For as long as I can remember, I had a notebook next to my dictionary during my primary school days. (I was 12.) I kept a list of new words in that notebook. The list grew as I looked up more words in the dictionary.
My four-year-old daughter isn't equipped to find words in the dictionary. Well, she doesn't need a dictionary; a child's vocabulary simply grows by asking and listening. It reminds me of a recent conversation with my daughter, when she asked me for the meaning of new words.
"Touching. What does that word mean?" Jasmine looked at me.
"You must have heard it somewhere. This is similar to moving. It's a feeling, of being moved and touched by something that brings special meaning. Bittersweet, umm, what shall I say? I'm not exactly sure what can that be. Let me tell you when we have something really touching."
The day after the conversation, we went to the wedding ceremony of Jasmine's kindergarten teacher. She decided on her dress pretty quickly. She picked a white one, almost the same as her best friend, and quite close to that of the bride. By the time the bridegroom and bride said their speech, my daughter whispered, "Dad, why is Ms Anna crying?"
"This is touching," I smiled back. "Do you remember the word touching? Anna cries. That doesn't mean she is sad. The wedding brings back memories from when she was a girl, as small as you, when her dad and mom brought her up with love. There are so many touching memories with her family. In fact, she cries because she finds the memories touching."
I didn't know if Jasmine got the meaning right until Jasmine connected the word touching to a shadow and puppetry show two days ago. That's the story of a boy suffering from a rare disease that threatens his eyesight. He will lose his vision by Christmas, the doctor told his father. The boy's father decided to give his son lasting memories of the world's amazing sights before it's too late. He sold his small business and started a heartwarming globetrotting journey with his child.
A touching story, I agree.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Tiger
Playing violin is hard. Making a four-year-old practice the bow stroke is quite impossible. Bringing up a daughter to be violinist, with the house turning topsy-turvy while the wife crumpled invalid after getting multiple sclerosis, almost never works.
You'll know just how hard this is for the Ukrainian-born music teacher Mr. K to do so after reading the book Strings Attached.
As a dad who asks my daughter to practice piano for not more than (and often less) ten minutes each day, I can't imagine the number of hours Mr. K's daughter spent on practicing and symphony rehearsals. I dare not think about the instrument's strain on the chin and neck, the throbbing pain between the shoulder blades, the row upon row of sweep back and forth, bow up and down.
That's why I've never had the courage to read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Some of you might be proud of the stamina that can be found in the blood of a tough mother and her daughter. I am not sure if I am.
You'll know just how hard this is for the Ukrainian-born music teacher Mr. K to do so after reading the book Strings Attached.
As a dad who asks my daughter to practice piano for not more than (and often less) ten minutes each day, I can't imagine the number of hours Mr. K's daughter spent on practicing and symphony rehearsals. I dare not think about the instrument's strain on the chin and neck, the throbbing pain between the shoulder blades, the row upon row of sweep back and forth, bow up and down.
That's why I've never had the courage to read Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Some of you might be proud of the stamina that can be found in the blood of a tough mother and her daughter. I am not sure if I am.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Passion
Many people have a preferred way to motivate themselves, to arouse enthusiasm and uncover what they want in their life and work. Some of us buy ourselves good coffee before work, and others go for Häagen-Dazs ice-cream after a big project.
Yesterday morning, as the sun was breaking open the clouds, I took my camera and crafted a picture before going to work.
Not a groundbreaking picture, but good enough to build my energy for the long hours of hospital work.
I worked till the sun set behind the hills next day. I didn't sleep too much in the hospital last night. Even so, I'd kept my sense of humour, stayed clear about my mind, and then took another nice picture of the dusk after work tonight.
Okay. Why am I still awake after these long hours of work? To me, the most important thing is to avoid the pitfall of poached frog. When we drop a frog into boiling water, it will instinctively jump out. And if you place a frog in a pot of cool water and increase the temperature slowly, the frog can't - and, in fact, is not supposed to - notice. All this boiling goes on little by little, most of the time without the frog even being aware that it's sitting in hotter and hotter water, until it got burned and burnout.
The moral of the boiling frog seems all too clear: Look out for the slowly boiling water that indicates we've lost touch with our real self and lost the fun at work.
Yesterday morning, as the sun was breaking open the clouds, I took my camera and crafted a picture before going to work.
Not a groundbreaking picture, but good enough to build my energy for the long hours of hospital work.
I worked till the sun set behind the hills next day. I didn't sleep too much in the hospital last night. Even so, I'd kept my sense of humour, stayed clear about my mind, and then took another nice picture of the dusk after work tonight.
Okay. Why am I still awake after these long hours of work? To me, the most important thing is to avoid the pitfall of poached frog. When we drop a frog into boiling water, it will instinctively jump out. And if you place a frog in a pot of cool water and increase the temperature slowly, the frog can't - and, in fact, is not supposed to - notice. All this boiling goes on little by little, most of the time without the frog even being aware that it's sitting in hotter and hotter water, until it got burned and burnout.
The moral of the boiling frog seems all too clear: Look out for the slowly boiling water that indicates we've lost touch with our real self and lost the fun at work.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Chain
If you find that your friends start a number of upbeat feeds on the social network Facebook, and that your mood and performance soar along their suggestion, it is probably more than coincidence. I didn't know where to start, but I did know that emotional contagion has been recently demonstrated by a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In The New Leaders, Daniel Goleman quotes the example of circulatory system being a closed-loop system which is self-regulating because "what's happening in the circulatory system of others around us does not impact our own system." On the other hand, an open-loop system depends largely on external sources to manage itself. Our limbic system is one good example.
I found out more about emotional contagion after a child died in our hospital last month. Well. I do not know if the eight-year-old boy really died of a contagious disease. Everyone talks about the unfortunate child, but nobody knows the exact story. I spoke to the daddy of the child today. Three more doctors joined in, and we began to talk about our educated guess, like a trial lawyer making a case to the jury, explaining various aspects of this difficult case, some of which, in my desire to protect the privacy, I did not put down here. Of course, there is always more we can do, and I reminded myself that we should spend time listening to the story of the daddy.
And then the father told us more: how badly he missed his son who fell sick after the Father's Day, the flickering moment he thought about going to heaven to look after his son, and why he worried his wife could collapse by the time new school term starts in September (when there won't be chance to wake up their kid for school).
At first I looked calm and listened.
Then I started to feel a knot in my stomach.
And teardrops.
In The New Leaders, Daniel Goleman quotes the example of circulatory system being a closed-loop system which is self-regulating because "what's happening in the circulatory system of others around us does not impact our own system." On the other hand, an open-loop system depends largely on external sources to manage itself. Our limbic system is one good example.
I found out more about emotional contagion after a child died in our hospital last month. Well. I do not know if the eight-year-old boy really died of a contagious disease. Everyone talks about the unfortunate child, but nobody knows the exact story. I spoke to the daddy of the child today. Three more doctors joined in, and we began to talk about our educated guess, like a trial lawyer making a case to the jury, explaining various aspects of this difficult case, some of which, in my desire to protect the privacy, I did not put down here. Of course, there is always more we can do, and I reminded myself that we should spend time listening to the story of the daddy.
And then the father told us more: how badly he missed his son who fell sick after the Father's Day, the flickering moment he thought about going to heaven to look after his son, and why he worried his wife could collapse by the time new school term starts in September (when there won't be chance to wake up their kid for school).
At first I looked calm and listened.
Then I started to feel a knot in my stomach.
And teardrops.
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