I arrived in Manila a week ago, and hit the ground running. Have been out almost every night, as different groups of friends sweep me off to gatherings, get-togethers, and parties in hotel rooms, in rapid succession. The trend seems to be: 3 days of going out, followed by one quiet day at home with my dad, resting, doing my laundry, and organising my schedule.

I am starting to feel the effects of so much socialising, drinking, and eating (food I’m supposed to avoid), but I have been loving the precious hours spent with “my tribe”: the raucous laughter, the feeling of being totally accepted, familiar, and unconditionally loved; the sparkling joy of conversations that dive—without polite preamble or censorship—into the depths of some of life’s great themes: how to live, how to die, how to engender change, how to make a difference, reconciling one’s real and imagined families, protecting integrity, nurturing creativity, food as encoded culture and as an expression of selfhood, the roller-coaster ride that is love, sex, and attraction, the role of poverty and its codependency with government, the absurdity of democracy, the ravages of time and the melancholy poetry of ageing…

As you can imagine, the sketchbook has suffered some neglect. Here’s a sketch of Darwin airport from my seat on the plane, and the facade of a hotel in Singapore, on Duxton Road. Nothing new to show, but I will try to do some sketches if I am home for most of the day, tomorrow. 🙂