I mean I want to see

WENT into a rave about literary smut ranging from tweedy dons with colourful lives (Diane Athill, Iris Murdoch, my matronly tutor making clear what “country” means in Donne) to my first experience with looking up smutty Shakespeare footnotes in the previous post…if you’re interested in reading it drop me a line and I’ll send you the password.

I don’t really talk about sex unless I’m sozzled to the eyebrows or with a select crowd of louche friends — & not over the public domain where most people searching for my name end up here.

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The other night:

A (bursts out in an angry tone in the middle of telling a story, when the food came at The Highlander Bar): “Why did you choose this place?”
B: Because of Macbeth.
A: No, no, I know. I was talking about my friends choosing that ice-bar.
B: I thought you were horrified at the sight of the food.

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From C

X: My school censored our Shakespeare text
Y: Which play did you study? Titus Andronicus? Romeo & Juliet?
X: Merchant of Venice
Z: What’s there to censor in Merchant of Venice? The elopement? The pound of flesh?
X: No, no
Y: Then what? The Jew?

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I’ve enough guy friends to know why they insult females or try button-pushing.

As I’ve written before: Would you like to know what to do if someone is deliberately trying to manipulate you? A fundamental law of negotiation states: “A recognised tactic is no longer effective.” If you catch someone — a coworker, a date, your wife, a politician — trying to undermine you, eliminate their tactics by exposing them. It’s about finesse, not fighting — you don’t have to fight all those tactics; sometimes you just have to name them.

CURLED up with T. S. Eliot’s complete works and going back to Ash Wednesday. Listening to the lovely 15th C melody of Noel Nouvelet.

Ash Wednesday’s been an old favourite of mine and has given me comfort countless times, together with the Four Quartets. Parts I know by heart, since I’ve been playing recordings of Paul Scofield reading Eliot’s work during my commutes for the longest time.

Together with Bach, recorded poetry on my music player kept me sane when I was on the long commute to work. I suppose paying attention to these works was a form of prayer for me, and was — and still is — deeply restorative.

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Oh well, I did listen to my fair share of schmaltzy pop while on the road. :) I’m beginning to sound insufferably stuffy.

LUSH swoonworthy Brahms and familiar Bach, reading on the wicked Houses of Renaissance Italy and dipping into Shakespeare while recovering from sunburn. Reading Howatch’s Starbridge novels too and thinking of glittering images.

An indolent life indeed. Except I look like a leper with skin cells committing suicide en masse…Was lounging under a canopy near midday without sunscreen, forgetting UV rays reflect off white sand.

APA khabar? I’m in love with Bali all over again — the culture and history, lush tropical landscapes, spectacular sunsets, beautiful people, food to die for…

I’ve a couple more days of Bahasa lessons with IALF in Bali and then it’s off to Ubud and the Gili islands.

Am staying with a warm Balinese family five minutes away from the beach in Sanur, which is one of the quieter areas in Bali. Adventures have included singing Beatles songs with the extended Indonesian host family over a babi guling feast and wandering around the lovely streets of the beach district, sitting by the ocean and writing postcards, attending a Balinese temple ceremony, eating wonderful Balinese, Italian and Japanese fare, and bargaining in Indonesian at a large open-air market for tropical fruits.

Till later!

K’S IN from Boston and V flew in from Jakarta, so there were hugs and laughter and catching up and story-telling over meals. Old friends who flit in and flit out of one another’s lives…if only there could be more flitting in.

New friends too. Often the first sign of friendship is that we are delighted to see the world in a similar way. We find ourselves laughing at the same jokes, enjoying the same novels, sharing other friends. We treasure the same things.

And I’ll be on the road again; am looking forward to new friends and places. Happy New Year, reader!

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A (who’s turned vegetarian to save the Earth): I’m not eating that. It’s against my religion.
B (scoffing): What’s this? An anti-cake religion?

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Was told this story –

The following question was asked at the University of Copenhagen in a physics exam:

“”Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer.”

One student replied:

“You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics. For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn’t make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

“Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.

“Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper’s shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work uut the height of the skyscraper.

“But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqrroot (l/g).

“Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

“If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor’s door and say to him ‘If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper’.”

The student was Nils Bohr, the first Dane to win the Nobel prize for Physics.