Memory

If you believe our memory is like indelible ink, I'm with you. We thought we experience and remember anything - the way we celebrated our child's first birthday, the first "papa" she said, the first day of school. Who won't?

And then I brought with me a book by the neuroscientist Lisa Genova, Remember, during our family vacation this weekend. I come to appreciate how episodic memory about an autobiogrphical event can be warped. In the words of Lisa Genova, retrieval and reconsolidating an episodic memory is like hitting SAVE in Microsoft Word. Every time we recall an episodic memory, we overwrite the earlier version of the memory and update it. Any edits we've made are then saved to to the new version in our neural circuits. The old one is gone.

We happened to bring our daughter to the Kowloon Park this time. And then I noticed that she cannot recall having visited the large public park housing flamingos. Let me be honest: I have to look through my photo album to find out that it has been more than eight years since her last visit of Kowloon Park.

Now that I understand how fallible our episodic memory can be, I must mention a more stable and long-lasting memory: muscle memory. The memory for how to do things, as it turns out, is quite different from the memory for what happened. Muscle memory is unconscious, and remembered below our awareness. Once learned, the motor skills can be retrieved effortlessly. That's why my daughter doesn't have to think about how she's going to swing her body across the monkey bar at the Kowloon Park playground. Easy-peasy.

Unknown

As 2021 draws to a close, no one knows the answers to the how and when for ending coronavirus pandemic, least of all the WHO and CDC. Now you dont't see it, now you do. It's an "unknown unknown."

All these questions whetted my curiosity. After delving into Mark Honigsbaum’s lively account of the epidemiological mysteries, I have learned a great deal from his book The Pandemic Century.

To his credit, we know no one can say for sure when there will be new plagues or new pandemics. And we are more often wrong than right. His narration of the last century's struggling against disease outbreaks speaks how we make downright mistakes, one in 1976 and another in 2003, one at Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia, and one at the Metropole, a mid priced hotel in Hong Kong. In both instances, scientists thought the world was on the brink of a new influenza pandemic, only to realise that’s false alarm and that the real danger lurked elsewhere.

Next comes one baby after another born with unusually small heads, with virtually no foreheads, when Zika virus hit Brazil. Unbeknownst to the public, the exceptionally high rate of birth defects has been triggered by a frightening mosquito-borne virus outbreak. Unfortunately rumours abounded that it’s all due to insecticides or vaccines. It's an all too common story. Similar conspiracy theory keeps repeating itself in history.

"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world," Albert Camus had already warned us, "yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky."

Birthday Party

Long ago, when my daughter was toddler, clueless, and looking for us to think of things to do, we decided the way of celebrating her birthday. Now that she turns twelve today, she has her say.

One thing I discover on seeing my daughter enjoy her way of orchestrating a sleepover party is how much she has grown up. She reveled in seemingly infinite topics of talking with three classmates she has invited. The four of them just kept laughing till midnight; their enery was astonishing.

By now, as I write this, after an hour of chasing swallowtail butterflies and kingfisher with my camera this morning, I have come to understand how much zoom telephotos matter for wildlife lovers. Come too close and the bird flies away. Too distant, no good. The same applies to my daughter. The relationship is complicated, that much is known, and we learn to keep a good-enough distance. A distance that would give both a balanced frame.

Verghese

Doctors' eyes wouldn't make any sense without being used to inspect for signs of disease. Odd as that might sound to you, every time, Dr. Abraham Verghese's eyes would be searching for signs. Not a day, maybe not even a waking hour, would pass empty of his peeping around, scrutinising people.

I've been reading his book The Tennis Partner, which has taught me the way Sherlock Holmes observes others. Verghese can't even stop himself observing naked tennis players in the locker room. On one man he saw a profusion of serborrheic keratosis. The next minute he came up with the idea of "Leser-Trélat sign" - a rare condition in which a slew of the usual seborrheic keratoses signifies an underlying malignancy.

Years ago, when I was a medical student, I picked up the habit of religiously observing passengers on a train or a bus. That's how our eyes, from habit, study people and look for diseases. A swollen neck with protruding eyes. A feeble liver from too much alcohol. And indeed, from time to time during my intern year, I found myself gauging the size of veins on others as if I have to insert peripheral intravenous catheters for them.

Try as I might, though, my habit can never be as professional as Abraham Verghese. One of my favorite quotes remains that of Verghese: "If you get on a hospital elevator, don't get off without making at least one diagnosis on your fellow travelers."

Sunday

Our days of parenthood have been inextricably linked with each other in our family. My daughter is growing up with two of us. If anything, I am the one who is away.

And then there are rare occasions, like this Sunday, when I am with Jasmine on my own.

What might we do when my wife was hiking with friends of hers? My daughter didn't hesitate in the least to suggest games at home. Her footwork needs downtime after weeks of hiking, I believe. That means indoor downtime and mental space to amuse ourselves. Where should we start? Here's what we did: a game called Nitro Type for typing speed competition, a strategy type guessing game Battleship, Scrabble, and new version of Jenga invented by two of us.

What more could we do? I still long for outdoor activity. Instead of hiking, my daughter agreed with the suggestion to ride our bikes along the seaside, burning off at least 400 calories.

Nightingale

Can a book be too long? That certainly can be. Chances are, we can still handle a long one but not necessarily a heavy one. Sometimes, a book can be too heavy. So much so that I can hardly finish since I picked up the book four months ago.

Kristin Hannah is a lawyer-turned-writer who writes truly moving novels. She gives weight to the story that can't be forgotten. The Nightingale is one of her best historical novels. A captivating novel for a lifetime, narrating two women in war-torn France during World War II. The saddest story of a heroine saving over one hundred and seventeen men as she hiked across escape routes of the Pyrenees mountains. And that of her sister risking her life to save Jewish children from the invading Nazis.

I don't know how many of you can sleep well after reading chapters of women in concentration camp. I can't.

Kristin Hannah asked in an interview about her book, "When would I, as a wife and mother, risk my life - and most important, my child's life - to save a stranger?"

Most of us wouldn't. But it can be even worst: What good is safety if she - your child - has to grow up in a world where people disappear without a trace because they pray to a different God?

Deep Learning

When we talk about the world's famed adventure itineraries, I am sure that New Zealand, Costa Rica or Iceland will spring to mind. These destinations describe the very essence of what photographers or hikers dream about.

I'd say so, but then as anyone can tell that's more a dream than reality at present. With the travel restriction and quarantine policy in mind, I consider my daughter very fortunate to have chance to spend a special week outside the classroom, camping in glorious weather, kayaking, working out her perserverance in ropes courses and scenic ridge-line hiking at Pak Sin Leng. 

This week is furnished with all sorts of new and old friendship in the countryside, where she and her classmates laugh and joke like crazy buddies. That isn't as cozy as five-star hotels - when you count the way of washing dishes after meals - but the students love how they make their own hotdogs. That isn't as classical as holidaymakers snapping selfies - when smartphones aren't allowed - but they have their own journals to create their time capsules of memories.

It's heartening to imagine the fun she has had even without an air ticket or passport.