Cyprien Katsaris, Liszt's Thing About Funerals and Death, and the Mystery of Job's Suffering

While there was tussling over where a certain warm body will be come Sunday, I ran like a robber's dog out of the office and scored a cheap-seat at the evening's Singapore International Piano Festival.

(The bad joke about the Singapore International Piano Festival 2007 is that when someone asked what'd happen if last-minute cheapseat tix to Cyprien Katsaris' gig weren't be had, the reply was that I'd be Liszt-less.)

Because this is the generation of the ipod and of life having a soundtrack, my earworm set Mike Reeves' latenight tasty taster of Job to the amazing Cyprien's repertoire.

(The first amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is his wonderful list of late Liszt, past long-maned showmanship and into contemplation of suffering, death and redemption:
LISZT, Trauervorspiel und Trauermarsch
LISZT, Nuages gris
LISZT, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 5 (Héroïde-élégiaque)
LISZT-KATSARIS, Czárdás obstiné
LISZT, Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
LISZT, Am Grabe Richard Wagners (I hope he wasn't spitting on it)
WAGNER-LISZT, Isoldes Liebestod

(The other crowd-pleasing stocking stuffers were:
SCHUBERT-LISZT, Three Song Transcriptions: Ständchen - Der Müller und der Bach - Ave Maria
CHOPIN, Waltz in A minor, Op. 34 No. 2
CHOPIN, Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9 No. 2
CHOPIN, Berceuse in D-flat major Op. 57
CHOPIN, Fantaisie Imprompet Op. 66
BACH-SILOTI, Prelude in B minor
BACH-KATSARIS, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565))

(The more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is that he can keep track of all ten digits in the midst of noodling up and down the ebonies and ivories and leapfrogging and reverse leapfrogging and making sounds like there are actually 4 hands on board or like church bells tolling over the grave of his son-in-law or like lovelorn young men beside babbling brooks or as in the Gottschalk encore: cheeky banjos in American minstrel shows. He is able to ensure, for example, that those fingers haven't noodled clean off the keyboard and started tickling some nice lady in the front row. Man. He ought to be in a circus alongside the bearded lady, the lion tamer and the sword swallower.)

(The even more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is that there wasn't even a whiff of burning despite the enormous amount of air friction his high-speed fingers must have generated.)

(The further more amazing thing about The Amazing Cyprien is his distinct familial resemblance to Bobo the Clown. (Mind, this is said without meaning any offence to clowns (or The Amazing Cyprien), having myself been the Sad Clown in a now-defunct Clown Ministry.) "Doesn't he look like Bobo the Clown?" I texted someone sitting in the slightlymoreexpensiveseats. "No, Krusty. :)" Which was spot on. The Amazing Cyprien would look just right, back in his room after 3 encores, flinging his tux and corset at the monkey butler in a corner and, alternately fagging 3 ciggies simultaneously and taking huge swigs from bottles of XXX, cussing the coughing, sniffling, rustling, jangling, muttering Singapore audience for being worse than a colony of obstinate tuberculosis-ridden gossipy bag-ladies.)

But really truly gobsmackingly amazing thing of the night was the suffering of Job, the grand mystery of suffering: why a good and sovereign God would allow an innocent man like Job to suffer. The thing about a Mystery is that you can't throw neurons at it and expect to understand it. Like the gospel (itself a Mystery), the answer to a Mystery needs to be revealed to us.

Job's comforters (humans, not duvets) thought they were pretty sorted folk. The reason, they said, for Job's suffering was really quite simple: people get what they deserve (Job 4 etc). Don't plead innocent, Job, when it is obvious from all that has happened to you that you are somewhat guilty. But we learn that God's anger burns against Job's friends because they have not spoken of God what is right (Job 42:7). The reason for suffering is not simple cause-and-effect.

The story of Job's friends would have concluded with their death for blaspheming the name of God. But God graciously allows them a way out: the sacrifice of seven bulls and seven rams. Poor innocent bulls and rams. What did they ever do to deserve to die so horribly? Nothing. They suffered because God was angry with Job's friends. There is a such a thing as innocent suffering.

God calls Job "my servant" at least 4 times in the book and as God's servant, Job is called to be a mediator to his friends – to pray for them. Just as Job pleads for his friends not to be dealt with by God as they deserve, he knows that there is someone in heaven who pleads for him, not to be dealt with by God as he deserves (Job 16).

Even to a casual reader of the New Testament, the Book of Job seems to point inevitably to the cross. And indeed, it is at the cross that the problem of suffering is asked and answered. The Mystery of Jesus, though wholly innocent, suffering for the sin of the whole world. At the cross, we see that through greatest suffering comes the greatest blessing. We do not know why we are afflicted with particular suffering. But we know that there is no suffering that God doesn't care about and no suffering that God is powerless to stop. God is intimately involved with the suffering of his Son on the cross. There is no senseless suffering. God only allows suffering so that he can bless us through it. However inexplicable and horrendous our own suffering, the Book of Job and the story of the gospel tell us that we will never lose any thing by our suffering. We can only gain. Let us not rage and despair in our darkest hours. Let us turn to the cross and know that God uses our pain to bless us more. Trust God that he knows what he is doing. Trust God for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health.

What comes of Job's suffering? At beginning of the Book of Job, we read that Job is a man in charge of many animals in a garden in the east. Alot like Adam in Genesis 2, huh. And at the end of the Book of Job, Job is blessed with twice as much as he had before. Very Isaiah 61 indeed. Furthermore, the blessing of Job is not just material. Note that he grants his daughters an inheritance along with their brothers (this was hundreds of years before Moses). And later, we know that it is only because of inheritance by a woman that Jesus inherited the line of David. Very cool.

The end to all the hints and nudges and winks and wriggling of eyebrows is this: we can learn from Job that no suffering is senseless, though it may in this lifetime appear inexplicable. God is still trustworthy throughout our suffering, and we must continue to trust him and treat him as God and hold to his word as true. This is not the blind trust of people who are groping about for a psychological analgesic. This is a trust built on the good foundation of Job's vindication and Jesus' resurrection from the dead. This is a trust that Job's mediation for his friends was only a picture of the real mediator's work. This is a trust that the blessing of Job was only a model of the true blessing to come for humanity.

James tells us that it is through suffering that the goal and purpose of creation is attained. So hold steady in the midst of suffering.

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. (James 5:11)

It is like the sentiment of Les Préludes from Alphonse de Lamartine's Nouvelles méditations poétiques that so moved Liszt that his prefaced his revised score with:

What else is life but a series of preludes to that unknown hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death? Love is the enchanted dawn of all existence; but what fate is there whose first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, whose fine illusions are not dissipated by some mortal blast, consuming its altar as though by a stroke of lightning? And what cruelly wounded soul, issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to solace its memories in the calm serenity of rural life? Nevertheless, man does not resign himself for long to the enjoyment of that beneficent warmth which he first enjoyed in Nature's bosom, and when the 'trumpet sounds the alarm' he takes up his perilous post, no matter what struggle calls him to its ranks, that he may recover in combat the full consciousness of himself and the entire possession of his powers.

It is also like the Lamartine poem excerpt (Liszt was quite a fan) that The Amazing Cyprien read before the performance of Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude:

D'où me vient, ô mon Dieu ! cette paix qui m'inonde?
D'où me vient cette foi dont mon cœur surabonde?
A moi qui tout à l'heure incertain, agité,
Et sur les flots du doute à tout vent ballotté,
Cherchais le bien, le vrai, dans les rêves des sages,
Et la paix dans des cœurs retentissants d'orages.
A peine sur mon front quelques jours ont glissé,
Il me semble qu'un siècle et qu'un monde ont passé;
Et que, séparé d'eux par un abîme immense,
Un nouvel homme en moi renaît et recommence.

(Whence, O God, comes this peace which floods over me?
Whence comes this faith with which my heart overflows?
To me who, not long ago, uncertain, restless,
And tossed on waves of doubt by every wind,
Sought the good, the true, in the dreams of worldly sages
And peace in hearts resounding with tempests?
Scarcely have a few days brushed past my brow,
And it seems that a century and a world have passed away,
And that, separated from them by an immense abyss,
A new man is reborn and begins again in me.)

Only, the answer is more than just Romantic affection and perfumed bosoms but in Job pointing forward to the gospel.

It is like Frodo and Sam during the Nazgûl attack where Frodo is about to give up:

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it's worth fighting for.

Only, this hope is more than just a fantasy. It is a hope with a sure and happy ending, one far better than even the best novelist could ever imagine or begin to describe.

Job's story is our story. Because of Jesus, we will not be dealt with as we should. Because of Jesus, we will be brought like Job through our suffering to God's blessings. There awaits for us a new body, a new family, a new much more excellent inheritance. We are looking forward to a future that is more wonderful anything this world has ever seen, a future more marvellous than Eden. A future in which Satan will be finally defeated. A future where there will be no more death and no more destruction. A future which is not just paradise regained but creation perfected.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day
upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall
I see God. (Job 19:25-26)

For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that
sleep. (1 Corinthians 15:20)

And there remains only one tragedy: that some will not be able to enjoy this because they do not realise that they need to be saved from being dealt with as they deserve, eternal destruction for ignoring God. They will not have Jesus plead for them as Job prayed for his friends.

Go to my servant Jesus, God says. He has already sacrificed himself for you. Go to him and ask him to pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you as you deserve. And do it soon, before the time has passed and it is too late.

Wisdom Books Tasters

There appears a possibility that a certain cosmic-ray-pinged body might actually manage 5 consecutive nights in the same bed this week! Sweetness! 3 nights and counting.

Meanwhile, while broadband is reliable (nobody making off with underwater cables to sell as scrap) and electricity supply is stable, have been voraciously tearing off chunks of good teaching. Today: Mike Reeves' taster menu, first presented at All Soul's Student Weekend Away circa January 2007, featuring the Wisdom books. Proverbs, Job, Psalms, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes in goodly-sized portions.

Bali

A holiday in Bali is crowding round a full and lazy breakfast every morning, comfy in jammies, asking each other what day of the week it is. So's to check the tide times, see.

The days melt into each other out on Seminyak beach, where the sunshine winks on the foamy turquoise beauty of the breaking waves. Rows of cushioned deckchairs and generous beach brollies look out to sea, invitingly bright and purple and pink and red and yellow. But there is nothing better, under that blue blue sky, than to rush out into the pounding surf and ride the waves with longboards and shortboards and boogieboards, whooping above the crash and roar of the curl. Addiction to exhilaration.

Later, brown ladies barefoot in the warm soft sand smile toothily as they massage bruised and battered bodies, apply temporary tattoos to the temporarily rebellious and proffer manicures and pedicures to the blonde and tanned and topless.

Come evening, there are icy cocktails for sipping everywhere but the stretch outside Ku De Ta is a mighty fine place to watch the sun setting to loungey tunes. Inland - mean French amongst fairy lights at Kafe Warisan and thumping feverish moves at Double Six Club.

But nights in Bali for bruised battered scraped sunburnt bodies (and also bodies that are stupid enough to be almost knocked unconscious by their own boards) are for hot and salty fish and chips and vegging about the villa with burgers and fries and fried chicken from McDs and green bottles of Bintang beer and frosty A&W rootbeer floats and boxes of Lindt and Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kremes and being gobsmacked by a fascinating* procession of S$1 DVDs and cable sport and B-grade movies and flinging powdered sugar everywhere from laughing and gesticulating wildly, eventually ending each night in slothful junkfood-induced coma.

One night, we go to sleep still cackling at the 80s drum machine and pelvic thrust cheese of Music and Lyric's PoP! Goes My Heart and when we wake, that song is the only thing any one can hum for the next few days. Waiting to board the plane back to Singapore, powered by the creamy goodness of Baskin-Robbins, someone continues to thrust away with great enthusiasm, to the undisguised alarm of fellow passengers.

(For the record:

In Ubud, the roast pig at Ibu Oka is over-raved but the ribs at Naughty Nuris are plenty tasty. The restaurants are pretty bales amidst flowers and greenery. In padi fields, ducks gather around white flags at dusk, waiting to be taken home. Arrack, some sort of palm liquor, is a terrible thing to have neat. The art museums are dank and dusty and in Agung Rai Museum of Art, the Walter Spies gallery consists of 9 regrettable reproductions of his oils, some not even in colour. Inner Liberaces love the crazy frames at Antonio Blanco's place.

Kecak and Fire Dances at night are Ramayana-and-tourist dollar-driven spectacles of chanting, hot coals and sweaty bodies. For tourists willing to part with many more dollars, there are moss-covered slopes and quiet bamboo groves for white linen togs, lush luxury, yoga and meditation at Como Shambhala and Four Seasons by the "sacred" Ayung River, until whitewater rafters rush past yelling,"Taksi! Taksi!".

In Jimbaran, the finishing touches are being put on the finishing line for the inaugural Bali International Triathlon.

Later, ten thousand Chinese tourists and a lone chainsmoking purveyor of roast corn cobs silhouette themselves against the setting sun. Clouds of smoke billowing towards the shimmering sea means lobster and crab and fish and prawns and squid are coming off fresh and fat and hot from the enormous barbies out back. Padded to the gills, speeding along at 50km/h into the starry Balinese night, the cab-driver boasts of Sunset Strip as Bali's highway.

No where do we see a church building.)

*fascinating, at least, for the telly-and-blockbuster deprived

Departure

This morning, the blood test came back normal. I am free to depart. Again.

Diversity and the Cities of Man and God

Diversity
I like the differentness of Ho Chi Minh City (which is not the same as wishing it upon my home country):

driving with one hand ever-ready at the horn,


ubiquitous phở, iced lotus tea, teeth-melting ca phe,


soda chanh for vitamin C,


how cake tins are lined with the yellow pages,


numbered trees with their bases painted white,


fresh fruit touted by ladies in conical hats,


how, at night, motorcycle headlamps are like fairylights from afar, and being threatened with Honda Om tyremarks across the face about 10,000 times a day,


whole goats being roasted in shopfronts,


kids cycling home from school in ao dais,


earnest tour guides saying "Ho Chi Minh was a very nice and very handsome man. Everyone who met him loved him",


motorcyclists wearing caps instead of helmets,


roadsweepers pushing along their huge orange dumpsters and keeping the city clean,


art copies being better than the stuff in Saigon museums,


the extreme foulness of mắm ruốc, pale sickly looking Vietnamese chilli that really numb the taste buds,


women wrapped up against the sun,


colonial hangovers like roadside bánh mì (baguettes) and


tree-lined boulevards radiating out from a central monument or round-about, women hanging out about town in pajamas...


...how life is lived out on the streets: how cameras are repaired on corners and watches traded and cigarettes sold from open briefcases, reading under street lamps,

eating places and drinks stalls along roads and outside shuttered shops with their little plastic furniture neatly set out, cuttlefish vendors and lottery ticket sellers strolling about the tables, young fire-eaters entertaining bemused customers, men sitting around in the morning with their ca phe chatting and reading the papers, people gawking through tall windows at foreigners indoors as at animals in the zoo. How unlike, say, England, where a Malaysian mate, squatting on the pavement waiting for his friend, was showered with 20p coins from goodhearted but mistaken passersby...

And its sameness: how it is, simply, a growing changing city with all the common problems of a growing changing city.

At lunch with some Vietnamese businessmen, I asked about the regulation of Saigon's multitudinous motorcycles:"These giu xe's (parking places). Are they the result of some law or government policy to keep the city neat and clean?" The Vietnamese businessmen laughed long and hard into their bowls of phở at my foreigner's ignorance. When they'd finally wiped their eyes, one said,"If you leave your motorbike on the road ah, when you come back, there is no more motorbike ah". Which set them off again for a good while.

Cultural heterogeneity and city homogeneity - c'est cool.

Diversity is totally enjoyable, and learning different languages and experiencing other cultures terribly exciting. But our differentness and diversity have a sinister history: the curse of Babel.

Rise of Cities

Cities, according to John Reader's Cities, are really things of marvel, intricate organisms: just think, for example, about the mystery of their historical roots - were they born of agricultural surpluses or was the requirement of specialised trades the main factor? Was their original aim the provision of security within walled defenses? Did they grow by being economic centres for trading and by the churning of money, the making of fortunes? And think of the richness of urban complexity: the planning of cities - water supply, sanitation, the spacing of housing to avoid overcrowding and prevent the spread of pestilence, constructing effective public transportation systems; the regulation of the population of cities - crime, violence, corruption, pollution, laws to govern how a mass of people can live harmoniously within a confined space, electing the lawmakers who are to make such laws...

Most people also equate cities with civilisation and creature comforts: central heating in winter, air-conditioning in summer, electricity and the delight of electrical appliances, movie theatres, bountiful libraries, 24-hour convenience stalls, flush toilets. An Economist article, The World Goes To Town, touts the development of cities as being synonymous with human development. More than just the modern conveniences, cities epitomise the pinnacle of human achievement: fecund hotbeds for wonderful new inventions, for being freed from such base worries as the acquisition of daily food and drink to advance the frontiers of knowledge about our selves and our world, to dabble in art and music and culture and the detailed discussion of jazz chords.

But we are told that the first cities were nasty things. The construction of the first cities were not signs of human development but human regression - rebellion against God. Cities were the architectural representation of one's hired (SIM) gardener marking out one's vegetable plot and claiming sovereignty over the patch.

Cain built the first city and named it after his son Enoch. Because Cain had earlier killed his own brother and spilt his blood on the ground, his days of getting food from the ground were over and he was to be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth, getting food from other sources. But God in his mercy had promised Cain that though he'd punished him, he would also continue to protect him from his enemies (Genesis 4:8 - 16). It might have been that Enoch did not trust God for protection or he might have thought that God's protective mark on him lacked any efficacy, for he proceeded to settle at Nod, there building for himself a something he might have been more confident would defend him from enemies - a city (Genesis 4:17). If this is true, then the Psalmist later laughs at such misguided folly in trusting in hackable walls and sleepy watchmen, rather than an undefeatable God for protection:

Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain. (Psalm 127:1)

The city of Babel was more obvious edifice of rebellion against God (Genesis 11:1-9). Its inhabitants said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." They sought honour and glory for themselves that properly belonged to the name of God. They sought security in their bricks and mortar rather than in God.

Fall of Cities
The recorded past demonstrates the impermanence of cities. Greece and Rome once great centres of learning, innovation and sophistication in their own times have since retired quietly into pretty tourist destinations. Where once great military conquerors were feted; where thronged successful merchants and agriculturalists; where governance was sophisticated and well-thought out with laws of contract and property and family, law courts and routes of appeal; where flourished refined art, monumental works of architecture, intricate jewellery-work, impressively accurate astronomy, the ancient cities of Assyria and Babylon now exist only as museum exhibits. Perhaps the city that manages to continuously reinvent itself might survive? Statistically, this is improbable.

And in reality, this is impossible.

Of the great city of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar once boasted:"Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my might power and for my glorious majesty?" (Daniel 4:30). And truly, Babylon was one of the wonders of the ancient world with its hanging garden and lofty walls and ziggurats and beautiful Ishtar Gate. Today, its ruins span over two thousand acres. But ruins, they are, the beauty and magnificence of human constructs ultimately amounting to nothing. In the end, warned Isaiah,"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendour and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them"(Isaiah 13:19).

Cities For The Redeemed
Though in this life and on this earth we have no lasting city, we seek a city that is to come (Hebrews 13:14) whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:10). Re-reading Revelation reminds me how much I long for that city:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.(Revelation 21:22 - 22:5)

Saigon Liveableness

Not quite the Big Mac Index, but it used to be (when dinosaurs had yet to be knocked cold by a random meteorite) that the availability of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Korean cuisine in a (Western) country not their own signalled some degree of urban sophistication of the host city.

Nowadays, post-takeout, post-fast-food era, it is the prevalence of cute little indie eateries and New Yorker ADHD-ness that red-flag the liveableness of a city to the Luxe Guide set.

One way to spend an evening in Ho Chi Minh City (whose very name screams for a Wallpaper* makeover), is to pop into Pacharan for bowls of pachada before downing microbrew pints at Hoa Vien Brauhaus, scoffing lamb kebab tucker slathered with garlic sauce at Arab Kebab, loading up on DVDs along Huynh Thuc Khang, grabbing ice-cream at Fanny's or Kem Bach Dang or fresh popcorn from Cafe Central, and settling in for the latenight screening of this season's blockbusters.

(Detoxing types, who ought to have gone out with the preppy look in the early part of this millennium, might do pretzels becalm themselves at Saigon Yoga for some ashtanga or pilates work, grab rabbit food at Juice, then soak in a bubble bath, learning Vietnamese from a CD.)

Swing Wednesdays and Salsa Thurdays, muffins and giggling Japanese expats at La Fenêtre Soleil. Afterwards, a quick messy-haired moto away, sequestered in a little enclave off Mac Thi Buoi, there might be dinner and shisha amidst pan-arabian fantasy tiles, beads and mirrors at Warda or a lounge-about Thai-style up the tight spiral staircase at Lac Thai.

Other evenings, well, darn it, one has to work! Cos thees ees a work trip, no? So dinner ees palatable French round the corner at La Niçoise, where there are only 5 tables ground-level and the people are friendly and chatty and happily brimming with wine and coffee. Just what is needed before trudging back to more toil.

The story about chatting in French is this:
once upon a time, a long-suffering French teacher had her class take turns practising for their French orals. 2 of her worst students, paired together, had the following conversation:

Student A: Pardon monsieur/madame, parlez-vous anglais?
Student B: Of course!
Student A: Cheh, why never earlier say?
(And an interesting conversation ensues, in English, about the benefits of speaking English.)
Madame (French teachers giving Chinese teachers a run for their melodramatic money)*crying into her sleeve*: Oh woe is me! What ever have I done to deserve such asinine students?

Warda
71/7 Mac Thi Buoi
Tel: 824 1374

Lac Thai
71/2 Mac Thi Buoi
Tel: 823 7506

Pacharan Tapas & Bedega
97 Hai Ba Trung
Tel: 822 2372

Hoa Vien Brauhaus
28 Bis Mac Dinh Chi
Tel: 823 1080

Arab Kebab
9B Thai Van Lung
Tel: 827 9867

La Niçoise
42 Ngo Duc Ke
Tel: 822 8613

Asia Life HCMC

In Which There Was No Hint Whatsoever That A Diversification Of Wardrobe Palette Was In Order

Rainy Twilight Over Ho Chi Minh City

Back again. With what ought to be an adequate stash of underpants.

It is the season for rain. In the Tan Son Nhut Airport, in waiting places and walkways and dutyfree shops and baggage carousel areas, assorted plastic containers catch drips from the leaking ceiling.

Edith Piaf has followed us from the plane. The tragedienne. You cannot miss her grating unsparrow-like voice. Above the incessant honking on the wet Saigon streets, she sings Cri du Coeur:
C'est pas seulement ma voix qui chante.
C'est l'autre voix, une foule de voix,
Voix d'aujourd'hui ou d'autrefois,
Des voix marrantes, ensoleillées,
Désespérées, émerveillées,
Voix déchirantes et brisées,
Voix souriantes et affolées,
Folles de douleur et de gaieté.

C'est la voix d'un chagrin tout neuf,
La voix de l'amour mort ou vif,
La voix d'un pauvre fugitif,
La voix d'un noyé qui fait plouf.
C'est la voix d'une enfant qu'on gifle,
C'est la voix d'un oiseau craintif,
La voix d'un moineau mort de froid
Sur le pavé d' la rue d' la joie...

Et toujours, toujours, quand je chante,
Cet oiseau-là chante avec moi.
Toujours, toujours, encore vivante,
Sa pauvre voix tremble pour moi.
Si je disais tout ce qu'il chante,
Tout c'que j'ai vu et tout c'que j'sais,
J'en dirais trop et pas assez
Et tout ça, je veux l'oublier.

D'autres voix chantent un vieux refrain.
C'est leur souvenir, c'est plus le mien.
Je n'ai plus qu'un seul cri du cœur :
"J'aime pas l'malheur ! J'aime pas l'malheur !"
Et le malheur me le rend bien
Mais je l' connais, il m' fait plus peur.
Il dit qu'on est mariés ensemble.
Même si c'est vrai, je n'en crois rien.

Sans pitié, j'écrase mes larmes.
Je leur fais pas d'publicité.
Si on tirait l'signal d'alarme
Pour des chagrins particuliers,
Jamais les trains n'pourraient rouler
Et je regarde le paysage.
Si par hasard, il est trop laid,
J'attends qu'il se refasse une beauté

Et les douaniers du désespoir
Peuvent bien éventrer mes bagages,
Me palper et me questionner,
J'ai jamais rien à déclarer.
L'amour, comme moi, part en voyage.
Un jour je le rencontrerai.
A peine j'aurai vu son visage,
Tout de suite je le reconnaîtrai...

Thanksgiving For Being Saved While Looking The Other Way

A mere post cannot encompass the extent of the mad birthday celebrations (which were all actually quite swell despite it being well-known that I am adverse to such things. But please do pray for the evangelistic do coming up next Sat!): a fortnight of fêtes and more to come, interrupted only by all this leaving (and arriving) on jetplanes. Days of festivities. Nights of revelry. Cheekiness. Plenty of laughs and honest talk. Stupendous food and drink. Great company. Maaan. Random things from today alone: pressies in the morning, including a flat tyre from my car (nice); lol ugly birthday photos courtesy of lol ugly models; pottering up to a pie just out of the oven and daftly wondering aloud why it had my firstname initial on it; a kid whose limited height and vocabulary transformed the traditional greeting to a cute cuddle about the knees mumbling "Happy! Happy!"; molecular gastronomy at Aurum, which, despite bad press, was fantastic - food prep hacking and then eating the results. (Am now in the market for centrifuges and a giant canister of liquid nitrogen for the kitchen.)

3am each morning, settling down for the long drive home, tired but most chuffed.

Who am I on quiet expressways that turn off to wide roads and backlanes and forests?
Who am I in silent wide spaces that unfurl into infinite horizons?
Who am I beside empty passenger seats rapidly forgetting their warmth?
Who am I when there is no one around? But God.
Who am I that the Lord of all the earth would care to know me?

Retro hits on the radio: I am 13. I am supposed to be studying for exams - for my future. But I am wondering about my future. It is shrouded. It is barely glimpsed behind a misty old windscreen caked with bug-splatter. So I write a letter to my future self in awkward newborn cursive: Dear me, who are you? Do you still remember me? Do you hold to everything that is noble and good and true? Will I like you? Yours sincerely, me.

Dear me, what adventure lies ahead: mountains to climb, oceans to swim in, rocks to scale, snowy peaks to slam down, people to empathise with and love whom you never thought you'd even get along with, barns to dance in, cathedrals to sing in, horses to be trampled by, eyebrows to be singed by pyrotechnic experiments, hands to be singed by baking experiments, smelling close ones dying, watching babies grow up, lying on the field in horrifying numbness after bad rugby tackles, imbibing the audience-energy of stage work, falling into darkness and clambering out, tasting the mellowness of a lost Strad under the chin, new possibilities and vistas, sweet/sour/spici/salti/bitter-ness...

And in the midst of all this, Someone will tap you (very hard) on the shoulder and point out politely that you've been falling down a deep dark void all this while and would you please like to grasp hold of a sturdy rope to keep from falling?

While you are not looking, Someone will come and guide you to all that is noble and good and true. And in that light, you will realise that you are truly evil. And also that none of this salvation is born of your own effort or qualification.

Will you like me? I don't know. But, heads up!*snaps fingers* (hehheh, yeah, we learnt to do that) Far grander, far universe-encompassing stuff ahead!

Love, me.

PS: Obviously, we haven't outgrown cheesiness, as this writing-to-ourselves thing evidences. Alas.
PPS: No worries. Slippers work even with "fine dining".
PPPS: Chinese tuition won't do you any good. Take the money and invest in Microsoft.