Dive In

Nothing sparks awe and evokes magic quite like swimming wild. That’s what I was told when I happened to leaf through a book Why Swim Wild in Waterstones bookstore a week ago. You might have also heard the claim that wild water ignites that playful, childlike glee.

My Greek friends nodded in agreement. They took us on a speedboat at Chios today to show us the way wild water releases all the feel-good hormones and endorphins. If I have learnt one thing swimming in wild water, it is the saltiness of Aegean Sea. 

That reminds me of the interesting osmoregulation of sharks living in an environment of high salinity. To survive in salty seawater, sharks handle the challenge by maintaining high concentration of urea in their body fluids. If not because of urea, sharks can’t achieve a body osmolality similar to that of the ocean surrounding them. If not because of similar osmolality, the sharks could have died from “drying out” when water is lost by osmosis.

That also explains the unpleasant odour when a shark dies: their urea breaks downa nd is converted to ammonia. Yikes!

Caffeine

Anyone who's visited Greece knows the word “kafeneio.” It is their time-honoured tradition to serve coffee, brewed in a narrow-top pot, in a small cup.

I happened to have missed drinking coffee at Athens today, when I refused to take the (remaining) decaffeinated capsule at the apartment. By midday I had proved myself an addict on caffeine. My reading speed dwindled. Concentration came to a standstill. It took me a while to recognise it's a sign of caffeine withdrawal.

In the summer, when sunshine is guaranteed, I still opted to go outdoor to buy a cup of much-needed expresso. That is more to respect my caffeine craving than the high heat of Greek summer.

Durrells

We are taught to buckle our seat belts, lock our doors, arm our houses against intruders. We worry about the weather, obsess about cleaniness, block the mosquitoes and moths.

All this sounds complicated, and it is. But it is also important to break the rules now and then. Before I visited Greece, I borrowed a story book about the British naturalist Gerald Durrell's family moving to the Greek island of Corfu. Written over half a century ago, the autobiographical book My Family and Other Animals makes me laugh all the way from London to Athens. 

Gerald Durrell had been spending every second in his childhood to investigate animals like trapdoor spiders, rose-bettles or mantids. By no means does his field work imply Gerald Durrell is serious enough to follow rules. He seldom followed the rules made by parents or adults. Once upon a time he grew very fond of weird-looking scorpions with crooked legs, crablike claws and tail like a rose-thorn. He managed to catch some brief glimpses of scorpions' courtship and caught a scorpion family. With infinite care Gerald Durrell manoeuvred the mother scorpion and baby family into a match-box. After being distracted by lunch, he left the match-box in the drawing-room. He completely forgot about the exciting new captures during family meal time. 

It was not until Gerald's brother fetched the cigarettes and picked up the match-box that the mother scorpion was allowed to escape. She seized the rare opportunity to hoist herself out of the box with lighting speed. This came perilously close to being a medieval duel. The scorpion strike and sting soon escalated into a pandemonium even worse than the Ukraine war. With a flick of his hand, Gerald's brother sent the scorpion flying down the table. One Durrell family member after another let out scream by the time a scorpion landed on them. Hysteria ensued. 

That's a bloodily amusing scene. 

London

With hundreds of thousands of Swifties heading to Wembley Stadium for the superstar Taylor Swift show, our family arrived at London one day ahead of her record-breaking Eras Tour at the capital city.

The joy of revisiting London, after my last one almost ten years ago, is not limited to my daughter's affection for the artist singer. With so much to see and do in London, my time-pressed travel during the conference last time has left plenty of to-do-list unchecked. 

The National Gallery and bookstore Waterstones were closed by the time my conference ended then. I was able to visit both this time. Yeah.

Hamilton

I hope you'll pardon me for not knowing Alexander Hamilton: I didn't study American history and haven't heard of George Washington's aide-de-camp in the Continental Army until my recent London trip.

When a good friend of our family bought us tickets for the multi-award winning musical based on the life of Hamilton, I borrowed the biography written about this man. The eight-hundred-page biography by Ron Chernow attests to the rise of an illegitimate orphan from the Caribbean. He was probably born in 1755 in the West Indies, where he was "surrounded by failed, broken, embittered people." His mother was unhappily married, and was soon deserted by Hamilton's father. With determined pursuit, six months after starting his self-education, Hamilton passed the bar exam at the age of twenty-seven and was licensed as an attorney before the New York State Supreme Court.

The rest of his story has led us to think about the Gatsby curve; that is about the height of economic ladder rungs. The farther apart each rung becomes, the much more difficult to climb. If not because Hamilton was born more than two hundred years ago, he could not have become the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.

Not any more. With time, the degree of income or status inequalities has climbed higher and higher. That means our economic prospects are determined by our parents' wealth rather than our own success.

Bookstore

Eating pizza doesn't make us Italian, any more than playing baseball turns Japanese into Americans. That said, I concede that, visiting London can turn you into a book-lover. Indeed, reading culture is deep-seated in London. So much so that we see bookworms everywhere in London, from underground to cafeteria. 

That's why our family headed to London's famous bookstore on the very morning of arrival, even before we think of Westminister Abbey. 

The Edwardian bookshop close to where we're staying, Daunt Books, is arguably the most beautiful one in London. It boasts long oak gallaries and stained-glass windows, and is home to travel guides and literature arranged by country. A bookstore so large, so thrilling, and so inspiring that we spent more than an hour.

I daresay that visiting bookstore like Daunt Books or Foyles is a must when you visit London.

Tranquility

If you happen to be an amateur birder, you may have the habit of chasing kingfisher like me. What draws kingfishers to be watched again and again come from their bright plumage and strikingly fast flight. 

As if to further cement my passion of kingfisher, I have learned about its connection with the Shinkansen bullet train during my viewing a virtual conference in Milan today. 

Eiji Nakatsu, like so many other of us with a passion for birdwatching, has been the engineer looking after the technical development of the Japanese high-speed bullet trains. He wasn't the first person to be frustrated by the noise and vibration created by their trains. So much so that sonic booms were heard by residents 400 metres away from the train tunnel. And then Eiji got his eureka moment after being inspired by kingfisher's vertical high-speed dive silent enough to score ten in the Olympic diving events. He was curious enough to explore the shape of its bill. In other words, the key is to prevent buildup of pressure wave by reducing the cross-sectional area of the Shinkansen. 

Eiji finally figured out to redesign the nose of bullet train like the bill of kingfishers. That's a romantic story of biomimicry to reduce power, fuel, money spent, and yet, create a quieter journey.