Marathon

Most "important" books aren't much fun to read. Most fun books aren't very important. But there is always exception. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink is exactly the case.

That's a book I'd waited for four months before my turn to borrow from the public library. And to be finished within two weeks, for that matter, before the due date. As it turned out, I learned so much from this book within two weeks. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. But completely fun. And practical.

I expect you want an example? Of course you do.

So often in my day-to-day conversation about running I was asked when it's my plan to lace up my shoes and run a marathon. I reacted the way I reacted to filing a tax return - sooner or later I'll do it.

I haven't yet.

It suddenly dawned on me, after reading Pink's chapter on Endings, that the last year of a life decade could have been the answer. I was introduced to Red Hong Yi (an artist who ran her first marathon when she was twenty-nine years old), Jeremy Medding (a diamond businessman who ran his when he was thirty-nine), Cindy Bishop (a lawyer who ran her first marathon at age forty-nine), Andy Morozovsky (a zoologist who had never run anywhere close to 26.2 miles until he'd turned fifty-nine).

Notice their age: twenty-nine, thirty-nine, thirty-nine, fifty-nine.

The best illustration of "9-enders" aiming to search for meaning before another new decade in chronological age, in fact, comes from a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In an analysis of the age at which 500 athletes ran their first marathon, the 9-enders are overrepresented by a whopping 48 percent. What is the most likely age for us to run the first marathon? That's twenty-nine. (I'm out, okay, I know.) Twenty-nine-year-olds were about twice as likely to run a marathon as twenty-eight-year-olds or thirty-year-olds.

What next? That's forty-nine. Someone who's forty-nine (I shall wait for that, I guess) is about three times more likely to run a marathon than someone who's just a year older.

Albert River

Kids love water theme parks. Adults too. But after indulging in another plunge down yet another nautical plastic tube you might find yourself justifiably itching for something a little more authentic.

That's exactly what we did at Gold Coast Hinterlands this week. That means untamed destination where we can get a thrill from the water while still being at one with nature. During our farm stay, we had picnic lunch at Albert River, blending traditions with frenzied fun. There was no fast food shop (where price can jump crazily high at theme park) but prepacked sandwiches. There wasn't bracelet for day pass either, because we could play as many times as we wished in the wilderness. And no wonder. Few places on earth can match the natural beauty of a river in the lush forest.

When my daughter saw a rope tied on the treetop, her first impression was it should have belonged to Tarzan. Or flying fox. My eight-year-old dared not to try. Grabbing the string and swinging, and all the way splashing into the river: that's way too wild, and beyond her comfort zone.

Thankfully, the children around showed her the ropes (no pun intended). After watching their jumping poise - on par with athletes in the diving competition at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast - my daughter was tempted to try her hand. She mustered strength of every muscle fibre to swing into the icy cold water, swam back to shore. One rope swing after another. A feat that I couldn't have imagined. By putting all of her energy into the diving rope, my daughter had played so many times she forgot to have her sandwich.

The feel-good effect of endorphin and adrenaline release is what my daughter finds most amazing. "Dad, you should have written a blog post on this highlight of our trip," Jasmine looked up at me, after scrolling through my blog.

And here I did.

Lamington

Many a time while traveling I would look for ecotour rather than entirely self-guided tour. This is one of the best ways to learn about the wildlife.

I was lucky enough to find one gifted guide to bring our family to Lamington National Park. One of those very rare, special nature buffs who are as knowledgeable as Sir David Attenborough. By the way, my guide's name happened to be David, too.

Following David is like joining a field trip aboard Miss Frizzle's Magic School Bus. We learned everything from remnants of subtropical rainforest some 50 million years ago (when Australia was still part of Gondwana), to the whereabouts of our lost blue pegs and blue bottle tops (oh yes, they are pilfered by male satin bowerbirds to decorate their bowers for mating). It would have been impossible for us to find those blue "love hotels" ourselves at the World Heritage-listed national park.

On our way back, I asked David his major at university, and expected answers like biology or environmental science.

"No, I didn't study them at university. I know all these out of my own interest. The key is to have genuine interest in a subject, and not a major in the subject," David added.

Rein

Our family is grateful to have farm stay vacation in the Gold Coast Hinterland this week. There's no shortage of entertaining activities for my daughter. Plenty of domestic and wildlife. And of course horse riding is always the winner.

That reminds me of The Naughtiest Girl books, in which Whyteleafe School allows students to keep pets, and even horses. After a second-term student Robert has promised not to be a bully, he is allowed to choose two horses under his special care, feeding them, grooming them, and helping younger children to ride them.

We aren't as skillful as Robert, of course. As a novice, I simply enjoyed the leisure ride around the picturesque field, ambling at a relaxed pace. I didn't even mind to have my grass-snatcher horse munching here and grabbing a bite there. I know I should have pulled the rein and stopped my horse from eating on the trail, but I didn't.

Isn't it the way to bring up our children? Pulling the rein too tight, and we lose rather than gain control. Think about Whyteleafe School, where the children make their own rules, hold their weekly meetings to hear grumbles and complaints, discuss and solve problems themselves. I can think of no better example of self-discipline.

Nĭhăo Beijing

I attended a conference at Beijing this week. It's not something I usually do, but I'd been lucky enough to be invited to give lectures there.

My last visit to the capital city of China was 28 years ago (if I didn't count another short conference trip of mine 8 years back). How times have changed. The toughest antismoking legislation in 2015 has been impressive enough to give us essentially smoke-free environment, I must say. The smog isn't diminishing, though.

"Be forewarned. Air quality can be a problem," so says Lonely Planet. On the day after arrival, I was cautioned by the hotel concierge that I'd better run at indoor gym. That said, I tried to bring my camera and walk my shoes off around my hotel, without wearing a smog mask. That's fine as long as I don't take picture of the (relentlessly gloomy) sky.

Still, most of my photos turned out to have a tinge of yellow tone. When I first saw the pictures on my camera screen, I rolled my eyes. On second thought, I realized it made perfect sense. My camera, I suspected, is smart enough to pick up all the PM10 and PM2.5 particles, even without checking the National Meteorological Center's blue alert for Beijing's sandstorm. Jiùmìng!

Family Doctor

It is difficult to conceive of the sin of a doctor whose father died from an undetected blood clot traveling from his leg to the lung. This happened when his doctor son was thousands of miles away. But Dr. Phillip Lerner was suffering from such guilt. Tempting as it is to brush aside the responsibility to the surgeon who operated on a groin hernia, actually it is Dr. Lerner who took his father's death harder than anyone. The thing that bothered Dr. Lerner most was that his father had a hernia repaired on the other side a few weeks before the final operation. The second hernia was not discovered until a postoperative check.

Those of us working as doctors and looking after family members had a sense that we should be doctoring our family, and we were. De facto. This is mentioned in a book written by Dr. Lerner's son. Entitled The Good Doctor, the book is filled with moving accounts of how Dr. Lerner lived up to his duty as a revered clinician at the same time of looking after family.

The situation becomes terrible, of course, when things go wrong. Here's why: Dr. Lerner wondered if the second hernia had been there all along. "If I'd found out that’s the case, my daddy would have had only one operation to fix both of them. If that had happened, he might not have died." Not surprisingly, he never forgave himself for urging his father to get the second hernia operation. "Perhaps the clot formed because my daddy had undergone two operations within such a short time."

For reasons I cannot remember, my mentor confided in similar view and believed that he was to blame for his father's death from pulmonary embolism, too. Like so many other doctors, I asked my daddy come to see me when he mentioned low back pain for recent three weeks. I don't know if my father is proud of what his son dares to do – to take charge when illness hits home – but I know I am.