Work continues to be the sine qua non of my life.

Unfortunately.

As a result, there have been few "big deals" to write about.

This is so not how I want it to be...

Nevertheless, our very comfortable life continues, with many substantial rewards:

-- We have spent time with friends from Indonesia and Malaysia.



-- My obsession with trees growing out of buildings continues to find plenty of sustenance.



-- Nigel had a great time at the Formula 1.





-- We've continued to enjoy KLPAC's cultural offerings: another in the Shakespeare series (Al Pacino makes a great Richard III); and Uda dan Dara, a Malay musical on the old but always salient theme of love across classes and ethnic groups.

-- We've taken in another MPO chamber concert, and continue to enjoy movies on a regular basis.

-- Our local upmarket cafe occasionally stays open long enough to serve affogato with Kapiti ice-cream.



-- We've got to know what I will always think of as "Michael's bar" (it does good snacks and great margaritas).

-- At Quill, Purple Toast has become a firm favourite, as have Q Bistro and The Original Milkshake (TOM).



-- I finished Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists. One reviewer refers to a "surprising blandness" in this book, and it's true that I didn't FEEL it, viscerally, in the way I did The Gift of Rain. But for another commentator, it is a "strong, quiet novel"; and for yet a third, "elegant and haunting". And it is certainly that. These flawed, ambivalent characters, each with his/her secret, do haunt us. Likewise the vast gulf between the summits a culture can aspire to and the depths that can suck it in. The main themes -- memory and forgetting, the real and the artificial (as in the trompe l'oeil of garden design) -- are evocatively looped around the (admittedly sometimes confusing) three-era plot line.

-- I also finished -- and it's not that great but I have time to read so few novels at the moment that every one is worth recording -- Arif Yosodipuro's Di Balik Pesona Surga. It holds some useful reminders: "Tak ada yang bisa mengubah keadaanku kecuali diriku sendiri dengan seizin Allah. Keadaanku tak akan berubah kalau aku tidak mengubahnya." How true... "Ku harus bangkit, menatap masa depan mengambil hikmah masa silam. Biarlah pengalaman menjadi pemicu kesuksesan kemudian. DI DEPAN JALAN MEMBENTANG."

-- I've started to learn Korean. Which is fascinating.

-- Our neighbourhood continues to yield unexpected works of art.



-- And we continue to enjoy a good old rainstorm from time to time.



Truly, life could be a lot, lot worse...