Filter

I'm nerdy enough that I had to learn from my junior about Facebook some years after Mark Zuckerberg launched the social media. I have never installed this social networking app in my smartphone, with the hope that it can minimise addiction. I knew nothing about Tumblr or Snapchat. And until recently, I didn't quite understand the knack of using hashtag.

After my daughter asked for our permission to open an Instagram account last week, I decided to read about the story of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

By the end of the first few chapters of the book No Filter, I have already got more idea how and why I made use of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

For Instagram, I somehow craft it like a coffee table with magazines. Instead of inviting Instagram followers, I exclusively browsed photos of Lonely Planet, National Geographic, Runner's World and birds. That much is good. And this is the easiest way to enjoy photos of wildlife, kingfishers and leisure activities.

For Facebook, I use that as a gallery or diary with pictures of mine. Although posting photo on Facebook is more a hassle than using Instagram, the upside of this social media is the way it chronicles our memory like a diary.

For Twitter, I build my account to become a medical "knowledge tank". Following academic accounts such as that of the New England Journal of Medicine and the Infectious Diseases Society of America automatically helps me stay abreast of the most updated journal publication and conference materials.

I don't know if this system of categorising apps works for you, but this is perfect for a nerd like me.

Anniversary

The reason to take a day off on my 23rd wedding anniversary today, I would have thought, is self-evident. I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of reasons.

So: because of the fundamental importance of we-time. That is the reason. And more important than me-time.

Also because, in this particular case, of being grateful for my wife's willingness to tolerate a difficult guy: a guy who doesn't drive and have enjoyed his passenger status for more than two decades; a guy who works for longer hours than Meredith Grey; a guy with a cluttered desk and messy home.

A more immediate explanation is to say that I'm thankful for about my wife.

Wallet

I lost my wallet yesterday evening.

When I found about the missing wallet and thought about the credit cards and the Octopus card, I felt the flutter of trepidation in my gut. I paced around to search, and wished that my wallet was hiding somewhere at home. Except it wasn't.

Stomach in knots, I was seized by the urge to call the bank to cancel my credit cards. Deactivating all cards would make sense, that much is clear.

A small voice inside me than said, "Excuuuuusee me, can I have a reason to feel hopeful about retrieving my wallet?" No sooner did I make up my mind to report lost cards than I thought of something better: a global study on the likelihood of returning lost wallet. I learned about this study from the book Collective Illusions.

The behavioral scientist researchers conducted a series of experiments to calculate the return rates of lost wallets and published their results in Science. The researchers "lost" over 17,000 wallets in 40 countries. Each wallet contained three business cards with a clear ID and an email address, a key and a grocery list in the local language. Some contained no cash; others held about $13; and others contained $100. 

And what did they find? In almost all countries, people tried to return the wallets. In all but two countries, people tried even harder to reach the owner if there was money inside. The more cash, the better return rate.

The little-known moral and altruistic nature of human is best reflected by another survey conducted by the same group of reseachers asking people to estimate the return rate based on whether the wallets contained no money, $13 or $100. Both laypersons and professional economists projected a lower return rate for wallets with money, and the lowest when there were more money. The opposite is true, as it turns out.

Putting these findings together, I decided to temporarily block my credit card and wait with a jolt of optimism. So when twelve hours passed and I hadn't received news of my lost wallet, I began to get a little edgy. Okay, I worried.

I got a phone call more than half day after I lost my wallet, and was told that a stranger wanted to return my wallet. I hadn't even noticed that my mouth was hanging open.

School

My daughter has graduated from a primary school many of us wished to have graduated from.

Her school is great; everyone says so.

In case you're wondering whether the kids' parents have chance to graduate from this school, here's the answer: Yes. Some of us. Luckily or unluckily.

You won't believe this, I tell you. We have arranged a "graduation ceremony" in the school hall for a parent of my daughter's classmate. That is, sadly, a ceremony or memorial after she died of stomach cancer last year.

Which means, of course, that the school serves like a close-knit family for the students. So much so that, when my wife has committed to get baptised, the church has borrowed the school venue for this important moment.

A moment, and a school for that matter, we won't forget.

Easter

This Easter weekend is unquestionably one of the longest holidays for us since the lifting of pandemic curbs on travel. That means thousands of Hong Kong travellers heading to airport this week. Our family don't.

Make no mistake. Our family remains happy in our own way at our hometown. We didn't let an overcast sky ruin our holiday. Heading to the cinema offered us and our daughter a chance to watch the Japanese animated film Suzume directed by Makoto Shinkai.

Once the rainy day got less rainy, we quickly took advantage of the not-too-wet weather to have a constellation of outdoor activities: hiking, beachgoing, kite flying and cable car ride. 

I learned this richest of lessons that it's never a mistake to take days off when my daughter has school break, and for that, I am grateful.

Club

I have been raised in a family at the grassroots level. 

That means a guy who doesn't care much about extravaganza. So much so that I didn't realise my shoes are nearly coming apart until today afternoon. 

Luckily, our family and my wife have never been jealous of those premier or elite club membership. Last night my wife joked that we are proud members of the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association, and that of YMCA. 

We wear that kind of membership as a badge of honour.

Advertising

The last thing a doctor wants to admit is his or her being heavily influenced by advertisements of the pharma business. After all, medical doctors' prescribing behaviour is supposed to be pretty neutral and scientific.

But the awkward reality is that when it comes to pharmaceutical marketing strategy or advertising, doctors' neutrality aren't difficult to undermine. Not everyone believes in this. In no corner of doctors' mind, too, is there even a vague notion that they can fall trap to marketing of gangbusters business.

This is perhaps the good reason I have to read Patrick Radden Keefe's book, Empire of Pain. You should, too. The New Yorker staff writer will tell you how doctors are being influenced by the marketing to keep prescribing Valium, and then a far more dangerous drug OxyContin.

The book brings my memory back to a short article I published twenty years ago. That's the year when I could afford more time in the library during my once-in-a-lifetime overseas training in Montreal. As it happened, I had a chance to dig out four major medical journals targeted for family practitioners (American Family Physicians, Canadian Family Physicians, Journal of Family Practice, and Postgraduate Medicine). Meticulously, I counted the number of pages and frequency of pharmaceutical advertisement to anti-bacterial drugs between calendar years 1984 and 2002.

To the casual observer, rising frequency of advertisement for an antibiotics class called fluoroquinolone, from zero to 37.5 percent, might have appeared to be nothing remarkable. But the interesting finding of mine is that there was strong correlation between such advertisement frequency and the contemporary national fluoroquinolone drug resistance rate to the bacteria, Streptococcus pneumoniae, that commonly invade our lungs and cause middle-ear infection. The two nearly identical curves go in tandem, one following another. The more advertisements in the pages of prestigious journals, the more use (or over-use) of fluoroquinolone antibiotics, and the more antibiotic resistance.

Truly a fact more than chance.