Back on Feet

Wealth or health (or lack thereof) is the catalyst for tension in almost everyone – though we can often decide which of them is the priority.

My dad has suffered from a stroke and repeated falls recently. Is that an high stakes situation? Absolutely. After everything that had happened last week, and pondering everything that could happen later, our family found comfort in tackling the mess one by one. 

It's like the tangles in our hair. We can't settle unless we start from the bottom and gently work our way up. We must take our time and can't tug or pull.

Be a patient, and be patient.

Medication

In September 2015, a drug company's CEO Martin Shkreli ordered a price hike of pyrimethamine from 13.5 to 750 dollars per pill, after his purchasing exclusive rights to distribution.

Pyrimethamine is a medicine to treat life-threatening parasitic infection in disadvantaged AIDS patients. The reason for lofty profits from jacking up the price is nothing other than greed. There were no development costs because this drug has existed for over 60 years. To prohibit manufacturers from "price gouging" on essential off-patent or generic drugs, the court had ordered Shkreli to repay the profits, and  barred him from the industry for life.

I didn't know this shameful story until my friend recommended me Elisabeth Rosenthal's book An American Sickness. I couldn't agree more with Elisabeth Rosenthal that doctors in training are generally taught little to nothing about the cost of medicine. We have been taught how to prescribe medicine, but knew little about the market. 

Neither doctors nor patients could have heard the story how a drug company intentionally moved its acne medicine from one form to another three times in order to keep its costly brand-name drug status. We knew nothing about the tactic of developing a "new" version (that could be chewed, or broken up and sprinkled on applesauce) to eke out time with patent protection. We didn't know that drugmakers can gain extra months of protection by filing a lawsuit to stymie or delay the launch of a generic.

Now I know.

Lie

You know the feeling: you have a hard time recalling the name of someone you know – in many case, an old acquaintance.

You appear to have recalled someone's face or voice, but not the name. You have to admit having a lousy retrieval system for name. The older you grow, the worse the system will be.

One way to train myself is reading novels with more characters. I don't know your manageable number of characters without the need of a cast spreadsheet. I recently read a novel, First Lie Wins, in which the central character operates under multiple aliases. That gives me the challenging experience of not mixing up Lucca Marino, Evie Porter, Izzy Williams, Regina Hale, Wendy Wallace, and Mia Bianchi. Those are simply different names of one protagonist. 

If I wish to tell you a lie, I would pretend that I didn't get confused with these names.

Muscle

If you have been told about your age-related muscle mass loss, join the club. 

About half of adults older than 80, like my parents, are having sarcopenia or low relative muscle mass, often defined as skeletal muscle mass being two standard deviations below the mean of a young reference group.

I must admit that I don't visit my parents frequently enough. I hardly ever, if ever, look into the fridge of them. We checked today upon visiting them. I saw an empty freezer and plenty of space after opening the lower door. My wife leaned over and shook her head. Chances are high that my parents aren't taking enough proteins. We don't even need to check with a dietitian. 

Before teaching them squat exercise or body resistance training, we knew the quickest way to reverse the downhill sarcopenia course is to fill up their fridge and stomach. Our home visit then turned into a grocery errand. A fulfilling one.

Technology

In November 2022, the release of ChatGPT became a viral hit within two months. By then, the milestone of reaching 100 million daily active users (within two months, let me repeat here) was a testament not only to the explosion of artificial intelligence, but also to a new era of technology. This year, a powerful model DeepSeek emerged in China and shunned the world.  

Fifty years ago few of us were familiar with VCR, let alone computers. Now that we get problem comprehending TYVM and ICYMI texts from our children, we will get further behind if we don't prepare ourselves with mainstream real-world AI skills.

To get myself less outdated, I borrowed the book Teaching with AI written by two educators, José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. They cautioned that AI will eliminate some jobs, but it is going to change every job: those who can work with AI will replace those who can't. Rather than banning AI, they clarified the need for teachers to help students move above and beyond what AI produced for them. A few good examples of writing assignments would be asking students to grade a paper produced by AI, and to write a better paper or improve the AI-generated essay (and include tracked changes and comments).

Another way of understanding the new changes is to look at the history of calculators. Think about the days when we were busy with learning multiplication tables, doing long division, or adding long columns of numbers. Then came the technology of calculators. The calculator did not really eliminate the need for human math, but changed which math skills we needed. By the same token, AI won't eliminate the need to write well and with ease, clarity and voice. Trust me, never ask AI to write your wedding vow, or your Valentine's Day love letter.

Diversity

For most people, the words diversity and inclusion are used interchangeably. But hear me out: this is more difficult than what we think to have love or acceptance that transcend every prejudice.

That's the reason many of us will find the book Far from the Tree unsettling. Andrew Solomon, who is gay, wrote seven hundred pages on families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia and transgender children. Despite his proposition that diversity is what unites us all, dwarfs still carry with them the historical and cultural baggage of being "ugly Rumpelstiltskins." Parents still struggle with undue blame on themselves when their sons suffer from autism. "It's because I went skiing while I was pregnant," said one highly educated activist. Many trans kids are referred to as "idiots" and "freaks."

Sadly, we still hear reports of human children with disabilities being discarded in Dumpsters. It's terrifying to think that Andrew Solomon's book could have the same fate soon. Let's pray that its time has not yet come.  

Cat

Japan's connection with cats is always tangible. The legacy of cats goes all the way back to the famous robotic earless blue cat. The Japanese have also created Totoro, Hello Kitty, Guest Cat and the grey kitten from Chi's Sweet Home. 

I couldn't help but feel obsessed to fit in one more book, The Cat Who Saved Books, when my wife shoehorned our travel luggage for Hokkaido trip. That's the story of a mysterious talking tabby cat called Tiger. 

If you love books, you will love Tiger. If you want to discover the way to connect with kind-hearted but introverted people –  otherwise known as hikikomori in Japan – you will be eager to find the feline friend Tiger.

I feel so lucky to have picked the book about Tiger to travel. It's like the best cheese and wine pairing – uplifting and deeply satisfying.