supplies and sufficiency

as your days, so shall your strength be.

- deut. 33:25

i look back over the past year and see that it has been so. 

my heart is full, as is my cup.

hk-macau-zhuhai bridge

the longest sea crossing and the longest tunnel in the world.

opened in mid-october this year.

we take the express bus from macau back to hk over the bridge and feel like we are taking a part in history.

as well as figuratively walking on water.

hong kong

we visit another old friend. it is really nice to speak cantonese again. it's funny how in multi-lingual singapore one doesn't really get to speak it as freely as you might expect. 

the food, as remembered and as expected, is good. it's hard to go wrong in a city that takes pride in hawker-style fare and it's hard to go hungry in a city that stays awake. EXCEPT when they lace shrimp wantons with pork. ugh.

it'll be lovely weather, HOM tells me. pack light! i believe him and pack shorts and forget that december is their cold month. my bad.

it's a lovely escapade to end the year with.

day trip

HOM and i trip over to macau. he brought me there twenty-eight years ago, he tells me. i forget. anyhow, here's my ode to macau (the old casino bit near st paul's, mind you, and not taipa, or coloane):

• it's crowded. like, fire hazard crowded, or claustrophobia-inducing crowded but out in the open where in other places you get this crowded only indoors
• it's really good for walking, what with their traffic lights at every street corner and apparent pedestrian supremacy. it does make being in a vehicle a bit of a nightmare though
• them portuguese tarts are over-rated. gimme a nice tai cheong bakery egg tart any day
• speaking of portuguese, here is where my pidgin italian and bastard spanish fail me. to my disappointment, they don't exactly port over
• i don't know if it is because we explore too circumscribed an area, or if the macau people are really generous with their free admissions to ruins and churches and mansions and museums. but hey, i am grateful!
• there is the pawnshop and the goldsmith's and the gilded and the fishmarket

grand ol' lady

i like KL too. the city of my youth, now lately wrapped in glitter and gilt. it's beginning to look a lot like singapore, i think. 

and then a speeding car almost takes the unsuspecting pedestrian down. we get stuck in the gridlock that is KL's afternoon traffic. and i realize, to my secret relief, that KL is more like manhattan than like singapore, all messy haphazard startling unpredictable grubby charm underneath the new concrete and lights. 

meeting in manhattan

we spend a weekend with J1 J2 and Y stolen out of uncompleted tasks and busy commitments. 

i have missed this, i think. i have missed the easy companionship and playful ribbing and sharing of hopes and plans and anxieties and disappointments. i have missed the physical proximity and easy availability of years and times past.

i am much blessed, i think. i have young adult children who have jobs and dare to dream and wish to soar. i wish you may each soar high and catch the sun and rise on the wings of the wind. and when you fly, remember who you are and be faithful. when the way is harder, remember your dreams. you are well prepared!

i am thankful. my cup is full enough. and my old friend HOM walks with me still.

hello, old friend

it's been a time since HOM and i were here.

i feel the old tug of energy messy order and grubby charm.

the sidewalks are crowded and busy and loud and just a bit familiar.

the outskirts are gentler and merge with my memories of my other favorite cities.

at the end of a long year, i'm glad to be visitin' again.

the emperor of all maladies - mukherjee (2010)

this book is most informative. it is breathtaking and magnificent in breadth of scope and ambition. but the writing is ponderous. it's really too bad. 

that's all i can say.

billion dollar whale - wright & hope (2018)

Jho Low is one smart boy without a conscience. what i cannot understand is how his dad and mom and extended relatives do not appear to be troubled by too many scruples either. i mean, would not your heart just break? 

Najib comes across as a greedy bugger who made an unfortunate marital choice. and not a very smart one either, compared to the gentleman above. but vicious in a corner.

as for Goldman Sachs, they are pretty much the scum of the earth. one can hardly believe the unfettered avarice.

i do wish that michael lewis had written this though.

rudolph the red-nosed whatever

i venture to the stores today in a trip determinedly dedicated to commerce. as opposed to a walk that serendipitously ends up in the neighborhood, so to speak, sans planning sans energy and sans wallet.

here are my observations:

• they've started on the great christmas carol massacre. right on time just off of halloween
• there is a concurrent black friday sale. that's cultural appropriation for you
• some people even have an autumn sale! 

in any case, like i report to HOM, i spend two-odd hours browsing and successfully buy yong tau foo for lunch. vive la on-line shopping!

still alice - lisa genova (2007)

fresh from the other book i imagine another lisa genova cannot be wrong so i launch into this one. and wow.

she's a bit too high functioning for me i guess. all that working into the night and lecturing and traveling and researching and supervising and stuff make the fulness of her family life a bit difficult to believe. also the family relationships are all too potentially messy to fall so neatly pat as the book progresses. her children are too conveniently angst-free even though i know we are looking at them through Alice's cognitively distorted lens. i think her husband's actions have the truest ring about them - reflecting as they do fear and resentment and shattered hopes and self-preservation and love.

HOWEVER. this book is a engrossing account of how bits of memory go, and confidence, and then agency, and finally self-awareness. and yet delicate exquisite bits of humanity remain, as i have seen it remain in real patients with Alzheimer's.

i love best that Alice is a linguist. Alzheimer's strikes at her explicit memory, that language-based scaffold by which she chronicles her life. it is cruel to her where she is strongest, and her perspective is compelling as she becomes horribly aware of this and as she reaches past denial to resourceful but ultimately futile compensation.

left neglected - lisa genova (2011)

this is a glorious book that opens my eyes to a patient's tortuous  tortured path through rehab following traumatic brain injury.

she writes like she knows. 

i also like her way of quietly sneaking asides into the descriptions. because of this i am going to look for her other book.

the tattoo murder case - akimitsu takagi (1948), translated 1998

rip-roaringly satisfying whodunit with devious turns and a most salaciously evil twist at the end. dem good story, is all i can say. and when Kamizu explains all over a meal of sushi i feel like eating too. 

the fact that it comes from 1948 also means there is hardly any irritating officialese that peppers so many modern stories. here, the hoi polloi collaborates quite refreshingly with the police.

also, because i read this in e-book form, it doesn't feel like a 1948 or 1998 book. which goes to show that so much of our impressions are contextual.

the wife - meg wolitzer (2003)

part of the ebook stash, which i acquire from deep within the bowels of sedentary solitude when HOM is traveling.

this be not the dry brit wit, nor the earnest long sentences of the new yorker, and not the lyrical prose of my last book by ursula le guin. yet she has a fresh turn of phrase, this lady, and i turn the pages because i want to read more.

the main problem is that the anatomy of an unsatisfactory marriage to an obligate partner is not an easy topic to plow through. although the story does end pretty decently and the main characters are left with a semblance of dignity. 

the earthsea cycle - ursula le guin (1968-1990s)

rediscovering word-magic, le guin's and earthsea's, and  getting hopelessly distracted by the hold that chivalry and restrained power ever had on my poor heart.

for the record, there are six books in all, and i am three down.

also for the record, the national library's e-borrowing platform has transformed my life. although it would be more transformative yet if they had all six books, which they do not.

fake news, false alarms, & other irritants

the same people keep broadcasting only the unsubstantiated.

the unsubstantiated keeps finding root mainly in the same people.

there is a profound circle of life that mercifully wheels past the rest of us.

i wish that little circle would not keep trying to shoot out little arcs.

the little arcs drain my battery when they land in my inbox.

paradise postponed - john mortimer, 1985

a roaring good tale, this. satisfyingly juicy rich with convolutions and featuring a villain you love to hate so much that you actually feel sorry for him.

this is peyton place set in the sweeping english countryside and told in a suitably dry voice that makes you think of drafty stone buildings and windy moors. almost like a modern more digestible satirical version of wuthering heights.

on residency restructuring

say not, why were the former days better than these?

consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? 

- Eccles 7:10, 13

the days are different the songs are new and strange

the hearts beat distinctly off and the hopes sound odd

change is difficult

may God grant us courage and strength ideas and grit

and perhaps a good memory of the former days

and perhaps good future days

this is my (self-explanatory) song

this is my song, O God of all the nations, 
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;

this is my home, the country where my heart is; 
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:

but other hearts in other lands are beating 
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

my country's skies are bluer than the ocean, 
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, 
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:

o hear my song, thou God of all the nations, 
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

- Lloyd Stone

these are our children, here our best our purest desires
and there another's hopes, his dreams his sweetest songs
help us to see

yes minister - lynn & jay (1984)

snarky situational comedy and sardonic humor with bursts of convoluted linguistics as only career civil servants can do it. yessss sirree.

what a nice surprise

i discover, to my amazed delight, that there is this dinky button-y fixture on the side of the bus seat that opens up to reveal  USB sockets to charge my devices.  

next to air-conditioning, this is be my favorite bus amenity.

collezione

HOM's growing stash, courtesy of the times he goes to the airport in jeans and forgets to pack a belt.

book list

so many books, too much net trawling, too stuffed bookshelves. books i'd like to get my hands on and to read:

• the courage to be disliked, kishimi & koga
• this is what inequality looks like, you yenn teo
• kenneth e. bailey
• rumpole
• medical nihilism, stengenga

mid-point (almost)

june creeps up quiet like, and i've been gymming for nigh on six months now. during which time i have:

• wept with my hamstrings in shared agony
• wept with my butt after the rowing machine
• wept with absolute boredom on the cross-trainer 
• wept with my newly-discovered triceps, and 
• discovered that my neck thinks it's my core but it really is not.

the Guy tells HOM (because they have a gym session together too) that i am always checking the time on the 'phone. i don't need to, i say indignantly. i've set my alarm to mark time.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes - Kenneth E. Bailey (2008)

it's reading an entire treasury of great bible teaching, substantial and satisfying and terribly humbling. it's a book of reasonable and careful exegesis to make up for indifferent sunday sermons. it's an exercise of scholarship to inspire me to look at old passages anew. 

for those of us haplessly hunting in the wilderness of christian life for meat, not more milk, this is a good place to start.

lamentations

observations of a hapless churchgoer stuck in the pews on a usual sunday.

words that ought to be struck off the collective religious lexicon:

even, used as a pointless place holder. as in, dear lord, even as we are gathered.

lord, freely and inconsequentially repeated in prayer. as in, dear lord, even as we are gathered, lord, please lord.

for that matter we need to amputate that form of congregational prayer that reduces the richness of language to a whining collection of requests swimming in an abundance of mixed metaphors and misconceived poetry. it might be a good idea to write down what one wants to pray in public, if only to avoid twittering.

as for that modern invention designed to break the ice and share the peace and greet our neighbor, whence we leave our seats and make eye contact with each other and shake the paw and mouth the prescribed greetings like we are resurrection people! arise! well, i wish we could just greet each other with a smile and say good morning!

i have no worthy comments to make on the sermon. HOM says one man's meat is another man's poison. someone had a lot of meat today.

malaysia GE14

what do you think of the results, people ask me. i like it, i say.

but the history! M has done terrible things in his time! as for A - there is no smoke without fire!

true dat. but i am most glad that there is now an alternate power structure in place. i am so glad about this that i am willing to overlook the ruthlessness and shady rumors. because now we get a new grotesque, and it is a good thing to be able to choose between monstrosities. i tell HOM that the old barrel bottom was really rather bottom. 

i am next most pleased that the changeover is peaceful on a national level and full of rakyat coming out to gotong-royong on the community level. this is political and social maturity.

i've crossed many borders but my heart is proud across this one.

assissi

repose and retreat and refreshment for the tired soul. also quaint and pretty and charming little roaring tourist magnet.

the birthplace of the franciscans, the guide says. we will visit the superior church and the inferior church. 

our little group stages a little revolt. we will forgo the church, we say. can we go shopping instead?

HOM and i take a break from visiting basilicas and from shopping and tuck into a nice burrata with wine and cappuccino.

assissi is bijou.

health education

spotted at istanbul airport.

they certainly do not mince their words.

which is not to say they are effective.

rome

after greece, rome is wonderful.

the food is better.

the ruins are better kept.

the graffiti is more controlled.

the hotel is more functional.

the weather is more agreeable.

the language is more comprehensible, on account of years of music theory.

they smoke just as much though.

visit to the vatican

the humans

the photo taking, like there is no tomorrow

the museum the architecture the art the basilica the proportions!

the sistine is a little bit of a let-down. perhaps because it has been so thoroughly pre-explained that the wonder of a new place is lost. perhaps because it has become a fish-market of sorts, noisy with prohibited chatter. mostly because i don't get why a jew and all his jewish contemporaries are portrayed as anatomically perfect white europeans. great art, yes. but artistic licence stretched to national effrontery, if you ask me. also totally inaccurate.

i feel like i've ticked off one on my bucket list.

greece, in summary

the ruins are magnificent

their religion is ornate and florid

it's a beautiful country

i've had better food

i've had much better food

traveling through greece

the good:

• i get to practice recognizing the greek alphabet
• and realize i have been saying them wrong all this time, the bees and the vees and the dees and the thees
• also i get to marvel at greek words that have wandered in to english, the thesaurus that became our treasury and the metamorphosis that transfigured, and i feel a tiny part of a magnificent edifice that spans thousands of years
• plus a constant supply of greek myths far more elaborate and salacious than today's tv and book offerings
• and an actual physical location to those old names: theseus minos the sphinx and all the inhabitants of tanglewood

the good is that this is the trip to pull my patchy education in the classics training in the sciences dabbles of the socratic method and fancy for juicy stories together

the bad:

• the food sounds better than it tastes, or perhaps that is because we are with a group tour
• and the environs are a tad slummy, or is that the microenvironment we end up in
• also the cognitive dissonance i guess, of Helen the beautiful and the EU member today

thoughts as i visit delfi

it occurs to me

that a ancient devotee

going to the oracle

must be

moving through much

never-ending construction

imagine 

the constant erection

of new statues

the constant setting up

of new offerings

of streams of pilgrims

the temple is only perfect

like a memory

to the pine

straight and tall

against the sky

atten-shun!

greek tragedy

visiting greece. lovely snow-capped mountains rolling fields dipping valleys and breathtaking views. the cradle of civilization, they tell me proudly. the intellectual foundation of western thought philosophy science and literature. the ancient monuments are magnificent. what manner of hand shaped those pillars carved those likenesses? what manner of mind thought of kronos and chairos when i only think of time? or calls a dateline the appointed time, infinitely more elegantly and efficiently? what manner of training gave us Socrates Aristotole Homer Alexander and such? 

what happened? that i should look at thessaloniki today and cannot conceive of it in its heyday. that i should walk the streets of athens and be aware only of an anticlimax. the utilitarian buildings. the graffiti. the unemployed. the strays. the run-down the unwashed the cheap touristy knock-offs and the things that don't work. 

what happened? that i hear of chinese israeli german american japanese korean innovations but not of greek? that one thinks of greece more in terms of the greek life in american colleges than in terms of modern philosophy architecture or scientific discoveries?

when did the sublime become so defiled?

turkish thots

what I learn from a day-layover in Stamboul:

• turks love their smoke, and a particularly potently odoriferous one it is too
• they are marvelously cheery and friendly, even to a jaded tourist like me
• but that makes them cheerfully rubber about their time management, to put it politely
• the arasta bazaar is way more pleasant than the grand one, in terms of crowdedness
• but the grand bazaar is way more fun and stuffed, mainly in a chatuchak way

i buy me a lovely heavy golden embroidered shawl that i must now find excuse to wear frequently. on a related note, HOM and i buy us a senneh kilim, despite and in full recognition of the embargo on new big items in our home. there is something pernicious about shopping on vacation.

my cup runneth low

more drained

than i have been 

in a long while

because

marital stresses

long-standing dysthymia

breaking into depression

chronic life-altering illness

relationship issues

and work problems

take their communal toll

and i am

privileged to listen

and support

and love

and weep with

and pray for

but

drained

chinese new year bleahs

ardent red exuberances exhaust me

lion dances mandarin oranges festive songs

and other symbols of unalloyed commercial fervor

new clothes new stuff new flavors new lives

also i don't like prolonged repeated hearty family do's

and i shut down at earnest lectures on tradition and culture

although i like the two days off work

when the whole country shuts down

and i wish life could too

but doesn't. because chinese new year

okinawa thoughts

• goya champuru. bitter melon. tofu. scrambled egg. spam. belatedly discovered in my middle age. it's a glorious toss-together of textures and tastes. especially for that spam, which breaks every nutrition rule i've tried to make HOM live by
• sadly, after all the hype the soba is underwhelming. i'm afraid it tastes like chewy noodles. and without the lip-sticking broth of ramen either
• kōrēgūsu is awesome. HOM is agitating for our own version now that we're home. chilli padi in chinese hua tiao wine, he suggests. i'm beginning to agree
• more english than during my last visit to tokyo last year. that, or my hand gestures have improved. plus i figure out what the jap word for restroom looks like
• fewer smokers than in tokyo. or perhaps we were just lucky. although they still smoke freely in their tiny restaurants and one really wishes they would not, because the restaurants are wonderful otherwise - neat little tatami lined spaces with all manner of attention to detail that you don't get anywhere else in the world
• skinny cars for the narrow lanes. which makes many cars look taller. think of tidy little white boxes tootling along their roads
• heated toilet seats. are. da best. few things relax the sphincters as smoothly as sitting on a warmed up w.c. on a cold winter's nite after you have shivered your way to the loo

the mystic masseur - v.s.naipaul (1957)

lavish and colorful and sly and irreverent and cutting and all the time pretending to be gently bumbling along.

as a novel this is clean entertaining stuff that doesn't quite get written anymore.

for a first novel by a 25-year-old this is amazing.

the only quarrel i have is with the ending, where Ganesh's metamorphosis has an almost deux ex machina-like quality.

a prayer for courage at the start of the year

in returning to work that challenges and to the scruff and the scuffle, grant us strength and purpose. grant that we may look to the days with holy excitement and be unafraid of the year. grant us courage in the face of the unknown. nay, grant us curiosity wonderment and anticipation because that which comes from thee will also come with supply unto each. teach us to count our blessings and to know the joy of resting in thy provision. thou who hast searched us and known our most loathsome flaws, take these broken pieces and fashion a sound vessel useful for thy purpose.

gym. me. 2

my infraspinatus aches with a pleasantly effete ache today.
near the insertion. oww.

done it

i update my iTunes to reflect my name my country my address my credit card and make my first purchase. the type that involves a monetary value i mean, not the free type that they euphemistically list as a purchase anyway.

after years of lurking in the apple milieu and sponging off HOM's iTunes account and other people's strategically complimentary offerings i feel that i have finally adulted.

gym. me.

my first session today with the Guy.

my body fat is 22.8% which is in the ideal range. yesss. let's go for coffee! 

not so fast, he says. things change with age. we want to build muscle too. 

i'm not too ambitious, i tell him bluntly.

he says (kindly i think) at the end, i think for you for now your core exercise should be lying on the floor.

day off

a book. online access. a cuppa. jazz. blustery weather out.

a girl could get used to this.

because i do this every year

resolutions for this year:

• use that DLSR!!
• read!! specifically, books, non-trade
• be nicer to more people
• do something different

to these ends, the camera battery is charged and i have Rumpole to read and choir practice to show up for this saturday. HOM threatens me with a personal trainer. this is not bad, as new year resolutions go.

perspective

not a bad thing to remember at year's dawning

before the winds trouble and the rains come 

and heart's strength is tested anew and again

and i forget that the measure will equal the days

talk to the hand - lynn truss (2005)

my first read of the year and a rip-roaring re-read.

twelve years on i agree with her even more about those idiots who tell their life stories on the 'phone in the train who take up two seats on the bench for one body and who allow their kids to holler in library. i especially agree that something ought to be done about the awful use of grammar in public places by people who should know better.

unfortunately i am unsure her optimism at the end is justified. twelve years on rudeness has just become more systemically and individually entrenched.

but i will end with my own note of optimism. it's new year i guess, so i will try to be nice to more people this year. not because i am nice but because we ought to THINK OF OTHER PEOPLE sometimes.

resuscitated

here she is.

back from two weeks of infirmity and a few days at the store getting a logic board change and two nail-biting days getting the ol' gal back to what she was. 

i have so missed the fingerprint access.

💕

thoughts on New Year's

• taking down the baubles is a pain
• it's shaping up to be a food delivery kinda day