(Still working on my review of Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days, so instead of rush-posting it before I’m happy with it, I’m posting this review.) I am writing this review without access to the Internet, so I may not have a chance to search for links before posting it. However, since I have a little free time, I am eager to write up this book while it is fresh in my mind. I’ll keep my review simple: this book is a fascinating, deft exploration of Thailand from the inside, by a young writer who I envy like mad. Lapcharoensap’s writing is …
Month: February 2010
Micro-update
Connectivity is severely reduced for a few days, maybe more. If you’ve emailed me, or are trying to contact me, please be patient. Yes, it sucks. Makes me koo-koo, reduces my productivity. Working on it. Working also on a book review for Kyoto Journal (of a book on North Korea) and on reviews of several other books I’ve read for this here blog. Next review will be on Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald, which was wonderful but which is proving thorny in terms of writing a fair, critical, and incisive review. Reading? Um… yeah, I’m working on it. And fiction-writing? …
Loud Coffee?
I posted it on Facebook, but I’m wondering enough to ask it here. I’m in a Starbucks by a bookshop that Miss Jiwaku decided we should go to, because she knows how I am with bookshops, and because we needed coffee, and the cinemas nearby are showing crap. (Incidentally, as with a number of places in Asia, the movie cinema industry is not quite a monopoly, butit’s heavily dominated by a few big companies, meaning your selection is often quite limited. Given a choice between the new Travolta film and the new Mel Gibson, we decided to give moviegoing a …
You Know You’re in the Tropics When…
… you see a lizard on the bathroom wall and it doesn’t particularly surprise or alarm you. The driver who was sent to pick me up didn’t quite get the explanation he should have, so he drove to Depok, on the wrong side of town So I’m now waiting for a taxi. Hmm… another day in Jakarta.
The Polo Shirt of Religious Art
Today consisted of a an attempt to visit some older sites and monuments in Jakarta. We managed to visit what is claimed to be the biggest masjid in Southeast Asia, the Mesjid Istiqlal, as well as the “Catholic Cathedral” across the street from it, and a chunk of old Batavia, where the Dutch ran Indonesia for a long time. Batavia was polluted, loud, and full of people; if the air had been closer to breatheable, we might have enjoyed the microcircus we saw performing a little more. The Masjid is what one expects of a masjid: big open spaces, not …