Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSaturday, and in theory a free weekend. I say “in theory” because the theory didn’t survive contact with the morning. Colleagues are away, someone has to hold the fort, and this weekend the fort-holder was me. A free weekend with obligations is a bit like a decaf espresso: it looks the part, but you can tell something’s been taken out.
Morning rounds came first, and ran longer than planned. They always do on a Saturday. There’s an unwritten rule that weekend work expands to fill whatever time you’d hoped to save, partly because there are fewer hands and partly because the quiet makes everything feel slower. You walk the corridors with that particular weekend hush around you, and somehow an hour becomes two without anyone being consulted.
Still, there’s a certain virtue to covering. It’s a favour that gets returned eventually, the professional equivalent of lending someone your umbrella. I just wish the umbrella weren’t so often in use.
Once I was finally released, I made a quick stop at Bangsar Village. Quick being the operative word, and for once I stuck to it. Bangsar Village has the slightly polished calm of a place that knows exactly who it’s for, and on a Saturday afternoon that’s a lot of people who look as though they’ve just come from brunch and are considering a second one. I admire their commitment.
Then on to The Gardens for an early dinner. An early dinner is one of the great underrated pleasures of adulthood. You beat the rush, you get a decent table, and you’re home before the evening has a chance to turn ambitious. People mock the early diner, but the early diner is rarely seen queuing.
The weekend crowd was out in force, of course. Mid Valley on a Saturday is less a shopping centre than a migration. Families moving in formation, couples drifting in and out of shops with no apparent purpose, teenagers travelling in clusters like weather systems. I find it oddly reassuring. Whatever else is going on in the world, people still turn up on a Saturday to walk slowly past things they don’t need. There’s something stubbornly human about that.
I didn’t join the stampede. I took things easy, ate without rushing, and let the noise wash past. That was the whole plan for the evening, and it’s the best plan I’ve had all week. Not every evening needs a purpose. Some just need to be got through gently.
There’s a contradiction in all this I’m happy to sit with. Part of me resents a weekend chipped away by work. Another part quite likes being the person people can rely on when they’re away. I suspect most of us carry both, and pick whichever one suits our mood that day.
Tonight I’ve picked contentment. It’s easier to digest after a good dinner.
Tomorrow is Sunday. Technically free. We’ll see.