been very long. And very unprintable.

Shouldering The Burden

In those far-off days (circa 1971 - 77) of labouring in factories and industrial cleaning (when not goofing off at school and university) I would never have believed that office work (as performed by the middle-classes) involved any kind of physical strain. And now I know a lot more about it I know it doesn't really. Well, not teaching anyway. Except for niggling little pains and physical irritations.

Like shoulders aching from holding them too tightly, as my shoulders are now doing. It's not exactly painful but it hurts, if you see what I mean.

Generally aching shoulders aren't a problem for me at all, in the ordinary run of things. But when I unconsciously hunch up over the old laptop the folly of doing so can leave its mark. Over time I've come to realise that I need to consciously relax when throwing myself into that kind of work - like getting entangled in e-mails, so generally I avoid the problem. But I've come to realise over the last few days of examining for the oral component of my subject that when I'm engaged with my students in their one-on-one recorded presentations I get extremely tense physically, but not mentally, as if in sympathetic response to the pressures some of them feel.

Much as I've generally enjoyed listening to what they have to say I'll be happy when it's over for them. And even more so for me, just to be more than a bit selfish.