Usually, We'd Be in London by Now

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA new week arrived this morning with all the ceremony of a bin lorry — noisy, inevitable, and not especially interested in whether I was ready for it. I wasn't, particularly. Mondays rarely ask permission.

There's a particular flatness that comes at this point in the year, and I know exactly where it comes from. Normally, by now, we'd be in London. Cool air with a bit of an edge to it, the light going amber by late afternoon, that specific pleasure of walking somewhere without a plan and ending up in a bookshop you didn't mean to enter. The body seems to keep its own calendar, quite independent of the one on the wall, and mine has been quietly flicking through pages and looking up expectantly. Nothing doing this year. So the mood sat a bit low, not dramatically, just a background hum, like a fridge you only notice when you're trying to think.

Irfan is still here, at least. Two more weeks before he goes. That's the sort of thing you tell yourself is plenty of time, and it is, right up until it isn't. I've learned not to make too much of the countdown — nobody enjoys being treated as a departure lounge — so I mostly just note it privately and try to make sure the ordinary days between now and then are decent ones. There's something to be said for the last stretch before someone leaves. It's rarely the grand farewell dinner you remember. It's the two of you in the kitchen at an odd hour, agreeing that the kettle is taking its time.

Work was slow today. Not slow in the sense of dragging, but slow in the way a river is slow — moving steadily, going somewhere, unhurried about the whole business. Days like that are underrated. Nothing arrived that needed to be solved in the next five minutes, and so things got done properly rather than merely quickly. I got through what needed getting through. No heroics. No fires. Just a sequence of tasks that agreed to be finished in the order I attempted them, which is more courtesy than one usually gets.

And yet by the end of it I was thoroughly done in. That's the odd arithmetic of a gentle day: you'd think the tiredness would scale with the drama, but it doesn't. Steady effort has its own weight, and it settles on you all at once somewhere around the drive home, when the podcast you've been half-listening to finishes and you realise you couldn't summarise a word of it.

So, an early night. No principled stand on wellness, no elaborate wind-down. Just an honest assessment of my own capacity, which had run out somewhat before the evening had. Bed, at an hour I'd have found faintly embarrassing twenty years ago and now regard as one of life's quieter luxuries.

London will still be there next year. Tonight, a pillow will do.

The Art of Winding Down

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoTuesday had a specific energy to it — the quiet industriousness of someone tidying the house before going on holiday. Not frantic, just purposeful. Everything today carried the faint undertone of get this done properly so tomorrow can be tomorrow.

Clinic took up the morning, the usual rhythm of consultations ticking along at a steady clip. There's a particular satisfaction in morning clinic when it moves well — each appointment finding its natural length, nothing dragging, nothing rushed. The kind of session where you emerge at the other end feeling like the work did itself, even though you know perfectly well it didn't.

After lunch, the ward round had a clear objective: discharge as many patients as possible. There's an unspoken kindness in this before a public holiday — nobody wants to be sitting in a hospital bed over Aidil Adha if they don't need to be, and the ward staff deserve a lighter load too. So we moved through it with cheerful efficiency, ticking off the ones who were ready, making sure everything was in order. It's oddly gratifying work, sending people home. The paperwork is tedious, naturally, but the outcome is worth every duplicated form.

By three o'clock, the clinical side of the day was done. What remained was the administrative tail — the notes, the letters, the various bits of documentation that accumulate like sediment over a working day. I worked through them methodically, the kind of low-intensity task that suits a mind already half-turned towards tomorrow.

The drive home felt lighter than usual. Perhaps it was knowing there was nothing pressing on the other side of tonight. No alarm set to a punishing hour — well, actually, that's not quite true. The alarm would indeed be going off early, but for the best possible reason. Irfan lands tomorrow morning, and I'll be there to meet him. There's a different quality to an early start when it involves collecting someone you've been looking forward to seeing.

The evening was deliberately uneventful. Just the gentle deceleration of a day that had done its job. No grand plans, no elaborate dinner, nothing that required standing up for longer than strictly necessary. Sometimes the most luxurious thing you can do with an evening is absolutely nothing at all.

An early night, then. The kind where you're in bed before the hour feels remotely embarrassing, and entirely at peace with it. Tomorrow the holiday begins properly — Irfan home, Aidil Adha ahead, and two unhurried days stretching out like a cat in a sunbeam.

But that's tomorrow's entry. Tonight is just the pleasant business of stopping.

The Unhurried Wednesday

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days arrive without any particular ambition, and there's wisdom in letting them be what they are. Wednesday came in slowly — not sluggish, just serene, as though the day itself had decided that urgency could wait. I didn't argue.

Breakfast got its proper due this morning. Not rushed, not squeezed between tasks, just a quiet sit-down before the drive in. There's a version of the morning routine that feels like preparation and another that feels like presence. Today was the latter. The coffee was unhurried. The toast was deliberate. Small luxuries, but real ones.

The afternoon clinic matched the day's tempo — lighter than usual, the kind of session where the gaps between patients give you room to breathe and catch up on the administrative debris that accumulates when things are busier. I'm not one to complain about a slow clinic. The work still matters; it just moves at a pace that lets you be a little more thorough, a little more present with each person in front of you. A transplant meeting rounded things off before I headed home, the sort of discussion that always carries a certain weight regardless of the day's general mood. You shift gears, focus sharpens, and then it's done.

The family dispatches were more interesting than mine tonight. Idlan had a long day at Taylor's, but the good kind of long — the kind that comes from being properly engaged rather than merely enduring. He seems to be settling into his new course, which is quietly reassuring. There's a particular relief in watching someone find their footing in something they've chosen, that moment where obligation starts to shade into genuine interest. Early days still, but the signs are encouraging.

Anita, meanwhile, had assembled herself a rather civilised itinerary. Lunch with a friend at Rebung — Chef Ismail's place, where the Malay spread is the kind of thing you don't so much eat as surrender to — followed by tea at Carcosa Seri Negara. There's something wonderfully old-world about Carcosa, all that colonial architecture and manicured calm. She came home with that particular glow of a day well spent in good company, which is its own kind of contentment.

And then there's Irfan, who's just finished his exams in London. The relief must be enormous, though knowing him it'll manifest as quiet satisfaction rather than anything theatrical. He's spending a week with friends before flying home next Tuesday, which feels exactly right — that liminal stretch after exams where the city belongs to you again and responsibility hasn't yet reassembled itself. London in late May, with nothing to do but wander and eat and stay out too late. I can think of worse prescriptions.

A slow day, then, but one that held more than it first appeared to. Sometimes the unhurried ones carry the most.

Memories of Merdeka

I'm not going to pretend that I'm a patriotic kind. But having lived abroad for a big chunk of my student life did put things into perspective somewhat. And for Merdeka Day, most of the students used to congregate at the High Commissioner's Residence in London for a quick get together and food, clad in their traditional costumes.

I guessed that made things felt rather different from the ordinary routine.

The first and only time that I joined in - making a trip to London from where I was based was rather tricky - was soon after I first arrived in 1990. I remembered that the High Commissioner's house was just outside Central London. We took a train there and then a short walk from the station. From afar you could see your fellow Malaysian in their Baju Melayu and Baju Kurung. Quite a sight in a foreign land.

We were ushered in, plenty of food at the garden this being late sunmer when the weather was still warm. A few of the students happened to be children of well known parents from back home and were known personally by the Commisioner or his staffs. They got to be introduced around, while us ordinary folk just mingled around looking perplexed.

We then decided from then on that maybe hanging around and meeting friends at Malaysia Hall was a better idea. Elitism can be stuffy .......

A Quick Stop

It took about 15 minutes before the counter could issue a boarding pass for me. The problem? My first name was too long. Hopefully that was not a bad omen. It was soon sorted out when the supervisor arrived to verify things. Boarding pass issued, and off I went to the terminal floor. The shops were just about to be opened then. It was just after 6 in the morning local time after all. Around 2 back home.

A quick phone call to Anita. She had just arrived at Cameron Highlands - a trip planned for the boys, plus her mother. She was about to check in there. They got lost a couple of times, but managed to sort the directions out in the end. The children were behaving themselves I hope.

I was skipping breakfast since I had one earlier on the plane. I'll probably take another nap on the Trans-Atlantic flight. I'll give Anita a ring again before I board. Hopefully, there won't be much issue at the immigrations. I really could do with a nice shower now.

More on my Atlanta trip here.