Bird's-Eye View

Essays of Helen Macdonald, an award-winning naturalist, are exemplary pieces of heart-tugging writing about hawfinches, cuckoos, orioles, magpies, swifts, barn owls and many wildlife.

My recent reading of her Vesper Flights had prepared me to immerse myself in the thrilling details of spotting birds. An inchoate attempt with instant gratification. The happiness and the spectacle I've discovered with my camera has held me spellbound.

I watched in awe today afternoon in Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve, populated by songbirds. And so I listened agog when their aerial appearance swelled my heart out of all proportion to the size of my viewfinder. It was thrilling. If there is a better way to conclude a birdwatching walk than seeing a bright grass-green leafbird with a plumage tinge of cobalt-blue, then I don't know it.

Biodiversity

In the days after the pandemic has ground air travel to a halt, I became obsessed with the flight of other species, which include the resident birds as well as passage migrants. 

The Mai Po Nature Reserve, a Ramsar site of International Importance as a stop-off point for migrating water birds on the transit flight between New Zealand and Siberia, held me spellbound every time I visited the wetland. Instantly. Joy, breathtaking, gratitude; an avalanche of emotions from the riveting encounters between urban humans and wild animals. 

Today, I went there with my family and friends after buying a telephoto zoom lens. The pastime of birdwatching increasingly fascinates me, and more so with a new gadget. That was when I recognised the telescopic sights of birds can have a magic pull. On my way home, I had a stopover at my university campus and spotted few more species. So perfectly did this detour give me chance to see a strikingly colourful kingfisher, it had the force of absolute addiction. 

Start a wildlife photography journey and you could lose yourself for days.

School

The coronavirus has always been a rich source of new words for English. Or for me, at least.

Unknowingly, the word "webinar" has become way more popular than Ribena. Inarguably the lingua franca of our times. The idea of listening to webcast lecture is our new normal.

I set my alarm clock to wake up after midnight to learn about the controversial topic of school closure today. That's one day after my daughter returned to campus as soon as Government guidelines permit. At long last. Of course, it isn't full-scale yet but opening at not more than one sixth of the school's capacity.

And this is what my daughter did. She went to school for morning face-to-face session once weekly. Yup, a precious moment, reconnecting with friends. Perhaps the best part of her school lesson is the whereabouts of the classroom: the teachers move the classroom to the countryside on her school's doorstep. I was told that they were having indigenous animal tracking exercise, tree climbing and meditation.

We'd never been more content with school life before and it is probably my daughter's best lesson during the pandemic.

Memoir

For many years, I've kept the habit of browsing through the best book list from Goodreads recommendation site, and will never run out of books to borrow.

One of the real surprises this year is The Beauty in Breaking, a memoir written by an emergency room physician Michele Harper. Looking past the years (and tears) of healing gunshot wound victims, resuscitating neonates, juggling between intoxicated patients and bed debt, Harper has shared many heartfelt lessons she has learned.

Among much else, her navigation through night shifts has touched a raw chord within most doctors. Harper states the cold, hard truth: "Night shifts are always inconvenient and much like hangovers: The older you get, the hard they are to recover from. For some, they are a badge of honor; those types sprint them like marathons, race after race, year after year, with the stamina of a long-distance runner."

One can't help but think of bleary-eyed Michele Harper, kept awake by the sound and aroma of the percolating coffeemaker. I can always find my similarity with her liking for extra-dark coffee, as what she calls "the elixir of life."

Of course, coffee is our life. How could it not?

Team

One of the famous opening sentences in Brené Brown's talk goes like this, "Connection is why we're here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives."

This, it seems to me, is at the heart of a recent campaign The Billion Steps Challenge. In essence, we were encouraged to sign up into teams of between two and five people, who then log in our daily step count by syncing our mobile device.

It is a beautiful example of what behavioral scientists mean by nudging healthy behavior with group-based incentive, a far more effective tool than individual incentive. Some years ago, scientists have experimented with the two types of incentive to help people shed pounds. Slimmers were randomly organized into groups of five people or separate individuals. Offering groups a collective reward for meeting target weight loss is more successful than incentives offered to each individual.

Whether you call it social pressure or peer motivation, the trick simply works wonder.

School

In the days after the tightening social restrictions, going to school became an exception rather than the rule, which doesn't make sense to me. 

Talk to the parents and you'll hear curse words about suspending face-to-face teaching. Listen to the students and you'll know how they long to go back to classrooms. A low incidence of severe coronavirus infection among schoolchildren without closing schools in Sweden, unfortunately, didn't seem to have allayed fears of the Education Bureau.

To stay calm and remain sane, we came up with an idea of hiking at the countryside near my daughter's school campus today. Thankfully, I've picked a sunny afternoon to take a half day off from work. My daughter was in seventh heaven when she found a tree to climb, reading a novel by J.K. Rowling on cloud nine.

Today, I have learned to trust my intuitions more.

Pleasure

What makes us happy?

Ask people this question and you'll get a truckload of answers. Brace yourself for some bad news and be prepared to find out that we often misremember what made us happy in the past, and foretell wrongly what will make us happy in the future. In short, we have imprecise prediction.

If you're skeptical, and you should be, you might assume buying new running shoes after 400 km is going to double the joy - as what my Runkeeper tracking app keeps reminding me. Wait, and think twice. As far as research data are concerned, runners in high-end shoes are more likely to get hurt. In case you skipped over the last sentence, I'll repeat it, and put it in italics. For double the price, you get double the pain. That much is clear.

Next, I am surprised to find out that beat-up running shoes are safer than newer ones. Little did I know that as shoes wore down and their cushioning thinned, runners gained more foot control.

And heigh-ho. There is no point trying to make lives happier by spending a fortune. In the real world, it's next to impossible to overcome the pitfall of hedonic treadmill. We simply can't make ourselves happier by making our wallet emptier. Now, if you know how expensive a Montblanc fountain pen can be, I have to say that one of my happiest moments this week is buying a Hero fountain pen which costs 40 dollars.