Nostalgia

If you find the new normal hard to live with, you aren't the only one.

Over three hundred years ago, a medical doctor came up with a new disease's name "nostalgia." In his dissertation, the term described the sickness of Swiss soldiers when they were in the lowlands of Italy, yearning for the alpine vistas of home. Oh, how they had oodles and oodles of symptoms like indigestion, high fever, melancholy, fainting, seeing ghosts and hearing voices. And even death.

Things soon start to look like another "nostalgia" pandemic this year. The cause of symptoms turns out to be homebound sickness rather than home sickness. Otherwise, the two are similar. Very similar.

People want to start the day the way we have been having. Not any more. Every morning, we wake up, discover the world has been changed, and can no longer go back to the old habits.

No more trips to Louvre Museum (and hey, even the Hong Kong Museum of Art is temporarily closed). No more Japan autumn foliage tours. Nope. We have no control over the travel restriction. What we can do is to keep our mind (and eyes) open. So that's why I and my wife take a half day off this afternoon to find the red leaves of sweet gum (Liquidambar formosana), a striking example of native deciduous species.

NOEA

It's not always easy to eat alone, but it's always what we're advised to do. I just felt uneasy after reading the "do's and don'ts" for dining at workplace, as if we're entering a whole new season of cold isolation. The dining table around us grow quieter and emptier each passing day.

This reminds me of Lili Rachel Smith, a young woman born with Apert syndrome leading to her horribly deformed face after premature fusion of the skull bones. She grew up in San Francisco where she attended middle school. Although she wasn't bullied, she felt invisible within ever-shrinking walls. Lunchtime means oblivion. Uncertain what to do after eating alone, she'd retreat to a toilet and call her mom. The more she stayed isolated, the more terrible sense it made.

After her tragic death at age fifteen, her mom founded a nonprofit organization to combat social isolation in schools. One of their best known student-led initiatives was No One Eats Alone (NOEA) Day. Ooooh ... can't you just see the inspiring message? It's that simple: Make sure no one sits alone at lunch.

That's not to say that I object to the latest decision to ban dine-in service at 6pm. There is of course a great deal of scientific evidence, including one model using mobile-phone data to map people's movement on the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, proving that restaurants are hotspots for the disease. As published in Nature, the model demonstrated that capping restaurant venue occupancy at 30% would reduce new infection by more than 80%. Much as I love science, to the point of worship, I must confess that I also cringe at the idea of an al desko lunch. 

No. No. NOEA.

Eleven

The decision to have a child is momentous, according to educator Elizabeth Stone. "It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body," she says.

That's the best decision we have had more than ten years ago. My daughter turns eleven tomorrow.

If, like me, you have taken on the lifetime responsibility of loving children, you will agree wholeheartedly with the beautiful quote about parenthood.

There's plenty of smiling moments with bringing up a child. I’m still amazed - and grateful - to find the sweet memory's time capsule: how a kid grows up, what a kid has changed, and when we find ourselves changed as well. And really, the journey is far more fun than I could have imagined. Those were the days when I bought stickers to keep my toddler occupied and fascinated. Fast-forward to now, when, interestingly, she returns me bunches of stickers - creative ones via WhatsApp!