Kauila

There are few things so simple, so heartwarming, and so very family-friendly as watching Disney movies. Especially when Lilo & Stitch is a live-action remake of the animated film, a retold story of a broken family, a six-year-old Hawaiian girl Lilo and her older orphaned sister. 

I went to the theatre with my daughter to watch the movie this afternoon. The relationship between Lilo and the creature Stitch reminded me of the Hawaiian goddess Kauila. I first learned about the huge sea turtle goddess, Kauila, from the marine biologist Christine Figgener's memoir, My Life With Sea Turtles. Lilo’s sister, by the way, also wished to become a marine biologist.

Kauila, like Stitch, transformed herself into a human girl to play with the keiki, the children, and protect them. In Hawaiian mythology, Kauila is associated with green sea turtle and empowered with the ability to turn from turtle to human guardian of the community, especially the children who play near the shore.

That's an admirable story which deserves to be told many times.

Snowstorm

Take a walk in the forest with snowflakes glistening in the sunlight shining between the clouds. Feather-light snowflakes land on the bridge of nose and lips. The scene from the novel We Do Not Part, written by Han Kang who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, is ethereal.

If you ever find yourself being served red bean juk to confront the fury of cold and hungry journey, the juk feels like a reward nothing short of heavenly.

As I kept reading, the story of bullets shattered the romantic masquerade of the woodlands landscape. The plot of social unrest followed by massacre, in a location Han Kang dared not name, made me shiver. Oh no, there were hundred thousand people slain; the dead bodies were washed out to sea, or abandoned in the cobalt mine. One of those who were imprisoned, but not shot, wrote, "I'm well, there's really no need for you to worry. I have six years still to serve, but considering how many folk from Jeju were sentenced to fifteen and even seventeen years, I'm one of the lucky ones."   

The more I read, the more I understood the meaning of the red bean juk. Because of the curfew, the gunshot victims could not go to the hospital. To make up for all the blood loss, the only chance to live would be to drink their own blood. If not, the red bean juk. My goodness.

Newborn

Maybe you're one of those people who are optimistic enough to enjoy your barbecue party after your wallet has been stolen. Or maybe you're the person who's putting on a smile when your computer is beyond repair before you have backup of the files. Some of us can remain positive even when we're knee-deep in troubled waters.  

Except for childbirth, or the first one year of newborn. That's what Kerry Hudson wrote about in her beautiful memoir Newborn, a journey towards her parenthood. With countless trauma in her early years of poverty, Kerry Hudson never knew if her mother would be coming downstairs. And then her mother stopped eating, lying listlessly in bed. And that, the fate decided, would mean growing up between foster families and homeless hostels.

As tough as Kerry Hudson would be, she couldn't have imagined the challenge after seeing a second blush of pink next to the control line on a strip. The positive pregnancy test made her tense. Her anxiety soared. She and her partner watched YouTube videos for weeks practising how to install the car seat and did so expertly like a soldier reassembling a rifle in a blindfold. With little information about how the coronavirus might affect pregnant women, she dared not leave the house. Even she was convinced to go out once a day – mask on, hands deep in the pockets – she did not touch anything.  

The best description of her early weeks of caring for the child is the fourth trimester because, in reality, the baby should still be inside the mom's belly.

Read-a-thon

Prize-winning writer Emily Henry is celebrated for her romance novels. That isn't among my favourite genre of books, though I borrowed her book Funny Story recently. The character of Daphne, a book lover and a children's librarian, reminds me of the good old days when I kept visiting library for my daughter's book choices.

There's no place so friendly as a chidren's library. Where the side-by-side beanbags seem to be heaven for readers, and where you'll find pictures books for the not-yet-readers. For where else can you step into a room amid a book club so tempting the kids (and parents) don't get distracted by their devices? 

I'm so proud of myself. I'm as proud as Daphne who has made big efforts to prepare a fund-raising Read-a-thon, an all-night reading thing for the kids. I know I mention this all the time, but it's still not enough: I am the luckiest to have a daughter who loves reading. I can't imagine anyone better. My Read-a-thon for my daughter is the marathon of choosing books for her. That's the highlight of parenthood.

River

If, after a strenuous Mt Kinabalu climb, you'd like nothing more than an easy trip, you're in for a boat ride.

Our family were simply too frazzled to go for more walks after return from the summit. All because of aches and pains, we chose to take a break and wait for the recovery of our jelly-like thigh muscles. Luckily, there is something magical about river cruising in Borneo. On the last day of our trip, I picked a late-afternoon wildlife cruise down the mangrove, reminiscent of the novel Where the Crawdads Sing.  

Like Kya, we came close to fireflies along the river, but didn't go into that much detail about the female fireflies drawing in males of another species by dishonest flash light signals. As twilight set in, a romantic firefly light show is wild and poetic enough to wow nature lovers. The long, soft-bodied nocturnal fireflies, known as kelip-kelip, produce a greenish-yellow light along the mangrove waterways. The way hundreds of kelip-kelip display their light show is remarkably reminiscent of Christmas-tree lights.

Besides watching kingfishers and fireflies, another highlight of the waterways is the chance to meet the proboscis monkeys. These big-bellied (and even bigger nose) monkeys live only on Borneo. They now rival orangutans as the most popular primates to see in Borneo. Sadly, both are threatened by modern-day poaching, logging and habitat destruction.

Kinabalu

Mention the word Mounjaro and you're likely to conjure images of blockbuster drug glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist with global prescription growing at 38 percent annually. To me, the brand name resembles Kilimanjaro, or, for that matter, Kinabalu. 

One good reason is my chance to climb Mt Kinabalu this week. I tried to make the ascent almost 30 years ago, but failed without the legally required mountain guide and climbing permit. My wife and I have longed to return. 

After my planning of the climb with my wife and daughter, I read about a German who is interested in tropical ecology and brought his family to Borneo. His son and niece were young and as animated as dogs on a road trip, metaphorical heads struck out the figurative car window, tongues flapping in the wind. As time goes on, it is getting more difficult to stay composed when we are no longer kids. Not anymore. My daughter is more prudent. We made a list of all the ingredients for survival we would need for the ascent of Borneo's highest mountain – from water filter bottle and energy bar to walking poles. With a hefty dose of luck, we told ourselves, the odds of ever surviving the climb are higher than the sea turtle hatchlings returning to the sea. 

Step after step after step. The knee-jarring ascent from start to finish, according to the estimates of the Lonely Planet author, is like scaling seven Eiffel Towers or six Empire State Buildings.

I still remember the engineering maxim, "Good, fast, cheap. Choose two – you can't have all three", mentioned by the German visitor who was buying car after moving to Borneo. Even we're not having project management, the "good, fast, cheap" triangle seems to apply to our Mt Kinabalu climb. 

The fee is not too costly (unless you're comparing dorm bed to dorm bed). The box “cheap” is checked.

The magical sunrise at the summit is hard to beat. We were literally on cloud nine with its majestic crown of wild granite spires. The box “good” is checked.

But let's be honest, the trek to the summit at Low's Peak is never meant to be fast. We can never forget the unforgiving steps uphill and the gruelling descent. And that kind of exercise, I guarantee, would be much more effective than Mounjaro.

Green Turtle

Borneo is the world's third largest island, after Greenland and New Guinea. Slice Borneo in half and chances are you'll see the equator bisecting this island twice the size of Germany. There is no better or worse time to visit Borneo; equatorial climates mean year-round rain which rarely lasts long. Our family arrived in Borneo this week, after our daughter's examination.  

We first stopped at Selingan Island in Sandakan Archipelago, where sea turtle conservation has been underway for many years. Watching gravid turtle coming ashore to lay eggs is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Sea turtle nests are called clutches, and a female may dig several of them in the sand in one nesting season. A clutch may contain between 50 and 200 eggs. The eggs are buried deep in the sand for about sixty days. When the young turtle hatchlings break out of its eggs, they must make a race to the water. They don't have GPS; many a time they follow the moon's reflection on the water for guide. If they don't make it, they die.

For every one thousand hatchlings, about one will survive to adulthood. Hear me out: one in one thousand. That's even more difficult than securing the Research Grant Council funding after research grant application. 

As part of the efforts to save the endangered sea turtles from predators, the rangers at Selingan Island patrol the beach every night and transfer the eggs to the hatchery. They also release the new hatchlings on the beach.

Our family were lucky enough to have facetime with three green turtle hatchlings burrowing up through the sand and scuttling down the beach before sunset. These three brave young turtles aren't those collected by rangers; they are from naturally hatchling eggs. We saw three up close, small and fragile. The fourth one didn't make it to the sea; it was swallowed by a hungry water monitor lizard. In the field of harsh and competitive academia, these three young hatchlings are early-career researchers with neither senior support nor RGC track record. I don't know if I should quote the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who advised "Follow your inner moonlight. Don't hide the madness." I simply know we had wished all hatchlings good luck.