Boots for Somewhere Colder

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday began with the morning round, as Sundays tend to, but the sky had clearly decided to make it up to me. It was gorgeous sunshine, the clear, generous kind that makes the city look freshly washed. After the week’s floods and grey afternoons, it felt like an apology from the weather. I accepted it.

Then off to KLCC, because Anita wanted to see the new Ugg store. I’ll admit I went along expecting to be a patient companion rather than an enthusiastic one. Shops built around a single product rarely surprise me. This one did. It didn’t disappoint, and I say that as someone who walked in with low expectations and walked out carrying a bag. There’s something faintly comic about shopping for sheepskin boots in a city where the temperature rarely drops below twenty-five. But that, of course, was the point.

We bought one pair each, for the London trip. The trip isn’t here yet, but it’s close enough now that the shopping has started to make sense. It’s a pleasant kind of shopping, buying for somewhere else, for a colder version of yourself who’ll be grateful to the warmer one who planned ahead. The boots will sit in the cupboard for a while, faintly ridiculous in this climate, waiting for their moment.

Lunch was at Maria’s, with a view worth slowing down for: the park spread out below, the towers rising above, the whole city looking rather pleased with itself in the sunshine. The spot used to be the Harrods Café, and there’s a small, wistful pleasure in sitting somewhere that remembers being something else. Places change hands and names and menus, but a good view stays a good view. It felt fitting, too, to be eating in a former piece of London while shopping for London. Not planned, but neat.

Then off to Bukit Antarabangsa to collect Mak after her night away. Picking someone up always feels nicer than dropping them off. The drive there has purpose, and the drive back has company. The house had been a little quieter without her, and it was good to have her home again.

Home, as it turned out, wasn’t quiet for long. Idlan had friends over for band practice, and the apartment briefly became a rehearsal space: instruments tuning, songs starting and stopping, the earnest, determined sound of young musicians working something out. It’s not always polished. It’s not meant to be. There’s a joy in it that polished music sometimes loses, and I’d rather hear that through the wall than silence.

Otherwise, an early night for the rest of us, the kind a good Sunday earns. Sunshine, new boots, lunch with a view, Mak home, and music in the next room. A gentle way to close the weekend.

London is getting closer. At least our feet will be ready.

The Long Way Round to Where It Started

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA good night’s sleep. The rare, unbroken kind, where you close your eyes and open them again and the night has simply been folded up and put away without fuss.

I woke early. It had rained all night, and was still at it, steady and unbothered.

First order of business: charging the car. In the rain. There’s no graceful way to do this. You stand there with the cable, hood up, collar damp, feeling vaguely like a man refuelling a spaceship in a monsoon. The car, of course, stayed perfectly dry throughout. I did not.

Breakfast restored a certain dignity.

Then we drove to Kepala Batas.

I chose the first Penang Bridge this time. The older crossing. It seemed right, somehow, for where we were going. Then off the highway and onto the old Butterworth road, through the kampong, the way we used to come before there were quicker ways to come.

A lot has changed.

That’s the polite way of putting it. New houses where there were fields. Shops where there were none. Roads widened, corners straightened. And yet, every so often, something unchanged would appear: a particular bend, a stretch of paddy, a row of trees standing where they always stood. Like a familiar face in a crowd of strangers.

Then Permatang Bertam.

The house where I was born. Where I grew up.

I won’t try to describe what that feels like. Partly because it’s private, and partly because I’m not sure I could. Houses are smaller than you remember. Everyone says that, and it’s true. But it’s also larger, in ways that have nothing to do with size. We stood there a while. Didn’t say much. Didn’t need to.

Then on, because the day does go on.

A stop in town for biscuits. There’s always a shop, isn’t there. The one you’ve been going to since before you could see over the counter. Some purchases are less about the biscuits than about continuing a sentence that started decades ago.

Lunch with Teh in Sungai Petani. Good food, better company, the easy kind of catching up where nobody has to explain who anyone is.

On the way back, Seberang Jaya for jeruk. Penang’s pickled fruits, sharp and sweet and slightly alarming in colour. You can’t leave the north without them. It isn’t permitted.

A quick rest at the hotel. Brief, but necessary.

Then out again, over to Balik Pulau for dinner, the island’s quieter side, all hills and dusk and winding roads. Laksa at Fara Idlan Cafe, again, because when something is right, you return to it without apology. Sour, fishy, fragrant, deeply unreasonable in the best way. Then goreng pisang to finish. Hot, crisp, a little greasy. A full stop with a flourish.

It had been a long day. Long in miles. Longer in other ways.

An early night, then.

Tomorrow, the drive back to KL. The road south, the city waiting at the end of it.

But today, for a few hours, I went home.

Time Well Kept

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAnother hazy start, though I’ve given up reporting on it as news. The haze is simply furniture now, like the wardrobe you keep meaning to replace. The morning itself, though, was smooth again. Two in a row. I’m treating it with the cautious respect one gives a cat that has suddenly decided to sit on your lap. Don’t move. Don’t make a fuss. Let it happen.

First order of business was setting up the new timer at the clinic. I’ll admit I expected the novelty to wear off by mid-morning, the way most clever gadgets end up as expensive paperweights by the end of the week. It didn’t. Something about seeing the minutes physically run down sharpened things. Less drifting, fewer half-finished thoughts, no reaching for the phone to check something that didn’t need checking. I’m slightly annoyed it works this well, because it means the problem was never a lack of time. It was me. A small box has politely pointed this out, and I’ve chosen to take it on the chin.

The morning clinic was busy, properly busy, the sort where you only notice your coffee has gone cold when you reach for it and it tastes of regret. But it moved. Focus does that. A full morning feels very different when you’re in it rather than being dragged along behind it.

Lunch was at Upstairs Cafe, which I’d earned, or at least I told myself so. The pasta was good. Not life-changing, not something I’ll describe to strangers, just honestly good, which I think is underrated. We’ve become a little obsessed with food that has to be extraordinary, plated like modern art and photographed before it’s tasted. I’d take a well-made bowl of pasta, eaten while it’s still hot, over a deconstructed anything. There’s dignity in a dish that simply does its job.

The afternoon slipped by quietly, and the evening followed suit. A quiet night is a fine thing after a day that asked a lot. No plans, no particular agenda, just the low hum of the house and the faint suspicion I should be doing something more productive.

Which, naturally, I then did. Lectures to sort. There’s always a lecture somewhere on the horizon, waiting like a dentist’s appointment you booked months ago in a fit of optimism. I opened the slides with the usual mixture of good intentions and mild dread. I’m one of those people who believes I work best under pressure, while knowing perfectly well that’s a story procrastinators tell themselves. So I got a head start. Not finished, not even close, but begun, which is half the battle and considerably less than half the work.

It occurs to me the timer might help here too. I may need to buy a third.

Perhaps not. Two timers is a system. Three is a personality.

The Second Timer

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA new week, and the sky over the Klang Valley hadn’t got the memo. The haze was still hanging about, that pale, indecisive grey that’s neither weather nor not-weather. It makes the whole city look slightly out of focus, as if someone forgot to wipe the lens. I’ve stopped pretending it’ll lift by lunchtime. It never does.

I spent part of the weekend catching up on Week 4 of the NFL, which tells you everything about my relationship with live sport. I’m a delayed-viewing man now. There’s something faintly absurd about watching a game whose result the rest of the world settled days ago, carefully avoiding headlines like a man stepping around puddles. But I’ll defend it. Knowing nothing and watching it unfold, even late, is still better than reading a score and feeling nothing at all. American football remains a sport I enjoy far more than I can sensibly explain. Every few plays I think, why does this need four downs and a committee meeting? Then someone throws a forty-yard spiral and I forgive it everything.

The morning itself was smooth, which I don’t say lightly. Smooth mornings are rare enough that I’ve learnt not to comment on them while they’re happening, in case they hear me. Coffee, a clear inbox, nobody needing anything urgently. Small mercies, and I’ll take them.

Lunch was with the pharma folk. These lunches are a peculiar genre: half conversation, half presentation, with a sandwich somewhere in the middle trying to keep the peace. I don’t mind them. You learn things, occasionally useful ones, and the food is usually better than whatever I’d have grabbed myself. I’d just rather the slides came after dessert.

The afternoon clinic made up for the gentle start. Busy, steady, one thing after another, the kind of afternoon where you look up and the light outside has changed without asking permission. Not unpleasant. Just full. By the end I had the slightly hollow satisfaction of a day properly spent.

Home, and a delivery waiting. The ZONE Timer by New Thing Lab, my second one. I already have one at home, sitting on the desk and quietly bullying me into finishing things. This one’s going to the clinic. Some would call buying the same gadget twice a lack of imagination. I’d call it evidence that the first one works. If anything, it’s a compliment to the designers that I didn’t bother shopping around.

There’s an odd pleasure in a single-purpose object these days. It doesn’t notify me, doesn’t update itself overnight, doesn’t want my email address. It counts down, and then it stops. I wish more things in life had that kind of clarity.

So, a Monday that behaved itself, mostly. Hazy outside, busy in the middle, tidy at the edges. A new timer to keep the next few weeks honest. Whether I actually listen to it is another matter entirely.

Buffets, Bazaars and Brakes

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe day began, as so many do, with a round of the usual duties followed by paperwork. The two have a way of travelling together, like a man and his shadow, except the shadow tends to grow longer as the morning goes on. I made decent progress on both and felt reasonably virtuous by late morning, which is about as virtuous as I generally aim to feel before lunch.

After lunch came a talk, and before the talk came lunch itself: a buffet at Vasco’s in the KL Hilton. I’ll say this plainly. A good buffet is the most honest way to bribe an audience into a seminar, and it works on me every time. The spread was genuinely nice, broad without being exhausting, and I exercised what I’d describe as selective restraint. That is, I didn’t try everything. Merely most things.

The talk ran until four. It was worthwhile, and I’ll leave it at that, partly because nobody wants a blow-by-blow of a seminar and partly because the post-buffet hour is never anyone’s sharpest. There’s an unspoken contract in these afternoon sessions: the speaker agrees to be interesting, and the audience agrees not to visibly digest. Both sides held up their end, mostly.

I was excused a little early, which was just as well, because I had made a promise to Anita about the pasar malam. In my experience, promises about pasar malam are the binding kind. You can postpone a meeting. You cannot postpone a night market that someone has been quietly looking forward to all day.

So off we went. There’s something about a pasar malam that I’ve never quite been able to explain to anyone who didn’t grow up with them. It’s crowded, it’s warm, it smells of six different kinds of frying at once, and it is completely wonderful. I wandered, Anita navigated with considerably more purpose, and we came away with more than we needed and exactly what we wanted. Having eaten a buffet at lunch, I really had no business buying anything edible. I bought several things edible.

Home again, and the Singapore Grand Prix on the television. I’ll admit to a soft spot for that race. Formula One under floodlights feels faintly theatrical, which suits it. There’s a certain pleasure in watching cars cost more than houses navigate a city street, while I sit on the sofa having spent the evening debating the merits of one kuih stall over another.

Before bed, I went in an entirely different direction and watched a few videos on electric vehicle care. With the car still fresh from its touch-ups, I’ve decided it’s time I knew more than which end the plug goes in. Battery health, charging habits, the small routines that keep things running well. It’s not thrilling viewing, but it’s oddly reassuring, rather like reading the instructions after you’ve already assembled the furniture.

Strange, really. An evening that started with racing cars ended with learning how to drive more gently. I suspect there’s a lesson in that somewhere, but I was too tired to look for it.