two paper-cuts on two fingers

in one day.

smacks of negligence, ma'am.

like the flowing river - paulo coelho (2006)

he writes about almost inconsequential things - chance meetings and impulsive adventures and missed opportunities - with a dancing light touch that draws you into his narrative almost unawares. he writes with compassion and gentleness and courtesy and faith. he introduces me to japanese mongolian spanish persian and french stories, and of course brazilian ones too.

no matter. he makes me want to write again.

before the storm

i love the evening sky before a storm, when the normal bit is just an iridescent fragment and the clouds seethe with greys mauves and navies and are amorphous and ominous. i love the stillness that holds everything in suspension just before the action starts. 

i love that calm in life too, just after things start to happen and just before things happen. like children growing up and starting to fly and not quite swooshing off yet. or like work finally finding a foothold and you get the sense that you could do this some more. you could say i am in an optimistic mood.

i miss the sky before the snows back in Virginia too.

the smoker in the carpark

there is a middle-aged gentleman who habitually smokes in the covered carpark. i know, because i see him when i walk E. there is a prohibition on smoking in such a place. i have a natural desire to avoid conflict. so do most people.

today i decide not to avoid conflict. i call out to him, hi! i do not think you are allowed to smoke here!

he completely ignores me. i say louder, hi! you are not allowed to smoke here, you know!

when he ignores again, i walk up to him and say, hello, do you know that you are not supposed to smoke here?

and because he is unable to ignore me any longer, he says, mind your own business.

sir, it is because everybody minds their own business that smokers flout the ban with impunity. 

also, a man should not get to middle-age and not have learnt how to respond civilly. mind your own business is uncouth and juvenile and shows a lack of vocabulary and intellect.

new generation

a young trainee drops by my room to chat. tomorrow's my last working day in this hospital! she tells me. she ends her residency soon, all three years of it. the exam's next, she says. then perhaps a baby. have a baby! i tell her. it's the physiological thing to do. have several of them!

not really, she says. babies are expensive, and she tells me how. i can pooh her concerns and say, girl, you make your own rules and your own budget. but then i realize that perhaps in my time things were simpler and truly cheaper.

handover

my young supervisee G asks me to write her a reference for her next endeavor. in my heart i think, so soon already? so-and-so, i write, has intelligence and intellectual curiosity in addition to compassion, and she has my support. she tells me i have helped shape who she is. it was my privilege, i tell her. remember you come from a goodly heritage. i was taught by R. remember to give back.

my new favorite cake

fragrant buttery pandan-coconutty indulgence that invites you to inhale as you ingest. i want a butter pandan cake, i tell HOM. he makes me this baked-cendol bit of magic.

resolutions, belatedly

new year's, to be exact:

• to read more voraciously, since i'm not getting younger and there is much more richness of soul to gain,
• to start drawing and coloring and painting, maybe maybe, because i have resolved this unsuccessfully for several years now,
• to be nice without feeling embarrassed. hey, in fact, i don't care if you are embarrassed either. like giving up my seat and watching out for the next person and smiling randomly,
• to be fierce about what is important, without feeling guilty. like, calling out unsocial behavior like men peeing in public bushes and smoking in prohibited places, and
• to do the right thing to have compassion and to walk in broken humility.

if i cut down on my letris time it may well help.

misnomer

i meet a child called Quintus. is this your fifth child? i am impressed. fifth? huh? you gotta be kidding, his mama says. 

he's our third, mama says. perhaps Tertius would be more in order. 

various feelings of disappointment and disgust*

we are fresh from the weekend by-election and from two weeks of campaigning and i wonder if noblesse will ever oblige in this country. will we not, i wonder, with alternating frustration and impatience, engage in a discussion of ideas? why will we not? why do we so consistently and determinedly drive the debates into depths of ill-chosen words and unchivalry? why do we teach our youngsters in school the importance of sportsmanship and then, when they reach adulthood and the age of reason, we reverse all that and just hit below the belt? why is the gutter the jousting grounds, sirs? remember you have to hold your heads high after! how do you do that (and not blush)?

*in re the bukit batok by-election, May 2016, during which various comments were made about the opposition candidate which sadly degraded the quality of discourse.