From the Chair

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAn early start, the sort that requires you to be decisive with yourself before you've had any real evidence that the day is worth attending. A quick round to get through first, and then straight on to the Hilton at Sentral, arriving in that slightly breathless state where you've already done half a day's work and everyone else is still queuing for coffee.

I was chairing the session before lunch. Chairing is a peculiar job. You're the least interesting person in the room by design, and your entire purpose is to make sure the interesting people run to time and don't talk over one another. Done well, nobody notices you at all. I've come to quite enjoy it — there's a craftsmanship in keeping a session moving without ever appearing to push.

And the speakers were superb. Colleagues over from Germany, France and Italy, all of them presenting work at a level that genuinely makes you sit up. World-class, and I don't reach for that phrase often — it gets thrown at anything that's merely competent. This wasn't that. It was the real article, delivered with the particular confidence of people who have lived inside a problem long enough to explain it simply.

There's also the pleasure of watching three European speakers approach the same material in unmistakably different registers. Precision, elegance, and enthusiasm respectively, and I'll leave it to the reader to assign the nationalities. Between sessions I caught up with old acquaintances — the ones you see twice a year in hotel foyers and never anywhere else, and yet somehow pick up mid-sentence from wherever you left off. These conference friendships are odd, shallow in frequency and surprisingly deep in substance.

Lunch was excellent, which matters more than organisers sometimes appreciate. A good lunch buys you a room full of people who are still awake at two o'clock. And the afternoon sessions carried on properly, which suggests somebody understood this.

By the end of it, though, I was thoroughly spent. There's a specific flavour of tiredness that comes from a full day of concentrated listening — not physical, exactly, just a sense that the part of you that processes things has quietly clocked off without telling anyone. I still had bits to finish, and I couldn't face them at any reasonable hour. They got done late, badly, and mostly by force of habit.

So I'm heading into the new week with a small deficit, and no great illusions about it. A weekend spent talking, however good the talking, is not a weekend spent resting. The mind is full and the tank isn't.

Still — better this than the alternative. A day among people doing excellent work leaves you slightly restored even as it exhausts you. You come away with things to think about, which is a decent trade for an early start and a late finish.

Rest first, though. Everything else can queue behind that.

Good Weather, Wasted On Nobody

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoRare thing, a properly good day outside — the sort with actual blue in the sky rather than the usual negotiated truce with the clouds — and naturally the day's plans involved being indoors for most of it. There's a particular comedy to that, spending a fine afternoon under fluorescent lighting while the weather does its best work entirely unwitnessed. Still, it wasn't wasted exactly, just redirected.

The morning opened with rounds and, threaded through them, an update on a lymphoma case worth the extra attention it got — the kind of detail that's easy to file away as routine until you remember it's precisely the sort of thing that shouldn't be treated routinely. Worth the pause, in other words, even on a day with other places to be.

Those other places turned out to be KL Hilton, which hosted lunch and dinner both, and did rather well by both — good enough that "the food was good" undersells it slightly, though it's the kind of understatement a day like this earns. The event itself ran the full stretch between those two meals, and earned its keep too: a proper spread of regional speakers, one dialling in from Saudi with the sort of composure that makes video calls across time zones look easier than they are. Sat with Jerome for most of it, which always makes the long stretches more bearable — company has a way of shortening even a full-day programme.

By the time dinner wrapped things up, the day had already delivered more than its share, so there wasn't much guilt in switching gears entirely for the evening — off to watch Manchester United open their season against Hull, optimism intact, the way it always is before kickoff, however unreliable that optimism has proven in seasons past.

It did not go well. Two-nil, and not the sort of two-nil that leaves room for creative interpretation — just a straightforward beating on opening day, the kind that sets an unwelcome tone before the season's even found its feet. Disappointing barely covers it, though there's a certain grim tradition to United fans starting the year disappointed; at least the ritual's consistent, even when the football isn't.

So: a day that gave generously in the morning and afternoon, and took a fair bit back by evening. Good conversation, good food, a talk worth attending — and then ninety minutes that undid a fair chunk of the goodwill. Balance, of a sort. Just not the kind you'd choose.

Evening Talk

After a long day at the office - with morning and afternoon clinics - I spent the evening listening to a talk in town. I listened to the speaker before and I knew the talk was going to be good.

And he delivered.

A great talk and a great company at dinner later. Shame that the turnout wasn't as good as planned.

Late Nights

It had been a busy couple of days and last night, I only got back home around 10 pm. It was nice to meet up with colleagues after a while, catching up on the gossips and all. As for today, few complications in the ward needing sorting out.

Last night, I was at a meeting discussing the upcoming society meeting in Penang late April. This was followed by a lecture given by a Professor from Athens, giving up updates on latest treatment for myeloma. Something I heard when I was in Atlanta in December, but the opportunity to ask question was priceless.

Then came dinner. And this was when the gossips came in. A few memorable stories I must say ......

A Talk with a Difference

I was invited to attend a lecture last Friday evening. it was organised by one of the Pharmaceutical company and it was a talk with a difference. The speaker was from France. And he was speaking from France. It was the first time which I attended a talk via Skype and it worked a treat. Not only that money was saved from having to fly the speaker over, it would also save everybody time.

The talk was held at KL Hilton and luckily, the hotel broadband system worked well. There were no delay, despite the audio and video of the speaker was transmitted in real time. Even more impressive, the slides were also controlled by the speaker, and it was also down the pipeline from there.

At the end, we also had the chance to ask him question, although due to a lack of a webcam - the organiser should have really used a Mac, the speaker was not able to see us. He heard us alright however.

The evening started with case presentations from three Senior Haematologists. Great cases, although it lacked balance since all three were from the private sector. In terms of geography, it was spot on however. The speakers were from Penang, Kuching and Kuala Lumpur. The French speaker were not hooked up to listen to those presentations however, as it would have interesting to hear his take on things.

So, who finished the snack?The talk came with a dinner. It was a Western affair. A three course meal, served on the table. As I arrived late, I was not able to enjoy much of the food. The talks got my attention however, and by the time I reached home, I was starving.

Kudos to the organiser for coming up with such arrangement. Personally, this was more economical in terms of time and money. Maybe they should try "Go To Meeting" next time around.