A plane fell from the sky in Pakistan, it’ll be a sad Eid. Two survivors, which feels miraculous: one who returned to consciousness and groped towards a light and leapt off the plane wing before the fires reached him, the other flung out, still strapped into his seat, to emerge only with a broken bone […]
Taipei heat wave
It’s the hottest May on record, says our Chinese language teacher. It is immensely hot and the flat has no movement of air. Our room has a large glassed bay window which gets full sun in the mornings, while the other rooms are dark. In the evening the thermostat in the bedroom reads 28 degrees, […]
Test
We had our Mandarin test this morning. Both of us passed with exactly the same number of wrong answers, though slightly different marks as the weighting was different. We preened a little at scoring in the high 80s until our teacher mentioned that the pass mark was 75%. Well, it’s done. I haven’t had a […]
Occlusion
The last couple of days I’ve had a bit of a dip, an occlusion of my normally sunny disposition. Partly due to physical reasons certainly, but also it was one of those periodic instances where the despair at where we are caught up with me. It will all eventually come to an end, and if […]
Relieved sigh
Our visas have come through, phew. It always seemed likely they would, and really, given the global lockdowns where could we go, but it’s still a relief. After our Chinese lesson this morning we went straight to the Bureau of Consular Affairs to collect our passports. There was about a 10 minute wait, then we […]
Cry for help
In Italy they were singing from their balconies, in Iran they hung banners with verses from their windows. In Pakistan, at 10 at night, they go to their window or rooftop and call the azan at a time when the azan is never said, calling people to prayer to call to God for help. It […]
Better deal
We went to our first class at the city school today. I was relieved that it turned out to be very good; the textbook remains as dire, but the teacher was genuinely good and made excellent use of its exercises so that perhaps for the first time I was confident I was listening and understanding […]
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 […]