This is going to be another post about the humdrum ordinary, because there's so damn little else in our lives.

Since my last post on "normality", the circumference of our world has closed in again. Malaysia shattered another record for covid cases yesterday (1,755). We are temporarily avoiding eating out. We'd already stopped going to the cinema, but in any case they're now all suspending operations. Our library has closed again. And though I'm technically still allowed to swim in the condo pool (providing I book a slot), it's become such a hassle to get the guard to unlock the door that I won't be bothering again for the next little while.

So what are we left with?

Well, even though walking, as I have already mentioned, is not as enjoyable as it used to be, it still provides us with the colourful little cameos you see in this post.



And the day has a lot of this:


I'm happy to say that my "shadow journeys" anticipated a lot of the suggestions here: taking in books and movies that help you get to know a place (tick); broadening your musical horizons (tick); cooking different foods (tick); virtually visiting a museum or gallery (tick); learning a new language (tick, tick, tick). As for the rest of the suggestions, well, I'm not sure how easy it is to come by "place-appropriate" aperitifs in Kuching; I'm not much for games; online tours of parks I can't visit would just have me scratching at the walls; and buying art over the internet is not such a great idea for minimalists.




Then's the everyday. The routine. The "train-train" of daily life, as I described it back in 2016. And it's true that there is something very beautiful about the dull ordinary. It's made up of so many pieces that we would badly miss if they weren't there. As I said then, "touching base with this extraordinary ordinary helps me remember all over again that I can be happy right here, right now". Jeez, I knew nothing back then... But the observation is still valid.

One of the highlights of the day at the moment is having breakfast on the balcony (on the famous new chairs). It's dark when we start (at 5.30 am) and getting light by the time we finish.

Often someone chants. I'm not sure where he is, as there's no mosque in the place where the sound seems to come from, but I love hearing him. Depending on the weather, the ratio of frogs and birds in the rest of the soundscape varies, but it's always pleasant. Not so melodious are the howls of the dogs, who all fire up together if they hear a siren... Sometimes the monastery is lit up (it seems to have a highly sophisticated calendar, and mostly I can't determine what the auspicious occasion is that has provoked the illumination). Beneath us and to the right, a lady walks on her L-shaped balcony at daybreak. Twelve paces along the longer bit of the L, maybe nine across the shorter bit. It's soothing to watch her.

The next highlight is the morning chocolate. How wonderful it is that dark chocolate is the low-carber's friend...




The evening brings an hour or so of TV. Tired of endlessly recycling old DVDs, we finally put some money into broadening our evening entertainment options, and have recently enjoyed crime series set in Ireland, Denmark, and France. Closer to home, in location at least, we also watched a dramatization of The Singapore Grip, which was shot at various places in Malaysia. (Here is my take on the book, written back in 2012. And here are some contemporary reflections by the highly astute Kirsten Han.)

Language studies continue to be a great source of interest for me, and I've recently added StoryLearning Spanish to my list of favourite sites. This is a serial, with a brief new instalment every day. The story is engaging, and the level is perfect for me -- easy enough not to be frustrating, but difficult enough to enable me to learn new words and structures.




Then there are Saturday evenings, when I try to cook something special, and we have a bottle of wine, and watch a movie. For the last two weeks, there has been a mid-week wine night too.. Because -- well, you know why...

Below, by the way, is wine made from airen grapes, "the most common grape variety you've never heard of":


This is a good note to finish on, I think, as the author, Kristin, reflects so much of the contradictory bundle of feelings that I'm experiencing myself at the moment:

"2020 is making me realize that despite how much I’ve worked on living in the moment, I’m still a very much future-oriented person. I used to think I was working toward something solid. I used to count on things working out.

"But now it’s almost comically impossible to anticipate anything, isn’t it?...

"Sometimes when I look back, to even the really shitty stuff, it will all line up in a crooked little line going back in time and only then does it all make sense. And I know I wouldn’t change anything, because it all brought me to who I am now, and I like her.

"Only when I see it this way can I see that everything happens for a reason, and begin to trust that the same is always happening, right now, in ways that will be clear later.

"And some days that works. Other days I wake up hoping it’s all been a bad dream, except it’s not. I feel vulnerable, raw, and unsure. My only option has been to surrender and to let things happen serendipitously...

"Maybe it’s naive but I trust that it will work out because it always has. I trust life though I know that this trust fall will be long, scary, and blind.

"So... I don’t have a conclusion at all, just a commitment to keep trusting, to let the present moment hit me over the head a few more times, and to let there be a silver lining to it all."