Log

If you happen to be a fan of the social media Goodreads, as I do, you are likely to become familiar with the Year in Books, a personalized infographic to showcase your reading journey near the end of each December.

In this light, the digital platform is similar to those fitness tracker apps that allow runners to log mileage. Readers keep record too, but check the log not so frequently. Yes, at most once a year. I read because I enjoy the experience of reading: the "mileage" of books finished is much less important than the mileage of running or pace. Too many of us remember too well our obsession with the numbers on our fitness trackers like Runkeeper apps or Garmin device.

One day, perhaps, I will learn to love running more than those numbers on my Runkeeper apps. As much as I enjoy reading.

Presence

Picture the scene: you're receiving a silver award at the Olympics medal ceremony. Think of the flashlight from one camera after another, and you might picture yourself smiling. But it would be interesting to take a peek (not more) at the bronze medalist on the other side of the podium. Do you know his smile is much happier than yours?

Psychologists, after going through video footage of the previous Olympics winners, are now rock-solid certain that the bronze medalists are way more happier than the silver winners. It is because of counterfactual thinking: we tend to compare our objective achievements to what "might have been." The silver medalist tends to focus on the difference between winning gold and the silver. The bronze winner, on the other hand, would focus on almost not winning a medal at all. In this way, bronze medalists' reference point of "At least I got a medal" makes them feel happier.

Not convinced? Consider yourself missing a flight by five minutes and then missing it after late arrival at the airport by two hours. Which of them is going to make you feel more miserable? Five minutes, of course. You wish to kick yourself hard for that mistake.

I don't just read the behavioral scientist research, I experienced it. And I didn't just experience it, I overcame the thinking. That happened after my first 10 km running race this week, when I took part in the advanced (oh yes, that refers to the age criteria, not the skill) category. I sensed an heavier-than-usual panting sound during the race as I got used to waves of runners passing me by. The instinctive human response to being passed is to accelerate as quickly as possible: the faster my competitors, the greater the speed I gathered. I unlocked my best personal record of finishing 10 km - if you're curious - within 46 minutes. This is, interestingly, a similar story to that of missing flight when I realized that my position is the tenth, just one short of the top nine runners who receive trophies.

"Oh, I could have won a trophy" ran through my head for a few times. And then, it hit me: I should get to yes to myself and learn to live for experiences rather than outcomes. The precious things in life are moments: the experience itself, not the afterglow; the doing, not the having done.

Getting to Yes

When is it okay not to wear mask in the outpatient clinic and why? If anything, my quick answer would be to show patients our smile. And face, too.

One of the embarrassing moments is when a patient entered my room this afternoon, studied me for a while and leaned toward me saying, "Doctor, you look haggard. And losing quite a bit of weight."

I went on to explain my indulgence with running lately, and I laughed it off.

Later in the same clinic session, a second patient recounted to me how I looked dog-tired and kaput.

"Why so?" I asked, my curiosity piqued. Isn't that odd? Why, I asked myself, would more than one patient tell me the same thing within the same afternoon? There must be a lot of truth in my patients' observation.

Before the next patient came in, I rose from my chair and took a walk to the bathroom. Yup, a bathroom visit is more or less the concept of going to the balcony. That comes from the groundbreaking book Getting to Yes by William Ury: If life is a stage and we are all actors on that stage, then balcony is the only place from which we can see the entire play unfolding with greater clarity.

Which brings me to the prequel to the classic, Getting to Yes with Yourself, my recent fascinating read. To apply what I've learned from William Ury, I put myself in my shoes and listened empathetically to my story. Little by little, it dawned on me that I had been provoked by several emotion-charged e-mails and telephone call. I could have got bogged down by the conflicts, without noticing my clenched jaw, face in knots and cortisol swooshing through my bloodstream. With the me-search bit by bit in the metaphorical balcony, I had a chance to talk myself out of the anger. As I listened to myself, I noticed the need to get past the blame game and stop myself from hatred. I wanted to be free and so I let it go.

Forgiving those impolite and sour conversations doesn't mean condoning what they did. The key is to free myself from their weight. I have come to realize the choice to say yes to life, shape my life, and be myself after reading William Ury's book. The truth is that, it's our birthright, a frame of mind to feel less dependent on others to satisfy our needs for happiness. I can choose how I define those words, no matter how bad, and move on.

As taught by William Ury, I may not have the power to change the challenging experiences, but I do have the power to change the impact factor I assign to them.

By getting to yes with myself, I wish I can reclaim my life. I see how I can take a deep breath and get out of a dark tunnel, shaking off the dog poo I happened to have stepped on.

Give

I don't think that there can be a busier time to buy gifts than Christmas. I'm not sure about your best gift this Christmas, but I'm pretty certain that mine is Adam Grant's book Give and Take.

After going through the first two chapters of the book I borrowed from public library, I knew I should buy one as a gift for the Christmas party, and one for myself. From there, I started to learn about takers (who like to get more than they give), givers (who prefer to give more than they get) and matchers (who strive to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting).

Me, I've always been a giver. Too much of a giver some might say. There are often times when the social style of giver jeopardizes a leader's reputation. Such fear of being judged as a wimp, believe it or not, can push us to act like a taker, or at least a matcher.

Not until I've learned more about the meaning of a giver from Adam Grant. One of the best examples comes from a nationwide cohort of Belgian medical students. At first glance, students with the lowest grades had unusually high scores on giver statements like "I love to help others." Wait. Before we conclude that givers are more likely to land at the bottom of the success ladder, a closer look at the data shows that it was only the first year of medical school when givers underperformed.

By the sixth year, the givers had much better grades than their peers.

By the seventh year, when the givers became doctors, they had climbed even higher and ahead.

Phew!

Dad Dates

It's true. Vice president should try to attend every council meeting. And yet I skipped a meeting tonight and I am glad I did. Oh, yes. Yes, I did that because I wanted to finish work slightly early to celebrate my daughter's birthday at the Disney theme park. I knew without a shadow of doubt that I should not use work as an excuse for not spending evening with my eight-year-old Jasmine.

We didn't stay at the park for long. After all, she has usual school day, and I long clinic day. But there is a magic about those two hours or so - the special times that we had together. In my experience, one of the simplest and yet most powerful ways for fathers to connect to their children is a piggyback ride. And what better way to navigate around the crowded park and enjoy the firework show?

You must, if you're a daddy, and especially if you have a lovely daughter, try this piggyback experience. How could you not?

Interview

When I first broached the subject of judging candidates by their honesty during job interview, I insisted that it's downright important. The thought of hiring a liar feels too unsettling. But I changed my mind when I was shown the results of a psychology experiment at the University of Massachusetts. The candidate I met recently is certainly not alone in being economical in truth.

During that eye-opening study, psychologists led a group of job applicants to believe that they were interviewing for the position of tutoring high school students. At the end of the experiment, the researchers sheepishly confessed that there was actually no such job position, and then asked the participants to watch a recording of their interviews. "We're sorry to have misled you," the researchers continued with debriefing. "Could you please identify every instance in which you deliberately misled the interviewer too?"

Turns out that four out of every five job hunters bent the truth, or that they each did so, on average, more than twice.

If those results weren't bad enough, add to it the fact that interviewers were seldom good at identifying liars. In many cases, seasoned interviewers are no better than novices.

The lesson? We should emphasize less with job interview. Unless, of course, we're recruiting the top-notch liar.

Gorilla

I had to have a giggle. It just seemed so silly. I read quips and quotes from a book Literary Wit & Wisdom. One of the collections reminds us the eerie fun of teaching poem: I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems; it's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

You thought I was going to teach you in the same manner? No way. Don't ask me why, but the sappiest, most inspirational kind of poem can come from kids. Really, they do. Here is one poem written by my daughter recently:

Would you eat a gorilla or a lion?
I would eat a lion
I suppose it’s very healthy
And also full of iron
A lion would be tasty
As you are for the lion
But if the lion ate you
You would end up cryin'
I would eat a gorilla
Suppose it’s very sweet
Sweet like my best friend Salena
Salena’s sweet like a gorilla 
Which swings from a chandelier
Would you eat a ...
Gorilla or Salena
A lion or some iron
A cryin’ lion or
A chandelier?

Change

Shying away from change is common, even though changes - resulted from a change of job, a friend moving away, or kids moving out - are all a part of life.

My daughter struggled with a small change last night when my wife rushed to hospital where her patient needed an emergency operation. I was glad to have gone home early. Who would my daughter have played with if I’d worked late in the hospital too? No matter how much we enjoyed the Battleship guessing game and drawing after dinner, my daughter felt it's never the same without mummy. The longer she waited, the more she could not stop thinking about mum. Going to bed without mum around means a big change, that was clear. I felt a twinge of sympathy for my daughter. Pillow talk with mum has become such a habit for Jasmine that she found herself uneasy near bedtime.

"How about a bedtime story, dad?" she said as the clock struck twelve.

I rolled my eyes, and in the end, nodded. I wasn't sure what she really wanted. Is it my story or another fifteen minutes to see if mum would return home before turning off the light?

I chose the library book Through the Gate. This picture book turned out to be a good pick. Yes, it's the story of change. Sally Fawcett takes us deep into the darkest corner where a little girl disliked the change of moving house. We found that little girl mooching to school, mooching home, mooching all week long. We were unsettled by her staring at her "new" house with old drooping root, peeling paint, and cracks everywhere. We watched how she coped with changes, step by step, till she noticed a new smile, a new classmate, and then a new look of her house. And a new world of opportunity.

A new opportunity for me to teach my daughter to face changes too.

Sabbatical

Imagine a bespectacled doctor checking his in-box on the cell phone along the hospital corridor during peak hour. With his eyes glued to the screen and fingers busy on the telephone keypad, he became inordinately distracted when he almost bumped into a gurney. And it's actually even worse than that. Those email replies in the middle of busy traffic are often regretted.

Obviously I am one of those addicted to checking emails during a lunch conversation, attending a meeting, commuting, and even between seeing patients in an outpatient clinic. Average phone checking per day is more than two hundred times a day for an average adult. That's right. You read that correctly. More than two hundred times. Perhaps more so for me after my recent change in job description. I could have been honked more than hundred times if our hospital gurney is equipped with a horn.

All that said, I have made efforts to help myself unplugged now and then. Running is one of the perfect ways to do so. Running is a beautiful - and beautifully simple - way of taking Internet Sabbath or digital detox. Simply lace up a pair of shoes and my instincts will kick in, telling me not to check the phone lest running into holes, lampposts, trees, or even dog poo.

Writing

As a greedy reader, I seldom finish one book before opening another one. My recent reading list include The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace and 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success.

When I turn the pages of these two books, I keep writing down the lessons I have drawn from them.

Keeping a journal and reflecting my daily experiences, for as little as 5 minutes a day, make me a clearer thinker. Time is not on my side lately. This fall, I am appointed the head of my department. Inevitably, I find it difficult to let go of the mental clutter that problems are everywhere. I can't control when our medical wards become flooded. I can't even quite grasp the email messages that are catapulting at me one after another. But I know I can list all my worries and questions on a piece of paper. As it turns out, writing down an optimistic but reasonable goal is only the first step; the next one is to share that with a colleague. This makes it harder for me to wimp out.

Which is why it's helpful to write and share. And that, in fact, includes writing this blog.

Reckless

I had to have a giggle. It just seemed so silly. I met a competitor during one of my recent evening runs, and we ended up racing like a pair of panting dogs.

Running is supposed to be a beautiful - and beautifully simple - sport in the first place. That is, unless we forget. You might want to listen to the story how I sometimes forget.

I whizzed past a young guy that evening. Little did I know that I was sparking a battle. And that is ... yep, you guessed it: he got annoyed and quickly sped up and overtook me. At full throttle. As that guy ran in stride, he kept turning his head back to make sure I was falling behind.

I cringed, waiting for myself to catch my breath. Even if it would have made me sound like a jerk, I ramped up my accelerator and passed him without a polite "Excuse me." Fact is, politeness just doesn't exist when two vicious dogs feel being threatened and challenged. We nearly barked. Seriously. Oh, we would have barked at each other if not because of running out of breath. That's when that rival started to run ahead of me, and I was keeping my pace good enough to be a few steps behind. But not too far behind.

The idea is simple: I could keep good track of how much oxygen (or lack thereof) my competitor got in his tank (and mine, too). Speaking of which, I reminded myself the advantageous position to pierce him with a long-handled barbeque fork.

What a dumb race.

Still, reckless as this example is, it's fun to have such silly idea once in a while. Like me, you'll be amazed at how much you beat your last personal record (and advertise that record to show off in the next few days). Mine is finishing 8.14 km with a pace of 4.4 minutes per kilo that evening, in case you were wondering. Which is cool.

Present

We were once travelling to Malaysia with our thirteen-something-month daughter when the end of our trip brought her tears. That's grief reaction. Think about when you last spent a week's vacation aboard and what you would feel at the end of that pleasant week.

I do not know of anyone (child or grown-up) who does not long for a longer journey near the end. I do not know of any human creature who does not dream of never-ending itinerary without the need to go back to school or work.

The reality is we never seem to get all the hours of break we need or we wish.

This is why we teach our daughter to live in the present. “Remember to enjoy every minute on the road,” I told Jasmine when she asked about the time we will fly back during our recent Taiwan trip. “Dance the way Cinderella does without worrying about your glass slipper. Glass slippers will take care of themselves.”

Which is the entire point of travel.

Or should be.

Gacha

Hands up if you can’t answer the question what the heck “gachapon” refers to.

Chances are you will.

Just to refresh your declining memories (or maybe that's just mine), gacha is the onomatopoeia for the sound of the capsule toys falling from a vending machine, also named gachapon. Remember that familiar sound gacha, in the not too distant past, when you made a clockwise twist after inserting a coin into a machine? The greatest attraction is the suspense after the sound of “gacha.”

You’ll never know what you’re going to get until you crack open the plastic capsule, even though it’s part of a defined set of toys like Pokémon. We were brought back to the memories of gachapon during our Taiwan trip when my daughter lost a gacha toy. That’s a treasured rabbit toy of hers. My wife and I were sure my daughter won’t forget about the incident. She never did. To help her make sense of grief and the loss of a loved one, we decided to coax her into exploring new opportunities. Gachapons aren’t as ubiquitous in Taiwan as in Japan, but we were able to locate a handful of gachapon shops for Jasmine to try her luck on.

Don't get me wrong - I was not trying to get back the same rabbit toy and she knew she won’t. We simply let her experience one gacha after another. One surprise after another. With a smile on her face, she learned to give thanks for each gacha, and to expect the unexpected.

Nothing expensive. Nothing complicated. But completely fun.

Satiety

Before my Taiwan trip, I borrowed Julia Donaldson’s book Princess Mirror-Belle, one of my daughter’s favourite novels. On the way to airport, she couldn’t resist to let Julia Donaldson regale her with the exciting adventure of a princess with a mirror image.

Whenever this happened, I wondered if she would finish the book even before our trip began. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve failed the temptation and eaten all snacks before departure during your school outing. I knew exactly what I should do: I’d better load my luggage with a book shelf.

I don’t think there is a more perfect happiness to be found in life than this state, the promise of endless books on the road.

That’s never-gonna-be-hungry bookworm at play, unmistakably.

Race

I'm officially 47 today.

Instead of joining the workaholic rat race, I decided to take a day off on my birthday.

A break.

That's a good reminder to stop frantically adding bullet points to my bio and feathers to my cap. We've been working hard to achieve more and more, moving ahead to get new posts. Sounds too much, right? I pride myself on spending time to watch animated television sitcom Mr. Bean with my daughter yesterday, followed by reading few stories of Horrid Henry together before bedtime.

In fact, I'm lucky to find my daughter's school Beach Day falling on my birthday. Thus more than one good reason to take leave. The sun must have been too excited to celebrate my birthday, and we couldn't stay in the beach for the whole day without being overcooked. We returned home in late afternoon and suddenly it dawned on me that I still had time to exercise. I ended up having an evening run. My favorite part of the run isn't the pace. It's that for the first time I needed two numerals instead of one to log how many kilometres I've run.

But wait, isn't that another rat race? Yes and no. I'm not racing against anyone but myself. But at some level, every runner except the one in the lead is chasing someone.

Trots

What's harder to catch the faster you run?

This is a joke question from my daughter, and I'm tempted to give you the answer. But I won't. Instead, I give you another question: What is harder to hold the faster you run? Did I hear someone shouting the answer "Breath"?

No matter how confident you are about your answer, my personal experience today yields an even better answer: the bowel. Try as you may, it's a lot harder than you can imagine when you're trying to fight back the call of nature during your workout.

This morning, I came across an old article on runner's trots that appeared in JAMA almost 40 years ago, and then happened to get abdominal cramps shortly after my run tonight. Did I know the magic to beat a bout of diarrhea? Of course not. But I had a sneaking suspicion that running faster was a recipe for disaster. It was that simple - and that complicated. The only solution was to find the public toilet as soon as possible, that much was plain. You yearned to be quick but your guts told you not to run. Jeez, I paused my timer reluctantly and ambled to the nearest toilet.

But then, before I got a chance to celebrate my stopping a running accident, I found myself being locked inside a public toilet (after the clock struck eleven). Translation: spending a smelly night in the toilet until someone comes to open the lock and rescue me. Ugh. So, as I tried to take solace in the fact that my trousers weren't soiled, I waited. And waited. Until another runner happened to see me behind the bar, and grabbed a park warden to open the toilet entrance door for me.

If you fancy a joke to tell your daughter, my story will be a good one. At least my daughter nearly died laughing at mine when I got home finally.

Junie B. Jones

Last night I was at the hospital.

Then, after long hours of working, I brought home few library books. That's one of the best gifts for my daughter. Every time I borrow Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones books, Jasmine can't wait to finish the story on the same night. I knew pretty well that there was no exception today, when I borrowed Jingle Bells, Batman Smells! from the same series.

Jasmine's eyes remained glued to the Junie B. story when my wife tried to show her the new outfit she bought. My dear wife, please don't read the next paragraph.

Okay. Now that she's not reading, I can let you know my wife was jealous.

My daughter continued to read when we started dinner. One chapter after another.

That's the only time we won't mind when my daughter missed her dinner.

Penguin

Lately, my daughter has been learning about the art of learning and her teacher asked her to understand how each person has different preference to learn.

She came home and interviewed me last night, throwing me questions like something I've done that I am most proud of.

"Hmmm, I would say start learning to run at the age of 46," I told my daughter and pondered what else can be better than this answer.

I soon realized that giving my daughter such answer is akin to telling teacher her daddy was caught smoking pot. "Daddy, another answer please. Isn't it too embarrassing to tell Mr. Yiu your age?"

I didn't push and respected her feeling, of course. But what if I'm really serious to elaborate on my first answer?  The best justification would then be showing my daughter the book I've been reading: An Accidental Athlete. That's a witty memoir of John Bingham, known as "The Penguin" for beginning to run at age 43, overweight, saddled with a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoking habit, and then completing over 45 marathons. When you start running after decidedly middle-age, as what the Penguin did, it's easy to forget that while the activity is brand-new, your body isn't. In the end, though, it's all a matter of wit and grit.

The Penguin has true grit. That's what I've learned, and continue to learn, from him.

Moments

We have had one of the best family summer vacations. Immediately after the long-haul journey in Europe, our daughter will start her fourth-year school the next day.

Saying goodbye to our trip inevitably means tear drops for Jasmine, whereas the first day of school gives her much excitement in buying eraser and packing the school bag.

I was reading the last chapter of John O'Leary's On Fire on the plane when Jasmine wept over the end of our trip. John O'Leary talked about the never-ending enthusiasm of kids who are fired up for their first day of school, first train ride, first dance, first time on a plane. They are totally in that moment, beaming at every landmark they pass, widening their eyes at every tunnel. Sadly, this is not the case for adults, whose enthusiasm saps out. And boredom seeps in.

I nodded when I saw the way to learn from children to live every day fully alive and fully engaged.

Ageless

A big part of preparing the family travel is packing our bags. We aren't going bush; we are going to Germany and Switzerland. That's why we are supposed to keep it simple, or buy much of what we need at our destination.

The bulkiest items ended up to be my daughter's reading materials. Not out of boredom or ritual, but we've learned that our daughter loves reading, and when she does, we try to nurture her habit.

We found ourselves bringing thirty-something books to Europe. Most of the books - but not all - are paperback editions. Good enough to build a reading corner, if not a library.

We're not advocating to replace the smart phone screen completely by paper - not now, not ever; it is not going to work, believe me. My daughter also stares into screens like zombies, and more so when her friend is teaching her new video games on the road.

But what I mean is that no matter how entertaining the digital world can be, no matter how quick the technology is changing the kids' way of learning, my daughter remains loyal to her favourite book series. She has finished quite a few story books during our trip. I expect you want examples? Of course you do. Handful of them Junie B. Jones books, few more stories of Princess Mirror-Belle by Julia Donaldson, plus novels of Beezus and Ramona. In case you haven’t realized how long the joy of reading can last, let me tell you the Ramona book series were first published in 1955.

Newbie

Running during family vacation, too naff? Not always.

We runners pride ourselves on calling the activity itself an addiction, and rightly so. Which is exactly why I find it somewhat difficult to balance with the special time with my loved ones.

This summer, our family are having vacation in Germany and Switzerland, easily the most charming lands straight out of a picture book. Running on vacation should not take a bite out of the precious hours during this irresistible trip, I hear that little voice in the back of my head.

But luckily, things are easy to get around. And fast. I prepared my running clothes before bed and then got up really early next day. Off I go for running first thing in the morning. I didn't even have to pack my running shoes for my trip; I run with my usual footwear. Another advantage of being a newbie is the short running distance. I used to head back after 5 km. That's safe enough before I get lost in a foreign country - in case my GPS gets hiccups.

Novelty

When I read about the Diffusion of Innovations theory this week, I knew very well where I've been falling across that bell curve - far far on the right side. Imagine five segments of our population: the first 2.5 percent with innovation ad infinitum on the left of the curve, followed by the next 13.5 percent being early adopters, and then early majority.

The last two chunks, the right-side-of-the-curve, refer to the late majority and laggards. That's me.

Laggards are those who, like me, keep iPhone 4 when others are buying iPhone 7. I'm used to borrow paperback books before packing for a vacation, no matter how many of you have already switched to Kindle. I wrote the travel plan using Microsoft Word file, and then was taken aback by the Sygic Travel apps recommended by a very good friend of mine. And it took me quite a while before I followed my friends' advice to try those smart bicycles that can be unlocked and rented with a swipe at my phone.

The best lesson of the week for me, however, isn't the uber-practical rent-a-bike app. It's the story of entrepreneur Ron Bruder at a crosswalk with his two daughters. They were waiting for the traffic light to change. Ron pointed to the red glow of the "Do Not Walk" signal and asked the young girls what they thought about the meaning of that sign.

"It means we have to stand here," his daughters replied. They were certain. Or so they thought.

"Are you sure?" he asked rhetorically. "How do you know it's not telling us to run?"

Summer Camp

The first step for kids to enjoy summer camp is to stay calm and be in control.

I remember my daughter's first outdoor summer camp few years ago, back when separating from parents was a real struggle. I was close enough to a brutal dad sending his girl to the Survivor without her agreeing. I tried to put myself in her (then) five-year-old shoes and imagine how she must have felt. And that's not the worst part. To add to the frustration, her teammates seemed not able to get along with a kid who cried.

Fast forward to this year. We signed her up for a summer camp at the Ocean Park. As it happens this time, she is head over heels for this adventure. We knew we don't need to worry on the first day, when she returned home and told us every bit of her learning. Things are so different. She never gets bored, and keeps telling us stories like a National Geographic reporter. I still don't know her recipe for preparing biscuits for pandas, but I get to tell the difference between a seal and a sea lion.

It is a great experience for my daughter, but I didn't know how much she loves it until the last day of the camp. On our way home, she told us she was beginning to miss the camp, so much so that she asked, "Mum and dad, I miss it and want to cry. Can I?" She made a sob. Then another. A serious one.

"Yes, of course, you may cry. Remember, it's your emotion." So there we go, if nothing else, parental empathy. 

Va-va-voom

I'd never described myself as a sportsman in any sense. To tell the truth, I seldom do exercise (if you don't count rushing between seeing patients in hospital). One of my favorite activities when my wife and daughter go swimming on Sunday, for example, is poolside reading.

I can't believe I would change my mind and start running. That was one month ago. By now I've got more than 100-odd kilometres of mileage. The feeling of running outside, sun on the face, sweat in my hair, is second to none. Sweat is the sign of a good run. The more I sweat, the more my spirits are revved up. It's no exaggeration to call sweating my baptism to running.

Which brings me to the fascinating way of healing the soul by running. I'm really not sure how it does it. You will simply be delighting in how wet you're. Yes, running outdoors, curious as it may seem, with sweating truly does the job of healing.

Scrabble

How many parents can honestly say that they loathe at summer vacation homework?

Why, I wonder, should we ask students to bring home a stack of homework at the end of school year? To my relief, my daughter doesn't have to. The important thing in summer is not so much to pack students with mountains of homework, as to discover new ways of learning.

As kids, they want and need us to bring them new ideas. My daughter spent the whole night playing Scrabble with me yesterday. Yes, that's real fun.

First things first: we don't have ironclad Scrabble rules. I won't object to using the name of Moana movie characters. Does tallying the scores teach numeracy? You bet they do. Children learn to maximize scores using the triple word or triple letter points. The most effective way of teaching by Scrabble I've ever seen is adding a D in front of ANGER so that the word spells DANGER. Alas, that's a good lesson to remember anger is just one letter short of danger.

Hats

How many hats can we juggle at the same time? It's a question that intrigues many of us.

One at a time.

That's what I've been learning from Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. On this point, I concede that I'd been multitasking a lot. I guess it's fine as long as I switch my hats one by one. Or chapter by chapter. And it's true that I like to embark on several books before finishing each one.

In the middle of Six Thinking Hats, I picked up another book UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. That's a parenting book with sage advice on raising empathetic kids. One of the crucial steps is to develop reading habits. It doesn't matter if it's a picture book or text-heavier chapter book. Stories or literary fiction is all that matters. The more literary fiction we read, the more we feel with the characters, the more we mirror their actions, and the more we stretch our "empathy muscles." Once I finished the chapter on Reading to Cultivate Empathy, I could practically hear my synapses fritzing and sparking. Hmm, did anyone of you long to start a fiction? I know mine did.

That's why I'm now reading Elizabeth Strout's Anything Is Possible, before finishing Six Thinking Hats and UnSelfie.

Veterans

One hot Sunday morning this summer, I picked up my casual footwear and started running. It seemed like a nondescript day. But this kick-started a healthy habit. Right away, running feels like the next right thing. I ran again the next day, and then the next, and the next after that. Ballpark figures showed that I've run for more than 15 kilos during my first week.

It was a hockey stick moment. Even more so for a bookworm without exercises for years.

Go read any book on distance running, and you'll notice that runners starting after age 40 are being referred to be veteran runners. I'm obviously qualified for that title.

But what, anyway, is old?

I am not even eligible to join the Fifty-Plus Runner Association. Plus, a review published two months ago in Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases suggested that an hour of running statistically adds seven hours to our life expectancy. My friend, let me keep my running log, and sooner or later, I'll be younger than you.

Superdad

Father's Day is just around the corner.

The best celebration is my daughter's annual school event: Father's Day Challenge. A very special day. We dads can't go to children's school that often. That is a brilliant idea to bring daddies to have a challenging game with kids at school. Every time I joined this event I registered a nice jot of energy. Year after year after year, I kept my promise to join my daughter at school, feeling uplifted.

That also reminds me of a story book Superdad's Day Off.

The story of Superdad goes like this: the greatest superhero dad on the planet works six days a week. He saves the world from disasters and bad guys. Friday is his day off and he always spends it with his kid. By no means do I compare myself with superhero. It just so happens that Father's Day Challenge is scheduled on Friday every year. My Friday's off for this event, it turned out, has been often eventful. One year ago, that's a 19-year-old patient of mine with lung clogged up by blood clots. Alas, I diagnosed a serious cancer, Burkitt lymphoma, in my patient today when it's my Friday half day off to join Father's Day Challenge. Yes, a challenge. It is.

Wisdom

One day, parenting expert Dr. James Dobson asked his radio listeners to call and record a message for their dads. He was unsure what would happen. Would they call? What would they say?

Here's what he found. More than six hundred listeners participated, but absolutely nobody - I mean, absolutely no one caller - focused on what their daddies did professionally. None of them said, "Thanks, Dad, for earning a lot of money" or "Thanks for the big house you provided for us." Instead, caller after caller said, "Thanks, Dad, for loving me and for being there for me."

The advice from his book Dads & Daughters is crystal clear to me: reserving time for daughter ranks at the top of every dad's job description.

On and Off

If you ask a lot of people the last thing they want near five o'clock on Friday afternoon, they say, "Oh, a new job on top of unfinished work."

Yes, yes, I understand how it gets our dander up because I had that experience this Friday. I didn't know if I should carry on working late, after a whole week's busy hurly burly. "Wouldn't it be better to finish my presentation slides for the annual conference this Sunday?"

Well, I know you will say yes even if I don't.

This is what I decided: Deal with the urgent and important task. Period. I spent more than an hour drafting a reply to the media enquiry, and then shut down my office computer.

No matter how busy my work is, I have to make time. I'd promised my wife and daughter to have home cinema time that evening. Yep, watching Mr. Bean is not urgent, but more important than my PowerPoint slides.

Connected

Love it or hate it, our child has her own definition of "parent-child connectedness." And if we don't accept that, nothing else would have worked either. Trust me.

When I took my wife and daughter for a boat trip followed by fine dining last Sunday - that's my wife's birthday - I thought it's quality time. To those who arrive at such a conclusion, I sound a cautionary note. My daughter rolled her eyes, "Mum, when can we play together?"

I rolled my eyes then too, with a slack-jawed expression of shock. "Hey, aren't we playing together the whole day?" Don't roll your eyes. Kids have their own way of calling quality time. My girl would have felt much more connected if we had pretend play at home.

Connection means unique activities that effectively form values in a child. As simple as watching YouTube videos (her pick, of course) during Sunday morning breakfast. My favorite part of connection this week is preparing gift for Mother's Day. Jasmine suggested writing cinquain for mum. I had no idea about this five-line poetry style created by Adelaide Crapsey. All Dutch to me.

"Okay then, let me show you how. Close the door please, in case mummy is peeping."

 That means a private poetry lesson given to a daddy who feels really connected.

Ruby

Ideas for writing won't pop into our mind by itself.

We need fuel or a matchbox to kick off the writing. The fuel needs not be as big as a nuclear plant - in some cases, it may simply be four hours of train delay (if you were JK Rowling). That's what I shared with my daughter when we read the picture book Ralph Tells a Story during breakfast today. We learned that a great story can be about something very small ... as small as an inchworm for Ralph, a kid stuck with writer's block. A funny boy who ended up with nothing on his paper after staring at the ceiling, going to the water fountain, roaming the school hallways, and then bathroom. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Not until he saw a wiggly inchworm.

My daughter's writing class at school is an excellent example of looking for that inchworm. Her teacher starts the spark in many creative ways, such as asking students to bring home the class dragon Ruby. My daughter showed me yesterday a bag with a green dragon puppet, a blanket (to keep Ruby the dragon warm and safe), a toothbrush (for sleepover, of course), a pencil and eraser, and Ruby's diary.

Without us noticing, the kids are learning to write diary for Ruby.

Gap

Ask anyone (yourself, quite possibly) who has to bring up a child and mentor a young doctor, and he'll tell you that they're somewhat similar. Oh, I was just reminded not to mix up the roles being a parent and a mentor yesterday during a sharing session on intern mentorship.

Still, I have to admit the same generation gap that exists between us - be they our children or younger interns. That means we have to rely on them to tell us how they feel, instead of equating their reaction with ours.

The Rules of Parenting teaches me that it's completely irrelevant how we feel when we're dealing with our children's emotions; their feelings are the only things that matter. When Riley (remember the movie Inside Out) has to move to a new state and a new school, she's genuinely devastated. Every inch of adults wants to tell Riley to tough up, or that she'll make new friends, or that there's always email, msn and texting ("and we didn't have that in my day").

Don't do it.

All these "good old day" advice and bygone standard simply backfire. Put simply, focus on our child and forget about ourselves (I mean, that old self decades older). Take their feelings and coping mechanisms as seriously as we do our own. The same applies to feeling how our newer generation interns feel. And indeed, what's the point of lecturing a doctor-in-training how we dug references out of the hardcopy Index Medicus in library when he gripes about difficult access to electronic journal at the office?

So, yes, we're to help the new generation react to the challenges that befall them, and not how we react to them. This rule seems pretty obvious, but chances are I'll forget. That's why I arranged the sharing session to remind ourselves. A lesson I should keep in mind forever.

Feedback

I was having a good vacation, a great one, in fact. In case you thought I'll be on a hedonic treadmill where happiness boost doesn't last long, let me tell you my way of overcoming that "happiness set point."

I returned to work and came upon a gift right next to my workplace. That is a new public library where I can continue diving into the everlasting pleasure of bookshelves. One of my recent discoveries is the book Thanks for the Feedback.

Let's define feedback first, shall we? To quote the authors: It's what your spouse has been complaining about your same character flaws for years (although I might think of that less as my wife "giving me feedback," to be honest). It's what your bum knee is trying to tell you about your diminishing spryness. (A confession: I've just sprained my right knee during my holiday).

And history is replete with googolplex of feedback not that well received. Something is wrong, we might think. The enlightenment came after I read about the aureate insights of push and pull. As the two authors Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen rightly points out at the beginning chapter, pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning. Their focus is not to teach managers (or your spouse, for that matter) how to give feedback. The focus - and my learning objective - is on feedback receiver. The real leverage is creating pull. It's about how I can learn to recognize my resistance to feedback. It's about how to seek out negative feedback, which can feel less like a "gift of learning" and more like a colonoscopy. Uneasy but worthwhile, I believe.

New

I'll admit it: changes often make us uncomfortable.

And that's one reason colleagues of mine don't like our recent switch from hospital pagers to mobile phones that much. We tend toward inertia; we need probing. But change we must. Always resist the status quo, I've been taught, and if pressed by inertia, unlock our habits step by step. This requires quite a bit of force, I know. Pacific Coffee has opened a shop in my hospital two months ago, and that seems to be a change pretty well received. No, I mean very well, and well enough so that people look happier at the new hub.

Yet, I am still sticking to my old habit and continue to buy coffee at a much-less-famous coffee store of social enterprises. What could be more addictive than drinking the same coffee in the morning?

Lest you think I'm as stubborn as Ebenezer Scrooge, let me tell you one new change that I embrace this month. A new public library right next to my hospital! I simply can't resist skipping my lunch to dote on this treasure-trove. Voilà, here are the two best gifts I found yesterday: a 383-page Classic Treasury First Poems (yeah, for my daughter) and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (written by the authors of international bestseller Difficult Conversations).

Experiences

Before our Oki Islands adventure, we weren't sure if it's a good idea to bring the whole clan, kids in tow, to an area without tourist spots. How to beat the suck of wall-sized entertainment monitor at big city? How else to compete with the YouTube videos on small electronic gagdets?

How children get going on trips, perhaps, depend on their parents' personality, too. Our love for nature sets a tone and inspires Jasmine to savour the lesson on Oki salamander at the museum. She enjoyed the coastal walk - or run - at the caldera formed by volcanic activity as long as we kept our promise to take a detour to playgrounds once in a while.

Another great choice for our trip is looking for a travel buddy. Cabins with two storeys at a pleasant waterfront location are draws, but the fun more than doubles when my daughter explored the areas with her classmate, sniffing here and there for real sea slugs, starfish, or jellyfish.

Be warned. Kids will entertain themselves, but not forever. The only authentic way to enliven a trip is to seize chance for hands-on activities. And whenever I think how smart (ahem) I've designed our itinerary, I keep mentioning the local artists' class of fabric dyeing, seashell painting, making jewellery out of abalone shells.

Oki

Sometimes when I'm flipping through travel guides, I long for novelty. I want to be offbeat. I prefer exploration to staggering back to common routes. That's how Oki Islands flagged my attention when a South China Morning Post article mentioned this remote area, north of Matsue and in the Sea of Japan. Some months ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no ideas about Oki, and nothing about Yonago Kitaro Airport, I read about this destination in the newspaper magazine.

A destination unheard of. Not even mentioned in the previous edition of Lonely Planet. Whenever I read those attractions of Oki Islands, I feel I should make a dash for it, following the advice of the novelist David Mitchell, "If you only make one trip while you are in Japan, make sure it's to the Oki Islands."

Rightly so, this place can be a magnet for nature lovers. For one thing, it's isolated: a three-hour ferry ride takes you back to an archipelago separated by changing sea levels and erosion during the glacial age. If it's back-to-nature moments you're after, this UNESCO Global Geopark is the place to spend time with. Don't mistake it with Okinawa (as what the computer search engine did, confusing me of the weather forecast). There is neither aquarium nor pineapple park. What Oki Islands lack in variety, it makes up for in scenery. The rewards of picking this destination - once a place of exile - aren't easy to describe till you've been there. I will never forget it. I've tried - trust me.

Leaders

Wouldn't it be nice for a doctor to take an occasional break and learn something new? Perhaps.

That's exactly what I've been doing these two days.

A course on leadership. Inside a classroom chock full of books to borrow and read. I am learning a little more each day. Some materials are a bit complicated for dimwit like me, I must say. One might be tempted to say that I am exaggerating. I am not. When our teacher showed me the four quadrants of DiSC leadership style, I found myself as lost as Dori from Finding Nemo.

Luckily, I felt more confident after reading another book TouchPoints by the CEO of Campbell Soup Company. Douglas Conant uses a simpler schema: the tough-minded approach (tackling task head-on) and the tender-hearted approach (where people come first). I quickly figured out my style (tender-hearted) and my not-so-strong style.

If there was one great lesson learned from the leadership style theory, it was this: I am not to lower the volume where I'm strong but to dial up in the area where I'm less comfortable.

Ash

"Now I am (one ... two ... three ... four) five years old!"

This is Alex's story I read with Jasmine on Sunday afternoon. My daughter loves reading story books; it's our favorite thing to do together.

"For my birthday I am having a police party. I am really excited - my daddy was a policeman!"

Let me explain: Alex used past tense since his daddy died when he was three. A true story.

If you're looking for a children's book about cremation and burial in age-appropriate language, you should try What Happened to Daddy's Body? That's a book Jasmine just couldn't put down even we were going to pick up her buddy for a play date.

I'd just told Jasmine my attending a thanksgiving ceremony for deceased organ donors in the morning, but this topic is easier to talk than that of a wooden box holding Alex's daddy, being taken down by a special lift into the cellar of the crematorium. How a body doesn't work any more after death. Can't move. Can't breathe. Can't feel anything any more.

When Alex knew that the box called coffin will be put into a very, very hot machine for burning the dead body, he asked her mum, "And it doesn't hurt because the dead body can't feel anything any more?"

By the end of the story, my daughter learned more about ashes, and how Alex took his dad's ashes to spread in a garden, mixed with soil, helping the tree to grow. And that, if you ask me about the most important lesson, it's okay to be sad, but it's okay to be happy, too.

Pride

Final year examination of our medical students is around the corner. Easy? I don't think so. Tension? Absolutely.

Ask most teachers the first rule to pass oral examination and they'll likely cite the credo "not to argue with your examiners." I told my students the same advice. "Follow the cue or you'll be killed."

That's one of the reasons most doctors tend to lionise senior during ward round. As a senior myself, I have a confession to make. Even if we don't realise it, we often mix up our authority as the almighty examiner and that of a doctor. My junior, for instance, didn't agree with my diagnosis the other day, and I could sense the way I get offended when an examination candidate sets out to defend his own diagnosis. Arguing with an examiner equipped with a model answer is tantamount to suicide. Sounds like a dictator, right? And, of course, the line between defending the truth and confronting the boss is blurry. But one thing is clear, I may not know better than a junior doctor when there isn't model answer at hand in real patient care.

So yes, it's much more difficult for a senior to be humble than a junior to speak up. This is especially true in hierarchical animals' case. Which doctors are, in a way that magnifies the pecking order. Whether we like to admit it or not, we need younger doctors to tell us we're wrong at times.

"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." That's a quote I wish my junior won't say behind my back.

Birds

Jennifer Ackerman was right to call birds "the genius." Not only do birds and humans have relatively large brains but both have brain size that correlates with juvenile period.

Most bird species, as I learned from Ackerman's The Genius of Birds, are altricial and their brains - like ours - grow a great deal after birth. In other words, nest sitters end up with bigger brains than nest quitters. Tempting as it may be to compare birds with human, Ackerman reminded us not to be accused of anthropomorphizing, interpreting the behavior of a bird as if it were a human clothed in feathers.

Still, I love the idea that birds and humans have a lot in common - emotional, analytic, creative, spatial, to name a few. Let me offer an example from the book. Genome sequencing of forty-eight species of birds has identified a set of more than fifty genes that flick on and off in the brains of both humans and songbirds in regions dealing with imitating sounds, speaking, and singing.

As I read the book, I kept drawing parallels between birds and my daughter. Yeah, the fact that birds play a lot seems to be good news. And more so for the suggestion by zoologist that it's only clever birds that are capable of complex play activities. My daughter would be delighted to hear that play both requires intelligence and nurtures it.

To back up the ornithologists' finding that sleep plays a role in song learning for young birds, I have to say that this is true for Jasmine, too. Once upon a time - just last week really - my daughter was practicing the song of Disney animated movie Moana "How Far I'll Go." An attractive song, in lyrics or in melody. Ask 10 serious followers of Angela Duckworth what best characterizes grit, you'll probably get 10 different answers. Ask 10 animated movie fans how Moana ignites children's grit, and you might get just one: their persistent efforts to pick up the songs and remember the lines. Clearly, my girl practices the song for more times than I can count.

After sleep, she was still singing, this time pianissimo, "Every turn I take, every trail I track. Every path I make, every road leads back. To the place I know, where I cannot go. Where I long to be."

Oh oh oh, oh, oh oh oh oh.

Lesson

"Raising a girl takes two parents: A mom to show her how to be a woman. A dad to encourage her to be fearless."

That's what I've learned from Harry H. Harrison Jr. I think he's right. I am not as touchy-feely as my wife, who has been truly amazing at giving our daughter pillow talk. I have absolutely no such magic power to guide my child - zilch, zip, nada!

You probably want to know my way of sharing with Jasmine. Well, there is a part of me that believes that reading could be a gift for her, and a salvation for me. And this simply works for us. So I'd sit next to my daughter and read, weaving life lessons together with those stories.

This morning, we read about an African girl named Mariama who takes a long journey by car, by train, and an iron bird, to study in a new school. A whole new experience with kids nearly "as white as the African moon that shone over the village where she used to live." Story, or narrative, or whatever you want to call it is our bedrock of learning. We began to talk about the challenge of boarding school, and she wondered if she could cope.

Then another piece of reading tonight gave her even more thinking: Pomelo Begins to Grow (if you haven't read it, it's adorable and funny). I can't tell you how many giggles we had musing over the story of a tiny pink elephant Pomelo facing the challenges of growing big, growing up, growing strong, and growing old. Pomelo, like all young children, doesn't seem to be aware of his growth. Instead of realising his getting bigger, the elephant goes long stretches of time trying to figure out the reason his favourite dandelion is getting unusually small.

I'm sure nothing would ever be a better way to learn about growth.

Shock

Many a time while picking a book for leisure read, say during flight, people would find one which appears to be less serious. Preferably not related to work.

Me too. Even though I'm in the middle of reading Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal, somehow I cannot resist putting away this book from my luggage for my short conference trip this weekend. Instead, I brought with me a novel not yet started: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult.

As the story unfolded, I realized that's about a labour and delivery ward with an emotional - a very emotional one, I might add - epic of childbirth. After a few pages, I had a hunch (and it later proved to be pretty accurate) that it would remind me of recent stories in my hospital. As my eyes adjusted to the lighting in the air cabin, I tried to see what the mother see: the saddest story of leaving the labour ward without the baby she went in to have. There are few things scarier than those three letters CPR in a labour and delivery ward. My heart tightened. Every page I turned, I registered a little jolt of electric shock.

Page after page. Jolt by jolt. More than enough to keep my pulse throbbing in my eardrums.

Morning

When I decided to take half day off for my daughter's parent-teacher conference, I envisioned a pilgrimage to meet her class teacher. I made plan well ahead and booked the time slot as early as we were allowed. Perfect plan.

Only it wasn't. As it turned out, the conference was cancelled because the teacher had urgent family matter. I smiled. My wife smiled, too, when she heard that I won't drop my leave plan.

I looked her square in the eye. "I know I should spend the morning with our daughter, after hearing the common and repeated regret from many others that they'd worked exhausting hours through their children's preteen years and later, when they had the bounty of the time this work produced, their kids were gone."

We then started to go through the plethora of plans to celebrate this extra holiday. As my daughter picked the playground next to our previous home, my mind drifted back to the days when she learned walking and running there.

Within minutes of entering the playground, we were surrounded by a crowd of Japanese students who were having school outing. Which is why we need more than one plan. After a while, we headed to the public library right next to the playground. Oh great. Lots of lots of books, from fictions to science books. Another heavenly place to spend a morning.

Valentine

Just because you've tied the knots for long time doesn't mean that Valentine's Day has to be boring. Not when you've married a lovely wife and fathered a thoughtful daughter.

You'll know when your wife bought a card and your seven-year-old wrote with oodles of heart. Guess what? My daughter didn't just write a card to her "super duper silly daddy" tonight. She went to buy chocolates for my wife after her clarinet class.

No wonder we love Jasmine a lifetime and are so thankful she is in our lives.

Home

One of the most important things I have ever learnt from John Ahern's family story is the meaning of home to children.

Pretend that you're bringing your family to a year-long European vacation on a campervan, like what John Ahern did. One day, you find a furry grey mouse scurrying around the campervan floor. Wait - there is a lot more. I haven't told you the next thing you see is smoke billowing out of the engine.

Well, there isn't much you can do except sending the campervan to the mechanic and moving into a one-bedroom apartment with your wife and two kids. Few activities are as boring as waiting for the engine parts to arrive, which is more or less like putting out rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

And then your kid raises a question with the gravitas of a grown-up who knows everything, "When are we going home?"

Good question. The question makes your stomach crawl.

"Well," you answer nervously, "we've still got lots of places to go. And eventually you'll go home." To get your message across, you know you should hide the fact that you miss your bedroom at home too.

That's exactly the question John Ahern had to answer his kids. I remember my daughter asking the same question when we brought her to camping at the age of three. A question both John Ahern and I had heard wrongly. His son was actually asking "Yes, but when are we going home? When are we going back to Franki (the name of campervan)?" And my daughter was referring home to the tent.

Lesson learnt: Home is about the people, how we connect and care for each other, not some designated pile of bricks and mortar with new couches and the latest flat screen TV.

Silly Dad

A confession: I’d dreamt of nomadic adventure on a campervan when I was young. Hands up if you think the dream is romantic. Yes, it might seem so at first blush, but it’s a big leap out of our comfort zone.

So before you get fooled into craving a year-long campervan trip with your wife and kids, go read the book On the Road … with Kids by John Ahern. He quit his job, rented out the house and spent a whole year on the road. With his wife, a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy. That’s a story funnier and sillier than Peppa Pig. I nearly fell off the chair laughing at his struggle with the chemical toilet.

As I read on, I couldn’t hide the flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck. Those are the oh-so-familiar silly stories of Daddy Pig (read “every daddy” – me included). When his kid bumped his head or had nosebleed, there was the oh-so-familiar calling “Mummy! I want mummy!” Ditto for playground fight and disaster. The daddy was so accustomed to being second fiddle to Mum in those moments. To put this in John Ahern's terms, daddy usually stands by, “as wanted and useful as tits on a bull.” I have to agree.

Technology

Those of us born before 1980 learned by literally reading. Page by page.

Not any more for the newer generations. So often in the current day-to-day lives we're inundated with information from the Internet, with twenty-four-hour accessible information juxtaposed with digital images. Click after click.

Embedded in devices like the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad are clues to the whole new world - be it the virtual world of Pikachu or that of Khan Academy's electronic blackboard. The fact that we're all hooked on technology means there is no exception, not even my seven-year-old daughter. Rather than saying either an absolute yes or no to the screen, we can still be a wise guide to our kids, finding ways to navigate the electronic pedagogue. A wise parent knows at what point in the learning tool each is best.

That also calls for a careful balance between form and freedom. When we travel, my daughter is often glued to her book on my wife's car. Of course I love this activity (and that of selecting books for her trip). But heigh-ho. There is no point trying to bring her books every time. (And by "every time" I mean "almost daily and twice on Sundays.") For that matter, wouldn't it be great to give her a break? I passed my iPhone to her, for example, after she'd finished reading the picture book Zen Socks on our way home tonight. That's for her to scroll down the National Geographic pages on my Instagram app. And, voila, what followed are hundreds of "likes" she gave those pictures of natural beauty and landscapes.

Clarinet

My daughter joined a clarinet class two weeks ago when I was reading Angela Duckworth's Grit. There are two powerful lessons I take from this book.

First, we need grit but we can quit, as long as we don't quit on a bad day. I still remember signing up my daughter for a music class when she was about three years old. Like a lot of parents (and not necessarily Tiger Mother), I had a secret wish that my girl will commit to music and piano. She tried and struggled. We didn't quit until the term (and that lasted for more than two years) was over, the tuition payment was up, and the end-of-the-term performance had been done. She didn't quit till the day we'd committed ourselves. Phew!

The uncertainty about if my daughter likes music was disturbing to us. So disturbing, in fact, that for the last one year, my wife and I didn't sign her up for another musical lesson. The decision to try clarinet came after a discussion of various other classes my daughter could have chosen. She didn't even have to pick one. Not a must.

The second lesson from Grit is nobody works doggedly on something they don't find interesting. Before hard work comes play. A degree of autonomy during the early years is conducive to building passion in the long run. Clarinet is an instrument of my daughter's choice. As it turned out, we needn't have worried. At the start of her clarinet class, what she needs is encouragement and freedom to figure out what she enjoys. Yes, she needs to practice. But not too much and not too soon. My daughter adjusts well to her daily practice. And daily small wins, I wish.

Hygge

Today I learned about a recommended book on Goodreads Newsletter titled "The Little Book of Hygge."

I haven't read the book from Danish author, and had no idea of the foreign word "hygge" before. After a few tabs on search machine, I realized that this mysterious term hygge originated from a Norwegian word, referring to the feeling that comes from seeing a rich variety of colours where other people would just see blue or grey.

Oh, that's something worth exploring, I thought. After that, I left the word aside and took my daughter to play. I didn't find a child playmate this afternoon. So, I became my daughter's. Interestingly, seeing - and joining - a child play could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into discovering happiness. I didn't have to invent games. She did. In every conceivable way - again and again and again. She's creative. More creative than I am, certainly. That's a child's way of finding hygge, I suppose.

Readers

At a glance, baby's first or child's first is amazing memory to keep.

Changing the first diaper is one example. Ditto for walking the first step, the first day at kindergarten, or the first talent show performance (and probably glitch on stage). I used to think that they're important milestones but I've come to the conclusion that it's the child's last that needs bigger chunk of memory space.

Think about it this way. We've been reading bedtime stories to Jasmine for years. In many cases the same book for the umpteenth time: The Nutcracker by Alison Jay, One Mole Digging a Hole by the natural-born storyteller Julia Donaldson, The Day the Crayons Came Home by quick-witted Oliver Jeffers.

Whether we like it or not, my wife and I have less and less chance to read her bedtime stories. I don't mean Jasmine has outgrown her love for stories. That's a love affair nobody can outgrow. My daughter simply reads the story books herself now. For those of us wishing to raise a child who loves to read, this is good news. And yet most of us want to remember the good old days when our kids enjoyed our story reading.

Ridiculous, right? But that's exactly what I've lamented and started to miss.

And so, grabbing each one's own book before sleep is another new activity at our bedroom. It's also a way to be an influence on reading habits of others. And that includes us.