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.