History

Historical fiction is to hang a story on a background of historical facts. Getting the historical facts right is one thing, and filling enough gaps of colour for readers to dive into is another.

When an author crafts the work like a memoir, we are led to time-travel. That's more or less what Eve J. Chung did in her debut novel Daughters of Shandong, a straightforward story written in the first-person style. Right at the beginning, I knew this is a fiction built from kitchen-table stories told by Chung's grandmother and interviewing her mom. But with time, page after riveting page, I was tangled up in the look-so-real story, mistaking the book as a memoir of Chung.

The profoundly brutal history of the Communist Revolution is best captured by the opening chapter's line: "The China I knew ached, and the hometown I knew bled." 

Thank goodness I didn't have to witness the narrator's trauma in real life. I can't imagine a thirteen-year-old girl being walked like a dog on a leash by the cadres. I can't imagine a little girl who spent hours kneeling on the ice, tied at the wrist, jabbed against her back by the butt of rifle. I can't imagine her carrying that land in her blood, in her bones, and in her memories. I can't believe Mao Zedong could have more followers than MrBeast. Who can?

Streak

Getting old, we can deal with. Being old is the problem. That being said, once we reach a certain age, it's hard not to wonder whether our running pace dwindles in opposite direction to the number of birthday candles.

Should you start tempering your running ambitions and accept the setback of going old, please go and read the story of Kevin Webber. He was told aged 49 that both his prostate cancer PSA score and Gleason score were sky high.

"Good morning, Mr Webber. I am looking at your test results. The Gleason score would fall somewhere between six and ten with six being the lowest form of cancer. Your Gleason score is between nine and ten, but let's say it is a nine."

The bad news about his prostate cancer was followed by Q&A. He immediately asked the specialist for a prognosis. "Mr Webber, you have between two to ten years, but you should realistically think you have between three to four years to live. Definitely don't think ten."

After the devastating news of high-risk prostate cancer, Kevin Webber started running – in addition to a brutal regime of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. He became a legendary runner and decided to keep a running streak. That means a personal challenge of running every day. He finished his first Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert of Morocco, the toughest foot race on the planet, in 2016. Then race across the snow and ice of the Arctic and the jungles of Cambodia. On his 55th birthday, he ran for 28 km, and celebrated his having survived another year of cancer and one day away from ticking off another ultra-marathon.   

He's still running. And I should, too.

BBC

BBC Wildlife, one of my favourite magazines, is full of breathtaking and masterful photos. From graceful glider devil rays to malachite kingfisher with turquoise-blue feathers, the pictures are powerful reminder for us to slow down and savour the nature.

If you share the same view with mine, you would love the live concert BBC Planet Earth III. This is a superb way to look at the world through different media: the orchestra performance, the score from Has Zimmer, the lens of high-speed cameras, deep-sea submersibles transport viewers, and lightweight drones.     

When my wife bought tickets for this beautiful show, little did we know it would fall on the same evening when many of our friends are under the weather. Our best friend's mum was sick with peritonitis and chaotic electrolyte imbalance. Another friend's daughter had pregnancy complication. I couldn't help but check the phone screen now and then. The struggle between choosing to tiptoe out of the hall and ruining the vibe for other audience by my glowing screen was as embarrassing as farting in the middle of a live show. 

Thank goodness the audience didn't kill me, and the nurse texted me instead of calling me on the phone. Even in the middle of a concert, I was able to orchestrate the cases in hospital – smoother than expected, but still, I have to thank all the angels helping me.

Forest

The bed is empty.

That's the opening sentence in the first and second last chapter of the thriller The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

In this multilayered story, two children had gone missing in the Adirondack forest. As it turns out, the son disappeared in 1961 and was never found; the daughter went missing in 1975. The terrain of the forest, dense with thick underbrush, was to be blamed. The staggering loss of two children meant involvement and connection of many people spanning over a decade: their parents, the summer camp counselors and staff, the police officers.

That means a plot with characters as complicated and mysterious as the Adirondack forest. To make sure I didn't get lost in the woods, I read the book next to handwritten notes in which I jotted down the character arc.  

With that, I navigated the woods like Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.

Tango

Medical school teaching on identifying illness prioritises the categorisation of diagnosis. We have been taught to use a funnel approach, moving from a broad list of possibilities to narrow down till a single diagnosis.

With time, I have lost count of patients who behave and suffer in different manners despite sharing a single diagnosis. This week I have been reading the story of an emergency medicine consultant Jonny Acheson who was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at the age of 41. The life-changing illness led to his realisation how complex a movement disorder can be. As a matter of fact, Parkinson's isn't simply a movement disorder; there are many non-motor symptoms. 

Everyone with Parkinson's disease has a unique and bespoke drug regime. Even if two patients are prescribed the same drug and dose, they may take them at different times. The surest path to understanding the disease is watching Acheson's YouTube video entitled "All the Same But Different." The film showed us stories of ten different people with ten different symptoms.  

The title of his book, When Your Neurons Dance, also reminds us how dance works for different people with Parkinson's disease. More than 20 years ago, researchers from the Einstein Aging Study had published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine to show that dancing can improve brain health and reduce risk of dementia. Few months ago, I read about how neurologists offered tango therapy for patients living with Parkinson's disease in Burenos Aires. Even those who struggle with the stop-and-start motions of walking can benefit from practicing the "slow, short steps" and pauses of tango. The classic move of sanguchito, or "sandwich", in which one dancer's foot slides between the partner's feet and pauses, offer patients clear cues to guide their bodies.  

If you believe that the national dance of Argentina works for patients living with Parkinson's disease, you won't be surprised to find that tai chi exercise, an ancient Chinese martial art, works too to improve postural stability by weight shifting and ankle sway. 

All these observations show how and why national art varies across cultures and yet works similarly.

Phub

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World by Jean M Twenge are books for parents who freak out over electronic devices and social media. I'm not sure if Mark Zuckerberg has time to read them yet.

Things are different for our family. Now that my daughter is over 16, the need for parental control of device and bedtime rule is of less concern. Reading about self-control has become teachable moments for myself instead.

I'll admit it: I'm actually the one in the family who screws up mostly. If you haven't heard about the word phubbing, it's a combination of phone and snubbing. If you charge me a dollar every time you catch me phubbing with my wife – and fifty cents for taking out my phone during family dinner – I would have to remortgage my house to cover the cost or go broke.

I feel dumb that I haven't behaved properly with the device myself. I do now.

Fishing

Famed of its Japanese garden and large pond, Ohori Park (Ōhori-kōen) is an attraction that draws me during my Fukuoka stay. I ran there and found many striated herons. They aren't just lively; they are smart and ingenious. 

As I learned from David Attenborough, these herons in Japan are inventive fishermen equipped with bait-fishing skills. You might wonder how a heron can get the hang of catching fish. In his book The Life of Birds, David Attenborough wrote about miraculous fish catching like what had happened in the Sea of Galilee. A few years ago, some herons were living beside a lake where people come to feed ornamental fish. One particularly smart heron as observant as Voltaire's Zadig learned the human behaviour from people watching. It started following what people do, picking up a a piece of bread (or a morsel of edible food that it did not eat but fish did) and taking it down to the edge of the lake. After flicking bait on to the surface of the water, a fish came up to take it – and was itself taken by the heron. That's a smart trick, I think you'll agree.

The habit spread. Other striated herons quickly pick up the bait-fishing skills. But bread isn't that easy to procure. The smart herons have further refined their technique; they have started to use little feathers, instead of bread, for the same purpose. And that too works. 

Aren't we guys using similar tricks for fishing?