A Birthday, Borrowed for the Day

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday started the way most of them do — with rounds, the ward apparently having never heard of weekends off, and a public holiday hasn't yet been invented that changes its mind. Brisk enough, though, and out of the way early, which left the rest of the morning free for something rather nicer: it was Mak's birthday, and the day belonged to her from that point on.

Drove out to Bukit Antarabangsa to collect her, the sort of drive that's become familiar enough to do half on autopilot, and from there straight to Rebung for lunch. Packed, predictably — it always is, birthday or not — but the food did what Rebung's food generally does, which is make the wait feel like a formality rather than a complaint. Some restaurants earn their crowds honestly, and this is one of them.

After lunch, a couple of quick stops — BSC first, then Taman Melawati, neither of them requiring much explanation beyond the ordinary business of a birthday outing, a bit of browsing, nothing that needed to be anywhere in particular. The kind of errands that exist mainly to stretch a nice afternoon a little further before it has to end.

Dropped Mak home after that — she had her own plans for the evening, which is exactly as it should be on a birthday, the day not needing to be handed back in full to anyone. From there, on to TWG for tea, Rwanda Express specifically, which felt like a suitably unhurried way to close out the outing. There's something properly civilised about ending a birthday lunch with a pot of tea rather than rushing straight into whatever's next — a bit of a pause built in on purpose.

Home after that, and the evening turned practical rather quickly. Some reading to get through ahead of the BLS course first thing tomorrow, the sort of task that's easy to put off right up until it can't be put off any longer. Did it anyway, without too much resistance, on the grounds that Monday-morning-you rarely thanks Sunday-evening-you for the delay.

The weekend, such as it was, settled itself in from there — nothing left on the list, nothing hanging over into the week uninvited. And somewhere in among it all, the now-familiar routine of checking in on Irfan, a message or two across the time difference, enough to know all's well on that end. It's becoming its own small ritual, that check-in, the sort that'll probably ease off eventually but hasn't yet, and there's no particular hurry for it to.

So: a birthday properly marked, good food fought for and won, tea to close things out, and a bit of homework squeezed in before the week reasserts itself tomorrow. Not a bad way to send a Sunday off.