Say Goodbye

After giving a lecture at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre this weekend, I went to the public library and returned an unfinished book.

I wasn't able to finish the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch before the book is due. I could not renew the library loan because it has been reserved by someone else.

Saying goodbye (for a moment) to this book isn't hard. Riding the emotional roller coaster with the story's narrator Theo Decker is.

It's a very tough thing to see how Theo lost his mum during a terrorist bomb attack, got carried away when he met a red-haired girl who was also injured and then (literally) carried away. I decided to take a break. At the beginning it was because they wouldn't allow me to keep the book, and at the end because I didn't want to. I should borrow the book later, not now.

So that was the plan.

As it turned out, I borrowed another book: Too Soon to Say Goodbye by the Pulitzer Prize winner (again) Art Buchwald. Buchwald wrote the book when he was in a hospice after declining dialysis. He shared his dream that he have an air ticket reservation to go to heaven. He went to the terminal and looked at the list of flights. Heaven is at the last gate.

Buchwald went up to the departure desk and asked, "Am I entitled to frequent flyer miles?"

The agent said, "You won't need any, because you're not coming back."

The next thing he heard was the loudspeaker announcement, "Because of inclement weather, today's flight to heaven has been cancelled. You can come back tomorrow and we'll put you on standby."

Burnout

When summer students joined me to learn medicine, we'd have lunch together and work like a team. And as much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn't skip the conversation topic of burnout, that to sweep this burnout issue under the carpet was to behave like an ostrich. It's a hot topic among our colleagues. And there is also the nettlesome question of whether our medical interns are getting less enthusiastic near the end of the term (translation: June) - that's an imperfect but perfectly human behavior, too.

Truth be told, I don't want to show these to an aspiring medical student. That's too frightening. If all doctors and doctors-in-training talk about losing their sense of empathy with time, burnout becomes synonymous with getting old. Everyone gets old and everyone has burnout. It's only a matter of time before you will.

Perhaps, but not necessarily.

Because grumbling begets more grumbling, the importance of teaching the spirits exceeds the importance of the textbook knowledge. So I tell my students everything that has helped me along the way. I wish I had a secret recipe I could pass on, some formula that has enabled me to go to work on a daily basis and still as happy as a kid going to the carnival. Is there a magic key? Maybe there is one, maybe not. But I hope there's one way for my student to find out.

Turtle

My friend tied the knot in Singapore, and I stayed in the diamond-shaped island over this weekend.

Travelling to Singapore is nothing but a three-hour nonstop flight. Before departure, I'd been reading a book on decision making but I decided not to bring the unfinished book with me this time. The idea is for something less serious; it's joyful time to go with the newlyweds and witness a couple saying "I do." Of course, "I do" is a big decision too. I just preferred to read something more romantic, and picked an easy-to-read book Making Marriage Simple.

It took barely a few pages, on the bus ride to airport, to get me absorbed in the book. The chapter on Turtle and Hailstorm simply cut to the heart of my problem. Truth be told, I used to be the Turtle who stays hunkered down in the shell at times (okay, a lot of the time) when my wife (dare I say) becomes storm-like. Turtles are said to have long life. And this has to do with turtle's stubbornness not to stick its neck out. The strategy of retreating into the shell holds true for many husbands like me. It appears much safer to hide when the dark clouds are gathering. Turtles aren't keen to "show up" when the tensions get high. Who would be?

As I read through the chapter, I figured out pretty easily that a turtle firmly stuck in the shell could have saved life, but that is incompatible with marriage. Let's face it, running away won't soothe the storm cloud away.

Don't try to run away from a golf-ball-sized hail, I learned, unless you want to receive an even bigger hailstorm.

Guaranteed.