Freedom, Briefly Scheduled

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe colleague is back. Tanned, rested, and suspiciously cheerful, the way people always are on their first day after a holiday, before the inbox has had a chance to get its hands on them.

I handed back the borrowed chair. It felt like returning a library book I’d only just started enjoying.

More time for myself, then. That was the theory.

In practice, the day had other plans, and they were written in pen.

The morning’s work wrapped up early, which I chose to interpret as a good omen rather than a trap. Then straight to physio. There’s something quietly humbling about physiotherapy. You arrive believing you’re a reasonably functional adult, and leave having been gently informed that a muscle you’d never heard of has been sulking for weeks. They’re always kind about it. That somehow makes it worse.

From there, no detours. Straight to the PJ Hilton for a dinner talk.

The talk was good. Genuinely good. The sort where you find yourself nodding without deciding to, and scribbling a note you’ll actually read later. Ideas, well put. Questions that went somewhere. An hour that justified the drive.

The dinner was not.

I won’t dwell on it. Let’s just say the food had clearly been introduced to flavour at some point, but the relationship hadn’t lasted. Hotel banquet cooking occupies its own peculiar category. Everything is the right temperature for about four seconds. Everything looks as though it means well.

Still, you don’t go to a dinner talk for the dinner. That’s what I told myself, somewhere around the second disappointing forkful.

Afterwards, the evening’s last errand: charging the car at a TNB station.

A few weeks into driving an EV and I’m still learning its etiquette. Planning becomes a small, constant hum in the background. Not anxiety, exactly. More like a polite awareness. With a long drive coming, a full battery stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the whole plan.

So there I sat, in a car park at night, watching a percentage climb with the attention normally reserved for football scores. A curious modern ritual. Plugged in, waiting, the city carrying on around me. Oddly peaceful, really. A forced pause at the end of a day that hadn’t offered many.

Because tomorrow is Penang.

The weekend away, after work. Straight from one thing to the long road north, which is either admirably efficient or mildly foolish, depending on how the traffic behaves out of the Klang Valley on a Friday evening. I suspect I already know the answer. I’ve decided not to think about it.

There’s an odd lightness in having somewhere to go. Even with the drive, even with the work beforehand. The weekend has a shape now. A destination. Food that will, with any luck, make up for tonight.

Penang owes me a decent meal.

I intend to collect.

Touch-Ups and Tidying

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe car went off this morning for touch-ups. It’s barely a fortnight old, and already it needs a little attention, which I’ve decided not to read too much into. New things often arrive almost perfect. It’s the almost that keeps the service centres in business.

I’ll admit I was more attached to the idea of handing it over than I expected to be. It’s only a car. It has no feelings about being away from home, and it certainly isn’t missing me. Still, the driveway looked a touch underdressed without it, like a mantelpiece with one photo frame removed. I told myself this was perfectly normal. I’m not entirely convinced.

Work, by contrast, was slow. Not empty, just unhurried, the kind of day that moves at the pace of a long lunch without actually offering one. After the rush of earlier in the week, I wasn’t going to complain. There’s a school of thought that says a slow day is a wasted day. I’ve never belonged to it. Slow days are where the backlog quietly gets nibbled at, and where you remember that not every hour needs to prove something.

I was home early, which felt faintly illicit. Shortly after, it rained. Not a polite drizzle, but the proper Klang Valley downpour that arrives without warning and leaves without apology. I can’t pretend I minded. There’s a particular smugness in watching heavy rain from indoors when you’ve only just made it in. It’s one of life’s smaller victories, but I collect those.

The truth is I needed the rest. The holiday had been lovely, and the first days back had been full, and somewhere between the two I’d run a little low without quite noticing. The body has a way of sending the bill late. I took the hint, sat down, and let the sound of the rain do most of the work.

Then, inevitably, the evening turned to paperwork. I had planned to rest properly, and I did, for a respectable amount of time, but there’s a pile that has been looking at me reproachfully for a week. Paperwork is the one task that grows in proportion to how firmly you ignore it. I gave in.

I won’t pretend it was enjoyable. It wasn’t. But there’s a certain dull satisfaction in clearing forms and filing things into their rightful places while the rain carries on outside. It’s the administrative equivalent of tidying a drawer. Nobody else will ever notice, and that is precisely why it feels so good to have done it.

By the end of the evening, the stack was noticeably smaller, the rain had eased, and I’d reached that pleasant state of mild tiredness that comes from doing something useful but unremarkable.

The car should be back soon, touched up and presumably looking pleased with itself. Until then, it’s a quieter household, a lighter to-do list, and a day that asked very little and got, I think, a fair return.

Re-entry, With Minor Turbulence

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThere is no gentle way back from a holiday. You can try to wake up early, eat a sensible breakfast and pretend that yesterday’s mee rebus never happened, but the body knows. It spent three days being told nothing mattered very much, and now it’s being asked to believe otherwise.

The morning made no allowances for any of that. It was busy in the scattered, slightly ungrateful way that first days back tend to be. Nothing was difficult on its own, but everything wanted attention at once, like a queue of people who have each been told they’re next. I spent the first couple of hours chasing loose ends I’d quite forgotten I’d left loose, which is the real cost of going away. The holiday is free. The catching up is not.

I’ll admit to a brief, uncharitable moment around mid-morning when I wondered whether the break had been worth it. That’s the post-holiday trap: you blame the rest for the rush that follows, rather than the rush that was always going to be there. I talked myself out of it, mostly.

And then, as it usually does if you leave it alone long enough, the day began to sort itself out. Things found their places. The noise settled into something closer to a rhythm, and I remembered, somewhat to my surprise, that I quite like the work when it isn’t shouting at me.

The rest of the day was fully booked, start to finish, with no gaps worth the name. I find I don’t mind a full day nearly as much as a fragmented one. A packed schedule at least has the decency to be honest about itself. You know where you stand, which is generally on your feet, and there’s a kind of clarity in not having time to wonder what to do next.

Lunch was the sort eaten with one eye on the clock. I won’t describe it, partly out of discretion and partly because there’s nothing to describe. After the weekend’s standard, it would only embarrass everyone involved.

I was back home a little after six. Not late, exactly, but late enough for the light to have given up on the day before I had. There’s a particular feeling to walking through the door after the first day back: not exhaustion, more a pleasant flatness, like a balloon that has decided against floating anywhere in particular.

The evening asked nothing of me, and I gave it exactly that. No plans, no errands, no admirable use of free time. Just sitting, a bit of quiet, and the satisfaction of having got the hardest day of the week out of the way on its first attempt.

There is something to be said for a day that starts badly and ends well. It makes a better story than one that is merely fine throughout. Tomorrow, presumably, will be a normal day. I find I’m rather looking forward to normal.