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.