All In The Timing

Came quite close to making a mistake regarding the timing of an important meeting in which I'm involved tomorrow morning. I'd noted the timing in my diary quite a while ago and was confident that I could afford an extra half an hour in bed and had planned accordingly. Fortunately I happened to decide on purging the emails lingering in my inbox, and discovered a recent one with a significantly earlier starting time for the meeting in question. So I won't embarrass myself on the final day of term after all.

This kind of confusion rarely if ever featured in my work in the first half of my career. Why not? Well, meeting times and locations were solidly fixed since our modes of communication were limited. As a result, sudden switches were generally out of the question since predictability was uppermost in our minds in terms of making sure it all worked. But these days last minute messaging regarding unexpected changes sometimes seems the default mode for organisations. Life has become interestingly unpredictable and, I suppose, more stressful for those who care about such things.

Happily, I'm now beyond embarrassment; though broadly speaking I'd prefer to be where I'm supposed to be on the grounds that it makes life just that bit easier.

Vanishing Worlds

Some years ago I was given a copy of Pico Iyer's book of travel essays Video Night in Kathmandu. First published in 1988, the year of my arrival in this Far Place, it was quite a fashionable read at the time and I'd already read a couple of the essays when it was given to me. I vaguely recall dipping into the different pieces based on the level of interest I had at the time with regard to the various locations involved, but at this distance in time I don't recall reading the work cover to cover, in sequence.

So it occurred to me that I might as well rectify that omission and see what I make of Iyer's work now we're well into the twenty-first century. And having now read (or, rather, re-read) the first piece on Bali I find myself quite startled by just how dated the writing seems. What was in its small way quite cutting-edge just four decades ago strikes me now as being positively old-fashioned in an almost humorous way. I find it quite a stretch to try and remember just how deeply fashionable Johnny Rambo was in his day and it seems extraordinary that the slightly ridiculous Sly Stallone was seen as something of an idol in the real meaning of the word in these parts.

In fact I realise that the Bali I remember visiting, in the 1990s, was already considerably more developed than the island visited by Iyer in the middle 80s. He laments the loss of an enchantment he experienced in his initial encounters with the place; I think back to my own enchantment with a world that, according to the writer, had already lost its magic.

I suspect our sense of enchantment with special places comes from within and that any world can be magical and is always fallen.

Restless

My weariness amazed me on two occasions today. Once in the morning; and again in the afternoon. And it's doing so again now. Not an unpleasant feeling if rest is imminent. But debilitating when there's lots to do. The bitter fruit of age, I'm afraid.

Connecting

Sometimes the simplicities of rhythm & rhyme are all you need. Carol Rumens's excellent choice for the current Poem of the Week is a telling example. Whilst reading I think that this is the world I really belong to. At other times I'm just happy to pop my head in and sample a better time & place. At least, that is, in imagination.

Not Connecting

Still processing yesterday's concert. The level of the musicianship from the SSO was stellar. Wonderful choral work in the Haydn mass and a soprano to die for in the final movement of Mahler 4. Yet somehow I didn't connect, beyond recognising the quality involved. 

And in a very different context I found something similar in my reading of Thoreau's Cape Cod. Much as I recognised the craft of the writing it didn't work for me beyond isolated snatches of appreciation.

Maybe I'm in a dry season. Encountering good things at the wrong time. Patience & perseverance are the order of the day. Let's face it. They are all any of us have got when things just don't work.

Limitations

Back from big helpings of Haydn and Mahler. Wonderful to be exposed to such excellence. But paradoxically made acutely aware of my very real limitations in relation to such heights of achievement.

Together

As I write this, Noi is flying in from Doha. I'll be setting off to the airport in a few minutes and we should be reunited in a couple of hours from now. Life will then settle back into its predictable routines.

And all will be very well, thank you.

Changing The Game

Attended a briefing-cum-lecture-cum-workshop related to AI in the school this morning. Found much to admire in the efforts of colleagues doing their best to find ways of integrating those tools-cum-platforms related to this into what goes on in classrooms. But also was keenly aware that the possibilities attendant upon the new technology are so spectacular in their range that the best efforts teachers make are likely to prove inadequate to the exigencies of the Brave New World that lies ahead.

Of course, I can afford to be complacent about all this, being at the fag-end of my career. So I'm looking on with a sort of stupefied curiosity, cheerfully hoping for the best, but darkly fearing the worst. 

Indeed, I fear that a significant dollop of the worst is already with us, but we're ill-equipped to recognise such.

Even More Grumbling

I'm just being extremely petty here. But I'm missing the SAC at work and I'm not entirely convinced that the place was in genuine need of refurbishment. I like areas with a run-down quality about them as spaces to hang loose in. And I can't think of anywhere in which to ease my rigid bits during the day at the moment. Mind you, things are essentially relaxed in these final weeks of the school year, hence the admission of pettiness.

I suppose there is something genuinely significant about all this, though. A recognition of the importance of trivialities in the workplace, and how deeply reliant we are on the familiar.

More Grumbling

My sore feet performed well enough today, wrapped in decent Umbro socks for protection, taking me to Star Vista in the middle of the day to do a bit of shopping to replenish supplies ahead of Noi's impending return on Friday. So nothing to complain about there. And the shopping centre itself was pleasant enough. They've put up one of those incongruously huge Christmas trees around their main entrance, but otherwise the decorations for the approaching season are reasonably restrained. And since I've got used to the tree being rolled out every November it wasn't too much of a shock to the system.

But the Christmas music in the Cold Storage supermarket was a step too far. It's 11 November, as the date above this post will confirm. It isn't the time to be musing on what Santa will bring, as one lyrically limited tune enjoined. Funnily enough I didn't recognise a single one of the songs played, which all sounded like something you might have heard in the USA of the 1960s. None of them worked in the November tropics. 

It's the incongruity of it all that's doing my head in. (A colloquialism expressing an incisive degree of personal distress, for those unfamiliar with the term.)