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.

Sleep

Working the night shift is no good, I know. You don't need me to tell you that. Unfortunately, all-nighters are part of life for many of us.

The struggle with sleep-anaemic mode of work is constantly playing havoc with our internal clock. Worse, should you read the neuroscientist Mathew Walker's book Why We Sleep, you will hear the bad news: the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span.

One inside story of the book is how birds' sleep pattern can work out better than humans. So this is how birds get around sleep deprivation no matter how busy they are: they're able to sleep with just one side of the brain. One half of the brain rests; the other half stays awake. Then switch.

"Oh, it's fabulous," I heard myself in awe, casting my eyes heavenward. To me it sounds like a genius way of sleep. But wait. Sleeping with half brain off and half brain on isn't a perfect solution, however, and that would still have myriad risks. Split-brain attention can be susceptible to the threats of predators, say. As an analogy, imagine your tummy being cut open and operated by a surgeon with one side of the brain sleeping. It is anything but safe.

How, then, could birds get nighttime benefits and yet maintain safe sleep?

As Matthew Walker tells in his book, many species of birds have an even more ingenious answer when they group together. The flock simply line up in a row. Except the birds at each end of the line, the rest of the group will allow both halves of the brain to indulge in sleep. Charged with the core duty of sentinel birds, those at the far left and right ends of the row are supposed to give alarm-call in case of predators - it's no wonder they can't fall asleep completely. They will enter deep sleep with just one half of the brain (opposing in each), leaving the corresponding left and right eye of each bird wide open. In doing so, the "anchorbirds" provide full panoramic threat detection for the entire group, maximizing the total number of brain halves that can sleep within the flock. At some point, the two anchorbirds will stand up, rotate 180 degrees, and sit back down, allowing the other side of their respective brains to enjoy periods of slumber.

The more I think about the eye-opening lesson from the birds, the more I am convinced of the tried-and-true strategy of survival: teamwork.

Anniversary

"Here's a question," my wife quizzed me last weekend. "Do you know what day is it next Sunday?"

"Yes, I think it must be an important day," I nodded.

When I realized I was caught red-handed without much idea, I averted my eyes from my wife, the way a medical student stares down at his feet like he can find the answer to a professor's question written on his shoes.

I waited. I waited. I didn't really remember the exact day of our wedding anniversary, but I felt I shouldn't say so. "Very nice," I murmured, and "Mmhmm. I see." Then, bit by bit, I began to crack the code, finding out it's our twentieth anniversary since we tied the knot.

I felt ashamed of myself for taking so long to remember the important date. What had happened to my brain? And besides, I have been working for long hours lately, so much so that I didn't seem like to have remembered my home. I actually blushed.

At the end of the day - in case you're interested in my fate - I didn't get guillotined. This is the best gift for me: a safe haven offered by the person I love most in the world.

Safety

At a recent final year medical student examination I was glad to have the chance sitting next to Professor Sung, our truly legendary physician. Like a student myself, I'm always hungry to hear his stories, which are at the very heart of Dickensian or Sherlockian flavor.

A lesson I learned was how we could have behaved like an asshole or bosshole without knowing it. The unfriendly and rude bullying behaviour of senior doctors was much more common in the old days, as I was told, when superiors treated young followers like dirt. What about now? Somewhat better in many fields, I guess. But not as good as what we might have wanted.

What does it mean? That's called bosshole gap. In short, bosses are notoriously poor at evaluating our own performance. We could have bragged about being a great boss, without knowing how much we're getting close to be a full-blown certified asshole.

How is it possible to assess the culture of psychological safety? One good metric is, perhaps, checking the willingness of young doctors or students to take interpersonal risks at work, to admit error or simply say "I don't know" in front of a senior.

To answer the last question, I must say "I don't know."

Sparkle

The world has become so small so quickly. A virus surfaced four months ago, and swiftly sweeps across the globe. This seems so sudden.

One of the social upheavals arises from city lock down, closing school, and isolating one from each other. Here's a heartbreaking reality: people can't visit their parents, even on their deathbeds, for fear of spreading the virus.

In these crazy times, we all need some encouragement to keep ourselves calm. To choose joy for the family, my wife signed up for Netflix and introduced Hayao Miyazaki's movies to Jasmine. I wasn't able to watch Laputa with them, but I was thrilled to be invited by Jasmine to join her arts craft activity this afternoon. That's making use of sandpaper to polish seashells we'd collected from Oki Islands two years ago.

"Good idea." I said. "I like to work out." I joined her and starting scrubbing, really, really hard. Making a seashell smooth and sparkling can be a cathartic and exciting exercise for both kids and adults. We'd been occupied for an uber-entertaining stretch of time.

If you ask me, I would say that children's ideas are what we need to get through these difficult days. A gold mine.