Crisis

Crisis is a fear-provoking word that gives us jelly legs. Awful things happen, and they hurt like hell. But as long as we acknowledge what happened wasn't right and it hurt, as long as we convinced ourselves we can choose to respond to what had happened, there is a transition in every crisis.

In many ways, Kristin Hannah's novel Between Sisters explores how two estranged sisters reunited. The half-sisters were raised by an alcoholic mother who married repeatedly; they couldn't remember a man ever being around for longer than a carton of milk. 

The broken relationship of two sisters seemed to be a fact of life. They did not meet but talked on the phone. They would talked about the weather, as if their lives were connected by the thinnest of strands. Then, one of them would invariably "get another call" and got an excuse to hang up.

The younger sister was a single mother working to run a campground to raise her daughter. One day, she had the medical crisis after being told to have a nasty brain tumour. This is how the two sisters came together to work through the crisis. 

What a beautiful reminder that difficult times can be a catalyst to bring out the best in people. That's the healing power of a crisis.

Run

We become increasingly rule bound as we grow older. That's why you can't teach old dogs new tricks. To overcome the trait, we must unlearn what we know and start over. 

And I've noticed my running style isn't the right way to go. As I read more about the topic, I have (somewhat begrudgingly) accepted I'll need core strength training. When it comes to static stretching after a run, I have never paid attention to this simple but proven routine – not even close. I simply press the pause button for the Strava tracking app and that's it. 

Instead of simply running a bit farther, or faster for that matter, I have to prepare my body better. I learned a hard lesson during my run tonight, when I encountered two aggressive dogs in a dark alley. Overwhelmed by the fear, I simply ran faster as the dogs barked and chased me. When their owners thought the leash laws don't apply to their animals, I had an even more stupid concept that I should crank up the speed. The faster I ran, the more speedy the dogs were after me.

I ran and ran, working my ass off to save my ass.

Memoir

When Ashley Ford was four and living with her single mum, brother, and grandmother, she taught herself to lie awake until morning because she wanted the sunrise. We learned about her backyard story in her memoir, Somebody's Daughter.

Ashley had little idea of whereabouts of her absent father (who was jailed) and dared not ask her mother why her father was in prison (because he raped two women). She moved out from the home in Brooklyn, where her mother was living with her boyfriend. She didn't want to ruin their relationship but part of her wished to tell her, "Mama, I love you, but I'll work myself past the white meat, down to the bone, and fistfight every stranger I run across on the street before we live under the same roof again."

For many years, Ashley didn't write back to her father in prison. And she didn't live under her mother's roof for seven years. She went back seven years later, when her mother nearly died after a ruptured appendix. She wasn't ready to become an adult orphan. Out of the fear of becoming parentless, she looked at her mom's dark-gray face lit up by the dead-white hospital room and came close to remember her promise to visit her dad. 

The drive to the prison (about an hour and a half) was far shorter than the wait for her father to reunite with her – alas, that's thirteen years.

Ashley Ford's forthright disclosure is a powerful and heart-wrenching self-portrayal as a poor Black daughter in a fragmented family. If I'd learned anything from her, it was the lesson not to hide from our emotions, not to suppress them, and not to shy away from them. 

Birthday

When Lonely Planet was launched in 1973, the very first book Across Asia on the Cheap highlighted the way to adventure across the world in a budget manner. Another Lonely Planet’s book, The Best Things in Life are Free, reminded us that we don’t need a million dollars to enjoy ourselves. 

To celebrate my birthday this year, I picked the MacLehose Trail, which is free, open all year, 24 hours a day. My pick is the first two sections of the MacLehose Trail. The sun-kissed route with alternating peak and beach is stunning but pretty tough. This is even more so after the flooding from Super Typhoon Ragasa. 

I didn’t check my camera's memory card, which turned out to be nearly full. I knew it’s not worthwhile to waste battery life to erase old images, but I had to. By the way, our camera's memory cards and batteries have a way of going out when you need them most. I didn’t bring spare camera battery and my camera battery ran out before I finished my five-hour trek. Uh-oh.

Put simply, the lesson for me to learn, especially as I get older, is to remember a backup plan.

Connection

Try as you may, you can't find words to exchange information clearly via text or emails. 

Jefferson Fisher shared his story of misinterpreted text exchange with his momma. His mom saw the words but never read them all right. She simply needed his voice to hear the true meaning. 

What's the difference between transmission and connection? Reading sheet music is going to convey information like transmission. It's a prime example of communication that lacks depth. Hearing a symphony perform the music, on the other hand, is the answer to connection.

Think of connection, according to Jefferson Fisher, as a two-factor authentication. 

You can't have one without the other to connect. If I understand you but you can't tell, you won't connect with me. And if I acknowledge what you're saying but I still don't understand it, I won't connect with you. The aim isn't to turn everything into a happy ending, but to open the floor. I can understand and acknowledge you and still be upset with you, hurt by you, or upset by the disagreement. But we can connect, and understand why we disagree.

Prussian

If Yuval Noah Harari is named the most influential historian from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Benjamin Labatut would have been the Chilean counterpart of him.

One of Benjamin Labatut's "works of fiction based on real event", When We Cease to Understand the World, chronicles the complicated links between scientists and Frankenstein.  

Think about the pigment Prussian blue. That's one of the sensational colours used by Van Gogh (think Starry Night) and Katsushika Hokusai (think The Great Wave off Kanagawa). The dye was discovered by the dyer Johann Jacob Diesbach by accident: his aim had been to mimic the ruby red made by crushing female insect carapaces in a laboratory set up by the alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel. Diesbach tried to pour potash contaminated with animal byproducts from some of Dipple's grosteque experiments, and ended up yielding the legendary blue. Dubbed "Prussian Blue," the creation was thought to be a fabled hue of the ancient Egyptians. 

Soon, another chemist stirred a pot of Prussian blue with a spoon of sulphuric acid, and created a new compound prussic acid, also known as Zyklon B. That is the way hydrogen cyanide poison came to leave its residue on the bricks of Auschwitz, ending million of lives in gas chambers.

The rest is history. 

Argue Less

Jefferson Fisher, the American trial lawyer who gained millions of followers online for his videos teaching on communication, shares tried-and-true tips on his new book The Next Conversation.

This is a book of handling conflicts. If you wish to remember just one lesson from his book, it would be the one about "Never win an argument." I learned this rule the hard way, after joining a debate session in a recent scientific meeting. 

Think of a heated competition that divide the world into "right' and "wrong," "winner" and "loser." After the back-and-forth dialogue, the first question some asks the next morning is always, "Who won?" Or, in my case, the final answer to the debate question. We run into the rabbit hole: the loss of meaningful connection, the failure of seeing other's point of view, and often, the short-lived pride but long-lasting damage to the friendship. 

If that's what we want to gain from debate, then I'm asking to quit. Winning an argument often loses you more. Not my cup of tea.