Sarongs, Soup and a Curly-Haired Labubu

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoI woke with the back I'd earned. The couch had done its worst overnight and presented the bill first thing, which is the way of these things — you don't feel the damage while it's happening, only afterwards, when standing upright becomes a negotiation rather than a reflex.

A shower at the lounge sorted out the worst of it, or at least made me feel considerably more like a person and less like something that had been folded and stored badly. Then ward rounds, which the morning required regardless of what my spine had to say about it.

The good news came reasonably early. Anita was seen by her specialist and sent home — a quick, unremarkable review, which is exactly what you want a review to be. There's a particular relief in a discharge that arrives without qualification or a list of conditions attached. After that I had breakfast with a senior colleague before heading off, and there's something civilising about a proper sit-down breakfast after a night that didn't really involve sleep. Conversation, coffee, and the slow return of a normal rhythm.

Home, then, and straight into a nap that I'd like to describe as optional but wasn't. Brief, deep, and entirely necessary. I emerged from it slightly confused about the time, which is the hallmark of a good one.

Out again for lunch, dictated entirely by the invalid's preferences — vegetable soup, which is the food of someone whose stomach has recently been through something and isn't ready to hear any ambitious suggestions. Sensible, restrained, and exactly right. Recovery has its own menu.

Then, having survived a hospital stay, she decided what the day really needed was a Labubu. Specifically the curly-haired ones, which apparently are their own category and not to be confused with the other sort. I've long since learned that the correct response here is not to ask questions but to drive. A stop at the pharmacy afterwards rounded out the errands, and the day quietly became one of those where nothing on the list was planned twenty-four hours earlier.

The original plan had been rather different. Malaysia Day was meant to involve going out shooting with friends — Projek Keretapi Sarong, which is one of the better traditions we've invented: a trainful of people in sarongs, moving through the city with a kind of good-humoured absurdity that photographs beautifully and needs no explaining to anyone who's seen it. I'd have enjoyed it. Some years you get to be in the middle of the thing; other years the day has other plans for you, and you let it.

So we went home instead. The new season of Reacher had turned up at precisely the right moment — a show that asks nothing of you beyond sitting still, which is all I had to offer — and the evening stayed quiet from there.

Not the Malaysia Day I'd pencilled in. But she's home, the soup was good, the Labubu has curly hair, and I slept in an actual bed. Given how the previous day had gone, I'll take it.

A Night on the Couch

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days arrive quietly and then keep adding to themselves. This was one of those — the sort that starts with one item on the list and ends somewhere entirely different, with you sitting in a room you hadn't planned on being in, wondering where the hours went.

It began, reasonably enough, with the Starex. It's being sold to make room for the new car, which is the unglamorous half of buying something — the part where the old one has to be moved on, priced, described, and eventually handed over to someone else's driveway. There's no great sentiment about it. It's a vehicle. It carried people and shopping and the occasional argument about directions, and now it'll go and do that for somebody else. Still, there's a small pause in it. Cars accumulate a surprising amount of ordinary life without ever asking permission.

That, though, turned out to be the easy business of the day. Anita's stomach trouble, which had been an irritation over the weekend, decided to get properly serious — the sort of worsening that stops being something you manage at home and starts being something you do something about. So: admitted, and put on a drip for fluids, which is one of those interventions that sounds more alarming than it is and works rather better than anything you could have offered her from the kitchen.

By the afternoon she was improving, steadily and visibly, which is the best kind of improvement — no drama, just a gradual return of colour and conversation. Relief arrives quietly in these situations. You don't announce it. You just notice, an hour or two later, that your shoulders have come down from around your ears.

There was a brief escape for dinner at Upstairs Cafe — quick, functional, eaten with one eye on the clock — and then home, not to stay, but to collect clothes. There's something faintly absurd about packing a bag for your own hospital-room sleepover, standing in your own bedroom at an odd hour, deciding how many shirts constitute optimism.

Back to the room, then, for the night. Hospitals have their own peculiar relationship with time — the corridors never fully dark, the sounds never fully quiet, and the furniture designed by someone who clearly believed that visitors don't really sleep, they merely wait horizontally. Luckily, tomorrow's a public holiday, which took the edge off the whole thing considerably. Whatever the night did to me, at least it wasn't going to be followed by a full working day.

I went down early, which felt like a small triumph at the time. Less so this morning, when I woke up with a back that had strong opinions about the couch and wasn't shy about sharing them. Sore in places I hadn't previously thought of as places.

Still — she's better, which is the only line of the day that really matters. Everything else was logistics. The car will sell, the back will recover, and the holiday is here at exactly the right moment, which almost never happens.

The Ainuls Coming for Lunch

It's Malaysia Day, a public holiday. And it was a Friday which meant that there would be a long weekend up ahead. On call the next day though.

Anita getting things preparedThere were mooncakes of courseThey arrived just after noon and we went straight to the mosque before returning for lunch. Itul was already there when Syahril and I returned just in time for food.

And Anita cooked her delicious soto. It was a hit.

The table being setBegedil! Part of the condiments ...There were also some macaroniAnd we were off!We ended up watching a movie after lunch. Syahril and I had always been into military movie since in Med School. So, I bought “13th Hour”, the new Michael Bay movie about the Benghazi invitation.

By the time we were done, it was too late for the pool already and the Ainuls had a dinner plan that night.

Poppy on Syahril's lapOne on the PS4The others on the Wii UPoppy's toolbag!Great day though. Shame that I had to be on call the next day…

Weekend Too Short

The weekend had come to an end and what a relaxing weekend it was. Only 15 minutes to work, cosy little place and near to all the places we loved to go to in town. That was the feeling like everytime we spent time at the apartment.

Idlan was occupied with his artwork. Irfan causing mayhem in his room and beyond. Anita got some me time watching her DVDs and the TV. Even our maid had her own time to herself and was able to nip to church last Sunday.

I even had a chance of trying out the latest instalment of Diablo. Using Irfan's PS3. Wow! It had been a while ......

We were still waiting to finalise the sale of our other house and would be using the money to do some renovation and redecoration on the apartment. So, in the meantime, we just made do with what we had. Even the master bedroom had no bed. Just a bunch of mattresses.