Sea Air and Second Helpings

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoI woke to the sea. Not the sound of it so much as the feel of it, that soft, salted breeze slipping in through the room, carrying the faint suggestion that today might be gentler than yesterday.

It wasn’t, as it turned out. But it started well.

The walk to breakfast along those long, pale corridors is a small pleasure in itself. The E&O does a quiet kind of grandeur: high ceilings, polished floors, ceiling fans turning with the unhurried confidence of something that has done this for a century and sees no reason to rush now.

And the breakfast. I’d half braced myself for disappointment, as one does with things remembered fondly. No need. It was as good as ever. Perhaps better. There is a moment at a proper hotel buffet where restraint simply leaves the building. I let it go without protest.

Then a Grab to Capri, and the working part of the day.

Two talks, back to back, followed by a discussion. The first talk is always the one where you find your feet. The second is where you discover whether you were standing on them correctly. Both went well enough. The discussion afterwards had that lively, slightly unpredictable quality good discussions have, where the room starts thinking out loud and you try to keep up without looking as though you’re trying.

Lunch was substantial. I say this with respect. It was the kind of lunch that assumes you’ll be doing very little for the rest of the afternoon, which, after the breakfast, was entirely fair.

Done by four. A rare and welcome finish.

Back at the hotel, Mak and Anita had reached that state of hunger that admits no discussion. Not peckish. Not interested in lunch. Starving, plainly and urgently. One doesn’t negotiate with that. One books a Grab.

So off to Dulang for an early dinner. Good food, unhurried, the sort of meal where the conversation picks up as the plates empty. It’s a fine thing, an early dinner. You get all the satisfaction of eating and still have the evening left over, like change from a generous note.

Not that the evening was finished with food. Back at the hotel, there were canapé bites waiting. Small, elegant, and frankly unnecessary. We had several.

Then Anita and I went for a stroll into town.

George Town at night has its own quiet charm. Old shophouses lit in warm yellows, five-foot ways half in shadow, the occasional burst of noise from somewhere tucked away. We didn’t walk with a purpose. That was the point. Just the two of us, the warm air, the uneven pavements, a pace set by nobody in particular.

It was a nice walk. Simple as that. Some things don’t need dressing up.

By the time we got back, I was exhausted. Properly, comprehensively done. Two talks, a discussion, too much food, and a city’s worth of pavement will do that.

I don’t remember my head touching the pillow.

The sea, I’m told, carried on regardless.

Borrowed Hours

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoNearing the weekend, and you can feel it in the shoulders before the calendar admits it. Thursday has a particular texture, close enough to Friday to taste it, far enough away to be cruel about it.

The haze was back this morning, which felt frankly unsporting. It rained the night before, properly and at length, and I’d gone to bed with the reasonable expectation that the air had been washed clean. Apparently not. The rain did its best, the haze simply waited it out. There’s a lesson there about persistence, though I’d rather not learn it from smoke.

I got to work early, partly by choice and partly by necessity. A colleague is away on holiday, so I’m covering, which means my usual load plus theirs, folded neatly on top like an extra coat in a heatwave. I don’t begrudge it. Holidays matter, and someone will do the same for me when it’s my turn to vanish to somewhere with better air. But covering has its own quiet weight. You’re minding someone else’s patients, someone else’s loose ends, all while trying not to rearrange the furniture in their absence.

And then there was my own full clinic as well, because the day had clearly decided generosity was the theme. The timer earned its keep again. I’ve stopped feeling self-conscious about it. A man with a countdown on his desk looks either very organised or slightly unhinged, and on a day like today, I was happy to be mistaken for either.

In the afternoon I headed to Sunway for a talk. Driving across the Klang Valley mid-afternoon is a kind of meditation, if your idea of meditation involves brake lights and quiet muttering. Sunway itself always feels like a small city that got ambitious and never stopped building, which I mean as a compliment. There’s an energy to it I rather like, even when I’m too tired to match it.

Dinner was included, which is one of those small details that shouldn’t matter as much as it does. After a long day, not having to think about food is a genuine kindness. Someone else decides, someone else serves, and all you have to do is turn up and eat. I’ve come to believe that a well-organised dinner is the true measure of any event. The content can be excellent, but if you send people home hungry, nobody remembers the slides.

It ran late, as these things do. By the time I got home the day had long since used up whatever reserves I’d brought to it. Tired is the honest word. Not the dramatic kind, just the ordinary, earned sort, where the body is ready to stop well before the mind agrees to.

There’s a certain satisfaction in a day like this, though I’d only admit it once rested. Two loads carried, one talk attended, one dinner I didn’t have to cook. The weekend is close now. Close enough that I can almost see it, haze permitting.

Leaving Early, Arriving Late

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe haze has stopped being polite about it. This morning it sat over the city like a damp tea towel, and I left the house already squinting at the horizon as though that would help. It didn’t. It rarely does.

It was an all-day clinic, which is a phrase that sounds manageable on paper and rather less so by mid-afternoon. The morning was long, not in the dramatic sense, just in the way some mornings stretch out like a queue you can’t see the end of. One person, then the next, then the next. I kept the timer going and it kept me honest, though I suspect even a very good gadget has its limits against a full list.

After the ward round there was a meeting, the kind that begins with everyone agreeing it’ll be quick. I’ve sat through enough of these to know that the word “quick” is purely decorative. Halfway through, I had to excuse myself. Not out of boredom, I should add, though I’d be lying if I said leaving early didn’t carry a small, guilty thrill. There’s something about standing up mid-meeting with a genuine reason that makes you feel briefly like a man in a film with somewhere better to be.

The somewhere better was Le Méridien, for a talk. The drive over was the usual Kuala Lumpur negotiation between optimism and traffic, and the haze gave the whole city a sepia filter nobody asked for.

The speaker had come from Kraków, and the talk was very good. I say that without the usual qualifications. Plenty of talks are fine, informative, competent, the sort you remember for the coffee break. This wasn’t one of those. It was clear, well-paced, and delivered by someone who knew the material well enough not to hide behind the slides. I find that rarer than it should be. Anyone can fill forty minutes. Making them feel like twenty is a craft.

It ran late, as good evenings tend to. By the time I was heading home the day had folded itself into night without my noticing, which is either the sign of a good day or a badly managed one. Possibly both.

The haze had worsened by evening. From the balcony I could see it properly, a thick grey wash across the city, the usual skyline softened into suggestion. Buildings I know are there simply weren’t, or were only half there, like a photograph left too long in the sun. I’ll admit it has a certain eerie beauty, which feels like an inappropriate thing to say about air you’re not meant to breathe. But I stood and looked anyway, for longer than was strictly sensible.

Then I came inside and shut the door. Some views are better appreciated through glass.

It was a long day, though not an unhappy one. Full at both ends, interrupted in the middle, and finished with something worth the effort. I’ll take that, haze and all.

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.

From the Chair

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoAn early start, the sort that requires you to be decisive with yourself before you've had any real evidence that the day is worth attending. A quick round to get through first, and then straight on to the Hilton at Sentral, arriving in that slightly breathless state where you've already done half a day's work and everyone else is still queuing for coffee.

I was chairing the session before lunch. Chairing is a peculiar job. You're the least interesting person in the room by design, and your entire purpose is to make sure the interesting people run to time and don't talk over one another. Done well, nobody notices you at all. I've come to quite enjoy it — there's a craftsmanship in keeping a session moving without ever appearing to push.

And the speakers were superb. Colleagues over from Germany, France and Italy, all of them presenting work at a level that genuinely makes you sit up. World-class, and I don't reach for that phrase often — it gets thrown at anything that's merely competent. This wasn't that. It was the real article, delivered with the particular confidence of people who have lived inside a problem long enough to explain it simply.

There's also the pleasure of watching three European speakers approach the same material in unmistakably different registers. Precision, elegance, and enthusiasm respectively, and I'll leave it to the reader to assign the nationalities. Between sessions I caught up with old acquaintances — the ones you see twice a year in hotel foyers and never anywhere else, and yet somehow pick up mid-sentence from wherever you left off. These conference friendships are odd, shallow in frequency and surprisingly deep in substance.

Lunch was excellent, which matters more than organisers sometimes appreciate. A good lunch buys you a room full of people who are still awake at two o'clock. And the afternoon sessions carried on properly, which suggests somebody understood this.

By the end of it, though, I was thoroughly spent. There's a specific flavour of tiredness that comes from a full day of concentrated listening — not physical, exactly, just a sense that the part of you that processes things has quietly clocked off without telling anyone. I still had bits to finish, and I couldn't face them at any reasonable hour. They got done late, badly, and mostly by force of habit.

So I'm heading into the new week with a small deficit, and no great illusions about it. A weekend spent talking, however good the talking, is not a weekend spent resting. The mind is full and the tank isn't.

Still — better this than the alternative. A day among people doing excellent work leaves you slightly restored even as it exhausts you. You come away with things to think about, which is a decent trade for an early start and a late finish.

Rest first, though. Everything else can queue behind that.