13 October 2006 20:30
the miscellania of life.on my way into work this morning i was listening to the morning talk show on KLAS. the two dj's were reminiscing about the good ol' days before the Jamaican dollar really inflated. (inflation hasn't been as bad in the two years that i've been here, although it has dropped from $61 to $66 against the US dollar. i remember when we visited Jamaica in the 90's at some point it was $32 to $1US). they were remembering the days when you went to the bank and withdrew $2,000 and had to get it put in a brown paper bag (to prevent people from seeing how much and and deciding it was worth mugging you). with $2,000 now equaling only $30US it's not as much an issue. another recalled the day they came out with the $1000 bill.
since $1000 is still their highest denomination, the one dj wondered when they would come out with a $5000. the other protested immediately against the bad luck of mentioning it (don't say it and won't come true...the implication being more inflation to come). as an outsider who gets paid in us currency, i personally wouldn't mind a $5000 bill. one time i paid the company phone bill for an entire quarter, which came to roughly $47,000JMD. imagine buying something at walmart for $47 and paying for it in ones. as a kid in the states, i remember one time seeing a car paid for with $5000US cash. that transaction probably still stands as the largest amount of money i've ever seen personally at once. a similar transaction here in jamaica would total one third of a million and would result in a stack of 330 bills. but further down the scale, sib has memories of being an mk in rural ghana and going to the bank in accra. they would come out carting a month's supply of cash in ice chests, simply as a way to carry it all. and some documentary images flash through my mind of wwii germany i think where marks were being hauled around in wheelborrows. not a pretty picture.
remember hurricane gordan last month? some nasa pics from the shuttle atlantis.
i've been having fun at work, or perhaps a little too much fun. flourescent die-penetrant inspection of a nose landing gear fork for cracks with a UV light (none found), and coming home last night after dark...i'm rather fond of our futuristic blue instrument lights. aren't they cool?i've been reading A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell and have really liked it. which is odd considering the somewhat depressing material he's working with, a rambling satire of britain between the wars. as the cover describes, "Here [he] effects one of his earliest pieces of social reportage, as with devastating accuracy he depicts the hypocrisy, the poverty and the spiritual starvation which accompany [the protagonist] on her Odyssey through the England of the Thirties". if nothing else it's a good way to add to one's vocabulary. to my surprise, i like it better than 1984, which i read just two or three weeks ago.
'Surely I don't take you to mean,' said Mr Warburton, 'that you actually REGRET losing your faith, as you call it?...Used you not, if I remember rightly, to do horrible things like getting up at five in the morning to go to Holy Communion on an empty belly? Surely you're not homesick for that kind of thing?'
'I don't believe in it any longer, if that's what you mean. And I see now that a lot of it was rather silly. But that doesn't help. The point is that all the beliefs I had are gone, and I've nothing to put in their place.'
'But good God! why do you want to put anything in their place? You've got rid of a load of superstitious rubbish, and you ought to be glad of it. Surely it doesn't make you any happier to go about quaking in fear of Hell fire?'
'But don't you see--you must see--how different everything is when all of a sudden the whole world is empty?'
'Empty?' exclaimed Mr Warburton. 'What do you mean by saying it's empty? I call that perfectly scandalous in a girl of your age. It's not empty at all, it's a deuced sight too full, that's the trouble with it. We're here today and gone tomorrow, and we've no time to enjoy what we've got.'
'But how CAN one enjoy anything when all the meaning's been taken out of it?' (emph mine)
'Good gracious! What do you want with a meaning? When I eat my dinner I don't do it to the greater glory of God; I do it because I enjoy it. The world's full of amusing things--books, pictures, wine, travel, friends--everything. I've never seen any meaning in it all, and I don't want to see one. Why not take life as you find it?'
He was quite incapable of understanding her difficulty--incapable of realizing how a mind naturally pious must recoil from a world discovered to be meaningless. Probably the idea that life was essentially futile, if he thought of it at all, struck him as rather amusing than otherwise.
actually, the first part of hte book was the least likeable for me, when Dorothy (the protagonist) was living her life as a clergyman's daughter. she lived a life full of "religion", but there was no love and light and life and joy, it was all drear and drudge and fear and work. salvation by works and structure and ceremony, not salvation by grace and faith and a personal relationship with a loving Saviour. for me, her now meaningless life had no less meaning that her supposedly meaningful life before.
any road, while the content of this book may not be the happiest, it is still quite real. and more importantly, it flows, the writing is very well done.
and in writing all that myself, i'm reminded of why i don't do book reviews very often. "good read, recommend" or "don't touch it with a 10-foot pole" are a lot quicker and easier. and MUCH less subject to misinterpretation. time to go home and eat supper. and actually finish the book i just wrote a review for.
20:30 email me permalink / commentary (1)
Don't know if you've read it, but it might fit in with the Orwell books you've been reading. Children of Men by P.D. James. Takes place in the near future 2015-2020 or so, about 20 years after humanity became infertile. Fascinating book. It's been made into a movie to be released here in the States in a couple months. 14 October, 2006 00:29 – 
Jeff
