First, some (qualified) good news: Abdi, whom I told you about last Friday, has been helped over the weekend. On Friday, his leg was finally x-rayed and he was flown to Port Moresby to have his leg looked at properly on Saturday. Reports indicate that he has snapped his patella tendons; at PIH in Port Moresby, they removed 100mL of fluid from around his knee and have given him appropriate painkillers. He’ll need surgery and he also needs an interpreter, as right now without one he’s having trouble understanding what the doctors are saying. So it’s not over yet, but I hope his situation continues to improve. Also I really hope that another refugee mentioned in last Friday’s Guardian article gets help before he loses his sight(!!). I wish things were better. Five years of detention is too long.
Now, onto the life update.
The next couple of weeks are busy. As of the 20th of this month, I’ll have finished my second-last subject of this uni degree and with it my project placement. But there are a number of milestones I have to meet first.
What have I been up to? Well, yesterday I helped out at my uni’s open day, which was interesting. A long day but a good one.
I have read a number of books lately. My strategy is to read on public transport and before bed, and I use my local library. It has online shelves including one called, “For Later”. This becomes my TBR list. I then combine this with the “place on hold” option to get my reading material, because I can read through a book in a matter of days or even hours if I find it interesting enough. Of course, uni and life mean that sometimes it takes me weeks to get through a book as well. So placing several at once on hold, collecting them and making my way through them over time is a good thing.
So far in the past month or so, I have enjoyed Redshirts (John Scalzi), Eat Up! (Ruby Tandoh), Zac and Mia (AJ Betts) and Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves (Rachel Malik).
Redshirts is space satire sci-fi, poking fun at several different tropes, especially a particular Star Trek one about the (minor) character deaths always happening to the ones with red shirts. It makes a good point, in a whimsical way, about being the creator of your own destiny.
Eat Up! is a non-fiction book about food, food culture and food satisfaction. It’s a great read. Food for the soul and very reassuring. I’d like to buy it someday, tbh.
Zac and Mia is about two teenagers who are quite unlike each other, except that both are (as the story starts) in hospital due to cancer. They form a bond that deepens throughout the book. It’s a book that I find hard to define, but it was a really good read. See more here.
Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves is an interesting story. It’s a fictional tale of two women in the mid-20th-century that was inspired by a family tale of the author’s. It’s about forging your own path, making your own home and finding your own way. It’s also about how those things can come with consequences, especially if the past catches up with you.
I’m currently reading Second hand: a novel (Michael Zadoorian), which isn’t as engaging as I’d hoped.
Over the next couple of weeks, one of two things will happen: either almost all the posts you see here will be scheduled, or there’ll be very few posts at all. 😉 See you on the other side…
myzania 