Departure time once more. We're off again today.

Still so, so busy. And there seem to be so many setbacks at the moment. Time-consuming, energy-sapping, stress-inducing setbacks.

Apart from a cheery dinner in Bangsar with a sadly departing colleague, the main event of the week has been watching Pulang, a Malaysian film telling the story of the man who never came home...

Othman is a fisherman, who loves to be surrounded by the broad expanse of the ocean. As his work brings in little material reward, however, he leaves Thom and Omar, his wife and child, to offer himself as a sailor on a cargo ship. He sends postcards with the briefest of messages from his ports of call around the world. But he doesn't come home.

Why does he go? Ostensibly, it's his way of lifting his wife and child out of poverty. Is it also the lure of the sea, of distance, of risk? We don't really know. He loses his savings in a shipwreck, and -- like many migrants -- can't contemplate a return without "success". Or is that just a rationalization of a fundamental inability to settle down?

(Spoiler ahoy, by the way... Hard astern if you don't want to know...)

He secretly returns (we learn at the very end of the film), and sees Thom about to remarry (she nearly does, but actually doesn't). Othman doesn't stop to ask or explain. He just disappears again.

When his son Omar, now a student in UK, tracks him down to Liverpool, Othman writes a letter to his wife. He dies not long afterwards. Angry, Thom throws the letter away unopened, and in this frozen atmosphere, Omar seems unable to tell his mother that her husband is dead.

At some point (unexplained), Omar's memory is severely affected, so all this truth goes to ground, and has to be painstakingly disinterred later.

Which it is, a whole generation further on, when Thom's grandson goes looking for the missing sailor. He discovers the death, the grave, and -- eventually -- the letter, which Omar tucked away in times when he could still remember.

There's a poignant line in the film to the effect that journeying is useless if there's nothing to come home to. That's true. Regular homecomings, to communities you know and love, are surely vital.

But the film's primary message, as far as I'm concerned, is the need to communicate...

TALK! Communicate what you're doing, and why. Discuss, consult, argue if you must. But TALK! Previous generations didn't talk much. I know this from my own family.

So... a very touching film.

I wasn't rapt with the CGI, but the cinematography was otherwise superb. Sea, beach, curtains in the wind, hanging nets -- all beautifully riffed (with scenery borrowed from Terengganu). The narrow confines of Othman's English accommodation were touching too, understated and poignant.

We talk a lot about Liverpool as the outward gateway for migrants, the portal through which thousands set out for the "new world", but much less about those for whom Liverpool was the portal in another direction, sometimes as flow-through point, sometimes as final destination. Bunnell, whose work on Malay seafarers in Liverpool is mentioned in the film, is one of the exceptions.

As is the strange way of things sometimes, we have a photo of a rose in the Mersey, taken earlier this year. I dedicate it to Malay sailors everywhere...









Meanwhile, it's farewell to another comfortable abode. As well as the view from the window, I will remember the shrine near the mall, always carefully tended; the multiple guises assumed by the unfinished tower; and the picture on our wall, which (unlike most hotel art) actually says something meaningful about Malaysia.

Back soon, KL. Take care.