Hero

I've long believed that introverts like me often gravitate to secret passageway allowing us to leave a party early. If we can't find the secret tunnel, even retreating to a bathroom can do wonders.

On another note, I recently learned about another type of humble partygoers who are worth learning from. William McRaven, a Four-Star Admiral at the United States Navy, once attended a private dinner hosted by a famed exercise cardiologist. He happend to meet his dinner companion with the name Charlie. He didn't catch Charlie's last name and just knew he was in the Air Force before retirement.

"What did you fly?" William asked.

"Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that."

"A man of many talents, huh?"

"Or a guy who couldn't keep a job." The old man laughed.

Over the course of the evening, the old man Charlie didn't talk much about himself and was much more interested in William. 

William found Charlie pleasant. Little did he know about Charlie's humility until the end of the dinner. After saying bye to Charlie, he was told the full name of his dinner companion: Charlie Duke, the youngest man ever to walk on the moon. William was dumbfounded. To his embarrassment, William didn't realise he had been having an entire dinner conversation with the national hero astronaut who had landed in the Descartes Highlands, the highest point on the moon.   

This is indeed a prime example of hero, and a humble hero.

Aoyama

If necessity is the mother of invention - and it often is - the ones who invented bookstore and library should have been outdated grandma by now. We're living in the world known as Kindle, or a state called Amazon, or a universe governed by tablet. Bookstores and libraries are shrinking, if not vanishing.

In this sense, it may be heartening for book lovers like me to see the survival, however difficult, of bookstores and libraries. That's the reason I paid a visit to the Books Kinokuniya Tokyo on my daughter's Taylor Swift concert night. Kinokuniya is the largest bookstore chain in Japan, famous for the immense size and collection of books including English ones.

That's how I learned about Michiko Aoyama's novel What You Are Looking For is in the Library, and met the enigmatic librarian Sayuri Komachi. Set in the fictional local community library, the five chapters narrate the way people - be they a department store sales assistant, a furniture manufacturer accounts clerk, a former magazine editor, an illustrator-to-be, or a 65-year-old getting use to retirement - contemplate a life change. None of the five characters know what they are searching for - until they meet the librarian.

Each chapter is a bite-sized lesson from the librarian. The last chapter on the mourning about books (that aren't selling as well any more) and bookstores (that are disappearing) strikes a chord with me. The 65-year-old retiree's daughter says it well to her father, "Stop it. When everybody says that, as if they know what they're talking about, it turns out into a trend. Books will always be essential for some people. And bookshops are a place for those people to discover the books that will become important to them. I will never allow bookshops to vanish from this world."

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How many books did I pack for my trip to Japan? 

Two only. 

We wouldn’t want to pack a luggage the size of Tokyo Dome. It’s kind of balance between luggage size limit and the clothing packed for a destination with thermometer reading touching zero.

I ended up with less luggage room for my books. That, to say the least, is not the priority. And though I had two books, I did know that, by peeking in the choice of my daughter’s, I had more to read. Her novel, such as We Were Liars, is among the best she ever read, and wishes to read again. That can also be on my reading list.  

Which is a good thing. That means I have a bigger “bookshelf” simply by sharing.

Snow

When I was a kid, Peanuts comic had a story of Charlie Brown who reasoned that the weather wouldn't stop anyone from playing baseball. In any event, Charlie Brown will stand on the mound in a drizzle, and will remain so in a downpour.

"Don't go! We have a game to play! Come back!"

I couldn't have compared myself to Charlie Brown. I quit every now and then. During our recent family trip to Hakuba, I had decided not to join my daughter to ski. This has nothing to do with the weather; we're blessed with pleasant snow. I chickened out after a workplace accident, leaving me a right shin wound. Well, the fact that many race down the slopes worry-free doesn't mean that I am not struggling with ski anxiety and afraid of ski injury.

All right, I'm scared. I am getting nervous about fall. Snow is amazing, I know. As the recent Time magazine article "Why People Love Snow So Much" mentions, snow engages all five senses. We can feel it, we can taste it, we can even find the sound of silence. A couple inches of snow can absorb up to 60% of sound. That means our world really seems quieter, and more peaceful when it's in white.

Mention Snow White, and I imagine myself looking like Bashful of the Seven Dwarfs (hiding behind cloud and trepidation, in my mind, as he often does).

Eras

Growing up with a kid - or bringing up, if you like - is one of the most entertaining journeys. An unspoken rule is to jump in with an open mind, the expectation that you won't expect, and the knowledge that you've never learned.

When our daughter was young, we planned our vacation with simple fun in mind. Legoland or zoo. Hands-on museum. Playground and beach. That's the kind of itinerary I have mastered nicely, the kind that stops being difficult and starts being natural. We just like the way we travel.

Wait. It's not that simple. Fast-forward to the teenager years. I learn to plan our trip according to new milestones. Now that our daugther becomes a Swiftie, we felt a jolt of adrenaline after Taylor Swift kicked off her Eras Tour last year. We never saw our daughter so affectionate with a chance to pay homage to the stadium. Taylor Swift has been packing stadiums from Las Vegas, Nevada to South America. When we learned about her tour to Tokyo, I asked my friends with American Express to do me a favor. Well, it turns out, not as simple as that. They aren't Japanese American Express cardholders and could not help with getting pre-sale tickets.

To plan a trip in Tokyo is one thing; to time the trip to Tokyo Dome with two secure concert tickets, quite another. That's all parenthood is, really: every chance to enjoy the challenge to its fullest. 

Remorse

I was waiting for a kidney biopsy procedure for my patient in hospital. I had prepared everything the day before. That's something simple. I knew every step, and the way to the procedure room was easy. I knew every corner, every turn on the way from one building to another in the hospital I have been working for nearly thirty years.

So off I went, once I knew the patient was ready. I was running, to be honest; it was my habit not to keep people waiting after receiving a call. Like maybe I had been running a race. I stopped abruptly at the corridor intersection before I could see someone pushing a cart. The side collision gave me a chance to practice somersault - if it is the right word - and righting reflex. I managed not to break my bone, but not my skin.

I felt like the urge to curse, to shout, to pick up the cart and chuck it through the corridor, see the cart smashed. I was terribly sorry to have thrown a tantrum, and to that end, I was exceptionally empathetic to my 86-year-old lady who needed a kidney biopsy.

If there's one thing I've learned yesterday, it's the meaning of the word "redemption."

Nancy

A story moves people. 

Tell a story, Nancy Hopkins was told by the faculty chair at the Massachusetts Institute. This is how the molecular geneticist and cancer researcher navigated her way to win the fight for her “women’s work. 

In turn, the Pulitzer Prize winner Kate Zernike retold the heartbreaking story of Nancy. I didn’t need a tape measure or statistics chart to learn the demoralising path of gender equity. After I read the behind-the-scenes account of Francis Crick’s hands on Nancy’s breasts, I knew what is meant by inequities. Ditto for sexual assault by the renowned biologist who had founded the journal Cell. 

I knew the meaning of discrimination when Nancy could not even get an equal share of fish tanks for her zebrafish research. I was furious. And who won’t?

Be the Bus

During my daughter's childhood days, I had been hardwired to borrow books from public library and read to her. With time, I borrowed books and read with her. As she gets older, my daughter picks her own reading materials.

Times have changed. These days, my brother and sister have been taking peek at my daughter's reading list to find books for themselves.

Now that she draws up her reading list, borrowing books has become a solitary endeavor or an activity for myself. Today I happened to find a humorus book by the author who told the story Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! That is Mo Willems, one of our favorite authors. It turns out, bringing the book home has allowed me to relive the experience of bookworm daddy. My daughter had her head buried in the book right after I brought it home.

I could barely contain my delight; it is one of the most rewarding experiences for me.