North by Northwest, in the Wet

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe morning’s work went quickly. Suspiciously so. By noon I was heading home, which felt faintly illicit, like leaving a party before the speeches.

Home, but not to rest. There was paperwork, the kind that multiplies when unattended, and slides for tomorrow’s talk to look over one more time. I went through them twice. Changed a word. Changed it back. Preparation, at a certain point, becomes a nervous habit wearing a sensible jacket.

Then the waiting. Idlan had his online class, and the departure was scheduled around it, as departures with children generally are. You don’t leave when you’re ready. You leave when everyone is ready, which is a different hour altogether.

And then we were off.

It rained. Naturally. The sky seemed to have saved it all for the moment we set out.

Getting out of KL was the usual negotiation. Heavy traffic, slow lanes, brake lights stretching ahead like a string of red beads that someone kept tugging. Rain doesn’t just slow the roads here. It seems to make everyone reconsider their choices at every junction.

Eventually the city loosened its grip.

Simpang Pulai for a charge. There’s a particular kind of stop that only EV drivers know: the deliberate pause, the plug, the small ritual of watching numbers climb in a car park with rain drumming on the roof. Not quite a rest. Not quite travel. A sort of in-between, with snacks.

Back on the road, it kept raining. All the way. Through the hills, past Ipoh’s dim silhouette, down the long stretches where the highway lights blur into soft streaks on wet glass. The wipers kept their steady, slightly weary rhythm. Conversation came and went. Mostly went.

But the traffic, at least, had relented. Smooth after that. Hours that pass without incident have their own quiet satisfaction. You don’t remember them, which is rather the point.

One more toilet break before the second Penang bridge. It seemed prudent. Nobody wants to discover a pressing need halfway across twenty-odd kilometres of water at night.

Then the bridge itself. Long, dark, lit in a thin line, the sea invisible on either side. There’s something about crossing water at night that feels like a proper arrival, even before you’ve arrived. The island announces itself slowly. Lights first. Then shapes.

We reached the E&O just before midnight.

The old building was calm at that hour, its corridors hushed, the kind of grandeur that doesn’t need an audience. We were too tired to admire it properly. A quick check-in. Bags in. Shoes off. The heavy, grateful silence of a room after a long drive.

Settled in quickly. No ceremony, no unpacking worth mentioning.

Tomorrow there’s a talk to give, and a weekend to begin.

Tonight, though, the island can wait.

The rain has finally stopped.