Yesterday, Saturday, was the last sunny day, with today and the next few days to be cold and rainy, It was also the first day of this year’s official sakura festival, so we decided to visit Chiang Kai-shek’s old summer home in Yangming park and called an Uber (along the way we saw a man […]
A man and his daemon
In the morning yesterday got an Uber and drove up and down narrow winding roads wrapped along the hills of Yangmingshan, with views over Taipei to one side and green hillsides to the other. There were trees in early bloom along the way, sakura and rhododendron, and wildflowers on grassy bits. We were behind a […]
Back at last
The GF arrived last night, after our longest time apart in years. It was lovely to see him, though there is the inevitable need to learn to live with someone else again – no more leaving the curtains drawn overnight as he doesn’t like light in the mornings. This afternoon I cancelled all my phone […]
Da’an town
Apologies for the tortured pun. As readers familiar with Taipei will gather, we (the Bodhisattva, Woodland Creature and I) went into town today, to one of the nice parts of the city. Started around Yongkang Street, which is a slightly touristy but nice street with plenty of tea shops and a startling number of umbrella […]
East of the world
I am in Taiwan, and will be here for at least the next two months, perhaps longer. The rest of the journey was fairly smooth though it was notable how the density of masks skyrocketed – on the flight itself, there was only one small family without masks and they were European. The air of […]
Old haunt
Here I am in KLIA in the middle of the night, a place I’ve passed through many, many times at this hour, when the flights from Pakistan typically arrive. This time I’ve made my way to the lounge as my connecting flight is several hours away, and am just about to doze. I wore a […]
Left behind
Last night I went to a dinner for Lahore’s beautiful people, a crowd I was not particularly interested in when I lived in Lahore, and even less so now that I feel so far away. It’s funny though how one can feel sad about not fitting in, even with a group one doesn’t particularly want […]
Smoke and ash
Yesterday, as I was sitting glumly staring at my computer, my father decided to have harmal done. This is a hallucinogenic plant that is burned as a folk remedy for allergies. A small brazier was taken from room to room, and the ground seeds cast upon it to fill the house with a pall of […]
Clean out
As part of my ongoing cleanout of the Lahore house, I hired a Filipina woman yesterday, for two days of intensive cleaning. I generally feel rather conflicted about Pakistanis who employ Filipina maids as I find it exploitative of the maids and unfair to the many, many poor Pakistanis who are not employed, paid those […]
Lap of luxury
I went to see The Gentleman last night, of which I knew nothing at all, though once it began I realised I did know that Hugh Grant had a film in which he gleefully played a scuzzy tabloid journalist of the sort he loathes and established an actual NGO about. It was entertaining stuff: very […]