Our building celebrated Chinese New Year today, with a lion dance and a dragon dance and a small banquet. I was glad especially to see the lion dance, as though I’ve seen the ‘dance’ bit of it quite a few times now, I’ve never been around, or close enough, on time, to watch the ritual […]
Dream
I have a headache again today, but this time I know exactly why. I had a dream this morning, of a fairly ordinary day. I was soon leaving the country and my mother and I, with younger siblings in the backseat, were driving around running some errands. We had to stop at someone’s house on […]
Stupid sentimentality
Today was almost overwhelmed by sentimentality. I watched the first episode of Aakhri Station, which was getting some buzz as a good new Urdu drama series, sort of like a feminist Black Mirror. The conceit is that it is set in a women’s carriage on a train from Lahore to Karachi and each episode is […]
Headachy day
A second headachy day, and indeed a headachy night as I woke up several times feeling awful and once, sure that dacoits had robbed the bank vault – which bank vault, who knows. I think these are tension headaches due to very tense shoulders. I really should go for a massage. In any case, I […]
Uninteresting
A busy sort of day today, with a couple of speeches to write in the morning, then a consultancy to bid for (little hope but one must keep at it), and finally a rather interesting article on disability to edit. However, I have had a headache all day, which is steadily getting worse, and I […]
Busy, busy
The week has started with a fair bit of work, much of it now overdue as I had to spend a great deal of time in KL’s less salubrious shopping centres getting photocopies, photographs and postage for passport renewal. The wheels are now in motion and hopefully it’ll be here in four to six weeks. […]
Spooked
There was a strange sense of unrightness around KL today, or maybe I was just spooked. There are often addicts sprawled on the pavements in our part of town, and I had my bag snatched very dramatically in my first week in the city which ended with a trip to the emergency as my head […]
Incense
After two cups of morning tea, twice my usual allocation, we went down to Petaling Street where, rumour had it, Ali Muthu & Ahok was one of the rare restaurants open on Chinese New Year. It was open and was packed, but we found a table for nasi lemak. Merchant’s Lane next door appeared to […]
Afrofutures
We went to see Black Panther yesterday. It was very good, and I say this as one who is not a fan of superhero films. It was beautiful of course – Afrofuturism is lush visually (I’m less fond of the novels I’ve read in the genre). And so strange and refreshing to see a big […]
Relief
A relief to be back in KL with our next guest to come in a fortnight but only for a couple of days, and then perhaps a family visit in May. It is very nice indeed to be back with the GF without others around. We went to Sarang and had a delicious Nyonya laksa […]