End of the week

Winter reading

Notes

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipul
Salim journeys into the heart of Africa, into the same territory explored by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness nearly eighty years earlier—but witnessed this time from the other side of the tragedy of colonization. Salim discovers that the nation’s violent legacy persists, through the rise of a dictator who calls himself the people’s savior but whose regime is built on fear and lies (familiar isn’t it?).

Fires by Raymond Carver
One of my favourite authors, he says of why he chose to write short-stories: Nobody ever asked me to be a writer. But it was tough to stay alive and pay bills and put food on the table and at the same time to think of myself as a writer and to learn to write. After years of working crap jobs and raising kids and trying to write, I realized I needed to write things I could finish and be done with in a hurry. There was no way I could undertake a novel, a two- or three-year stretch of work on a single project. I needed to write something I could get some kind of a payoff from immediately, not next year, or three years from now. Hence, poems and stories.

Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame
When I was younger and struggling to find something to write about, I had actually wished that my circumstances were different. I actually believed that if I had struggled, I would have something substantial to write about. Well, I wonder what Janet would say about this: Frame was born to a railroad worker and a sometime-poet who had been a maid for the family of writer Katherine Mansfield. Her early years were marked by poverty, the drowning death of her sister, and the disruptions created by her brother’s epilepsy. In 1945, while studying to be a teacher, she suffered a breakdown. Misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, she spent nearly a decade in psychiatric hospitals. From 1947, following the drowning death of another sister, she endured repeated courses of electroconvulsive therapy. During that time she read the classics voraciously and cultivated her writing talent.

Sunday's ribs

I love pork ribs BUT I HATE THE SAUCE.

I think there was a cannibalism scene in some dystopian movie or show where human ribs were covered in that ubiquitous brown glop that made me think- not because it was disgusting- how unnecessary it is flavour-wise. Of course the cannibals had to cover the ribs with sauce because if they didn’t, the flavour of the meat would be a giveaway.

But there’s nothing like the unadulterated taste of fresh pork. When I get the chance to eat lechon, I pick the belly meat for sure, but there’s the ribs and the spine, the meat and fat salted just right with that hint of lemongrass and garlic. And when I got out a rack of St. Louis Pork Ribs from the freezer I sure as hell, wasn’t going to smother out the flavour with sauce.

The rack was just seasoned with salt and pepper and marinated in lemon juice and crushed garlic.

The Station Buffet

From Wikipedia
The station handled freight and passenger traffic from when it opened in 1872 until closing in the late 20th century, and from 1880 was the site of an interchange between passenger rail and trams until the 1930s. The station building remains and is currently tenanted by a restaurant. There have been proposals for the reinstatement of commuter rail services on the Main North Line that would involve the use of Papanui but thus far, none has been approved.

And this restaurant, a Korean BBQ Buffet is called The Station in Papanui, Christchurch.

And it isn’t fancy by any means. There’s a table when you come in where you sit if you do not want the buffet, and in the buffet area, there are tables with the requisite single burner portable butane stove on top. The station structure is wood and while there are overhead heating lamps, it can still be quite cold- until you start cooking and eating.

I must say I love buffets. As someone who eats basically only one meal a day, indulging yourself in unlimited food is VERY satisfying. And the price- who says no to $39pp? If you’ve been to Korean buffets, you’d be familiar with the requisite sides: kimchi, pickled cucumber, and candied sweet potatoes. But because this is New Zealand, there are also chicken nuggets, hot chips and fried-chicken nibbles. Some people I know find table-top cooking a chore, but if you can keep yourself from eating a lot of the prepared sides, waiting til your meats are cooked allows your stomach to take in more just to get your money’s worth.

Weekday night at the movies

We had to wait till after the siren sounded.

And then we had to wait a couple more minutes ‘just to be sure’ my sister said.

Sure I said trying inwardly to match her nonchalance, but five uneventful visits in, I still couldn’t shake off the feeling of dread that sat at the pit of my stomach alongside the fried chicken we had for dinner (I had way too much). My nephew who was visiting for the first time, didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

He had announced during dinner that he was staying overnight in the city the next day at a friend’s and automatically raising protests from his parents as if he was 12 all over again. But it’s obviously way safer in the city, he argued.

To be honest, he may be 15 years older, but he still acted 12 most of the time. He had brought all his toys as he was always inclined to do on these trips and avoided any kind of meaningful family participation with the exception of meals.

He was in the lounge now with his console and playing a game through the large screen where he was a lost explorer blasting his way through a horde of alien monsters.

The game was so loud that every blast made me wince.

I think I said can we leave now a couple of times, annoyance creeping into my voice until finally, everyone trudged out, donning jackets and putting on boots.

A fog had descended and everything did look like an ordinary winter’s night, a Monday at that with school out. I caught my niece standing at the side of the road doing a small dance and I barked at her to get into the car.

When They first arrived, in the 1st spate of attacks that caught everyone by surprise, a story went around that instead of running and hiding, you could do small, repetitious movements and it would trick Them to think you weren’t, well, human. It spread like wildfire on social media but it was a cruel lie. People who believed it died in the thousands.

The cinema was a short 5-minute drive away. During the day, we could have walked instead but of course..

It looked deserted from the outside, but once we were in, I realised we were looking through digital screens that showed the external visual of an empty building. There were at least a dozen people- mostly kids- inside who like us, were booked for the 8pm showing. Suddenly, I felt a surge of nostalgia -some things never change- like the smell of buttery popcorn, the nervous teen tasked with manning the till, and several arcade-styled games scattered all over the small lobby.

My nephew plonked himself of course on the Tekken console while my niece begged her dad to spend a couple of dollars on the claw machine.

They were readying the theatre and we had minutes to kill. I bought a bag of Skittles and my sister got herself an ice cream cone. We made small talk and several times I glanced outside my mind saying what if, what if, but could only see my darkened reflection on the thick bullet and shatterproof glass.

And then the usher told us to go inside and the kids shuffled in first and I thought, have they even seen the previous movies to this sequel? Movies that were even older than their parents who were probably in their mid to late 30s??

There was a short intermission and then Harrison Ford came onto the screen in his prime at 40, ageless and virile. Turns out that if you were looking for immortality, all you needed was a legendary career, box office clout and the tacit consent of your estate to allow you to ‘act’ indefinitely 10 years on after you’ve died.

Dr. Henry Walton ‘Indiana’ Jones Jr. promised a last adventure way back in 23, but promises are made to be broken in the name of entertainment. First, there was a dial, then there was an artifact from the Trojan War, and now, a gate that opened both space and time.

The gate opened a ‘fissure’ in time and at the mention of the word, a kid screamed ‘anal fissure’ raising howls from their group which drew hushing from the adults.

Indy’s conflict was familiar; family was worth more than all the powers promised by any ancient artifact, and they had to make that decision now before the gate closed completely. And of course, the movie wants you to believe that they won’t make it, with the gate closing ever so slowly, sparks flying, making all sorts of racket when the lights go off in the cinema, as the red panic light came on.

Surprisingly no one actually screams. Mama, my niece called out, panic and fear in her voice, but my sister was seated several seats away and automatically, I took my niece’s hand and reassure her that everything was going to be alright. Elevator music played and then the usher’s voice comes through on the PA. The movie would be back on in five minutes; that it was a false alarm; that the authorities were checking just to be sure. That we all had to wait a couple of minutes after the movie to exit the cinema and get into our cars.

It seemed like forever and I was trying really hard not to look in the direction of the hallway, to imagine Them crashing through the glass, Their impossibly sharp claws and tentacles slashing and cutting everything within striking distance, as they made their way to a theater full of screaming people with no chance of escape…

Mercifully, the movie went back on, and to be honest, I couldn’t really remember how it indeed. I guess I would just have to wait till it drops on the streaming platforms to see what adventure Indiana Jones will be up to next.

I’m here, I’m here…catch me if you can

The Weekend

The winter sun in this part of the world looked like 4pm even if it was only 12 noon.

We drove through places that were now familiar to me; the place with the quirky shops, the place with the great pies (there was a long queue), and the place with the salmon fish. After that, a big blue lake appeared on the right and it seemed never-ending as we drove alongside it.

At one point, we drove past what looked like tourist vans parked on the lake shore. A mass of white, naked bodies- teens, adults I couldn’t tell- were actually swimming in the cold water. Good on them.

I never sleep on these trips, but this time I did with the soft 4pm sun caressing my face.

When I woke up we were nearly there and you could see the mountain or the mountains, standing guard like a gate to something. Before them, a vast plain of bush and grass, rocks, and a single road that led to the village.

And it wasn’t really a village in the true sense, but accommodations for tourists and scattered housing for conservationists, scientists, and maybe the military.

We stayed at the best one- the oldest one, and it looked like it was in the middle of shedding its age and donning new retrofits for the future. Half of the hotel wasn’t even done- we could see mattresses lined up along the corridor from the large windows in a connecting wing- and we stayed half a kilometer away at refurbished cabins.

We settled in (there was a buffet for dinner) and in my room, I could see the mountain looming high and shadowed.

It was’t at all inert- it was alive.

Today

What's the time?

The very first time I put on the Apple Watch when it first came out, I was hooked (though I had to take it off every night to charge it because the battery of that 1st generation model didn’t last long).

But this was because I literally had Apple everything and if you were in that ecosystem, the watch was another extension of that. You quickly viewed text messages on it (which prompted people to ask if you needed to go); answered calls (which got you strange looks); or even paid your groceries or purchases via NFC (which had people gaping which was actually pleasing).

But three watches later, I feel that I’m done with it. I’m currently using a stainless steel model and if it broke, or got old and irrelevant (the fate of every Apple device), I don’t think I’ll pay out another $NZ 1400+ for a new one.

I’m also done with having to be ‘connected’ all the time- it’s exhausting and pointless. If it meant doing and actually acquiring/achieving something tangible like money, or saving a life or benefitting someone, then I’m all for it.

But all it ever does I feel is gaslight me 😅. So there, I’m really done it!! (though full disclosure- if the Watch Ultra was smaller, I would have bought it).

But I feel that I’m ready to go back to analogue and these are my picks:

On my 'shelf'

(from the NY Times review) In Törzs’s world, books of magic, all written in human blood, can do incredible things when someone feeds them a drop of blood and reads them aloud. Abe Kalotay collected these books to protect them from falling into the wrong hands, and raised his daughters, Joanna and Esther, as stewards of a beautiful and dangerous library that had to be kept hidden at all costs; in Esther’s infancy, her mother was murdered by powerful people who wanted the books.

A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them.

Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us―and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.

J'aime la France: qu'ils mangent du foie gras

Don’t ask me how much we paid for dinner.