Live Concert

We've all been programmed - at all levels including school, work and socal - to think, act, and live in a virtual world under various restrictions. We have Google Classroom; we attend virtual scientific conferences; we watch Netflix movies.

With time, the good news is that we are now gravitating toward out-of-home activities after relaxed social distancing. Who in their right mind would choose not to go out?

Going to live concert by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra last night has been one of our best family activities after the fifth wave of Omicron. In my opinion, none is greater than their idea of blending music with the Blue Planet II nature documentary.

As I sat staring at charming puffins rattling their beaks together after fish hunting expedition, mouth hanging wide open (mine wider than puffin holding a mouthful of sand eels), I was in awe and blown away by the matching music on stage. Live music by an 80-piece symphonic orchestra in a concert hall. Giant screen of the BBC marine life series, side by side. Ebb and flow. Mind-blowing. I was elated.

Grip

To be honest, I'm not good at remembering characters. But that's what most novels ask us to do. 

So, the gods and goddesses, mythical beings, as what my daughter's reading of Rick Riordan's book series entails, would be almost impossible for me to comprehend. I don't even know how to figure out "who's who" when I read the not-so-divine novel Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.

But there is a catch: It's not every novel that has a large cast of characters for us to keep track of. If you're easy to get lost in the cast, you may decide to pick up the novel by Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt, as what I recently did after my brother's recommendation. There aren't too many characters: a Mexican mother and her son, and sixteen other family members. If you worry about the number of characters, I will be the first to reassure you. The sixteen of them, for that matter, were dead bodies in the backyard by the end of the first chapter. All killed by the end of the first few pages.

Seriously, though, story of the mother and son after the massacre is riveting enough to grip our attention.

Terminology

Language is a rich tapestry of what we feel, what we see and what we record. Think of language as our lens to perceive the world. Chances are, as what exactly Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states, you will be led to believe that the language we speak influences how we think.

Odd as the counterargument would sound to you, the relationship between language and culture can be the opposite way round. That means our language we speak doesn't shape the way we percieve the world. Quite the opposite - one might argue that it's language that reflects our view.

I'll bet the debate can go on forever. The only thing we can agree is that we should mind our words. A recent British Medical Journal article about medical language will show you why.

A real-life scenario that exemplifies how doctors' language belittles patients: "Patient denies fever, chills or night sweats." To deny, according to the authors, is to refuse to admit the truth. Isn't that connotation of untrustworthiness?

Another not-too-uncommon language usage that emphasises the patient as passive of childlike: doctors "take" a history, or "send" patients home.

Now, there's no question that we can use language to blame patients after treatment failure: "the patient failed chemotherapy" rather than "chemotherapy failed the patient."