This is week 2 of my new gig. I’ve been walking to work. It’s circa 2km, and while it has been great to take in the fresh morning air while listening to whatever podcast program that takes my fancy, I’ve also had to think about managing stuff like dealing with sweaty outcomes and presentability of my work clothes as a result. Last night, I googled hacks for keeping clothes wrinkle free, for workers who choose riding/walking as their forms of commute. It looks like more work/effort will be needed but it also looks like it will all be worth the while.

This morning I was the only one in the office when I got in, as my boss is away in his beach house – working remotely from there. He’s there to let his dying mother in law have one last trip before she dies of cancer. It’s all very sad. Yesterday, as I did my now customary walk through the leafy streets branching off Canterbury Road, I listened to Tim Keller talk to Russel Moore. Tim Keller too, has (pancreatic) cancer and to listen to him talk about the experience that swings from one end of the emotional and psychological pendulum to the other is to appreciate that the human experience can be so complex. He drew on the canon of the bible to show the range of thoughts, emotions, approaches, genres etc., to show the need to accept more than just a narrow narrative of the human experience. That the Bible has such a breadth of genres and approaches shows it takes more than a narrow or shallow engagement to make the human experience closer to what it is capable of/intended to be. It really is a case of the older I get, the less confident I am that I have seen it all.

This morning, I got to meet another one of my new colleagues. A fellow Malaysian, she and her family moved to Melbourne a few years before we did. We talked of similar experiences with our kids’ journey as well as shared dismay over what has happened (and continues to happen)  to/in Malaysia. That conversation has reminded me of what we have lost in the past 1-2 years of working from home. The interaction and engagement that often happens in a workplace can be little things that provide an assuring anchor of sorts. Staring at screens all day sans physical human interaction can be so unmooring as to render it all so much more soulless.