Magenta Rain

From above morning sun stolen.
Patio magenta, bougainvillea strewn
Delighting wet film of grey.
Frogs greeting from tunnels hidden.
Rhythmic. Answering calls come
echoing from friendly frogs.

From Dickens of two hundred years ago I jumped straight into a future thriller ‘The Fear Index’ by Robert Harris on Kindle e-reader. I also listened to the unabridged audio book version, narrated by Christian Rodska.

What I admire most about Robert Harris is the extensive research he does for each one of his books, whether set in the past historical Pompeii or in the port city Archangel in Russia or into the computer world.

The Fear Index reminded me Bill Gates’ talk of 1999 ‘Business at Speed of Thought’.
‘As I was considering these issues…a new concept came into my head: The digital nervous system. A digital nervous system consists of the digital process that enable a company to perceive and react to its environment, to sense competitive challenges and customer need and organize timely responses.’

The Fear Index: Dr. Alex Hoffman and Hugo Quarry are partners in an investment company in Geneva – Hoffman Investment Technologies. Alex, the physicist is the brains of the operation. He programs his smart computers to generate huge financial returns for their clients. Hugo Quarry, an Englishman, is the financier who takes care of the business side. The success of the company is due to the vast sums the investors are able to reap due to the company’s digitized programme, VIXAL-4’s calculations of the money market.

The operation moves along well allowing both men the means to enjoy expensive life styles. Alex pursues his hobby acquiring Antiquarian books. Being a paperless advocate he insists on a totally paperless office and so he keeps his antique book collection a secret. Alex’s wife is well provided for and is a high-powered artist who converts body scans into glass sculpture. Hugo follows an expensive decadent life-style with yachts, fast women, and faster cars.

Soon fear on fear mounts. The super computer develops a personality of its own. The artificial intelligence evolves its own algorithm and starts to work for itself. It begins to virtually stalk the creator. It rearranges Alex’s life dangerously. Alex receives the first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, with the bookmark on the page about fear. It appears he purchased and paid for it. The super computer takes over his life and his business. It begins to work on the financial market. The out-of-control computer disseminates information in nanoseconds and sends out ‘buy and sell’ messages. It creates price shifts that cause volatility and fear in the financial market. Neither Alex nor his team of computer experts is able to control the output of the VIXAL-4′s “brain”. Considerable tension builds up. The rest thrilling and nail-biting, and I am not revealing more.

The plot is riveting. One does not need knowledge of high technology or of hedge funds and stock markets to enjoy this thriller which is part sci-fi and part mystery. Yes, there is murder too. The ending leaves one imagining a sequel.

‘The Fear Index’ had me contemplating on our super technology assisted lives. Artificial intelligence has already taken over the many tasks we did for ourselves and much is now taken for granted. I am thinking about my own electronic future. Will computers move beyond my control?

When I first went to Britain I heard the statement buy black, black does not show dirt. I was quite taken aback with this. Having been brought up in the tropics, where we change clothes a few times a day, not only because we sweat but dirt is dirt. Just because dirt is not seen it does not mean the garment worn over a period of time is not dirty.

But recently when I went to Japan more of that dirt situation came into focus. My friend, TJ believed in travelling light. On a ten-day trip my TJ wore the same pair of denim jeans. Ten days in Tokyo and two days of travel there and back, twelve days in all. I was quite appalled.

Then I came to hear the story of denim jeans not being washed for six months. Six months for the lived-in look to create your own body fashion. The lived in jeans gives you ‘whiskers, honeycombs and stacks’… big body fashion statements and your very own too. Your own body distressed denims. Denim fades not only with wash but also with wear. Jeans not washed but worn over a long period of time creates whiskers on the upper thighs, honeycomb behind the knees and stacks around the ankles. For the last you need to buy a size long in the legs. One could try to look even more distressed by creating one’s own raggedy fashion ripped with a pair of scissors.

Weighing The Distress

Jeans fabric originally came from Nimes in France, a serge, Serge de Nimes. It became popular in America in the late 18th Century. Mostly miners and construction workers found it to be sturdy due mainly to the weft supported by more than one warp, which can be seen on the reverse side.

The number of indigo (natural or synthetic) dips gives the fabric the different blue shades, and stretch fabric is created with the introduction of elastic to the fabric.

Denim jeans, distressed or not, is now universal wear.

Dirt Fashion.

Each time I read and reread Dickens I find his writing more interesting, more humorous, and revealing more layers.

In February on Charles Dickens’ 200th anniversary Don and I read ‘Great Expectations’ at the same time on our kindles. It is the second reading for me having read it the first time many years ago. Our reading took us a little longer than most modern books do, but it was much fun. Most nights we compared what we had read during the day and came up with humorous incidents that had us laughing again. We were filled too with much appreciation for this 200-year-old author.

Dickens is satirical of his times, looks deeply and critically into the foibles of his society but 200 years later we find the same foibles in our society. Great Expectations at first seems simple but it is a complex novel of love and cheer, loyalty and betrayal, guilt and innocence, and sympathy, sentimentality, and much wry wit.

The story is full of forebodings and dark too from time to time, but keeps the reader engaged throughout. We get great insight into the lives of the ordinary people and high society, into the lives of the poor and rich. The language is a little archaic but does not slow the reader. Much of the text is beautiful.

Expectations are several. We follow Pip’s character as he grows from a village boy to a young man lost to a man sensible and cultured and with good values.

A very strict and nasty older sister and her husband, Joe, bring up the orphan Pip. Joe, a kind mild mannered blacksmith, is a good influence in Pip’s life. His first expectation is to get a good education. But he is soon contracted by Miss Haversham to serve his apprenticeship with Joe with a view to becoming a blacksmith. Becoming a blacksmith is not part of the Pip’s ambition. His expectation is to be part of high society. The young boy wants to be well educated and move away from the village, move up to high society. Soon a mystery benefactor arranges through a prominent London lawyer to buy him out. Circumstances change immediately and Pip is sent to London on his way to becoming a gentleman. That comes at a cost. He is in Iove with a highly placed young lady in Miss Haversham’s care. And he knows nothing of money management and gets into debt squandering his quota of money from his benefactor in high living. Due to even more higher expectations he’s deeply disappointed when he finds out his benefactor is no nobleman. His fierce anger towards the man who is a criminal, whom he at first found not up to be to his expectations turns into kindness and love. This love for the stranger nearly costs his own life.

Towards the end he realizes that many of his expectations were merely superficial. He sheds his false values and looking for deeper meaning in life finds happiness and love.
Humour in the first chapter: Pip as a young boy is in the churchyard on a foggy evening and walks about looking at inscriptions on the tombstones, one of them is his parents’, both his father and mother buried in the same plot.

‘At the time I stood in the churchyard reading the family tombstones. I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct for I read “Wife of the Above” was a complementary reference to my father’s exaltation to a better world.’

And Dickens has such witty and clever way of saying things. When Pip is a young man of means he says of his housekeeper and her niece:

‘They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted, indeed that was their only reliable quality besides larceny.’

Love it.

My Collin’s Classics

Note: About Collins

In 1819, Millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set p a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymnbooks and prayer book. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperColins Publishers as we know it today.