Closing Remarks, Open Weekend

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday, in theory, is a day of rest. In practice, mine began with the usual morning duties, which have never shown much interest in the calendar. I’ve stopped resenting this. There’s a certain quiet to a Sunday morning at work that you don’t get on any other day: fewer voices, slower corridors, and the faint sense that everyone present would rather be somewhere with better coffee.

Then back to the KL Hilton for the second day of the event, this time to give the closing remarks. Closing remarks are a curious assignment. Nobody comes for them, everyone is mentally halfway to the car park, and yet they matter more than people think. You’re not there to say anything new. You’re there to tie a ribbon round two days of other people’s hard work and send everyone home feeling it was worth the parking fees. I kept it short. In my experience, the most appreciated part of any closing speech is the closing.

What I didn’t do was stay for the lunch. Having made my contribution, I slipped away to have lunch with Anita in KLCC instead. I’ll admit I enjoyed the small rebellion of it. A hotel buffet is a fine thing, but lunch with your wife on a Sunday afternoon is a better one, and nobody asks you to wear a lanyard.

Afterwards, we wandered across the road from Suria to the old Robinsons building, where Anita bought herself a dumbbell. I want to be clear that this was entirely her idea, and I offered no commentary beyond carrying it. There’s a lesson in marriage somewhere about knowing when to have opinions about fitness equipment. The lesson is: don’t.

The lower ground floor there used to be home to Atlas Gourmet, which is now closed. I found myself oddly wistful about that. It was never somewhere I went often, but it was the kind of place you liked knowing was there: a reassuring pantry for the city, all good bread and things you didn’t need in pretty jars. Now it’s just a space, waiting for whatever comes next. KL does this constantly. You blink, and the places you half-relied on have quietly moved on without telling you.

Home again, and properly tired. Not the dramatic kind of tired, just the cumulative sort that builds over a week of full days and comes due on Sunday afternoon. I sat down and let it happen.

Later, the Singapore Grand Prix on the television once more. I’m aware I’ve now spent more time this week watching cars race through Marina Bay than actually driving my own, which is still recovering its dignity at the service centre. There’s an irony there I’m choosing not to examine too closely.

So the weekend closed much as the event did: briefly, gratefully, and with the feeling that the important bits had been covered. Tomorrow the week begins again. For now, there’s a sofa, a race in the dark, and a dumbbell in the corner that I have no intention of touching.

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.