Secret

What happened when a hundred-year-old man climbed out of the window (in his slippers) and disappeared? Go read Jonas Jonasson's novel and you will find out the man set off in his pee-slippers (so called because men of his age rarely pee further than their shoes) and unravelled one story after another.

But what if a four-year-old climbed out of the bed and disappeared?

Ah, a mystery.

That four-year-old turned out to be Jasmine's cousin. We were celebrating the Easter holiday in a hotel at Discovery Bay. And then the two kids entertained themselves by falling under the spell of jumping around the hotel bed. They simply forgot to go out and let every parent feel good about the decision to book a hotel and - you have to admit - any hotel with beds to jump on will do.

A silly but incredible idea. The kids jumped from one bed to the next. The last drops of a hundred-year-old man's urine might not quite make it to the toilet bowl, but it isn't difficult for a four-year-old kid to jump and land exactly on the bed next to one another. Halfway through the jumping, they - only the kids, not you - could hear the roar of crocodiles underneath. Hungry crocs they were too.

"Be careful, Aaron and Jasmine."

"Of course, we will, unless anyone of you want to be the dim sum of the crocs."

Over the first hour, if not more, of arriving at the hotel, dads and mums usually have plenty of time to read and relax. We were having tea and coffee when things turned out a bit different. I heard a sound louder than a crocodile's roar, and the next thing I knew, Jasmine's cousin was lying next to the coffee table and crying. We could never imagine how this could have happened.

"Interesting," my sister said, and meant the opposite.

In the end, we gave up our attempts to solve the mystery, and settled for soothing the pain of Jasmine's cousin.

Three days later, during her bedtime story session, Jasmine disclosed that her cousin was trying to rescue few cats from the crocodiles' breakfast plate when he lost his balance (and his face). That's a secret.

This could be brilliant, I thought, for her to keep the secret. Disclosing openly the story of a Humpty Dumpty firefighter would be a faux pas and definitely embarrass her cousin.

Whodunnit

Let's pretend that you're the mummy. You have two little girls. One of them breaks fifteen cups as she is coming into the dining room, the other breaks one cup as she is trying to get some jam while you are not there. Which of them would you punish more severely?

I didn't make up this story myself. That's the way the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget explored the child's understanding of morality. This story comes from my recent reading Teaching Right from Wrong: 40 Things You Can Do to Raise a Moral Child.

See what happens when Piaget conducted an interview with seven-year-old Constance:

Constance: The one who broke the fifteen cups...
Piaget: Have you ever broken anything?
Constance: A cup.
Piaget: How?
Constance: I wanted to wipe it, and I let it drop.
Piaget: What else have you broken?
Constance: Another time, a plate.
Piaget: How?
Constance: I took it to play with.
Piaget: Which was the naughtier thing to do?
Constance: The plate, because I oughtn't have taken it.
Piaget: And how about the cup?
Constance: That was less naughty because I wanted to wipe it.
Piaget: Which were you punished most for, the cup or the plates?
Constance: For the plate.
Piaget: Listen, I am going to tell you two more stories. A little girl is wiping the cups. She is putting them away, wiping them with a cloth, and she broke five cups. Another little girl is playing with some plates. She breaks a plate. Which of them is naughtier?
Constance: The girl who broke the five cups.

Suddenly I began to see parallels everywhere.

Let me explain.

Not too long ago, I signed an apology letter to the family of a patient who died in our hospital, saying sorry for our intern doctor who didn't turn up to certify death until an hour after the patient had his last breath. Hmmmm... Let's think about another scenario - and that is a real one, too - in which an intern doctor went to vertify that his patient was dead ten minutes before patient's electrocardiogram went completely flat. The nurse was a bit concerned with the occasional waveform displayed on the electrocardiogram paper, pointing out the waves that might imply few heartbeats. The doctor was less eager to wait for the electrocardiogram's going dead than the death of the patient. "Don't worry, can't we see that the electrocardiogram is abnormal enough? It will go flat pretty soon."

So that was that. Let's count. Sixty minutes' delay and a gap of ten minutes. Which of them would you punish more?

Genius

Close your eyes. Picture a scene inside a cooking school. Odds are you will see students learning how to chop vegetables, make bagels, wash dish, or prepare a kitchen. Perhaps even more bottom job.
 

Isn't it the right way to learn cooking? It's hard to think of better ways to learn.
 

Impractical ways of learning, such as staying in library chock-full of French culinary books, are funny when you think about it. Silly, in fact.

However, I repeat, we are in a funny society where silly things are more often than not. So when I heard about a real funny cooking school, I am not surprised at all. That school - in case you're interested to know - pays great efforts to improve the safety. Before the students learn the ropes of being a cook, they are taught safety first. They have to attend fire drills, infection control class, and data privacy ordinance lecture. The school head keeps wondering how one could do without those certificates.

After the monumental achievement (of getting those certificates), I suppose, the students will move on to learn cooking. But wait. The school head gets pretty upset about the kitchen accidents. Two students cut their fingers when they were preparing carrots last year. No more bare knives in the kitchen cupboard. Not any more. After lengthy discussion, the cooking school decides to introduce a knife with special safety design like Swiss Army knife. Here's how it works: using a digital lock, the knife won't unfold until you've keyed in the user-defined password. Truly otherworldly and brilliant.

Did the students find the new knife a success story? Alas, I never get the answer from the students because it has been decided that students are not granted access to the password at the cooking school. Not any more. Not until they graduate and become a chef. But what if they could go back to the traditional knife and learn the knife skills? No. Those knives are unsafe and banned in the school. Period.

This scenario probably sounds bizarre to you. Of course it does — you've never been studying or teaching in that school. Pity those, like me, who have to.