Homeward, With a Detour Through Traffic

Four nights away has a way of making a house feel almost unfamiliar by the time you're heading back to it — not unwelcoming, just slightly held at arm's length, the way a book feels when you've put it down mid-chapter for too long. But before any of that, there was breakfast to be had, and Pondok Santapan was the right place to have it. Good food, fair price, the sort of quiet quality that KL, for all its polish, doesn't quite manage to replicate. Worth the detour on principle alone.

Packing followed, mercifully brisk this time, and JB was behind us in good time — the road ahead the only real unknown left in the day. It didn't stay unknown for long. Rain set in early and stayed committed to the bit all the way through to Tangkak, heavy enough that conversation quietened and the wipers took over as the main soundtrack of the drive.

Lunch at Ayer Keroh R&R offered a decent pause, the kind of stop that exists purely to reset the body before asking it to sit still for another few hours. Then back on the road, patience tested properly this time — Seremban delivered its now customary jam, the sort that turns a fifteen-minute stretch into something closer to a small ordeal. Nobody was surprised. Everybody was tired of it regardless.

KL arrived a little after four, and with it, the particular relief of familiar roads and a driveway that doesn't require a key card. Four nights is enough to miss home without quite forgetting how to appreciate it — the small comfort of your own pillow, doors that open the way you expect them to, silence that isn't shaped by an air conditioning unit.

Amid all that, a bit of proper news filtered through — Sepang, after nine years out of the picture, is set to host this year's Bahrain Grand Prix, brought over after circumstances made racing in Bahrain itself impossible. Formula 1 back on home soil, even under someone else's name on the calendar, felt like a genuinely good thing to land on after a long week — the sort of headline that makes the drive back feel a little less like an ending and more like something to look forward to.

It has, by any honest measure, been a tiring week — conferences, talks, long drives, longer traffic, and not nearly enough uninterrupted sleep. But there's a particular satisfaction in a week like this closing properly: bags unpacked, home reclaimed, and something genuinely exciting waiting on the calendar for later in the year. Tired, yes. But the good kind — the kind that comes from a week well spent rather than merely survived.