A Day Measured in Fares
Thursday, June 25, 2026 at 11:02PM 
Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days announce their length early, and this was one of them. It began, as the busier ones tend to, with rounds — the steady morning ritual of working through the ward, that unhurried procession of names and notes that grounds a day before it has a chance to run away. I moved through it knowing the rest of the morning had other places to be.
From there the city took over. A Grab across town to Hospital Ampang, that particular Klang Valley experience of watching your estimated arrival time negotiate quietly with the traffic and losing. The occasion was the launch of the new CPG — one of those events that exists somewhere between ceremony and admin, equal parts polite applause and genuine usefulness. There's a satisfaction in seeing one of these things finally put down on paper and sent out into the world; a great deal of patient work goes into a document most people will only ever skim.
Lunch followed, and then I dropped by Jerome's office — the kind of unscheduled detour that turns a working day into something more companionable. A conversation here, a familiar face there, the small social mortar that holds the professional bricks together.
And then the long crawl back to SJMC, which is where the day presented its bill in the most literal sense. Sixty ringgit. I sat in the back doing the arithmetic of distance against fare and arrived only at a quiet resignation. Surge pricing has a way of finding you precisely when the city is at its most congested and you are at your least patient. I paid it, of course. One always does. But I noted it, the way you note a small injustice you've no intention of contesting.
Home, mercifully, came early — early enough for a proper sit-down dinner rather than the rushed, standing-over-the-counter affair that long days usually produce. There is a particular pleasure in an early dinner after a day spent ricocheting across the city: the food unhurried, the chair welcome, the sense of the day finally consenting to slow down.
The evening, though, still had one thing left to offer. I settled in to listen to a talk by Elias Jabbour, over from MD Anderson, with Jerome in the chair — the same Jerome whose office I'd lingered in hours earlier, now presiding from a stage. Jabbour is the sort of speaker who makes a complicated thing sound almost conversational, and there's a quiet luxury in being able to take it in from the comfort of home rather than a conference hall's unforgiving chairs. I listened with the contented attention of a man who has done his travelling for the day and intends to do no more of it.
A long day, then, and a crisscrossed one — measured out in fares and finished, fittingly, with someone else doing the talking. I was happy enough to sit and absorb, the city's traffic safely on the other side of the window.
Lunch at Al Halabi
It was not often that a restaurant which looked good on the outside, served good food. At least not often here in Kuala Lumpur. So, Anita and I decided to be a bit more adventurous this Sunday lunchtime and for some reason, I fancied some Arab food. I passed by this particular restaurant on a newly opened section of Pavilion recently but it was too late for lunch then.
So, I decided to give this one a go. It was called Al Halabi, located on the seventh floor, through the escalator near Times Bookstore. It was part of a new section called Dining Loft.
It was spacious with a separate seating area in filled with natural light right at the back. A lot of shisha smoker back there, so we decided to take one of the seats in the main area. Very nice setting, true to Middle Eastern theme, with some of the waiters who were actually Arabic.
The cooks were definitely from the Middle East and they have a butcher there preparing fresh meat and ingredients, plus a baker who actually baked the puffs and bread traditionally. The grilling was also done in-house as well and the produce were displayed by the main counter as if you were sitting in a market. It was reminiscent of Marche.
What did we order? I started with some hummus with sliced grilled meat, and for the mains I had grilled pomfret while Anita had chicken tikka. We had some rice with them and I had some Arabic mint tea in the end.
I was impressed. I could feel the succulent fish melting in my mouth and the dips were amazing. Even the mint sauce tasted authentic - and made from real mint - while the rice was a joy. The mint in the tea was a touch to light to be honest and it finished up tasting rather bitter.
We gave up on desserts since we were just too full.
The seats were very comfortable as we were on a sofa, and I now understood why the patron seemed to sit down there for hours! We ended up sitting there for nearly a couple of hours, nibbling away at our food, before finally leaving the place. The staff were OK, although the Arabs struggled somewhat with their English. The other staffs who spoke English were Filipino or Bangladeshi. How I wished that the locals would work there, as I could see that most of the patron were locals.
Highly recommended although I hope that they could maintain their standard in the future. The place was still rather new when we visited.