It’s the familiar double-bind. On ordinary days, working days, I feel like there is not much to write about, and I want to get off my computer anyway. On interesting days, like the days when I was travelling through Central Asia, there is so much to do and absorb that I can’t stop to write […]
Not the bestest
And written under a pseudonym, but here’s a piece I wrote for a friend recently.
Experiments yield fruit
My first encounter with the bizarre side of Chat GPT, in requesting a song about duck farming in the style of Bruce Springsteen. This came after a few questions about duck in Pakistani cuisine for which the answers were the usual plausible + suspect. But this song is just weird. I mean, terrible – an […]
Return to Benjakitti
It was over 40 degrees so of course I went for a walk in the park. I left at around 4 and got to the park around 4.45, with a stop along the way to buy a bubble tea. I had planned to find a spot to drink it in the park, but it was […]
In hiding
Today was in hiding as the sun is quite fierce and I was feeling indolent. I made the mistake of having a rather large breakfast, of the crab with chilli and herbs from last night, with added egg and broccoli to slightly temper the heat for an breakfast. It didn’t really temper the heat, but […]
Day’s inspiration
Yesterday I had the brainwave of making a short comic about an encounter earlier this week, for the magazine’s social media. This was rather ambitious and, unsurprisingly in retrospect, I ended up spending most of yesterday planning it, and most of today drawing it. So a very, very enjoyable day, with the sort of tiredness […]
Another day lost
It was a pleasant sort of day, but felt like another day lost, largely because I was trying to draw a short comic and didn’t get anywhere. I’m in charge of the magazine’s social media this week and have no idea whatsoever what to post. I had one post on Middlemarch on Monday, then today […]
A moderate success
The workshop is over, and it was a moderate success. The timing was very poorly managed, and my technical skills were not up to managing breakout rooms etc so that was a fiasco, but my bit of the presentation was ok, and I think most people appreciated the one-on-one discussions (other than the time issue). […]
Exposure
The comic formerly on this website has appeared, in bowdlerised form and under another title, in the magazine. I daresay the original version will appear in my postmortem collected works, a slim volume but one offering great delight. I was rather on edge about this comic. I objected to having to tone it down, as […]
Scattered head
I’m back to work today, and am certainly struggling. It doesn’t help that after a couple of days off, the work is both considerable and immensely tedious. My head feels scattered, and I am unable to concentrate on anything much. The relative by marriage in Pakistan is not doing well at all. It’s even odds, […]