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.