I left early in the morning into cold rain and wind as I had an appointment with a hairdresser in Xinyi. This is just on the edge of downtown-y bit with all the malls and megastores, a sixth floor office in an office block turned into a hairdresser’s salon. This sort of setup seems quite […]
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Scent of lilies
Last weekend we bought a bunch of lilies in bud from the flower market. Yesterday they suddenly bloomed and have flooded the flat with scent. It’s a heavy, heady fragrance, and I feel that there was a book in which it was called the scent of death. I think maybe they are commonly used in […]
Whirlwind
We persist in reaping the whirlwind as the President of Pakistan, armed with a fatwa from Al-Azhar, the closure of the Kaaba and Al-Aqsa, a revised azaan in Kuwait, and the example of nearly every other Muslim country in the world, meets the jahil-e-azam mullahs of Pakistan and comes away with the the following decision […]
Deadline
Yesterday was the submission deadline for a document that had been badly disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak. We squeezed it out under the wire. In the process I managed to annoy my oldest colleague/ friend at the organisation who doesn’t like his indolence to be brought to attention. Some years ago I think I would […]
News of a lockdown
So Pakistan is now also in lockdown, after days and weeks of ostrichism and prevarication. I have one sister in Islamabad, by herself in a flat in the Diplomatic Enclave; another outside the enclave, a father mostly by himself (though, happily, his house help returned from vacation just in time, hopefully not bringing the pest […]
Flower shopping
The GF woke up late and I waited for him, so we parted ways with the Boddhisattva and the Woodland Creature for the day, planning to meet up in the early evening at the Jian Guo Flower Market to buy some plants and flowers for the flat. So off we went, first for lunch at […]
To Da’an
This morning we moved to Da’an. We called an uncle who has one of those gigantic taxis and loaded it up with all our belongings: two suitcases each (one large, one small), assorted backpacks and handbags, and a few bags of household stuff acquired here: lamps from ikea, mugs, the GF’s basketball, the Woodland Creature’s […]
Slight untilt
After the heightened worry of the day before, yesterday felt a little calmer. Not that things were much better. My possibility of return to Pakistan has been blocked as the government has put in a requirement that all travellers be formally cleared of coronavirus in the day before travelling, which is just closing borders without […]
Wobble wobble
The world wobbles on its axis. Strange that there is nothing outside this current crisis. When I did humanitarian work in the past there was always something outside it. Here there is nothing outside, no escape for any of us. The GF and I have had a few conversations on what we should do. The […]
City stroll
Yesterday we went for a stroll. First a taxi down to Xinbeitou (since the shuttle bus was on reduced hours for the weekend). We shared it with a couple from Japan and their young daughter who are staying in the building and will be taking over our flat when we leave this week. The wife […]