Time Well Kept

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAnother hazy start, though I’ve given up reporting on it as news. The haze is simply furniture now, like the wardrobe you keep meaning to replace. The morning itself, though, was smooth again. Two in a row. I’m treating it with the cautious respect one gives a cat that has suddenly decided to sit on your lap. Don’t move. Don’t make a fuss. Let it happen.

First order of business was setting up the new timer at the clinic. I’ll admit I expected the novelty to wear off by mid-morning, the way most clever gadgets end up as expensive paperweights by the end of the week. It didn’t. Something about seeing the minutes physically run down sharpened things. Less drifting, fewer half-finished thoughts, no reaching for the phone to check something that didn’t need checking. I’m slightly annoyed it works this well, because it means the problem was never a lack of time. It was me. A small box has politely pointed this out, and I’ve chosen to take it on the chin.

The morning clinic was busy, properly busy, the sort where you only notice your coffee has gone cold when you reach for it and it tastes of regret. But it moved. Focus does that. A full morning feels very different when you’re in it rather than being dragged along behind it.

Lunch was at Upstairs Cafe, which I’d earned, or at least I told myself so. The pasta was good. Not life-changing, not something I’ll describe to strangers, just honestly good, which I think is underrated. We’ve become a little obsessed with food that has to be extraordinary, plated like modern art and photographed before it’s tasted. I’d take a well-made bowl of pasta, eaten while it’s still hot, over a deconstructed anything. There’s dignity in a dish that simply does its job.

The afternoon slipped by quietly, and the evening followed suit. A quiet night is a fine thing after a day that asked a lot. No plans, no particular agenda, just the low hum of the house and the faint suspicion I should be doing something more productive.

Which, naturally, I then did. Lectures to sort. There’s always a lecture somewhere on the horizon, waiting like a dentist’s appointment you booked months ago in a fit of optimism. I opened the slides with the usual mixture of good intentions and mild dread. I’m one of those people who believes I work best under pressure, while knowing perfectly well that’s a story procrastinators tell themselves. So I got a head start. Not finished, not even close, but begun, which is half the battle and considerably less than half the work.

It occurs to me the timer might help here too. I may need to buy a third.

Perhaps not. Two timers is a system. Three is a personality.

The Second Timer

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA new week, and the sky over the Klang Valley hadn’t got the memo. The haze was still hanging about, that pale, indecisive grey that’s neither weather nor not-weather. It makes the whole city look slightly out of focus, as if someone forgot to wipe the lens. I’ve stopped pretending it’ll lift by lunchtime. It never does.

I spent part of the weekend catching up on Week 4 of the NFL, which tells you everything about my relationship with live sport. I’m a delayed-viewing man now. There’s something faintly absurd about watching a game whose result the rest of the world settled days ago, carefully avoiding headlines like a man stepping around puddles. But I’ll defend it. Knowing nothing and watching it unfold, even late, is still better than reading a score and feeling nothing at all. American football remains a sport I enjoy far more than I can sensibly explain. Every few plays I think, why does this need four downs and a committee meeting? Then someone throws a forty-yard spiral and I forgive it everything.

The morning itself was smooth, which I don’t say lightly. Smooth mornings are rare enough that I’ve learnt not to comment on them while they’re happening, in case they hear me. Coffee, a clear inbox, nobody needing anything urgently. Small mercies, and I’ll take them.

Lunch was with the pharma folk. These lunches are a peculiar genre: half conversation, half presentation, with a sandwich somewhere in the middle trying to keep the peace. I don’t mind them. You learn things, occasionally useful ones, and the food is usually better than whatever I’d have grabbed myself. I’d just rather the slides came after dessert.

The afternoon clinic made up for the gentle start. Busy, steady, one thing after another, the kind of afternoon where you look up and the light outside has changed without asking permission. Not unpleasant. Just full. By the end I had the slightly hollow satisfaction of a day properly spent.

Home, and a delivery waiting. The ZONE Timer by New Thing Lab, my second one. I already have one at home, sitting on the desk and quietly bullying me into finishing things. This one’s going to the clinic. Some would call buying the same gadget twice a lack of imagination. I’d call it evidence that the first one works. If anything, it’s a compliment to the designers that I didn’t bother shopping around.

There’s an odd pleasure in a single-purpose object these days. It doesn’t notify me, doesn’t update itself overnight, doesn’t want my email address. It counts down, and then it stops. I wish more things in life had that kind of clarity.

So, a Monday that behaved itself, mostly. Hazy outside, busy in the middle, tidy at the edges. A new timer to keep the next few weeks honest. Whether I actually listen to it is another matter entirely.

Closing Remarks, Open Weekend

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday, in theory, is a day of rest. In practice, mine began with the usual morning duties, which have never shown much interest in the calendar. I’ve stopped resenting this. There’s a certain quiet to a Sunday morning at work that you don’t get on any other day: fewer voices, slower corridors, and the faint sense that everyone present would rather be somewhere with better coffee.

Then back to the KL Hilton for the second day of the event, this time to give the closing remarks. Closing remarks are a curious assignment. Nobody comes for them, everyone is mentally halfway to the car park, and yet they matter more than people think. You’re not there to say anything new. You’re there to tie a ribbon round two days of other people’s hard work and send everyone home feeling it was worth the parking fees. I kept it short. In my experience, the most appreciated part of any closing speech is the closing.

What I didn’t do was stay for the lunch. Having made my contribution, I slipped away to have lunch with Anita in KLCC instead. I’ll admit I enjoyed the small rebellion of it. A hotel buffet is a fine thing, but lunch with your wife on a Sunday afternoon is a better one, and nobody asks you to wear a lanyard.

Afterwards, we wandered across the road from Suria to the old Robinsons building, where Anita bought herself a dumbbell. I want to be clear that this was entirely her idea, and I offered no commentary beyond carrying it. There’s a lesson in marriage somewhere about knowing when to have opinions about fitness equipment. The lesson is: don’t.

The lower ground floor there used to be home to Atlas Gourmet, which is now closed. I found myself oddly wistful about that. It was never somewhere I went often, but it was the kind of place you liked knowing was there: a reassuring pantry for the city, all good bread and things you didn’t need in pretty jars. Now it’s just a space, waiting for whatever comes next. KL does this constantly. You blink, and the places you half-relied on have quietly moved on without telling you.

Home again, and properly tired. Not the dramatic kind of tired, just the cumulative sort that builds over a week of full days and comes due on Sunday afternoon. I sat down and let it happen.

Later, the Singapore Grand Prix on the television once more. I’m aware I’ve now spent more time this week watching cars race through Marina Bay than actually driving my own, which is still recovering its dignity at the service centre. There’s an irony there I’m choosing not to examine too closely.

So the weekend closed much as the event did: briefly, gratefully, and with the feeling that the important bits had been covered. Tomorrow the week begins again. For now, there’s a sofa, a race in the dark, and a dumbbell in the corner that I have no intention of touching.

Buffets, Bazaars and Brakes

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe day began, as so many do, with a round of the usual duties followed by paperwork. The two have a way of travelling together, like a man and his shadow, except the shadow tends to grow longer as the morning goes on. I made decent progress on both and felt reasonably virtuous by late morning, which is about as virtuous as I generally aim to feel before lunch.

After lunch came a talk, and before the talk came lunch itself: a buffet at Vasco’s in the KL Hilton. I’ll say this plainly. A good buffet is the most honest way to bribe an audience into a seminar, and it works on me every time. The spread was genuinely nice, broad without being exhausting, and I exercised what I’d describe as selective restraint. That is, I didn’t try everything. Merely most things.

The talk ran until four. It was worthwhile, and I’ll leave it at that, partly because nobody wants a blow-by-blow of a seminar and partly because the post-buffet hour is never anyone’s sharpest. There’s an unspoken contract in these afternoon sessions: the speaker agrees to be interesting, and the audience agrees not to visibly digest. Both sides held up their end, mostly.

I was excused a little early, which was just as well, because I had made a promise to Anita about the pasar malam. In my experience, promises about pasar malam are the binding kind. You can postpone a meeting. You cannot postpone a night market that someone has been quietly looking forward to all day.

So off we went. There’s something about a pasar malam that I’ve never quite been able to explain to anyone who didn’t grow up with them. It’s crowded, it’s warm, it smells of six different kinds of frying at once, and it is completely wonderful. I wandered, Anita navigated with considerably more purpose, and we came away with more than we needed and exactly what we wanted. Having eaten a buffet at lunch, I really had no business buying anything edible. I bought several things edible.

Home again, and the Singapore Grand Prix on the television. I’ll admit to a soft spot for that race. Formula One under floodlights feels faintly theatrical, which suits it. There’s a certain pleasure in watching cars cost more than houses navigate a city street, while I sit on the sofa having spent the evening debating the merits of one kuih stall over another.

Before bed, I went in an entirely different direction and watched a few videos on electric vehicle care. With the car still fresh from its touch-ups, I’ve decided it’s time I knew more than which end the plug goes in. Battery health, charging habits, the small routines that keep things running well. It’s not thrilling viewing, but it’s oddly reassuring, rather like reading the instructions after you’ve already assembled the furniture.

Strange, really. An evening that started with racing cars ended with learning how to drive more gently. I suspect there’s a lesson in that somewhere, but I was too tired to look for it.

Finding the Stride

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoBy now the week has stopped feeling like a return and started feeling like a week. That’s the moment I tend to trust. The first days back are all adjustment and good intentions; by the fourth or fifth, you’re simply getting on with it, which is where most of the real living happens anyway.

The morning was busy. Not chaotic, not the scattered busyness of the first day back, but the purposeful kind, where one thing leads sensibly to the next and you look up to find it’s nearly lunchtime. I’ll take that sort of busy every time. It has a shape to it. The other sort just has noise.

The journey home was less cooperative. The traffic had clearly decided that everyone should leave at precisely the same moment, and we all obliged. I sat in it with the resigned patience of a man who has lived in the Klang Valley long enough to know that honking only adds to the soundtrack. There’s a strange solidarity in a jam. Hundreds of people, each privately convinced the other lane is moving faster. It never is. I checked.

I don’t really hate the traffic, which is probably a contrarian thing to say. It’s one of the few places where nobody can reasonably expect anything of you. You can’t answer messages, you can’t do paperwork, you can only sit and think, or not think, which is often better. I’d never choose it, mind you. I just no longer waste energy resenting it.

Dinner first, then the evening meeting about MSH 2027. Next year’s gathering is already taking shape, and these early conversations are where the real work quietly gets done: ideas floated, gently tested, a few politely set aside. Planning something a year out has an odd rhythm to it. Everything feels both distant and urgent, as if you’re laying stepping stones across a river you haven’t yet reached.

I enjoy these meetings more than I’d let on. There’s a particular pleasure in watching a plan slowly firm up from vague enthusiasm into actual decisions. It’s slow, occasionally circular, and every now and then someone says something so sensible that the whole conversation shifts. Those moments make the hour worthwhile.

It also helps that it happened after dinner. A meeting on a full stomach is a more forgiving affair. Nobody is in a hurry, nobody is irritable, and the tea is usually better than the agenda.

By the time it wrapped up, the evening had grown quiet and the week had all but run its course. I’m settling in now with that pleasant, slightly hollow tiredness that comes from a full day properly spent.

The weekend is waiting, and I intend to meet it with very low ambitions. Rest, perhaps a decent meal, and the luxury of not having to be anywhere at a particular hour. After a week like this, that feels less like laziness and more like good housekeeping.