Language

When it comes to the how of English language, there is a genuine thrill of discovering and decoding kids' lingua franca.

Before my daughter entered kindergarten, she coined words like "mouses." With time, she made fewer grammatical mistakes and observed new rules from her teachers. One of the classic clues that she was making (some) progress comes from her question: "Daddy, who is the beautifulest princess?"

Remember, my daughter goes to international school, and has been exposed to a rich verbal environment full of native English-speaking teachers. Many a time her spoken English is better than me. Much better. In time, my little one learns English faster than I can imagine.

Just a few days ago the two of us watched a drama adapted from the book Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. That's one of her favorite books. We love to replay the story as if on stage, "I am not a stick. I'm a Stickman, can't you see?"

"Oh, well," my daughter added, "you're Miss Stick Man, daddy."

"Excuse me. Why do you call me Miss Stick Man?"

"Hey, 'cause you're silly and make lots of mistakes. You're Mistake Man."

Buddies

For most parents, the choice of travel destination matters a lot.

It is not really that important. The real question is find the right playmates.

My daughter is one of the fortunate girls who has good friend's family whose company we enjoy. We traveled to Taiwan this week, and went with the family of Jasmine's best friend met in kindergarten. That's the best part of our trip.

Affectionately called the twins, the two girls look alike, smile alike, play alike, and talk alike. Almost the same as the Latina girl Dora and her companion Boots. When we announced that we're traveling together, my daughter's "wow" showed me that it's much more important to load the "luggage" with the close friend than packing anything else.

A huge difference.

And a guarantee to do away with the spell of "Are we there yet?"

Sandwich

To watch Salma and Lily, one from Jordan and another from the United States, play at school is to witness children's friendship in action.

These two girls appear in the fascinating story book The Sandwich Swap. (There's even a YouTube version with the same title of the book.) They're close to each other like a pair of gloves. Or at least sort of. They spent a lot of time together at school, played on the swings together, drew pictures together, jumped ropes together, ate their lunches together. In many ways, they are pretty alike, except the color of hair: Salma's is black and Lily's blonde.

Nobody could have predicted the day when Salma and Lily shouted at each other.

Why did they shout?

The weird sandwich.

This is their cultural conflict - what to think of the foreign (Middle East) hummus and pita, and what to keep for herself (peanut butter and jelly sandwich). Treading that line, keeping one's culture in mind, and accepting other's cookery, is what we call tolerance. And it isn't a trait we're born with. Lily didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to accept her friend's hummus sandwich.

"Your sandwich looks kind of yucky,"

It could have been Lily's slip of the tongue, but seemed to be bad enough to set up a tsunami of dirty words. Ewwww, yuck, gross, garlic breath, bad smell, weird, you name it - the surefire ways to start World War III. At the height of the War, the two girls made rude insults that had nothing to do with peanut butter or hummus. They just yelled. In effect, it insults, it intrudes, it intimidates. The insults can hurt, and are shockingly mean.

Although I was unaware of it when I borrowed this book from the public library, my daughter had just made the same mistake as Lily. I then told her the story of curse words that hurt the best friend.

She promised she would not do it again, and I tried not to think about the last time I promised this myself.

Blessed

Caring for a sick child, and what's the first thing you want to do?

Jasmine started to throw up for quite a few times last night. My wife had a quick examination of her tummy and didn't find anything serious. Or, to be strictly accurate, not that serious for a doctor. I dare say there won't be something called minor ailment for all parents. Ah well, still, there isn't much we can do except waiting for the virus to go away.

She looked less tired today but didn't want to eat. On our way to the music class later this afternoon, my daughter and I were rapt in conversation when I read her a story. She interrupted me, toward the end of our train ride. "Daddy," she said. "I have to vomit."

Without thinking, I handed my daughter a bag.

She paused, then looked at me. "Maybe I can hold for a while ... and try not throwing up."

I glanced at my daughter, and then at the bag I was holding. Oh, I'd given her a duffel bag with her name on it. That would have ruined the nice bag. Which is what my daughter didn't want to do.

I looked around and found another plastic bag for her. She was by now feeling better. I put the plastic bag away, sat closer to her, leaned over and hugged her.

There was a momentary silence. "Dad," my daughter looked at me and whispered, "I'm afraid I could give you my germs."

Then I realised my daughter has grown up a lot.

Cops

Over the course of seeing patients for many years, I've referred some of them to have their bodies cut open for further examination even after their cardiac monitor tracing went completely flat. It's a detailed process of cutting and digging into each and every organ of a dead body. Not all patients have to undergo such critical examination. The medical term for this process, autopsy, is the last thing we want to hear after losing a beloved family member.

It seems an odd thing - it strikes me now as it did then - that I read about a black teenager's autopsies in The New York Times two months ago. Autopsies, not autopsy. I mean it. The 18-year-old Michael Brown, as it turned out, had gone through no fewer than three autopsies. The story of three autopsies for a dead body is unsettling.

Wait. It's even more unsettling when you read on: Michael Brown was shot at least six times, and all bullets were fired into his front. He died in a storm of bullets from a police officer. Most people believed Michael was innocent. In any case Michael was unarmed when he was killed by a white policeman.

The public uproar and outcry are best summed up in the #handsupdontshoot hashtag on Twitter, not to mention the tension during the nine nights of protests. Sure enough, requests for three autopsies (one for the locals, one for the feds, and Dr. Baden on behalf of the family) spoke volumes of disapproval and untrust. Dr. Baden, in case you don't know, reviewed the autopsies of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Two months after reading this story in St Louis, I witnessed how armor-clad cops treated the law-abiding protesters with tear gas and pepper spray in our city. Quite similar really, except that we're yellow, and not black.

What wrong did Michael and the local demonstrators do? Why did Michael deserve six bullets and why did Hong Kong protesters deserve the volleys of noxious chemicals? You tell me!

Literacy

Around two years ago, I wrote about reading the classic picture book Good Night, Gorilla to my daughter. I knew I was just getting started: most kids younger than five can't figure out the written words.

"Don't push," I told myself. "Let her look at the pictures and come back to the words at a future time."

Now that my daughter is approaching five, her school has been celebrating the literacy week. What's that about? Bring a book to school, trade a book with classmates, spend money on books at the school book fair, dress up as the favorite book character. Read what you love and love what you read. This, I came to think, is the essence of literacy week.

Soon after the literacy week, my daughter came home and talked about the classic bear book by Eric Carle. This is the first time I heard about Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? I didn't pay much attention until we found another book by Eric Carle at the public library. She then told me more about the bear book, and it seemed to me that my daughter really loves the book.

My wife decided to buy her the book this weekend. Little did we know that she can read most of the sentences in the book. On the way home, she kept reading it and couldn't take her eyes off the pages.

This intrigued us. Does she really recognise the words? Or, does she simply remember the rhymes? Or both? We didn't check. As long as she loves reading, it's a good start.