The Ordinary Week, Reasserting Itself

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAnd just like that, the holidays folded themselves away and the ordinary week returned, unbothered by my brief taste of leisure. Back to work, then, with an early start — and the seasoned certainty that the first clinic after a long weekend would be heaving. People save up their ailments over a holiday the way one saves up laundry, and present them all at once. I was not wrong. The clinic overspilled, the list grew longer than the morning could decently hold, and the afternoon absorbed the overflow with weary good grace.

The traffic, too, seems to have remembered its old habits. It has been thickening by the day, the roads reclaiming their familiar congestion now that the city is back at its desk. There is a grim sort of reunion in sitting once more in a queue of brake lights, watching the minutes go and the distance not.

The real drama of the day, however, unfolded elsewhere entirely. Mak and Julia had stationed themselves at Zehn, locked in the modern gladiatorial contest known as the BTS ticket scramble — two determined people, several devices between them, refreshing pages and willing the servers not to crumble. I have witnessed military operations planned with less intensity. The queues, by all accounts, were brutal, the kind that test both patience and broadband.

In the end, it was my account, of all things, that came good. Four tickets, secured against the odds, which I learned of via a flurry of messages bordering on the triumphant. So it is settled: we will be at Bukit Jalil on the thirteenth of December, somewhere among the masses, doing whatever it is one does at these things. I make no claims to expertise in the matter. But there is something rather lovely about being swept into someone else's joy, and Julia and Mak's delight was infectious enough that I find myself genuinely looking forward to it, expertise or not.

The rest of the day did what working days do — it filled itself, quietly and completely, until I looked up and found it nearly gone. I reached home late, though mercifully in time for dinner, which is the small daily negotiation between work and the table that I do not always win. To sit down with the household at the end of a long one, the food warm and the conversation undemanding, is a reward out of proportion to its simplicity.

Now, an early night beckons, and I intend to heed it. The first proper week back has only just begun, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. The clinic will be full again tomorrow, the traffic will not improve, and the patients will keep arriving as patients do. But there are also concert tickets sitting somewhere in an inbox, a small promise of December tucked away against the long ordinary stretch between now and then.

For tonight, that is more than enough. Lights off, and a sensible bedtime, earned.

The Second Verse of a Familiar Song

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoTwo holidays in a row is the sort of luck that ought to feel indulgent, though the wards remain stubbornly indifferent to such generosity. So once again I rose early, while the rest of the household enjoyed the particular smugness of having nowhere to be, and went to do the morning round — still covering for the two colleagues whose meeting in China had stretched comfortably across the long weekend.

I have no complaints. The rounds were smooth, almost suspiciously so, the kind of morning where everything is where it should be and nobody springs any surprises. There is a quiet satisfaction in that, the professional equivalent of finding the milk hasn't turned. By the time I left, the day still had most of itself ahead, which is the chief reward of an early start one didn't ask for.

Lunch was the day's small adventure. We went to Banglo 289, tucked within Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad — a building I have admired from the outside for the better part of my life without ever expecting to eat inside it. I arrived with the modest expectations one brings to any restaurant trading partly on its address, and was promptly proven wrong. The ambience was genuinely lovely, the sort of room that makes you sit a little straighter, and the food more than held its end of the bargain. Better than expected is faint praise on paper, but in practice it is one of life's more pleasant verdicts.

The afternoon was given over to a nap, which I will defend to anyone. There is no finer use of a holiday than the deliberate, unhurried sleep that comes after a good lunch, the kind where you wake unsure of the hour and entirely at peace about it. I surfaced slowly, the light gone amber, the day having quietly carried on without me.

Dinner was Irfan's call, and Irfan wanted Thai, which meant Busaba at Bangsar Shopping Centre. There is something reassuring about a young person who knows precisely what he wants and is not shy about saying so, particularly when the answer involves tom yum. The food did its job, the conversation drifted pleasantly, and we let the evening take its own pace, in no hurry to be anywhere.

Then home, and rest. Two holidays bookended by morning rounds is a peculiar rhythm, but there is a logic to it — the work anchoring the days that might otherwise float off entirely. Tomorrow the calendar reasserts itself and the ordinary week resumes. I find I don't mind. There is comfort in the return of structure, in knowing that the rounds will go on, the colleagues will fly back, and the small machinery of normal life will pick up where it left off.

For now, though, an early night. A good meal, a better nap, and Thai food chosen by someone with strong opinions. As holidays go, it asked for very little and gave back rather a lot.

A Holiday That Forgot to Check the Roster

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThere is a particular irony to a public holiday that arrives for everyone except you. The Agong's birthday had emptied the roads and shuttered half the city, yet the ward, as ever, took no notice of the calendar. Patients do not observe royal occasions, and neither, it seems, does the morning round. So while the rest of the country lay in, I made my quiet pilgrimage through the wards, notes in hand, the corridors unusually hushed.

Two of the team had vanished eastward — off to a meeting in China, leaving the rest of us to redistribute the workload with the cheerful resignation of people who know complaining changes nothing. The round went smoothly enough, and by noon I was free, which on a holiday feels less like an achievement and more like an unexpected refund.

Anita and I pointed the car towards Wangsa Maju, drawn back to Alpha Angle for lunch. There is something pleasantly unhurried about returning to a place that once formed the backdrop to ordinary life. When we lived in Gombak, this was where we drifted on idle afternoons, before either of us had the sense to wonder where the years were going. The mall has changed in the small ways malls do — a shopfront here, a new signboard there — but the bones of it remain familiar, and familiarity, on a day off, is its own kind of comfort.

Lunch slid easily into groceries, as these things tend to. One does not set out to buy a trolley's worth of provisions, and yet there I was, examining the relative virtues of one cut of something against another, while Anita made the more decisive calls. We left heavier than we arrived, which is the unspoken contract of any visit to a supermarket.

From there to Mid Valley, on a mission for bedding — a phrase that sounds far grander than the reality, which was the two of us standing before a wall of identical white linen, trying to detect meaningful differences in thread counts neither of us fully understood. We chose something, eventually. We always do.

The final stop was the Apple Store at TRX, where the day's true purpose quietly revealed itself. Anita had her eye on the new MacBook Neo, and after the requisite admiring of the thing in its box, she walked out with the citrus model — a colour that manages to be cheerful without being loud, much like its new owner. There is a small ceremony to collecting a new machine: the heft of it, the promise of a clean slate, the faint suspicion that one's old habits will migrate across regardless.

We came home as the light softened, the boot full, the day quietly accounted for. Not every holiday needs to be remarkable. Some are simply for retracing old steps, buying sensible things, and watching someone you love choose a laptop the colour of marmalade. That, I think, is holiday enough.

Walking the City Awake

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday started with purpose and good company. Azul and Robin were already waiting when I arrived — our walking group has become one of those fixtures that anchors the weekend properly. This morning brought a few new faces too: Jon, Andrew, and Santik, who folded into the group with the easy camaraderie that seems to happen naturally when people walk together. There's something about moving at the same pace that shortcuts the usual small talk.

Breakfast was at Al Baik, which set us up nicely for the miles ahead. But then came the gut punch. Light Capture Cafe — closed. Gone since January, apparently. I stood there processing this with the particular devastation reserved for discovering a beloved spot has vanished while you weren't paying attention. You always assume these places will just be there. They aren't obliged to wait for you, of course, but it stings nonetheless.

Medan Pasar remains under renovation, still wrapped in its scaffolding and promises. KL is a city perpetually in the process of becoming something — whether that something is better or simply different remains to be seen. We stopped instead at Makan.BUZZ, which was living up to its name with an energy that bordered on infectious. Full tables, good noise, the clatter and hum of a place that knows it's doing something right.

From there, we cut through Central Market and threaded our way through Chinatown towards Merdeka 118, the tower making its presence felt long before you're anywhere near it. The real destination, though, was the lobby — Azul has his work displayed there, which is no small thing. It's a grand space, all height and light and polished surfaces, and seeing someone you walk with on Sunday mornings represented in a building of that scale gives you a quiet thrill. We admired it properly, because that's what friends do.

The return leg took us to Dayabumi via the MRT, legs pleasantly tired, the morning's mileage sitting well in the bones.

At home, I caught the first episode of Star City over lunch — the new For All Mankind spin-off. Early days, but it has the feel of something that knows where it's going. Enough to warrant a second episode, certainly.

The afternoon turned domestic. A drive out to WMart and Bangsar Village for groceries, which is the kind of errand that passes for leisure when you're in the right mood. There's a meditative quality to choosing ingredients when you already know what you're cooking.

And what I was cooking was wagyu. Sunday steak night remains non-negotiable in this household, and wagyu elevates the ritual to something approaching reverence. Seared simply, rested properly, served without fuss. Some traditions don't need improving, only honouring.

A full day, but the right kind of full. The kind where your feet ache and your kitchen smells wonderful and you've seen a friend's art on the wall of the tallest building in the country.

The City, Twice

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe long weekend announced itself properly — rounds started early and wrapped up by noon, which is exactly the kind of Saturday morning that earns its afternoon. With the rest of the day wide open, I took Anita into the city, starting at Central Market.

There was a bittersweet errand first. Nala, the outlet in Kasturi Walk, is doing a closing down sale. It's always a shame when a place you've browsed happily over the years decides to fold. You don't realise how much a shop has become part of your mental map of a place until someone announces it's leaving. We paid our respects in the way one does — by buying things at a discount and feeling vaguely guilty about it.

Lunch was at Pak Jen, quick and unfussy, the kind of meal that exists to refuel rather than linger. It did its job admirably.

Afterwards, we wandered across to Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad, mostly on a whim, and found ourselves genuinely surprised. The new wing was open — something I hadn't expected — and it's been fitted out with a cluster of restaurants and cafés that give the whole building a completely different energy. Heritage architecture with modern tenants. It works rather well.

We tried Tannin Hill, a tea house that offered a tasting menu. The concept was lovely, the execution generous — perhaps too generous, if we're being honest. By the fourth or fifth steep, we'd crossed the line from pleasantly caffeinated to faintly overwhelmed. There is, it turns out, such a thing as too much tea. A sentence I never expected to write.

We walked it off, exploring the rest of the new spaces, and somewhere during the stroll the idea formed: we'd come back this evening with Irfan. The place deserved a second visit, preferably with a different stomach.

So that's exactly what we did. Dinner at Jibby Chow, because Irfan had his heart set on dim sum, and Jibby Chow delivers on that front without argument. Idlan was too tired to tag along, which is the quiet prerogative of anyone who's had enough socialising for one day. No judgement. Some evenings you simply don't have a second outing in you.

After dinner, we returned to Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad as planned. The building looks different at night — the lighting picks out details you miss in daylight, and the whole precinct takes on a more relaxed, almost European quality. We stopped at Niko Neko for matcha, which I'll describe diplomatically as an acquired taste. Irfan seemed more convinced than I was. I suspect matcha is one of those things you either feel strongly about or simply endure politely while waiting for someone else to finish theirs.

The walk back was the best part, really. The city at night, properly strolled rather than rushed through. KL rewards you when you slow down, and tonight it was in a generous mood.