A very very long day indeed. My flight was at a truly terrible time, at 6 in the morning and, unusually, I had the good sense to sleep for a couple of hours before leaving for the airport at 3.30. A later departure than usual to Lahore airport’s hellzone as my brother whose love language, […]
Business style
Now this is what I call a dunning letter from an accountant, received by someone of my acquaintance and passed on to me for my delectation. My UK accountant could learn a lesson or two. Dear Sisters, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for the opportunity to assist with your 2023 tax filings. It […]
Uses of AI
Met one of my odder relatives, someone who has a life-limiting illness which has made him more peculiar but he was always a bit odd. He told me he is using ChatGPT to write letters for his newborn granddaughter to read after he is dead. The prompt he gives is ‘write a letter to my […]
Floods of guests
A number of guests today and yesterday, including friends and including an unexpected friend of my mother who had heard we were all in town and just turned up, stayed for hours, ate lunch, left and nearly caused a rift with a neighbour who rang to demand why she hadn’t been told about the visitor. […]
Full day
Our only full day of the four of us plus my father together. Most of it was spent with others actually, as first one aunt arrived with her grandchild (a rather odd looking creature, like the baby in Spirited Away, but a sweet and seemingly ordinary child with a penchant for wearing backpacks, and then […]
Gathering forces
In Lahore. The flight was long and, rather to my annoyance, my seat was one of the bulkhead ones, which are much desired by the longer limbed, and pay a premium for them. I didn’t pay a premium, but the plane was changed so found myself assigned a far more expensive seat than I’d have […]
Sudden decision
This morning I woke at 5 to finish some work and just as I completed it at around 7, I got a call from my father, saying that my siblings were all going to be in Lahore this weekend, why don’t I come too? I looked at tickets, they were very expensive, and then there’s […]
Same place as last year
After emerging, with some difficulty, from nearly a year of extreme overwork, I find myself in nearly the same place as a year ago. Nearly agreed to a work assignment that will eat up the winter (but comes with travel), nearly agreed to joining a committee that nearly killed me last year, and have rejoined […]
Mall aesthetic
Today we decided to go and explore the Camlica mosque, the immense structure built on a hill on the Asian side, dominating that view. It required a ferry to Uskudar and then a metro and then a climb up a hill past a place where we had lunch (kuru fasulye) and up through a large […]
Climb down jump off
Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had […]