Torpor

The humidity is getting to me: it is the cloying dampness, paper that feels twice its normal weight, air that does not move, clothes that do not dry. Of course there is air conditioning, but welcome though it is, it is a solution of last resort. Some days are better than others, a thunderstorm helps.

The picture is the conical structure on Orchard Road known as Wheelock place. Taken at night, looking upwards, it is very different to the day. Indra's net perhaps?

Now to sort out a new wireless router whose default settings are devoid of any security - open to the world.

Added later: set a 128 bit WEP key, not impossible to crack, but better than nothing!

Passing thoughts

From today's FT: shares in VeraSun Energy Corporation, the second largest ethanol producer in the US, soared by 30% on their listing in New York. Shares in ADM, the largest US ethanol producer have risen by 85% in the past year.

Are we collectively mad? The idea of using cultivatable land to produce fuel for cars makes no sense - morally, scientifically or economically. Even if those without food were fed, it would still make no sense.

An hour in one of SingTel's shops tonight, and I will have a phoneline, broadband access and a number in a week's time. I move at the weekend.

Reverend Master Mugo of Moving Mountains is also moving: my thoughts are with you.

Hot?

They laughed kindly when I said I thought it was hot!
An excuse for a green tea ice on the way back.

Standards

The British three-pin plug, big and bulky for travelling, impossible to pack, is alive and well in Singapore. But there is always an upside - I bought a small adaptor block with the three-pin monster on the cable and European and US / Japanese sockets on the short block. This is will be very useful for my motley collection of non-UK devices. I now don't need a tree of adaptors hanging from the nearest socket (in hotels, always too few and inaccessible). The Japanese are masters of such things, and I treasure a laptop power supply from the railway arches of Akihabara, at least half the size of the official one, with pins that fold flat into a recess in the body. That and my "Road Warrior" plug and I am ready to travel!

No room for error

I watched this ship coming very, very slowly into the already occupied harbour: when very close to the point of no return, it began to slowly rotate on the spot and edge into the berth — sideways. No white churning water, just power applied carefully and at the right spots. I thought of the officers in charge, watching their instruments, absolutely no room for error. And yet mistakes are part of being human. Why mention this at all?

Momentum is mass times velocity: a slowly turning ship has very low velocity but enormous mass, so the momentum is very high and will destroy anything in its path. Likewise, listen or not, my true Nature works within me, cares naught for my thoughts and is unstoppable. Sometimes I don't listen and get in the way.

70 Cents of Bliss!

This has been quite a week. Leaving for Singapore's Changi last week on a 22:25 flight from Heathrow, I wondered what I was doing. One week on I still wonder when I wake up at odd hours, but the week has gone very well. The first apartment is back on the agenda again, and will now be painted and cleaned up this week. Servicing the air-conditioning every four months is one of the conditions of tenancy – step outside and you know why. I move in next weekend.

This weekend I caught up on some sleep, and wandered about a bit. Inevitably I was drawn to the electronics quarter, Sim Lim Square, but escaped relatively unscathed, just a cheap headset to use with Google Talk and a replacement disc drive for my laptop as the existing drive is "ticking" loudly as the heads park. The toys get more exotic as you go upwards, regular stuff on the ground floor, spy cameras and hidden microphones higher up, until at the top, the PC graveyard and everything you might want customised! Repairs, over-clocked PCs - water cooled with glowing cases, 19"-racked blade-servers, build-to-order, you name it, they do it. People cradling their dead PC cases waiting to see the doctor - there must be a place for that in the UK.

From there to Little India. In the Tekka Centre market wandering with the very colorful crowds amongst the food vendors, I discovered Ginger Tea. If I have an award for the week, it must be that, Ginger Tea - and only 70 cents. I thought I had mis-heard!! Nothing in this world is 70 cents. Now I can die!

And the flowers!

I do believe Singapore might get under my skin!

Bad for your health?

I read the FT, not because I have money and need to know about "hedge funds" and off-shore "instruments", but because I find the cynicism of much of the "red-top" and broadsheet press cruel and destructive, inflammatory comment rather than serious analysis. Most people remain, in my experience, decent and generous, as they always have been, yet journalists would have it otherwise. From supposedly sinister criminal immigrants carelessly released from prison, to knife-toting lads on every corner, you yearn for a sense of perspective. Some calm remains - Polly Toynbee is always worth reading: her article in today's Guradian on-line deals with this very issue. Simon Hoggart, Polly Toynbee and "The Northerner", are all I can read in the Guardian these days.

The FT here has, as you might expect, an Asian slant - and the weather map looks unfamiliar. It's also $3.50! I take it with my morning doppio macchiato as the world streams by. Then I join it.

Wednesday, I think.

They don't hang around here! Work permit collected, bank account opened, metro-card bought and loaded, twelve apartments visited, one selected, lease being drawn-up, two candidates interviewed for my new team. I think it is only Wednesday! The jet-lag is fading and I feel almost human today. A vegetarian Indian restaurant is nearby which I suspect will become a regular haunt. Hot and humid, what did I expect!

Update: took another look at the apartment before signing, and noticed a lot that would need attention. Decided to hold off, and revisit some, now having a better idea of what to look for.

Where did the day go?

Left at dusk, arrived at dusk. Likely to be a busy week.

Airport Training

Airports are good places for training and trying to hold on to that still centre. Indeed you have little choice. I have never enjoyed the departure process, and the thought of the future Airbus 380 with two decks fills me with dread. As Singapore Airlines takes delivery later this year, it is possible that I will put this foreboding to the test. Everything about airports seems designed to induce stress, an extreme version of a consumer culture distilled into a small space, devoid of anything calming and natural. Amsterdam's Schiphol has a meditation centre, and I'm sure many would welcome similar quiet oases, no talking, no mobile phones, peaceful lighting, calm. A friend used to find obscure stair wells in distant parts of the airport, and sit on the steps, but these days you are as likely to be cautioned or worse. So, I will make my own calmness.

It has been a graceful ending to the week, most things "resolved" (fine word). What isn't can wait. Bag packed, checked-in on-line, laptop backed-up, keys disbursed, taxi ordered.

Many small things have helped this journey, most unremarked. That includes several blogs whose authors have a lightness of touch I have yet to achieve. "Teaching without teaching". I thank you all.

If there are mountains, I look at mountains;
On rainy days I listen to the rain.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter.
Tomorrow too will be good.
Tonight too is good.

Yama areba yama o miru
ame no hi ame o kiku
haru natsu aki fuyu
ashita mo yoroshi
yūbe mo yoroshi

From "Mountain Tasting" Haiku by Santoka Taneda, translated by John Stevens, Weatherhill

Almost done!

Hopefully the last trip to the recycling centre today. Running down the food, cut back sharply on caffeine. Leaving Saturday night, arriving 24 hrs later. Start Monday 08:30!
Not much time for posting, but I noticed the following in yesterday's FT.

"The two companies fined a record £13.5m for safety breaches in the fatal Hatfield rail crash have received £21m from the government to cover legal costs".

The figures were released under the relatively new Freedom of Information Act that we now have in the UK.

Haiku

a crane takes wing
to mend a flaw
in the sky

(tsuru tateri ten no kizu woba tsukurou to)

Einstein's Century, Akiko Arima's Haiku
Brook Books, Decatur, Illinois 2000

For the pocket: Casio EX-S600

In Tokyo I thought about buying a "proper" camera, something like a Canon EOS, but I knew I would never carry it, and would be seduced by the need to add lenses, and all the other bits and pieces. I should learn to walk first! A good salesman at Yodobashi in Shinjuku did the deal. The best selling compact cameras were an Olympus and this Casio, not a name I associate with cameras. The Olympus was marginally bigger, 7 Million pixels: the Casio was slimmer, 6 Million pixels, and importantly for me, takes standard memory expansion cards. Proprietary formats make no sense. The Casio slips in my pocket and I find I take it everywhere. A Flickr account, and I am set up for those first few weeks in Singapore, now very close!

A small station can have great charm, and many have brickwork worthy of a small monograph. Staring at a much drilled and battered forgotten wall in Stafford conjures a vision of a skilled bricklayer, Woodbine hanging from the lip, shaping a brick with a few taps of the trowel. Custom shapes, unusual colours, glazes, intricate patterns. Poulton-le-Fylde on the edge of Blackpool, is such a station with a fine clock, old semaphore signals actuated by rods and pulleys, and unusually long, disused platforms suggesting the long steam-hauled trains bringing the huge crowds to Blackpool for Wakes weeks and Glasgow weekends. It's a classic station with its brickwork and a fine display of tulips a few weeks back. Excellent work from someone.

It makes a difference.

To those who move

Everyone seems to be moving, MovingMountain and Crabby Old Lady (a misnomer if ever there was one), and no doubt others. At the end of this month I will go to Singapore, and I am ridding myself of some of the clutter that an ageing recluse accumulates! Yes, it offers an opportunity for a new start, but equally I feel that to go overboard, is also not fully responsible behaviour. I don't think this is attachment, just a recognition that some structure is necessary if I am to remain mentally healthy.

I have tried to dispose of things thoughtfully, donating where possible, but I have had to recognise that, functional or wearable as some things may be, no-one wants them, nor do I have the time to place them. That we are a "consuming" society has been driven home by my visits to the local recycling centre. A whole skip devoted to computers, monitors and peripherals, skips full of bicycles, wood, clothes, shoes. Not too long ago, most would have been landfill, so I suppose this is "progress", but you can't help but feel, much could be re-used. But, you just have to do what you have to do, and move on.


My tutor at University (the late "GF") was an alpinist and skilled photographer (the first Hasselblad I saw). He told how in the Himalaya, the expedition's opened tins, were sought by local people as containers for water or storage. I have never forgotten that lesson.

As always, I shall travel with hand-luggage only, and take it a day at a time.

I offer a stick of incense from Sanzen-ji to those moving, and those remaining.

Japanese theatre

Traditional Japanese Theatre is remarkable, and would become an addiction if I lived there. I am not knowledgeable, but a recent post from Moving Mountain soliciting information about a carved figure, sent me looking through what I had. My main text is "Traditional Japanese Theater: an Anthology of Plays" edited by Karen Brazell (Columbia University Press, 1998). The statue that Moving Mountain shows has wild hair, and if you look closely, long braids on either side of the (fearsome) face. The stance is solid, perhaps seated. At first I thought it was a Thunder God (an example is the first picture above). But the figurine did not have any headgear. The lower picture is of the Shite from the Noh play Yamamba (a demon play, attributed to Zeami). No headgear, and the Shite is seated (on a round lacquer box): the stance is very similar to the carved figure. As an aside, the gesture with the closed fan emphasises that grace descends "even to the center of the earth" (Brazell, p.221).
I don't think these necessarily provide the answer, and Johnny Newt's comment is likely correct, but I am grateful for the excuse to revisit something I love!

Vienna

I'm rediscovering Mahler after 30 years. I had everything on LP, but now must move a CD collection to iPod, or maybe to my Linux laptop in ogg format (arguably better). My choice is Claudio Abbado (Nos. 1, 3, 6, 9) Riccardo Chailly (No. 8), John Barbirolli (No. 5), Simon Rattle (Nos. 2, 10), Leonard Bernstein (No. 7) and Jascha Horenstein (No. 4).
There was something in the ritual of carefully cleaning the LP and lowering the delicately balanced stylus that set the scene for attentive listening, but my student flat could not cope with the enormous dynamic range of a Mahler symphony: constantly adjusting the volume did not make for attentive listening. Now headphones allow that concentration, but deafness and tinnitus are my new companions. No time to waste.
I was in Vienna last weekend to see a colleague, so had a coffee by the opera house. The apocalyptic horseman is on the roof of the Court Opera House. In the nearby bookshop, I bought the Blaukopf's book, "Mahler, his Life, Work & World", based on contemporary quotations from letters and newspaper reviews. I sat in the early morning sun, shut out the tour buses and drifted back 100 years to hear the horse-drawn trams on the Ringstrasse.

I am mindful that I have already had eight more years of life than Mahler was granted.

Financial services

I've never understood the financial sector and their increasingly byzantine trades. Somehow I stubbornly believe that society's wealth must ultimately rest on people making things. Of course a healthy financial system is necessary to facilitate this, but to this layman, the financial sector seems more and more to exist for itself. The FT comments (27 April 2006):

"By facilitating economic expansion, the financial system plays its part in raising living standards. For these functions the banks have always taken their cut. However this has increased dramatically in recent decades. US financial companies earned 10-15 per cent of total US corporate profits in the 1950s and 1960s, but now account for 30-40 percent of the total."
"This trend for finance to grow much faster than the "real" economy is also apparent in the UK and elsewhere. In return for absorbing a rising share of society's resources, especially highly qualified workers, what is being delivered in return?"

Good question.

To Kiyomizu-dera

The approach to Kiyomizu-dera: Ninnen-zaka and Sannen-zaka. Steep alleys, relaxed crowds, tourist shops. So far, no Starbucks.


A donation elicits a ring of the bell, or a bang of the staff on the ground, and an invocation. A Japanese friend suggested the monks may not always be genuine, if that's the word, but I've no reason to believe otherwise.



Maiko, I assume.

Reith Lectures 2006

Daniel Barenboim "In the Beginning was Sound". The first two lectures are available on-line, the rest to follow. Recommended. In the same vein, the book, "Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value" by Julian Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2002.
Barenboim recounts hearing Brahms' Violin Concerto in a hotel lift, and having to conduct the work that same evening.

Incidentally, noise pollution is rife in Japan, though the lifts are mercifully silent.

Cherry blossom

The crow too was enjoying the blossom on this venerable, pruned tree in Maruyama-kōen, and sharing her pleasure with the hundreds of humans below.



"Poetry meetings were often held outside under blossoming cherry trees. Their organizers were often Amidist hermits from Ippen's Ji sect – or sometimes monks of the Ritsu sect – who invoked the souls of the departed. The canopy of the weeping cherry tree, like the oiled parasol of the reciter of the Heike, defined a space of shadow, midway between this world and the next. After the invocations, the participants wrote renga poems. Each in turn composed a verse on a given theme, which was continued by the next in line until all present had made up a verse. The quality of the poem reflected the degree of the participants' closeness. Anyone could come to these renga sessions 'under the blossoms'. Attendees had to hide their identities under loose-fitting clothes and broad-brimmed rice-straw hats that covered their faces. In the complete anonymity that guaranteed equality to each, everyone participated in the collective creation of a poem in the shadow of a tree, a space made sacred for a time by the invocation of the dead and the implicit agreement of the participants. Thus because renga meetings eliminated both status and sex barriers, a highly placed court noble or lady could draw pleasure from these meetings side by side with the lowest hinin."

From – "The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society", Pierre François Souyri, trans. by Kathe Roth, Columbia University Press, 2001




Well, maybe not much renga this year, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was good to be part of it.