25 Ramadhan 1437
In the middle of one Sky News reporter's account just now of various politicos back in the Disunited Kingdom stabbing each other in the back he noted, You couldn't make this up, could you? following which the lady anchoring the broadcast ruefully mumbled, Busy day, as the segment concluded. These are exciting times. Unfortunately.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Good Intentions
24 Ramadhan 1437
One feature of Islamic practice that took me by surprise when I converted was the emphasis on the niat, the formally expressed intention behind particular acts, such as fasting. It isn't enough to fast. One must declare the intention for the fast in advance of the act. And if you forget, as I understand it, the fast is invalidated, or at least in danger of being so. In this way of seeing things, God decides whether your fasting is acceptable, and you are never quite sure if it has been accepted.
What this means in practical day to day terms - and Islam is, above all, concerned with the practical and day to day - is that you can never forget what underlies your practice no matter how foolishly forgetful you might be. So for all the benefits that fasting bestows on the individual you know that is not the point of fasting. The fast is undertaken as an act of worship, one that leads inexorably, sanely outside the self.
I was thinking about this today in connection with Aristotle's notion of Final Causes. To those who can see, all things point in a certain direction. Inexorably. Finally. Sanely.
One feature of Islamic practice that took me by surprise when I converted was the emphasis on the niat, the formally expressed intention behind particular acts, such as fasting. It isn't enough to fast. One must declare the intention for the fast in advance of the act. And if you forget, as I understand it, the fast is invalidated, or at least in danger of being so. In this way of seeing things, God decides whether your fasting is acceptable, and you are never quite sure if it has been accepted.
What this means in practical day to day terms - and Islam is, above all, concerned with the practical and day to day - is that you can never forget what underlies your practice no matter how foolishly forgetful you might be. So for all the benefits that fasting bestows on the individual you know that is not the point of fasting. The fast is undertaken as an act of worship, one that leads inexorably, sanely outside the self.
I was thinking about this today in connection with Aristotle's notion of Final Causes. To those who can see, all things point in a certain direction. Inexorably. Finally. Sanely.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Down And Out
23 Ramadhan 1437
Sidling by my desk early this morning Moghan noted: Losing to Iceland must be even more humiliating for you than Brexit! He had a point. Fortunately I avoided watching the loss to Iceland by cunningly not arranging to get coverage of the Euros through our service providers here in Singapore on the grounds it cost too much (whereas it's free in Malaysia.) I had a bad feeling about the game and suspected my more intense interest in the competition might terminate at this point. Judging from what I've read about the game, watching it would probably be nigh on unbearable given the lousy performance of my countrymen. (I've seen the goals from Iceland and they were painful enough on their own, especially the Joe Hart fumble.)
Though I must say, I rather think I might enjoy watching Iceland do so well. A bit like watching Leicester win the league.
Sidling by my desk early this morning Moghan noted: Losing to Iceland must be even more humiliating for you than Brexit! He had a point. Fortunately I avoided watching the loss to Iceland by cunningly not arranging to get coverage of the Euros through our service providers here in Singapore on the grounds it cost too much (whereas it's free in Malaysia.) I had a bad feeling about the game and suspected my more intense interest in the competition might terminate at this point. Judging from what I've read about the game, watching it would probably be nigh on unbearable given the lousy performance of my countrymen. (I've seen the goals from Iceland and they were painful enough on their own, especially the Joe Hart fumble.)
Though I must say, I rather think I might enjoy watching Iceland do so well. A bit like watching Leicester win the league.
Monday, June 27, 2016
The Long And The Light
22 Ramadhan 1437
Today was my first day of fasting while at work this year - and a reminder of how time seems to slow down in fasting month. This is not so much because waiting to eat and drink slows things down as the fact that the day begins at 5.00 am for sahur and not having to eat or drink during the day means there's a lot of time for everything else. It's a curiously freeing effect.
I weighed myself after getting back from work, suspecting that I was somewhat lighter than usual (my jeans are hanging loosely upon me) and found I'm now well under my fighting weight. This feels healthy, but short term. I have no doubt I'll put the weight back on, but I am wondering if I'll go any lower. I don't think I've been this light since I was sixteen.
Time was when there were lots of articles about the benefits in terms of health related to fasting ahead of, or during, Ramadhan. There don't seem to be so many these days - possibly because the benefits are now easily recognised. As with so many things related to fasting month, there's a curious paradox here. Wouldn't you think regular periods of forced deprivation, even quite brief ones, might be damaging? But no, that's simply and wonderfully not the case.
Today was my first day of fasting while at work this year - and a reminder of how time seems to slow down in fasting month. This is not so much because waiting to eat and drink slows things down as the fact that the day begins at 5.00 am for sahur and not having to eat or drink during the day means there's a lot of time for everything else. It's a curiously freeing effect.
I weighed myself after getting back from work, suspecting that I was somewhat lighter than usual (my jeans are hanging loosely upon me) and found I'm now well under my fighting weight. This feels healthy, but short term. I have no doubt I'll put the weight back on, but I am wondering if I'll go any lower. I don't think I've been this light since I was sixteen.
Time was when there were lots of articles about the benefits in terms of health related to fasting ahead of, or during, Ramadhan. There don't seem to be so many these days - possibly because the benefits are now easily recognised. As with so many things related to fasting month, there's a curious paradox here. Wouldn't you think regular periods of forced deprivation, even quite brief ones, might be damaging? But no, that's simply and wonderfully not the case.
Sunday, June 26, 2016
On The Go
21 Ramadhan 1437
We'll be setting off on the journey to our usual place of abode later in the afternoon, with the plan being to break our fast on the road. In my earliest Ramadhans I wouldn't have considered this as a possibility, believing that the momentous nature of breaking the fast meant it needed to be in a definite place following a definite routine. I suppose it's a measure of how much I've adapted to the whole experience of fasting that that notion sounds rather quaint these days. As long as you can eat and drink it hardly matters how or where it's being done.
We'll be setting off on the journey to our usual place of abode later in the afternoon, with the plan being to break our fast on the road. In my earliest Ramadhans I wouldn't have considered this as a possibility, believing that the momentous nature of breaking the fast meant it needed to be in a definite place following a definite routine. I suppose it's a measure of how much I've adapted to the whole experience of fasting that that notion sounds rather quaint these days. As long as you can eat and drink it hardly matters how or where it's being done.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Kids & Cats
20 Ramadhan 1437
15.45
Left Maison KL in what looked good shape, having had the outside woodwork repainted over the last couple of weeks by Ah Seng's guys, and sped down the highway to Melaka yesterday afternoon. Greeted here by various small children and even smaller cats. Both species splendidly self-contained in their pressing concerns, which certainly don't include maintaining property and getting ready for work when next week starts. Lucky them!
Always good to break the fast here considering the mounds of goodies on the table, and I'm already looking forward to the high point of the day.
21.20
One of the cats, it seems, goes by the name of Lolita. Thank goodness it isn't one of the kids.
15.45
Left Maison KL in what looked good shape, having had the outside woodwork repainted over the last couple of weeks by Ah Seng's guys, and sped down the highway to Melaka yesterday afternoon. Greeted here by various small children and even smaller cats. Both species splendidly self-contained in their pressing concerns, which certainly don't include maintaining property and getting ready for work when next week starts. Lucky them!
Always good to break the fast here considering the mounds of goodies on the table, and I'm already looking forward to the high point of the day.
21.20
One of the cats, it seems, goes by the name of Lolita. Thank goodness it isn't one of the kids.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Uncertainties
19 Ramadhan 1437
What a difference a few hours makes. I went to bed after watching a bit of the news concerning the end of polling in the EU Referendum back in the UK. The general feeling seemed to be that the Remain camp would edge it. I wake-up to find it's almost certain that Britain is out of Europe, whatever that means.
That's the striking thing here. No one seems to know what the decision to leave (assuming that's the way things end up, and it looks increasingly likely) means in terms of the realities of political and daily life. As I write the value of the pound is dropping, though whether that's more than just a temporary blip isn't for sure, because nothing's for sure. I must say I'm a bit worried, but then I always am, so that doesn't mean a lot.
Noi says, I hope it all works out. Which sounds like the best that can be said in any circumstances.
What a difference a few hours makes. I went to bed after watching a bit of the news concerning the end of polling in the EU Referendum back in the UK. The general feeling seemed to be that the Remain camp would edge it. I wake-up to find it's almost certain that Britain is out of Europe, whatever that means.
That's the striking thing here. No one seems to know what the decision to leave (assuming that's the way things end up, and it looks increasingly likely) means in terms of the realities of political and daily life. As I write the value of the pound is dropping, though whether that's more than just a temporary blip isn't for sure, because nothing's for sure. I must say I'm a bit worried, but then I always am, so that doesn't mean a lot.
Noi says, I hope it all works out. Which sounds like the best that can be said in any circumstances.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Retreating
18 Ramadhan 1437
The past two weeks or so here at Maison KL have felt like something of a retreat for me, a pulling away from the world to rest and look inward. That doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything at all, but it does mean I haven't felt stretched or challenged in any distinct manner. It's a privilege to be able to experience fasting in this context, but I'm happy to leave these comfortable circumstances behind in the knowledge that discomfort is a mighty useful thing, and part of the point of the discipline of the fast.
And in extremely wobbly connection with the above reflections, I'm just hoping the England squad don't regard the game with Iceland as a comfortable way to move into the last eight. If they do I suspect they'll come unstuck. Watching Iceland battle their way through their group has been almost as pleasurable as following the progress of Leicester to their unlikely triumph.
The past two weeks or so here at Maison KL have felt like something of a retreat for me, a pulling away from the world to rest and look inward. That doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything at all, but it does mean I haven't felt stretched or challenged in any distinct manner. It's a privilege to be able to experience fasting in this context, but I'm happy to leave these comfortable circumstances behind in the knowledge that discomfort is a mighty useful thing, and part of the point of the discipline of the fast.
And in extremely wobbly connection with the above reflections, I'm just hoping the England squad don't regard the game with Iceland as a comfortable way to move into the last eight. If they do I suspect they'll come unstuck. Watching Iceland battle their way through their group has been almost as pleasurable as following the progress of Leicester to their unlikely triumph.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Diversity
17 Ramadhan 1437
I've been reading all sorts of bits and pieces in no particular shape or order since we've been in KL. This is partly related to the fact that the bookshelves here house quite a mixture ranging from books acquired when I was just a lad (which went into storage in two distinct locations for quite a number of years after 1988 until I finally shipped them out east) to stuff purchased very recently. Most of the comics/graphic novels I've bought since finding my way back into this genre via Gaiman's wonderful Sandman series are housed here, and I've had pleasure dipping into Persepolis, Gaiman's tales of Dream's sister Death and The Long Halloween, an imaginative updating of the Batman mythos.
Another tome handy for dipping into has been The Collected What If? a collection of historical essays dealing with some intriguing counter-factuals. It's quite a bulky volume, given to me as a present a decade ago by Mei & Boon (gosh, time passes!) and it's really not made for reading in sequence, so I've never bothered. Rather I find myself looking at some two or three of the essays each time we're around here for any length of time and enjoying the idea there's more to come.
But I've managed to get beyond just dipping and give the full length treatment to a couple of books in the last week that I've been meaning to get round to for some little time. The first of these was H.E. Bates's Love For Lydia which I acquired in 1988, just before heading out here since it featured in the Marshall Cavendish series of Great Books (or something like that) which, for some reason, I thought worth subscribing to back then, probably because they were cheap, I guess. I didn't have a chance to read it then and it's not featured high on the list of stuff I need to catch up since getting it out here since I can't honestly say I would regard Bates as a writer of Great Books in any meaningful sense. From all appearances it looked like an account of drearily obsessive first love for a drearily mysterious femme fatale, and that's pretty much how it turned out - except maybe just a bit better. Some observant descriptive writing relating to the natural world raised it slightly above the ordinary for me, but only slightly. I'm afraid I'm several decades too late for tales of young love and passion. I keep wondering why anyone would bother and, more practically, why the narrator didn't just take off with one of the nicely stable ordinary young ladies who made their availability clear to him.
The other book I went cover to cover with is, I suppose, a volume for children. Entitled Return to the Hundred Acre Wood it's a revisiting of A.A. Milne's engaging tales of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh and their companions written in the style of the original by David Benedictus and illustrated, quite beautifully by Mark Burgess in the inimitable (but here wonderfully imitated) style of E.H. Shephard. Now you might be thinking I must be quite a Milne fan, but that's not the case at all. I didn't particularly enjoy the Pooh stuff as a kid, coming to it rather too late, and I only know the stories from hearing them adapted as they were for programmes like Jackanory. In fact, it's only as an adult that I came to recognise the 'engaging' qualities of the tales, as referred to above and I don't feel any strong nostalgic impulse to read Milne (of the sort I definitely feel for Kenneth Grahame's work.) This was another book given to me generously as a present, quite unexpectedly, by my colleague Suzanne back in 2011. I think she'd been to the UK in the December of the previous year and bought the book at a signing by Benedictus thinking it was something I'd like precisely because I'm English. It's a handsome-looking volume, beautifully illustrated, as I say, and I popped it on the bookshelves at work meaning to get round to it some time soon - and didn't. And then when Suzanne passed away for some reason I lost all desire to look at it.
That was silly. It was fun to read and a reminder of a lovely person. Good enough reason to want to read anything, and I'm glad I did.
I've been reading all sorts of bits and pieces in no particular shape or order since we've been in KL. This is partly related to the fact that the bookshelves here house quite a mixture ranging from books acquired when I was just a lad (which went into storage in two distinct locations for quite a number of years after 1988 until I finally shipped them out east) to stuff purchased very recently. Most of the comics/graphic novels I've bought since finding my way back into this genre via Gaiman's wonderful Sandman series are housed here, and I've had pleasure dipping into Persepolis, Gaiman's tales of Dream's sister Death and The Long Halloween, an imaginative updating of the Batman mythos.
Another tome handy for dipping into has been The Collected What If? a collection of historical essays dealing with some intriguing counter-factuals. It's quite a bulky volume, given to me as a present a decade ago by Mei & Boon (gosh, time passes!) and it's really not made for reading in sequence, so I've never bothered. Rather I find myself looking at some two or three of the essays each time we're around here for any length of time and enjoying the idea there's more to come.
But I've managed to get beyond just dipping and give the full length treatment to a couple of books in the last week that I've been meaning to get round to for some little time. The first of these was H.E. Bates's Love For Lydia which I acquired in 1988, just before heading out here since it featured in the Marshall Cavendish series of Great Books (or something like that) which, for some reason, I thought worth subscribing to back then, probably because they were cheap, I guess. I didn't have a chance to read it then and it's not featured high on the list of stuff I need to catch up since getting it out here since I can't honestly say I would regard Bates as a writer of Great Books in any meaningful sense. From all appearances it looked like an account of drearily obsessive first love for a drearily mysterious femme fatale, and that's pretty much how it turned out - except maybe just a bit better. Some observant descriptive writing relating to the natural world raised it slightly above the ordinary for me, but only slightly. I'm afraid I'm several decades too late for tales of young love and passion. I keep wondering why anyone would bother and, more practically, why the narrator didn't just take off with one of the nicely stable ordinary young ladies who made their availability clear to him.
The other book I went cover to cover with is, I suppose, a volume for children. Entitled Return to the Hundred Acre Wood it's a revisiting of A.A. Milne's engaging tales of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh and their companions written in the style of the original by David Benedictus and illustrated, quite beautifully by Mark Burgess in the inimitable (but here wonderfully imitated) style of E.H. Shephard. Now you might be thinking I must be quite a Milne fan, but that's not the case at all. I didn't particularly enjoy the Pooh stuff as a kid, coming to it rather too late, and I only know the stories from hearing them adapted as they were for programmes like Jackanory. In fact, it's only as an adult that I came to recognise the 'engaging' qualities of the tales, as referred to above and I don't feel any strong nostalgic impulse to read Milne (of the sort I definitely feel for Kenneth Grahame's work.) This was another book given to me generously as a present, quite unexpectedly, by my colleague Suzanne back in 2011. I think she'd been to the UK in the December of the previous year and bought the book at a signing by Benedictus thinking it was something I'd like precisely because I'm English. It's a handsome-looking volume, beautifully illustrated, as I say, and I popped it on the bookshelves at work meaning to get round to it some time soon - and didn't. And then when Suzanne passed away for some reason I lost all desire to look at it.
That was silly. It was fun to read and a reminder of a lovely person. Good enough reason to want to read anything, and I'm glad I did.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Advancing
16 Ramadhan 1437
Watched the replay of the England game against Slovakia this afternoon and fell asleep towards the end. That's more of a comment on me being tired whilst fasting than it is on the England performance, and the fact that I knew the result already and there were to be no goals to brighten things up. Actually I'm fine with the fact they got through to the last 16 since I thought the group looked more difficult than it proved to be. I reckon England dominated admirably in all of their games and looked solid enough as a unit, but there's a need to up the tempo if they're going to score the goals needed to advance further, especially in terms of what they achieved last night.
Let's face it, if it comes down to penalties we all know what that means.
Watched the replay of the England game against Slovakia this afternoon and fell asleep towards the end. That's more of a comment on me being tired whilst fasting than it is on the England performance, and the fact that I knew the result already and there were to be no goals to brighten things up. Actually I'm fine with the fact they got through to the last 16 since I thought the group looked more difficult than it proved to be. I reckon England dominated admirably in all of their games and looked solid enough as a unit, but there's a need to up the tempo if they're going to score the goals needed to advance further, especially in terms of what they achieved last night.
Let's face it, if it comes down to penalties we all know what that means.
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