Taking Care Of Business

It's been all go for the last two days. Not enough time to spit out, as Mum would be likely to say. Just keeping up with things at work today was tough with classes wall to wall. But that's not really so bad - at least it involved teaching and thus doing what I enjoy.

We spent the better part of yesterday at Pantai Hospital in Melaka, where we had taken Mak for what we thought was going to be a straightforward health screening. It turned out to be something of an epic journey around the labs, the eye doctor and the chap who looks at your brain, or in this case, Mak's. The good news is there's no immediate medical emergency. The bad news is we were pretty close to one and we have to do something urgent to preserve Mak's sight, and prevent a possible stroke. So a more than worthwhile visit, but wearing on the legs and the batteries as we were there from early morning to late afternoon. I managed to get a fair amount of marking done while waiting though, and read a fair bit of a book I've got on the art of haiku.

After that we settled down for an epic journey to Singapore, the highlight of which was a two and a quarter hour jam at Tuas. The authorities have had the bright idea of getting tough with drivers who cut into the extremely long queues, and certainly they maintained good order for the final stretch from the top of the bridge down to customs. Unfortunately they chose to ignore the utter chaos taking place beyond this where a constant stream of drivers were cutting in further down the line with the result that the legitimate traffic queues were sometimes static for up to fifteen minutes at a time. I prefer the slow but constant movement the old free market system engendered.

And now it's time to make a birthday card for my sister and do a bit more marking before collapsing.