Dog

Life is unfair, as we all know, and a good thing too.

This is how the novel A Dog's Life opens with. And that statement, nine times out of ten, is true. Always. Heaven knows why, but we can't always ask for fairness.

To this day, after a traumatic evening, I still believe we should find the silver lining even when life has dealt us a bad hand. If you had asked me one month ago how I felt about running home after darkness, I would have had an answer ready: That's relaxing exercise to offload the stress.

Then an accident happened last night. I was attacked by a pug while running home after work.

As much as I love running - and man's best friend too, for that matters - I don't really have up-close-and-spine-chilling experience of being chased by a dog. One of the lessons is that once I spotted a dog off leash in the distance, I should have changed my route instead of passing from behind. The way and pace I ran somehow sounded like dropping a bomb at the pug. I was shocked that my running behaviour led the dog to lunge at me. My first instinct was to run even faster, lest being bitten. But as things turned out, I can't outpace a four-legged animal.

I certainly didn't expect the pug to give me injury, least of all breaking two long bones and two wedge-shaped bones of my right midfoot. I made my way wobbly back to the hospital. There were then magical moments when my beloved colleague rushed to greet me, when the emergency room staff wheeled me to have x-ray, when my nurses brought me two crutches. Call me pollyannaish if you like, but I find the positive spin on the warmth I'd received. And to be absolutely truthful, after a brief pang of anger, I felt better to recall that the dog wasn't suffering from our high-speed bombing. It's better to have one than two being hurt, isn't it?

LED

Unplugging before bedtime, as I have learned from Matthew Walker, has hefty benefit on the release of melatonin, a powerful messenger to signal "time to sleep". How much can reading on an iPad  suppress melatonin release compared to reading on a printed book? A lot, it turns out. By over 50 percent. It's a good idea, obviously, to unplug before hitting the pillow.

That is easier said than done.

Knowingly or not, we might stare at blue LED lights from laptop screens, smartphones, or iPad at night. I've tried to be one of the responsible parents nudging my daughter stay away from electronic devices before sleep. In fact, a family ritual of our own is to pick a book, mostly a graphic novel, to go with bedtime snack before catching some z's. Try as we might, we won't - can't, in fact - strictly stick to the no-screen-time-before-bed rule. Let me say, with all the moderation I can summon: at best, we try not to let the electronic devices rule the roost. But hey, I just say "try not to." So, yes, I failed now and then.

My daughter's snack tonight was string cheese, something new to us. After peeling open the string cheese, I and my daughter looked at each other, musing on the proper way to eat string cheese. We both scratched our head, and ended up taking a detour to YouTube for the answer.

You get the point. Staying from the screen isn't easy.

Classroom

While the classroom will resume for many local students soon, their life won't return to normalcy. Even the simple act of meeting classmates or hanging out with friends seems a pipe dream for them.

Before my daughter could return to campus, she has been "attending" interactive class via Google Classroom or Google Meet. What does it mean, specifically, to go to Google Meet? As my daughter told me, the key is to meet the teacher and learn. One hour or so in the morning. Work after class is often such a pleasure to have. One of her favorite tasks is answering "question of the day" put up by her teacher. What age would you like to be and why? Then the students would keep laughing at the replies posted on the online platform. Use three words to describe yourself. If you want to know the best answer to this question, that would be "minecrafty."

We're grateful for her school's approach to prioritize children's emotional and social health. For others, the virtual classroom can be much more inflexible and even at times boring.

Imagine sitting in front of the didactic computer screen for half day, and you can see why.

Instead of the hard-and-fast classroom schedule, my daughter can sign up at her own wish to have small group meet session, one time slot for each week, four students with teacher at one time. That's the best way to have social interaction in a virtual classroom. I can tell my daughter loves this. The way she picks different classmates each week is even more serious than choosing outfits from the closet.

One night after work, the first story my daughter shared with me is how much fun she'd had with the small group when they played the online Scribbl guessing game. A testament to the central role of social interaction when school is closed.