An Early Start, A Long Loop

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe alarm went early, before the sun had properly committed to the day, on the sensible assumption that a day this loaded needed every spare minute it could get. Physio booked for the afternoon meant the whole thing had a shape to it already — decided in advance, which is either restful or slightly ominous, depending on your outlook.

Grab was the order of the day, given the physio appointment sitting at the far end of it — no sense wrestling with parking twice over when someone else could do the wrestling instead. The morning rounds went smoothly enough to almost feel suspicious, everything ticking along without the usual small snags, which is the sort of thing you learn not to comment on too loudly in case it hears you.

Then came the virtual interview on CML — chronic myeloid leukaemia, for anyone not fluent in the acronym — which had been sitting somewhere at the back of the week with a faint hum of nerves attached. As these things so often go, the anticipation had done rather more work than the actual event required. It went better than expected, questions landing in places already comfortably familiar, the whole thing wrapping up with that particular lightness that comes from a worry proving to have been mostly imaginary.

Barely time to enjoy that before lunch, this one in honour of Prof Chan Lee Lee's retirement — a proper send-off in miniature, the kind of gathering where the conversation keeps circling back to "can you believe it's been this long," said with the specific fondness reserved for someone who's earned the right to finally stop. Quick as these things go, but warm, the sort of lunch that leaves you glad to have been in the room for it.

No pause after that, straight into a workshop on chemo prescribing, the new online module debuting with all the slightly clunky enthusiasm new systems tend to bring — a few dropped connections, a screen that froze at an inconvenient moment, the general teething of anything digital meeting real use for the first time. Got through it, though, filed away for next time.

Then Grab again, out to Kota Damansara for physio, the city sliding past the window in that unbothered way it does when you're a passenger rather than driving. By the time the session finished, tired had properly set in — the specific, bone-deep sort that a day this stacked leaves behind, no single part of it dramatic, just the accumulated weight of a great many things happening one after another without much gap.

Straight home after that, no detours, the evening arriving with the simple relief of having nowhere left to be. Dinner, then Anita needed to nip out to Mid Valley for something — one of those small errands that seems to arrive precisely when you've mentally clocked off. Went along anyway, more for the company than the errand, the day finally winding down somewhere between the car park and the walk back to it.

The Body Sends a Memo

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA sunny start to the day, and the morning round went smoothly — patients sorted out in good time, the list closing neatly rather than fraying at the edges. There's a quiet satisfaction in finishing on schedule, in walking away from a morning that asked for nothing more than what you'd planned to give. A weekend round done well leaves the rest of the day feeling earned.

Which was just as well, because the rest of the day was largely given over to repairs. I drove out to Kota Damansara for physio — the right shoulder has been playing up this past month, and it has now reached the stage where ignoring it is no longer a credible strategy. It was sore enough to warrant acupuncture, that curious business of being made to feel better by means of small needles and quiet faith. I won't pretend to understand entirely how it works, only that the shoulder and I have reached an arrangement, and the shoulder, frankly, has the upper hand at present. The body, having served without complaint for a good while, has begun sending the occasional memo. One reads them whether one wants to or not.

After that, a late lunch at Johnny's in Alpha Angle — the sort of unfussy, familiar place that asks nothing of you but your appetite. There's comfort in a meal that requires no decisions, no occasion, just sitting down somewhere you've sat a hundred times before and letting it be exactly what it always is.

And perhaps it was the familiarity of the place, or the slowness of a sore Saturday, but we fell to reminiscing — back to the Gombak years, when we lived out that way and the boys were still small. Funny how those days arrive unbidden, summoned by nothing in particular. They were not, at the time, days we thought we'd one day miss. They were just the days we were in — busy, ordinary, faintly exhausting in the way that small children make everything. And now they have that warm, burnished quality that ordinary things acquire only once they're safely behind you. We didn't dwell on it. You don't need to. A few minutes of "do you remember" is enough to acknowledge the thing and move on, which is probably the healthiest way to handle the past.

A quick stop at the pasar malam in Melawati on the way back — that reliable parade of light and smoke and noise, the smell of grilled things hanging in the evening air. I didn't buy much. Sometimes the walking-through is the point, more than the buying.

Then home, and an early night, the shoulder insisting on it more firmly than I'd have chosen myself. There's no arguing with a sore body once it's made up its mind. It had been a good day, in its quiet, slightly creaky way — a morning done right, an afternoon spent mending, and a brief, unsentimental visit to a version of us from twenty years ago. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday. The shoulder may disagree. It usually does.