Ocean

From the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the global population of sea otters fell from 300,000 to less than 2,000 individuals. That's a result of human hunting; these marine animals have the thickest fur of any mammals. I learned these from the recent David Attenborough's landmark series, Ocean.

His book shows us how the world is both desperately fragile yet astonishingly resilient. 

Little did we know the kelp forests are diminishing, albatross populations are crashing, seashells being washed up on the beach are disappearing. Such environmental amnesia or change in the accepted norms is called "shifting baseline syndrome", a societal phenomenon first described by fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly. In short, what we see today we tend to think of as normal, simply because we get used to a degraded environment. 

Arguably, humans are less sensitive to the changing ecosystem than other animals. A look at the Southern Ocean and you'll be amazed by how the animals get along with the temperature. Crocodile icefish, among all, is the only vertebrate that doesn't have red blood cells. No one is sure of the evolutionary advantage of this adaptation. Without red cells, it is harder to transport oxygen around their bodies. To compensate, they have evolved oversized hearts and scale-free skin that allows them to absorb oxygen directly from the seawater. To live in water around Antarctica, crocodile icefish have evolved antifreeze proteins in their blood which limit the growth of ice crystals, making the freezing point of their blood slightly below the freezing point of seawater. Now that global warming is raising the water temperature, warmer water has lowered oxygen solubility, putting them at risk of suffocation. 

What a tough life. 

Pachinko

I started reading Pachinko, an epic novel written by Min Jin Lee, before heading to Shaoxing for a conference.

I didn't realise it could have taken me longer than the trip to finish the book. What took so long? That's indeed a long story spanning nearly 100 years of history. A moving novel about identity and struggle with discrimination. 

There are countless examples of fighting for identity in the story. Sunja, the daughter of a crippled fisherman in this novel, was told, "For a woman, the man you marry will determine the quality of your life completely. A good man is a decent life, and a bad man is a cursed life." Many people like Sunja can't reverse a curse, and more so when they believe there is a curse in their blood. In a macabre environment of Japan-versus-Korea thinking, some of the Koreans had to to choose a Japanese surname to hide their blood. 

The worldview that saw people born with a curse is metaphorically a game of pachinko. In this game of pinball, the first strike of the ball against the flipper more or less determines how the game will play out. Sunja thought that there was a curse in her blood, similar to the way the fate of pinball is decided at the moment of plunger hitting the ball. 

Patient

Tilly Rose is an author and a patient advocate. She wrote a powerful story about being patient and a patient. 

Be Patient is an eye-opening account of her being a seriously ill patient without a diagnosis. That should be a must-read book for all medical students and doctors. Every year, there are cases with mysterious or unexplained symptoms leading to so-called medical gaslighting – "it's all in your head."

What makes the situation worse is the undefined illness that won't fit in one particular medical specialty. Tilly Rose could be having paroxysms of clammy body and shaking arms. For no reason, her brain could go foggy. One minute her headache was unbearable, the next she would be crying out with weak and wobbly legs. Then she put on extra body fluid enough to fill three gallon jugs. Now that each specialist is often interested in looking at his or her discipline only, Tilly Rose turned out being lost in a barren landscape or no-man's-land. 

"I imagine taking a photograph of my whole body and cutting it up into horizontal strips, separating all the different parts of me," Tilly Rose concluded. "The doctor holding the photo of my heads has no idea what my feet look like. I am trapped in a system that relies on putting people in boxes. Bodies aren't made for boxes."

To stop this vicious cycle of losing sight of our patients, here is my simple rule: Piece the photograph back together and learn to read the whole picture. Not a separate box for each strip.

Bees

In prehistoric times, the jawbones or tooth sockets of extinct rodents and mammals were nests for bees. Fast forward to today, bees are experiencing a massive global crisis; they have been dying off in massive numbers. Dwindling habitats and onslaught of pesticides account for a sharp decline in the colony numbers. Then came parasites and climate changes. Some beekeepers reported that 55 percent of their colonies had perished over the previous year – their worst losses ever.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons National Geographic put up the title "Secrets of the Bees" in the current magazine issue and their new docuseries, now streaming on Disney Plus. 

Sadness aside, we are now getting more fascinated by scientific discovery that bees are far smarter than we ever imagined. Even Karl von Frisch, the Nobel laureate who were famous for deciphering bees' dance language, had once commented that, "The brain of a bee is the size of a grass seed and is not made for thinking."   

When a team of scientists lamented that the parrots in a laboratory had failed a string-pulling test – a classic experience for testing animal's cognitive prowess to pull a string to retrieve a reward – one of them casually commented, "I bet our bumblebees could do that."

Everyone laughed.

But as the team soon learned, the bumblebees aced the examination by successfully pulling the sugar-coated flower using the attached string. 

Hunt

What can be more difficult to find than a white-throated kingfisher in Lantau? You might be scratching your head as you think about the loud chattering "kra-kra-kra-kra" laugh of this kingfisher.

Well, my wife and I were looking for birds who don't really sing. How different things are when we decided to celebrate my wife's birthday with the Flock Project. That means we explored the trails and alleys of Lantau, navigating with intermittent mobile network coverage, to find the paintings of a British artist Rob Aspire, known as "The Birdman" for his captivating murals of birds.  

The red-billed blue magpie and Swinhoe's white-eye aren't too difficult to spot. We were as enthusiastic as kids heading for Easter egg hunts. Imagine the fun for a couple, one of whom bird-obsessed, and another keen on drawing. The spectacle of the mural art makes us dive deep into the "birdwatching" art walk.

I won't post any spoiler here in case you want to explore. Trust me, the white-breasted waterhen is probably the best player of hide and seek.

Horse

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "dark horse" as a candidate about whom little is known, but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds. That's not a bad definition. Of course, we can find a better one. 

Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas, both accomplished in their field of psychology and neuroscience respectively, worked together to write the book Dark Horse. Put simply: they define dark horses as those bravely blazing their own trails through the wilderness. 

Their central concept of dark horse mindset is that the pursuit of fulfilment leads to excellence. This is exactly opposite to the mainstream dictum that the pursuit of excellence leads to fulfilment. For generations, we are being pressured to follow well-defined and rigid ladder rungs. All types of institutions, medical schools included, curate their scheme of admission and compel students to customise their portfolios to suit their tastes. Students are doomed by the Hunger Games system of survival or competition. How can they not be?

As a matter of fact, there is a way. Go and read the book Dark Horse, follow your personal passion, and not the dictated path.

Space

Recent launching of Artemis II marked a pivotal moment of human's traveling furthest from Earth – ever.

It's hard to think of a better movie or book than Project Hail Mary. In this beautiful sci-fi fciton, we were brought on an interstellar field trip like Ms. Frizzle's Magic School Bus to the solar system.

We followed the story of Ryland Grace on his solo space trip adventure, after his crewmates died. For those of us who aren't mathematics buff, we might not enjoy the calculation. There are so many things to calculate: relative velocity, thrust duration and angle, altitude, gravity, and minimum amount of fuel for interplanetary travel.

As we read on, we met a new species, Eridians. Between Eridians and Ryland Grace, we learned the power of real friendship. That's something that can't be measured or calculated. Neither by the frequency of contact, nor the distance between two species. 

Many of us won't remember the numbers or statistics of the fictional microscopic organism Astrophage. But we all will remember how Ryland Grace builds his lifelong friendship with Rocky, a highly intelligent spider-like alien. At heart, they are closer than many of humans on Earth. To me, that's the real wisdom that not everything that counts can be counted.