A Friday and Its Small Acquisitions

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoFriday again, and it arrives now with the quiet familiarity of an old acquaintance — the same face at the same hour, no longer surprising, still welcome. The week has a way of folding itself up by this point, and Friday is where the creases finally settle.

The morning clinic was a long one, but efficient with it, which is the best a long clinic can hope to be. There's a meaningful difference between a morning that drags and a morning that simply contains a great deal — the first wears you down, the second merely fills you up. This was the second sort. Names came and went in good order, the list behaving itself, and by the end I felt productively tired rather than simply depleted.

The afternoon turned to procedures, that more deliberate kind of work where the hands take over and the mind narrows to the task immediately in front of it. There's a particular focus to it that I've come to value — the world shrinks to a small, manageable size, and for an hour or two there is only the next careful thing. Then paperwork, inevitably, which has never once narrowed the world to anything but tedium, and I left late on its account, as one does.

Home, dinner, and then the proper business of a Friday evening: something to watch. We started Star City — the Soviet spin-off of For All Mankind, which Anita and I have followed faithfully for years now. It takes the same alternate history and walks it round to the other side of the Iron Curtain, all cold and watchful and grim in a way the parent show never quite was. Bleak, certainly, but compelling. There's something fitting about ending a long week in the company of people having a considerably harder time of it than you are.

And then the small triumph of the day, which had arrived earlier and waited patiently for attention: the Lofree Flow 2, finally here after its slow passage from China. I'd ordered it some weeks ago and half forgotten it, so it had that pleasing quality of a gift from one's past self. It's a low-profile mechanical thing, all milled aluminium and quiet, satisfying keystrokes, and I'm pleased to report it was better than expected — which, given my expectations, is no small claim. It types beautifully. It looks faintly too good for my desk.

This is, I should confess, the beginning of a plan. I've decided to buy one keyboard a month — a resolution I've dressed up as a measured, disciplined enterprise rather than what it plainly is, which is a hobby acquiring momentum. One a month sounds so reasonable. So sustainable. I'm aware of exactly how these things go, and I'm proceeding anyway, which is rather the point of a hobby.

So the week closes on a good clinic, a grim Soviet drama, and a keyboard I didn't strictly need. A fair haul, all told. The weekend can take it from here.

The Reward for Resting Well

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoBack to work, then — but I returned to it the way you return to anything after a proper rest: a little reluctant, a little restored, and quietly grateful that yesterday happened at all. There's a particular contentment in having spent a day off well. It pays out the next morning like interest.

The first business of the day was, admittedly, conducted at four in the morning. England played Croatia at that ungodly hour, and against my better judgement I was awake for it. They won, which made the lost sleep feel like a sound investment rather than a foolish one — though I'll confess the line between the two is dangerously thin at that time of night. By the second half I was less a supporter than a man simply too far in to turn back. It paid off. It doesn't always.

The ward round came and went with the usual rhythm, and then it was off to Sentul for teaching — that part of the work I genuinely look forward to, the chance to hand something on, to watch a concept land behind someone else's eyes. There's a quiet pleasure in it that the rest of the day rarely matches. You spend so much of your time solving problems that the act of simply explaining one feels almost restful by comparison.

Back to Subang for lunch, and then another meeting with the pharma people — the kind of appointment that arranges itself into your afternoon whether you've made room for it or not. These meetings have their own choreography by now, familiar enough that I could probably conduct one in my sleep, which after the four a.m. start was nearly a literal possibility.

But the day, kindly, was a short one. Done early, home by half five — an hour so civilised I scarcely knew what to do with it. There's something faintly disorienting about arriving home while the light is still generous, the evening still ahead of you and entirely unspent. We had an early dinner, the unhurried sort, and the whole thing felt like a small act of rebellion against the usual order of things.

Anita, meanwhile, had spent her day at the KL International Motor Show with Razak, returning full of it. The new Prelude had caught her eye — Honda's old coupe, back after the better part of two decades away, reborn as something sleeker and quieter and electrified. I find there's a particular pleasure in watching a name you'd half forgotten reappear, dusted off and reimagined for a different age. She described it with the enthusiasm of someone who has decided, without quite saying so, that she'd rather like to sit in one.

So the week resumed without protest. A short day, an early dinner, a head still half-full of football and lecture notes and Anita's revived motoring ambitions. Not every working day needs to be a long campaign. Some, mercifully, just let you home in time to enjoy the evening — and you take those gladly, without asking why.

Awal Muharram - The Midweek Lull

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA break in the middle of the week, which is the rarest and most civilised of luxuries. The trouble was the rain — a soft, insistent morning downpour of exactly the kind that turns the bed into an argument you're destined to lose. There is no more persuasive case for staying put than the sound of rain on glass before you've quite woken up. I lost the argument briefly, then got up anyway, as one does.

The ward round went ahead as usual, rain or no rain. The work doesn't observe public holidays of the heart, and the round has its own rhythm regardless of how reluctant its participants might feel. By the time it was done, the day had decided to behave, and I went to meet the afternoon properly.

Lunch was at TRX — Amazonas, which delivers every time and did so again. There's a confidence to a place that simply knows what it is and does it well, no fuss, no reinvention. You sit down, you eat properly, you leave content. After a damp start, it was exactly the right kind of indulgence.

Anita went off to inspect the new Mercedes F1 outfit, which tells you everything about where her attentions have wandered lately. She's back into the racing — properly back, the way one returns to an old enthusiasm and wonders why they ever left. I find there's something quite charming about watching someone rediscover a thing they love. The sport itself I can take or leave, but the renewed enthusiasm beside me is its own pleasant company.

Then, the film. Disclosure Day — Spielberg's return to the skies, the great man back among the lights and the wonder some fifty years on. I wanted to love it. I'd built a small cathedral of expectation around it. And it was, in the end, fine. Not the best of his work, not by a distance. There were moments where the old magic flickered, and rather more moments where it didn't. A perfectly decent way to spend a couple of hours, which from Spielberg feels faintly like an underachievement. You don't go to him for perfectly decent. Still — even his middling efforts have a craft to them that most directors would gladly claim as a peak.

The day closed with a haircut at Lucky Garden, that small reliable ritual that makes you feel marginally more put together than you did an hour earlier. There's a quiet satisfaction in it — the same chair, the same business, the brief sense of having tidied a loose end of yourself.

And now the evening winds down towards an absurd appointment: England playing at four in the morning. I'd like to say I'll have the discipline to sleep through it and catch the result over breakfast like a sensible adult. I'd like to say that. We'll see which version of me wins the argument when the alarm comes round — though I suspect, as with the rain this morning, I already know how it ends.

The Distinctly Average and the Genuinely Unexpected

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe clinic ran smoothly this morning, which is the sort of thing I've learned not to comment on aloud lest it overhear me and take offence. Names arrived, were seen, moved on. The rhythm held. There's a quiet pleasure in a morning that simply does what it's meant to, asking nothing more dramatic of you than steady attention.

The paperwork was less obliging. A whole sheaf of deferment letters for the insurers today, the prohibitive sort — the cases where the answer is no, dressed up in the cautious, careful language these things require. There's an odd weight to writing them, even when they're entirely correct. You spend the morning being a sound clinician and the afternoon being a faintly apologetic one.

Idlan came in the afternoon for a dental appointment, which gave the day a pleasant domestic seam running through it. There's something steadying about your own child turning up in the middle of a working day — a small reminder that the rest of life carries on outside the building, sons and teeth and all.

And then, on the way home, the day produced its one genuine surprise. We bumped into the President of Timor-Leste — José Ramos-Horta, Nobel laureate, the actual man — who had come to visit the son of one of his staff, a patient in our ICU. It caused a certain amount of excitement, as these things tend to. You go about your week assuming it will hold no heads of state, and then it quietly does. He was gracious, the moment was brief, and we carried on home slightly more interesting people than we'd been that morning.

Dinner was at a new place, Dapor Mekda, where I had the nasi kerabu. I want to be fair about this, so I'll be precise: it was distinctly average. Not bad. Not memorable. The kind of meal that politely declines to make an impression in either direction and leaves you respecting its restraint. A nasi kerabu should be a small riot of blue rice and herbs and crisp things, and this one had clearly read the brief and decided to phone it in. Still — a new joint tried, a verdict reached. Not every outing needs to be a triumph. Some are simply research.

The evening settled into quiet, helped along by the knowledge that tomorrow is a holiday for Maal Hijrah. There's a particular ease to the night before a day off, when the usual low hum of preparation goes silent and you're permitted to simply stop. No alarm to set with any urgency, no schedule lying in wait.

So the year turns over, in its quieter way. A new year on a calendar that keeps its own gentle time, marked not with fireworks but with rest and reflection — which seems, on balance, the more sensible arrangement. Selamat Maal Hijrah. A good night to be still, to let the day's small collisions of the average and the unexpected settle, and to wish the new year well.

A Kind Sort of Monday

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe week began the way Mondays rarely have the decency to: gently. A clean, unbothered sort of sunshine over the city, the kind that makes even the car parks look briefly forgivable. And then, against all reasonable expectation, the traffic behaved. Lanes moved. People indicated. I arrived with time to spare and a faint suspicion that I'd misjudged the day entirely.

That suspicion lasted roughly as long as it took to begin the rounds. Things found their momentum immediately — no slow warming up, no easing in. The morning simply started at full volume and assumed I'd keep pace, which I did, because the alternative was to be left behind by my own schedule. There's a particular satisfaction in a morning that asks a lot of you and gets it, even if it leaves you slightly winded by the back half.

By the time the afternoon arrived, I'd earned a pause, and I took it in the lounge with the football on. The World Cup is upon us again — bigger this year, sprawling across three countries and rather more teams than strictly seems necessary — and I'd missed enough of the weekend to feel out of step. So I sat and caught up, half watching, half simply enjoying the unhurried company of a game that asks nothing of you but your attention. There's something restful about a tournament happening in another hemisphere entirely. The drama unfolds politely in the background, on its own time, indifferent to whether you're keeping up.

I wasn't allowed to grow too comfortable. The afternoon clinic was waiting, and it turned out to be a long one — the sort that begins reasonably and then quietly expands, each name on the list bringing a little more than its single line suggested. These are not difficult afternoons, exactly. They're just full. You give what each moment needs and look up some time later to find the light has changed and the day has moved on without telling you.

The rounds afterwards ran late, as they tend to when the clinic overruns its welcome. By the time I finished, the gentle morning felt like something that had happened to a different person. The kind weather, the obliging traffic — all distant, faintly improbable. The day had taken back its dues with interest.

Dinner was waiting at home when I got there, which is its own quiet kindness, the sort that doesn't announce itself but matters enormously. To arrive somewhere and find that the next thing is already taken care of, that someone has thought ahead on your behalf — there's no improving on it after a long stretch.

And so the new week is properly launched. It began kindly and ended tired, which is a fair enough trade and probably the natural shape of these things. What I need now is straightforward and unglamorous: rest. The football will keep. Tomorrow will arrive regardless. For tonight, that's quite enough to be getting on with.