A good article on changing seasons, or rather on unchanging seasons, and on the harms of 24/7 convenience stores. We eat our strawberries, not knowing where they came from or at what cost, but they do taste nice. And if they spoil, we throw them out and buy more. Indeed, the increasingly superficial celebration of […]
Murder on the floor of the senate
A good piece by Uzair Younus. Today’s food for despair.
End of the age of aquarius
The weather here has been strange. The first week of June was unseasonably cool, in the low twenties, and in the teens in Multan, which the sun approaches closer than anywhere on earth because of the saint who invited it down to cook his fish. But now it’s as hot as June should be with […]
Poopmanteaux
Unreasonably enraged this morning by unwieldy portmanteaux, the object of my ire being ‘miltablishment’. Such nonsense.
Past the barricades
A neighbour is a senior politician and though one notorious for cutting his sail to the wind, is wanted by the authorities in the current situation. All the streets around our house are barricaded and full of very miserable policemen (one told me, plaintively, that he wished it would all end as he was sick […]
New or old?
I enjoyed Marina Hyde’s columns in the Guardian, at least the political ones and sometimes the pop culture ones. They were a bit of relief during the horrible UK politics around 2019. But then she went away on a break and came back, and the columns definitely feel quite mean-spirited, especially the pop culture ones […]
Lockdowns
This evening I was supposed to go to a birthday dinner, and in fact was supposed to convey some essential components of the dinner including the cake, the candles and a bag of smoked salmon. Then, about half an hour before I was to leave I got a message saying wait. The venue is in […]
News and views
The Dawn newspaper today, with three quite ridiculous headlines of roughly equal seriousness: A journalist of my acquaintance popped by this afternoon and was more despairing than I’ve ever seen him, and this is someone who reported during the terrorism years. I must say, I share his glumness at the tide of unseriousness that has […]
Goodbye SEA
I was supposed to go out for a final lunch, but slept badly so woke with a headache and cancelled the reservation. Instead I packed, worrying all the while about luggage allowance (this turned out to be not an issue). Among my purchases is a slightly embarrassing one, a very lightweight wok. I wanted a […]
Fine fish
Had my blowout meal in Bangkok this evening, at one of the city’s best sushi places. It was very good, quite a delight, and plenty of things I’d not tried before, such as a baby snapper and seasonal squids and eels. I didn’t go for the premium omakase which cost half again as much though […]