Do you often find yourself giving the thumbs-up to those who finish the job with a big voice? We do. To be honest, we should quit doing so. Here's why.
We've been lately getting unhappy with the performance of my wife's beeper, which makes a less loud voice than before. Two days ago, we decided to buy a new beeper. We can't – and, in fact, we're not supposed to – have a lot of choices because the commercial market of beepers is shrinking with all the cellular telephones and iPhone models around. At the end of the day, the shopkeeper handed us a beeper, the same model of our original one; she told us that it was the one and only one beeper available in stock.
Good, fine, we thought. So it goes. We made the payment at the drop of a hat and got a new beeper. The voice of that new beeper was much louder, I swear. But, it soon came to our attention that the new beeper makes a loud bleep only when it receives the signal – and it rarely does so. Whew! What's the point of a loud beeper but with weak coverage? Well, that was foolish and we lived to regret it.
It goes without saying that we immediately returned the beeper and redeemed our adorable old beeper.
All right, that original beeper doesn't make a big noise, but it sounds much more adorable to both of us now.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sneakers
As we live, we begin to discover what was perfectly sound in the old days would no longer work out in the present day.
Not that I am claiming to be a stubborn old chap who keeps reminiscing about his youth. I'm not sure if you will remember the days when we were left at home taking care of the young siblings. Picture yourself alone with your younger sister, two toddlers not even old enough for kindergarten, playing with a washing-up basin of water. You would have to make sure your younger sister won't drink the water. Fast-forward to the present. This is absolutely illegal. Period.
Then you start to notice that we are simply being disqualified to repeat what we were able to do previously. Over ten years ago (okay, almost two decades) I was having fun hiking and mountaineering with a pair of white canvas sneakers. Okay. The light shoes with flat rubber bottom are primitive, but are affordable to students living on grants and loans. It's no surprise that those slippery sneakers are not waterproof. What may strike you, though, is that I was then doing perfectly well with them, off the beaten tracks like Tai Shing Stream and Double Deer Creek. Not now. Shortly after having a badminton game with my friends this weekend, alas, the primitive white sneakers gave my feet plenty of jolly sore blisters.
I'm not sure of the moral of this story, except that we're often reminded that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Not that I am claiming to be a stubborn old chap who keeps reminiscing about his youth. I'm not sure if you will remember the days when we were left at home taking care of the young siblings. Picture yourself alone with your younger sister, two toddlers not even old enough for kindergarten, playing with a washing-up basin of water. You would have to make sure your younger sister won't drink the water. Fast-forward to the present. This is absolutely illegal. Period.
Then you start to notice that we are simply being disqualified to repeat what we were able to do previously. Over ten years ago (okay, almost two decades) I was having fun hiking and mountaineering with a pair of white canvas sneakers. Okay. The light shoes with flat rubber bottom are primitive, but are affordable to students living on grants and loans. It's no surprise that those slippery sneakers are not waterproof. What may strike you, though, is that I was then doing perfectly well with them, off the beaten tracks like Tai Shing Stream and Double Deer Creek. Not now. Shortly after having a badminton game with my friends this weekend, alas, the primitive white sneakers gave my feet plenty of jolly sore blisters.
I'm not sure of the moral of this story, except that we're often reminded that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Communication
One of the great boons of working with administrators in a big organization is the chance to learn from them. The fact is, administrators always seem to be miraculous eye-openers. Just asking for something that requires money is usually crime enough under their draconian policy. They don't always turn you down – that depends on how you define it.
I have found numerous such eye-opening examples in the Yes Minister series, and – believe me – they are undeniably fascinating and entertaining. One of the stories goes that Health Service Administration replied to the hospital like this: "Because of the current supply situation it is not possible to issue you with the extra stethoscopes you have applied for. We are, however, in a position to supply you with longer tubes for your existing stethoscopes." The administrators then went so far as to suggest that it could save a lot of wear and tear on the doctors – with sufficiently long tubes for their stethoscopes, they suggested, they could stand in one place and listen to all the chests on the ward.
This is curious, but there is much more curious thing going on around us. I recall with pristine clarity my experience of applying for four cordless phones from our hospital administrators in order to help our medical interns. I talked about the busy extended night shift when our poor interns keep running to and fro, drenched with sweat, their weary lives impoverished by the beepers shouting in bursts. I then suggested that the cordless phones will make the situation less chaotic for our interns in the middle of the night, when the hospital telephone operators are half asleep.
Two days later we received a note from the administrators, who saw no objection to the utmost importance for interns to return beeper calls with telephones. They told us, nevertheless, that the proper way should be to provide the intern rooms with landline phones, instead of cordless phones. As for me, and my sort of brain, I can't figure out the logic. Good gracious! Our interns are schlepping throughout the hospital during the night shift, instead of drinking coffee and answering phone calls at their rooms. The only way their counterproposal can help is to let us live with the illusion that our interns are staying in their rooms for nap. (Often, they can't.)
Finding your request unreasonable in every way imaginable, they come up with astonishing decision, to which you would have difficulty in understanding, not to mention rebuttal. The administrators are, in my mentor's parlance, creatures who have emigrated to Pluto. In short, for reasons too difficult to explain, or impossible to explain, they do not understand a whit what we speak on this planet. And vice versa.
I have not the slightest notion what goes on in the mind of administrators, beyond the conviction that it represents a mind totally beyond my capacity. Just as the administrators are able to make suggestion that I cannot imagine, and smell important things of which I'm unaware, I have a hunch that I can never become an administrator.
I have found numerous such eye-opening examples in the Yes Minister series, and – believe me – they are undeniably fascinating and entertaining. One of the stories goes that Health Service Administration replied to the hospital like this: "Because of the current supply situation it is not possible to issue you with the extra stethoscopes you have applied for. We are, however, in a position to supply you with longer tubes for your existing stethoscopes." The administrators then went so far as to suggest that it could save a lot of wear and tear on the doctors – with sufficiently long tubes for their stethoscopes, they suggested, they could stand in one place and listen to all the chests on the ward.
This is curious, but there is much more curious thing going on around us. I recall with pristine clarity my experience of applying for four cordless phones from our hospital administrators in order to help our medical interns. I talked about the busy extended night shift when our poor interns keep running to and fro, drenched with sweat, their weary lives impoverished by the beepers shouting in bursts. I then suggested that the cordless phones will make the situation less chaotic for our interns in the middle of the night, when the hospital telephone operators are half asleep.
Two days later we received a note from the administrators, who saw no objection to the utmost importance for interns to return beeper calls with telephones. They told us, nevertheless, that the proper way should be to provide the intern rooms with landline phones, instead of cordless phones. As for me, and my sort of brain, I can't figure out the logic. Good gracious! Our interns are schlepping throughout the hospital during the night shift, instead of drinking coffee and answering phone calls at their rooms. The only way their counterproposal can help is to let us live with the illusion that our interns are staying in their rooms for nap. (Often, they can't.)
Finding your request unreasonable in every way imaginable, they come up with astonishing decision, to which you would have difficulty in understanding, not to mention rebuttal. The administrators are, in my mentor's parlance, creatures who have emigrated to Pluto. In short, for reasons too difficult to explain, or impossible to explain, they do not understand a whit what we speak on this planet. And vice versa.
I have not the slightest notion what goes on in the mind of administrators, beyond the conviction that it represents a mind totally beyond my capacity. Just as the administrators are able to make suggestion that I cannot imagine, and smell important things of which I'm unaware, I have a hunch that I can never become an administrator.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Italian lakeland
Sometimes it's the smallest one that gives us the most. Difficult to grasp as it might seem, my recent experience of Italy is a case in point.
When I attended the World Nephrology Congress in Milan, I stayed in a big hotel that comes with the name "Executive." As its name indicates, this hotel must be a grand one, being occupied by over thousands of executives, if not hundreds of thousands. Ah, that's the point, and I ended up paying 10 euros just for the sake of using the wireless net service for 60 minutes.
After the congress, I traveled with my wife and stayed at a two-star hotel above a family-run restaurant in Stresa (a location in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, in case you're interested). This small hotel is not a grand one. Obviously not, I know. Yet, the friendly family shared with me their password of the Wi-Fi, without charging me a buck. And, in a way, it didn't matter very much that this small hotel doesn't have rooms at the top end. When I next moved to Menaggio's youth hostel, the room was even smaller – and cheaper. Lest I begin to sound like mean old Scrooge, however, let me say that it is this youth hostel that offered me the most pleasant lakeside view throughout my trip.
Size rarely matters. Content does.
When I attended the World Nephrology Congress in Milan, I stayed in a big hotel that comes with the name "Executive." As its name indicates, this hotel must be a grand one, being occupied by over thousands of executives, if not hundreds of thousands. Ah, that's the point, and I ended up paying 10 euros just for the sake of using the wireless net service for 60 minutes.
After the congress, I traveled with my wife and stayed at a two-star hotel above a family-run restaurant in Stresa (a location in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, in case you're interested). This small hotel is not a grand one. Obviously not, I know. Yet, the friendly family shared with me their password of the Wi-Fi, without charging me a buck. And, in a way, it didn't matter very much that this small hotel doesn't have rooms at the top end. When I next moved to Menaggio's youth hostel, the room was even smaller – and cheaper. Lest I begin to sound like mean old Scrooge, however, let me say that it is this youth hostel that offered me the most pleasant lakeside view throughout my trip.
Size rarely matters. Content does.
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