Sorry

The very idea of apology is that it means respect between two parties. The phrase "I am sorry" opens the window to restore broken relationships. Everything before and everything after might as well not have mattered at all.

It seems to me that apologies have become increasingly rare. Over one month after an unfortunate story of a young doctor, we haven't heard the word sorry. I won't describe the story in detail here, because even in print it's too distressing.

I really don't want the story ruin my day, and quickly forgot it after I went home today. It's a lot happier to see my daughter playing with her best friend after work. The two of them had already played outdoors for an hour, with all kinds of games they come up with by themselves, and was running around indoors when I met them. I say I met them because I didn't really joined them. As parents, I was told, we should hover less because kids gain more when we do less.

I talked with the mum of my daughter's friend, when our children were within eyesight. It's not unusual to see and hear some arguments in the playroom: an unsupervised boy wielding a gun and blocking the way, another stroppy boy in green sweatshirt calling kids by nickname, other children joining in the bullying. As we chatted, we kept an eye on our children but tried not to go near. Kids would learn much more about the world when they make up, negotiate, and derive their own rules.

I stepped in at the end, when a boy said dirty words about girls' underwear.

I didn't think it solved the problem. Anyway, my daughter was fed up with those naughty boys and asked to leave. When she and her friend were putting on shoes, to my surprise, a boy came up and spoke to my daughter with a bow. "I'm sorry. I was mean to you."

I didn't expect to hear an apology today. Now I have.

Pain

Do animals have rights? Does that mean we should treat animals equal as human beings?

That's a philosophical question I happened to come across during my recent reading.

Every so often in life we get to admit we cause animals pain, for one reason or another. Not many people (me included), on the other hand, would be prepared to stop eating animals because slaughtering animals induces animals pain.

Pain may be pain, Julian Baggini reasons, but it can become more (or less) serious depending on how and when it is felt, by what kind of creature. That is not to say that animal pain is trivial. There is clearly a moral concern when we kill animals, say, for the sake of testing cosmetics. Few things turn the stomach more when reading a passage how people torture dogs and cats for fun. How about chasing or killing a cockroach at your kitchen? Well, yes, being slapped by a slipper is unpleasant and painful, but as soon as it has passed, life of the cockroach goes on - or off, depending how precise we hit the cockroach. The same is not true for humans, as made clear by Baggini, because some more mentally sophisticated animals (like Homo sapiens) can turn their pain into longer-lasting suffering and become haunted by the memory of nasty pain.

That is why we should prioritise reducing human pain over animal pain. That made sense.

Yesterday morning, I taught my students how we inserted a catheter into the tummy of a patient whose kidneys suddenly stopped working. If we didn't make an effort to dialyse him, I told them, he would die shortly. Nonetheless, we had to use a pretty sharp needle to pop open his tummy. That's painful. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine how we can do that without causing suffering. The point of getting my patient sedated was discussed. Some of my students worried about getting the patient into sleep; they would rather suggest a bigger dose of painkiller. But that may not be the whole story of pain management. In other words, pain becomes a less serious problem if it won't be remembered or anticipated over time. That is why sedative, I would argue, serves to make the pain go away.

Chirps and Beeps

Today there's no hospital area - day or night - that isn't noisy. Add to this spectrum of decibels all the increasing number of machines, like infusion pump alerts, monitors that sound when patients try to leave their beds, blood pressure and heart rate alarms. Add all the pagers and hospital telephones. Ultimately the (health care worker) attention deficit-(alarm and noise) hyperactivity disorder prevails.

As a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association states, a tenet of medical alarm is that "the alarm activates only when a serious problem develops." As the level and complexity of patient care increase, unfortunately, more and more alerts have been invented. And no wonder: many of us believe hospital alarms should improve patient safety. This is true for critical alarms. On the other hand, many of the current alerts - visual or audible - probably don't bother a doctor or nurse that much, and are often disabled (such as a pop-up message about a patient's history of hepatitis) or muted (as is the case with a patient who triggers an alarm after minor movement in bed).

Simply put, we are caught up in a chaotic maze of cues, signals and noise. Whether we realize it or not, most of the modern hospital alerts are hyperactive enough to cause attention deficit or alarm fatigue. And the last thing we want to see is a man found dead in his hospital bed with a cardiac monitor that has been set to mute.

Happiness

Simplicity is the secret recipe of happiness.

I remember a blog by my mentor who wrote about the way to make himself happy. He suggested to build happiness on something simple, regular and durable. That's why writing blog has become part of his everyday life.

For me, writing blog is fun but I don't do it daily. It turns out that preparing lunch box is much more regular and generates tremendous happiness for me, my wife and my daughter.

Preparing lunch for my daughter (who is now attending full day school)? Me? It's a pretty safe bet that my daughter would wince at it. First, a disclaimer. I am all thumbs when it comes to cooking. Whenever I told people that my daughter loves the lunch box that I prepare for her, I would typically get two reactions. The first was the natural and straightforward response. "Oh?" my friend would say. "I didn't know you can cook."

It was the second response that I found easier to answer.

"Oh, what did you put in her lunch box?"

It's no secret that my maid prepares the lunch food. One of the best-kept secrets about making the lunch box lively is that we add a handmade lunch box card each time. On the night before, my wife and I will take out colour pencils or watercolour brushes, scissors, paper and thermal laminator. Few things are easier than conjuring up the happy events with our daughter during the day, and few things are harder than picking only one of them to draw on the lunch box card. Crazy game that she invents, silly story that she loves, monkey bar that she is proud of, animals like cheetah or ladybird, and the list goes on and on.

The card reminds us how lovely our life can be, and lets my daughter remember our love forever.

Missing Mummy

There aren't too many books you wish your children don't have to read.

Last week I found one that I pray my daughter doesn't have to read, and didn't borrow it then. This week I changed my mind and feel blessed that we have read the book together.

This is how the first page of the picture book started. On a cold and rainy morning, a boy went to the funeral of his mummy. He wasn't sure where his mummy has gone, and had tried looking for her everywhere, peeking behind the sofa and underneath the bed, in vain. He found lots of her belongings except her. The story itself, or at least the theme, is tearful.

We've been shying away from death the way people avoid talking about sexual education. I also felt a certain nagging worry, somewhere in my heart and my stomach (or my guts), wondering if my daughter would come out of the story shattered and frightened. "Does my daughter understand death and find ways to grapple with the emotional turmoil? And if she can, will she?" And on and on.

I read the story together with my daughter and wife last night. We were impressed by the way Rebecca Cobb painted the painful picture of child bereavement. Like dark chocolate, the bitter story isn't easy to swallow but still feels sweet in the throat. And of course, the lesson that Jasmine is about to learn could hardly be more permanent than the boy's memory of his mummy.

Karri

In many ways the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, which is the tallest lookout tree (at 68 metres) in Warren National Park of southwestern Australia, is more like a circus totem than a fire lookout station.

We had a lot of funny ideas in mind during our recent Perth trip, and this tree is one of those. For one thing, I kept asking myself if I should let my daughter climb the karri tree (and without worrying as I follow her steps up and up).

Spiral pegs around the karri tree trunk make the climb less daunting - but still somewhat scary. There's even a tree-house cage station midway, swaying up to 1.5 metres in case of extremely windy day. And did I mention there is no safety net below?

Which is to say you'd better mind your step and put your foot down with each step. Make any split-second decision carelessly and you will never have chance to make any decision. Best not to speak at all in moment like this. 

My daughter didn't say much during her ascent. "Focus," she simply said few words to herself, "and don't give up." Rarely has a game captured so much attention so firmly - young and old, daughter and her dad. The first time she climbed the tree, she started to try few steps, gaining an internal sense of control, and came down. This isn't surprising. One has to sense the footing before going further up. I stayed behind and held my breath, whereas my wife had decided to take the lead. She climbed and asked my daughter to follow. I peered anxiously at the bottom of the karri tree (you know, broken arm, shattered skull and the like), wondering whether I should tell my kid (and my wife) to come down. Or, should I let her push her personal boundaries just a bit? Or, could I?

On my return flight, I happened to read a news story about playground behavior of Auckland children, who had motion sensors strapped to them (for monitoring physical activity, as a research project). The researchers talked the schools into relaxing outdoor play rules, including lifting bans on running, riding bikes or climbing trees.

Their success rate in persuading schools to throw the rule books out the window is marvelous on its own, but all the more astonishing in light of how allowing children to take "risky" play resulted in a drop in bullying and serious injuries. And, I'm serious, an improvement in students' concentration and behaviour in class. 
 

I wish I'd read the story before visiting this karri tree.

Perth

People get crazy whenever travel is mentioned and I can understand why. We just had an adventure in Perth, and the week is packed with fun.

I and my wife had some trepidation at the thought of holidaying with our four-year-old kid in a country after eight-hour flight. Ah, eight hours. A sudden attack of the "are-we-there-yets" is always fingernails on parents' chalkboard, and can sometimes be more serious than Murray Valley encephalitis virus.

 

Mention boredom on the plane and movie is sure to come up. Jasmine had never watched a movie before, so watching her first one about an injured dolphin was a bit intriguing. The friendly animal lost her tail after being strangled by fish net. Jasmine worried a lot. Uneasiness became so palpable that I could see it on her face. She asked me for words of comfort, and didn't laugh even when a naughty pelican made a scene of chasing people.

 

Dolphin Tale takes many turns in its unfolding how the dolphin got her tail back, which I will leave you to explore.

 

The movie, as it turned out, quite matched our trip to the Penguin Island two days later. We saw hundreds of Australian pelicans (like the naughty one in the movie) on the way to the Penguin Island. Home to long-term injured or orphaned penguins (like that dolphin with tail maimed), the ecoconscious island is perfect for teaching my daughter how to appreciate our nature and love the wilderness. No food is sold there and yet we had picnic by bringing our own. No flushing system is available at the toilets and, still, they aren't smelly with composting design.

 

Unforgettable.