Last day in Oaxaca. I’ve been feeling rather sad. The city is overflowing with people and cars and dancers and music and excitement, which is making it feel like I’ll really miss out but also the city is starting to be unrecognisable. There are vast tents set up on some streets, and filled with stalls […]
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A final outing
It turns out that my Instagrammer acquaintance is well known in Bangkok’s food scene. Last night she invited a few of us over to the place where she is staying for a Thai meal. So I went to the market for fruit, met up with Vida Loca (who arrived at our meetup point late and […]
Two gods
A verse by the Punjab poet Ustad Daman, written in honour of General Zia and quoted in a very good article about him in Dawn: mery mulk de do khuda la elah te martial la ik rehnda a arshan utthay duja rehnda farshan uttay Even if you don’t know Punjabi, if you know the first […]
The dance of the feather
At 9 I met the Instagrammer at the spot from where one can catch colectivos to Tlacolula’s Sunday market. It was a pleasant journey, quite chatty. I told hre about my limpia, she told me about her limpia, and with this early morning exchange of innermost secrets it was easy to get along. We arrived […]
Spiritual cleansing
This morning, I and one of my housemates met my teacher in town to catch a taxi to a village near Tule, the home of the largest tree. Unfortunately, the road was very, very crowded and eventually turned out to be blocked – we would have to walk the rest of the way, about 3-4 […]
What could have been
An unexpected successful, if short, excursion this evening. I went out to get dinner and had thought I would go to Llano park for the delicious elotes from the cart one has to queue for 20 minutes for. At the last minute, as I walked towards Porfirio Diaz, I changed my mind and decided to […]
Bigger class yet
Two more people joined the class, bringing the total up to four (another left over the weekend and may or may not be back the next weekend). They are perfectly pleasant, even interesting – one a soldier who was posted to Afghanistan, and the other an Instagrammer in the flesh. But yes, too many people. […]
Mural barrio
On Saturday, which felt like Sunday, I went for a stroll through the barrio of Jalatlaco, just outside centro, which I’d heard was a particularly pretty little neighbourhood of Oaxaca: quite historic (formerly the leatherwroking quarter), but also pictureque, with many murals. It was a pleasant stroll, though nothing really out of the ordinary. it […]
Troubled and concerned
Day after day I get amazed at the passivity of Americans. It seems particularly noticeable at the moment, with mass protests in Sudan and Hong Kong, with even Brexit bringing hundreds of thousands onto the street. Even as Americans are troubled and concerned about everything – from the concentration camps on the border to the […]
Worst end of farmyard
It was the 14th birthday of my Spanish school and in the break there were two cakes. One, a tres leches cake, the other a jelly made with cream and with bits of regular green and red jelly suspended in it. It looked like something out of a 1950s American cookbook. Glad to have tried […]