Sea Air and Second Helpings

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoI woke to the sea. Not the sound of it so much as the feel of it, that soft, salted breeze slipping in through the room, carrying the faint suggestion that today might be gentler than yesterday.

It wasn’t, as it turned out. But it started well.

The walk to breakfast along those long, pale corridors is a small pleasure in itself. The E&O does a quiet kind of grandeur: high ceilings, polished floors, ceiling fans turning with the unhurried confidence of something that has done this for a century and sees no reason to rush now.

And the breakfast. I’d half braced myself for disappointment, as one does with things remembered fondly. No need. It was as good as ever. Perhaps better. There is a moment at a proper hotel buffet where restraint simply leaves the building. I let it go without protest.

Then a Grab to Capri, and the working part of the day.

Two talks, back to back, followed by a discussion. The first talk is always the one where you find your feet. The second is where you discover whether you were standing on them correctly. Both went well enough. The discussion afterwards had that lively, slightly unpredictable quality good discussions have, where the room starts thinking out loud and you try to keep up without looking as though you’re trying.

Lunch was substantial. I say this with respect. It was the kind of lunch that assumes you’ll be doing very little for the rest of the afternoon, which, after the breakfast, was entirely fair.

Done by four. A rare and welcome finish.

Back at the hotel, Mak and Anita had reached that state of hunger that admits no discussion. Not peckish. Not interested in lunch. Starving, plainly and urgently. One doesn’t negotiate with that. One books a Grab.

So off to Dulang for an early dinner. Good food, unhurried, the sort of meal where the conversation picks up as the plates empty. It’s a fine thing, an early dinner. You get all the satisfaction of eating and still have the evening left over, like change from a generous note.

Not that the evening was finished with food. Back at the hotel, there were canapé bites waiting. Small, elegant, and frankly unnecessary. We had several.

Then Anita and I went for a stroll into town.

George Town at night has its own quiet charm. Old shophouses lit in warm yellows, five-foot ways half in shadow, the occasional burst of noise from somewhere tucked away. We didn’t walk with a purpose. That was the point. Just the two of us, the warm air, the uneven pavements, a pace set by nobody in particular.

It was a nice walk. Simple as that. Some things don’t need dressing up.

By the time we got back, I was exhausted. Properly, comprehensively done. Two talks, a discussion, too much food, and a city’s worth of pavement will do that.

I don’t remember my head touching the pillow.

The sea, I’m told, carried on regardless.