The ending to ‘The Astrolabe’ remains unsatisfying. Usually I’m quite good at final scenes, but it occurs to me this is because they are often the first thing that comes to me, whereas with this I didn’t have an ending before I began. I read Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West last night, and that clearly suffered […]
Your clothes
My mother’s birthdays are always sad. She had mixed feelings about them; she was excited, they never lived up to the anticipation. The birthday parties required immense preparations, great expense and a lot of stress for everyone, but were something I had to endure for her sake, though I was less kind than I could […]
Disapprove
This is how they served the sugar for our cream tea, bah.
Junk food diet
For some reason Joe Millionaire popped into my mind. This was one of the earlier reality shows, the setup was that a number of carefully selected young American women were invited to the chateau home of a young millionaire on the look out for a bride. The question was, whom would he select, and how […]
Face of defeat
I’m watching Najib’s press conference. He looks a wreck. He has conceded defeat while saying, basically, that ‘we might have lost but no one else won’ – presumably this is due to a technicality in that the opposition PH coalition is not registered as a coalition and none of its component parties by themselves form […]
Things change
I started following the election results from around 7, with the Star newspaper’s live feed in a background window. Later I added Malaysiakini, which had less conservative estimates, as well. Through the evening, as I had dinner and did some work, the numbers kept ticking up, mostly the ruling Barisan Nasional to begin with (there […]
Critics
A low-level manifestation of the current trend against experts is the backlash again critics: that tastes are subjective, that my experience of a piece of music or a meal will be different from that of a critic and s/he is looking for something different than ordinary people anyway, and how dare one person have the […]
The last of them
I read an extract from Zora Neale Hurston’s oral history of the last survivor of the Middle Passage. It is profoundly sad. The only such voice that I know of. To think it has never been published.
Adding up
Moving out seems to be a rather expensive proposition. Getting all the air conditioners serviced, getting the curtains cleaned, getting a professional end-of-tenancy cleaning, cancelling the internet, shipping away our belongings; it’s all adding up. And that’s leaving aside the minor optional extras such as repairing a hinge or replacing the filter cartridge for the […]
Ugh ugh ugh
Facebook made me angry today; I’m really late to the party. Someone posted a truly stupid fake news article saying that the EU was legalising child pornography and after a dozen people commented that they didn’t believe it, added: ‘I don’t know if it’s true but if it is, it’s really terrible.’ I mean… yes, […]