A Weekend With Nothing in It

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoFriday came round with that particular lightness Fridays have, even before they’ve earned it. The weekend was close enough to see, and for once it looked entirely uncluttered.

That’s rarer than it should be. Weekends lately have had a habit of filling up in advance: a talk to give here, a meeting to attend there, slides to finish the night before. This time there’s nothing. No talks planned, no programme to follow, no lectern waiting anywhere. Just time with Mak, which is the best kind of plan precisely because it barely counts as one.

There’s something about having your mother in the house that changes its rhythm. The place feels fuller and a little more lived-in. Conversations happen in the gaps of the day rather than at appointed times, over a cup of tea or in passing in the kitchen. Nothing about it needs organising. That’s the whole appeal.

The working day, of course, had its own ideas about letting me get to any of that. It finished rather late, the way Fridays sometimes do, as if the week were collecting a few last debts before it closed. You think you’re nearly done, and then there’s one more thing, and then another, and the light outside has changed without your noticing. A late Friday finish is a peculiar kind of test of patience. The weekend is right there, and you’re standing at the door, not quite allowed through yet.

But eventually I was, and the evening made up for the delay.

Dinner was home cooking. Not a restaurant, no queue, no menu to deliberate over, just food made in our own kitchen and eaten at our own table. After a week of rushed lunches and a business dinner, it was exactly the right meal. Home cooking has a way of slowing everyone down. Nobody’s watching the time or waiting for the bill. The plates stay on the table a while after they’re empty because nobody is in a hurry to get up.

There’s a quiet happiness in an evening like that, the kind that doesn’t need to announce itself. Just the warmth of the kitchen, the familiar flavours, and the sense that the house is full in the best possible way.

And beyond it, the weekend, stretching out with nothing on the calendar but family. No speeches to rehearse, no early starts I’ve chosen for myself. I don’t remember the last time I looked forward to a weekend for what wasn’t in it.

The week is done, and it was a long one, in places. But it’s ending well: late, admittedly, but at home, well fed, and with two whole days of doing very little in good company ahead.

That will do nicely.

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.

Kit, Kin and a Late Kick-Off

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSunday, and another early start. I’m beginning to suspect my alarm clock doesn’t believe in weekends. It certainly doesn’t respect them.

The rounds, at least, were smooth. After yesterday’s overrun I’d braced myself for more of the same, but the morning was kind. Things went where they were meant to go, in roughly the time they were meant to take. I’ve learnt not to celebrate these mornings too loudly. Gratitude, quietly expressed, seems to work better.

Down in the lobby there was an unexpected bustle. People queuing to pick up their kits for the SJMC Run next weekend, clutching bags of race numbers and branded T-shirts with the hopeful look of those who’ve signed up for something and are only now remembering what it involves. There’s a lovely optimism to a kit collection. Nobody has run a single step yet, so everyone is still, in their own minds, rather fast. I admired them from a safe distance, which is my preferred relationship with running.

Then off to Bukit Antarabangsa to pick up May. It’s a drive I enjoy more than I probably should. The road climbs and winds, the city falls away behind you, and for a few minutes it feels like you’ve left Kuala Lumpur altogether, even though you plainly haven’t. There’s something about a hill road that makes you drive a little more thoughtfully. Or at least that’s my excuse for going slowly.

A quick lunch at Melawati followed. Melawati has an unpretentious, neighbourly feel that I’ve always liked, the sort of place where lunch is lunch rather than an event. No queues for photographs, no theatre, just food, a table and a moment to sit. I’m increasingly convinced the best meals are the ones nobody bothers to post about.

The afternoon turned to rain. Not the relentless kind of earlier in the week, but enough to settle the question of whether we’d be going anywhere else. We wouldn’t. Home it was, and home was exactly where I wanted to be. A rainy Sunday afternoon indoors is one of life’s small luxuries, though only if you’ve chosen it. Today, the weather and I were in complete agreement, which happens less often than you’d think.

At night I caught up with the Man United match. Supporting United these days requires a particular blend of loyalty and selective memory. You watch with hope, and you also keep a cushion within reach. I’ll say this for them: they never let you get too comfortable. Whether that’s a strength of character or a flaw in the defence is a debate for another evening. Possibly every evening.

Still, there’s something steadying about ending the week in front of a football match, whatever the outcome. It’s ritual more than entertainment now. The same seat, the same muttering, the same faint certainty that I could have done better from the sofa.

A full Sunday, in the end, but a gentle one. Work done, people collected, lunch eaten, rain watched. Next weekend, the runners. I’ll be cheering. From the sidelines, obviously.

A Free Weekend, Technically

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSaturday, and in theory a free weekend. I say “in theory” because the theory didn’t survive contact with the morning. Colleagues are away, someone has to hold the fort, and this weekend the fort-holder was me. A free weekend with obligations is a bit like a decaf espresso: it looks the part, but you can tell something’s been taken out.

Morning rounds came first, and ran longer than planned. They always do on a Saturday. There’s an unwritten rule that weekend work expands to fill whatever time you’d hoped to save, partly because there are fewer hands and partly because the quiet makes everything feel slower. You walk the corridors with that particular weekend hush around you, and somehow an hour becomes two without anyone being consulted.

Still, there’s a certain virtue to covering. It’s a favour that gets returned eventually, the professional equivalent of lending someone your umbrella. I just wish the umbrella weren’t so often in use.

Once I was finally released, I made a quick stop at Bangsar Village. Quick being the operative word, and for once I stuck to it. Bangsar Village has the slightly polished calm of a place that knows exactly who it’s for, and on a Saturday afternoon that’s a lot of people who look as though they’ve just come from brunch and are considering a second one. I admire their commitment.

Then on to The Gardens for an early dinner. An early dinner is one of the great underrated pleasures of adulthood. You beat the rush, you get a decent table, and you’re home before the evening has a chance to turn ambitious. People mock the early diner, but the early diner is rarely seen queuing.

The weekend crowd was out in force, of course. Mid Valley on a Saturday is less a shopping centre than a migration. Families moving in formation, couples drifting in and out of shops with no apparent purpose, teenagers travelling in clusters like weather systems. I find it oddly reassuring. Whatever else is going on in the world, people still turn up on a Saturday to walk slowly past things they don’t need. There’s something stubbornly human about that.

I didn’t join the stampede. I took things easy, ate without rushing, and let the noise wash past. That was the whole plan for the evening, and it’s the best plan I’ve had all week. Not every evening needs a purpose. Some just need to be got through gently.

There’s a contradiction in all this I’m happy to sit with. Part of me resents a weekend chipped away by work. Another part quite likes being the person people can rely on when they’re away. I suspect most of us carry both, and pick whichever one suits our mood that day.

Tonight I’ve picked contentment. It’s easier to digest after a good dinner.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Technically free. We’ll see.

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.