Common

On the first glance, it seems unbelievable that while the appropriate choice of action is all too obvious to most of us, common sense is such a rare occurrence that so many people just pick the most silly way to go.

Oh, you are wrong on that.

Let's go back one step and consider. Common sense is in fact a very capability that everyone of us have - that's why it's called common. The only problem is we could use it for only two purposes:

1. To see the solution of others' problem.
   
2. To see the solution of our problem in retrospect.

Alas, it is just that most of us cannot use this extraordinary talent to solve our problem at hand.

And we call them genius for the few who could do so.

I think I should be less cynical.

Remedy

You may ask, "Why don't we include the area next to the front door of the hospital, or to perform necessary emergency care when someone has a cardiac arrest ?"

On that you are wrong. It would be an endless argument to define how far from the door we should include, who to determine the cardiac arrest, and so forth.

For those who are familiar with the theory of administration or ethics, you would notice we are falling into the trap of a slippery slope. If we take care of a distance within 10 meters, why not 20 or 50 ? If we resuscitate someone with a cardiac arrest, do we need to take care of someone with a low blood pressure (which an ordinary receptionist may mistake as cardiac arrest) ? Then, we would next be forced to ask the poor receptionist to handle someone who simply has dizziness.

You open the Pandora box.

I believe that was in fact the reason in the mind of that poor hospital chief when he at first stood firm in front of the media.

PS. When I discussed the story with KM, I commented that the only effective means to prevent such an accident - while having receptionist of the current standard of intelligence - was to move the Information Desk next to the Emergency Department. That would solve one type of silly mishaps - unfortunately only amongst a billion possible types.

Detail

In fact, a sensible (yet a wanting character) administrator should not put up operation instructions that assume the front line staff could exercise common sense - they invariably fail.

But, if we could not put up Exercise your common sense as an operation guideline, it would also be impossible to improve the condition by having more staff training or better equipment - as claimed by some of our senior officials.

The reason is simple: no training or equipment could handle all possible scenarios that happen in the real world. (Albert Einstein was wrong: God does throw dice with the universe. Everything, by the law of quantum physics, happens in a chaotic and unpredictable manner; accidents, however improbable, would occur - usually on the most inconvenient day.)

Alas, now you come to realize why the guideline says "It is not within the hospital area" and "Dial 999". These are things with a clear boundary and could be done by anyone with a motor cortex.

PS. The problem is, while a responsible administrator should never use Exercise your common sense as part of the operation instruction, its application should always be encouraged in real life practice. Many extra-terrestrials have gone so far to forbid the use of this very capability and penalize those who try to be sensible.

That's the real tragedy.

Guideline

Don't get me wrong. I am all for putting up operation guideline for front line staff. After all, we must assume there exists, and in fact it is overwhelmingly common to have, people who could not think with more than two synapses and must have something to follow.

Once we come to understand this, it becomes difficult to conceive a solution to the current problem.

For obvious reasons we cannot simply put up Guideline #1: Exercise your common sense (although that should really be the first sentence of every written instruction, while the second one should be: If you have difficulty to apply Guideline #1, continue to read.).

Then, what should we put up ?

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A side track story of my own suddenly flashes back. When I was a 4th year medical student and attached to a peripheral hospital for my elective period, the consultant physician there took me around on the first day and said, "The first thing you must learn in clinical medicine is to tell if a patient is 頹." (This very Chinese word proves difficult to have an appropriate English translation - it encompasses the meanings of being critically ill, need aggressive treatment, requires invasive investigation, presence of atypical features, giving you a feeling of uneasiness, or a combination of the above.)

"But, what is the criteria of 頹?" I was naive enough to ask.

"Oh, exercise your common sense." And off he went.

Years later I realize he was paying me a compliment and assuming I have that extraordinary capability.

Sense

Many of us were mystified to hear the story of the man who died of a heart attack outside a hospital.

My friend KM outlined a story of a similar kind in his blog (http://drkmchow.blogspot.com/2008/12/ugly.html); he was certainly right in saying that it was a tragic story because of headless adherence to a guideline.

On a second thought, however, the remedy may be tricky.

Of course it is dead simple if the staff could exercise common sense. Nonetheless, as a previous professor of medicine over the other side of the harbour said, "Common sense is not common." To go one step further, if a particular staff is in possession of such an extraordinary talent of having common sense, he should be promoted to a more important position than staying as a receptionist.

Therefore, don't yell at people who blindly follow guideline. You wouldn't shout to an automatic ticket machine because it doesn't comprehen your logical argument, would you ?

You should kick its ass.

Plan

Passed by a book store; Vivian asked if I needed to buy some for my bedtime reading.

"Oh, no. My schedule is rather full. I mean there are enough books for me in the coming year." I considered for while and said.

Well, here are my plan (presumably in that order):

1. Bonkura (糊塗蟲) by Miyabe Miyuki (宮部美幸).
2. The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E. J. Wagner.
3. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
4. 分類尺牘大全.
5. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister (re-visit).
6. Food Politics by Marion Nestle.
   
7. The Penguin Writer's Manual by Martin H. Manser and Stephen Curtis.
8. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, book II and III (re-visit).

As commented by WC, a life-long friend of mine, I'm a head-to-toe pragmatist; there should never be a book bought but left un-read on my shelf.

Country

Briefly watched Love Actually again on TV - I had the whole movie some years ago when it's on the theater.

The whole of my memory with this comedy was the short speech of the Prime Minister, made during the US President came to visit 10 Downing Street and harassed Hugh Grant's secretary:

I love that word "relationship". Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship. A relationship based on the President taking exactly what he wants and casually ignoring all those things that really matter to, erm... Britain. We may be a small country but we're a great one, too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter. David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot, come to that. And a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward, I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that.

Yes, we may be a small country, but we're a great one, too. A people - be they small or large - who could appreciate the meaning of this little declaration would have hope.

Merry Christmas.

Value

You may wonder what the difference is between points #1 and #2 of the indications that I mentioned yesterday.

I would try to explain with the analogy of Andre Kostolany:

The intrinsic value of a company is the master, and the price of the share is the dog - the latter wanders around the former. Although the dog may sometimes be naughty and runs far ahead - or much behind - the master, in the long run, it is the man who leads the way.

Now, when we analyse and buy a stock, here are our assumptions:

• For type 1 value investors, he could tell where the master is at the moment.
• For type 2 value investors, he could tell where the master is going in the future.
• For speculators, (he believes) he could tell where the dog is going.

(The last scenario is certainly impossible, unless you are beast of a kind yourself.)

To me, it is definitely more easy to tell where someone is than to guess where he is going - although the latter task is not altogether impossible. My personal prejudice is, however, not to tell both at the same time. By the Principle of Uncertainty in quantum mechanics, no one could have an accurate judgement simultaneously on both the position and velocity of any particle (although I'm not sure if the analogy is right).

Reply

A few days ago, my friend Warren put up a question to me on a particular stock. Here is (part of) my reply.

***********************

Dear Warren,

Sorry I didn't make myself clear. To me there are three reasons to buy a certain stock:

1. The issue is trading at much lower a price than its intrinsic value. (This is the traditional method of Graham and Templeton.)
   
2. The company is trading at a fair value and is expected to prosper. In other words, the future value would be much higher. (This is by and large the method of Buffett and Lynch.)
   
3. The company is stagnant and is trading at a fair value, but it provides a certain amount of secure return in the form of regular dividend. (That's why many of us keep a certain proportion of our portfolio in bonds, REIT, or stocks of public utilities.)
   

The more important thing is: An investor should always be clear the original reason of buying a certain stock, because that inevitably hinges on when to sell. In the same order of the above mentioned indications, the reason to sell is:

1. When the price rises to its intrinsic value.
2. When the company ceases, or would foreseeably cease, to prosper. (Or, in the words of Peter Lynch, the story no longer holds.)
3. When the dividend rate becomes unacceptably low.

Sincerely,

CC

Dictionary

Extracted from the 2009 edition of the Practical Hong Kong Dictionary (香港常用語詞典):

深化 - The thing that an administrator claims doing when he sees a policy is going to a dead end and tries to back off.

花紅 - The method that investment banks use to keep their balance sheet zero after obtaining urgent loan from the government.

老人癡呆 - The ability to buy a TV channel with HK$100M and sell it 6 years later at four times higher a price. No wonder those who had an inferior performance in the same business lose all their nerves.

辭職 - The expert panel of Chinese language usage, led by certain Professor Ho (presumably the gold standard), formally approve the term could be used in both active and passive voice.

才子 - A small selected group of educated people who were badly insulted recently. Cao Zhi (曹植), Li Shangyin (李商隱), and Liu Yong (柳永) jointly declare their affairs had a higher spiritual level (not to say their remarkable contribution to the Chinese literature).

PS. Yu Dafu (郁達夫) ? Our apology; we've put him on the waiting.

閥閱

On a second thought, the admission system of many kindergartens and primary schools gives me a deja vu feeling of the ancient China.

You know what, in the Han (漢) dynasty, families of the upper social class used to put up two stone columns at the side of the gate door of their house. The one on the right side of the gate described the merits and achievements of the family and was called "閥"; that on the left gave details of specific government titles that members of this family held in the past, it was called "閱".

The catch is: the government selected its officials largely by the information on these two columns rather than the capability of the candidate living inside the house.

Well, this discriminating system was maintained until the Tang (唐) dynasty, when the empire used the Imperial Examination (科舉) for the selection of government official. Although the examination system was heavily criticized by many authorities, I tend to agree with Ch'ien Mu (錢穆): It was by and large a fair system; young people from the lower social class had a more-or-less equal chance of gaining entrance to the central government. In other words, it creates hope for the poor people.

That's all we need to keep the society in harmony.

PS. To be fair, part of the problem was that paper remained expensive in late Han dynasty and printing was not invented until the Tang era. Books were all handwritten and therefore unbelievably expensive - so that only the rich people could afford to have education.

Class

Dined with some university classmates. Many of us have become parents and naturally we had an active discussion on the application of kindergarten and primary school.

YC, a neurosurgeon, talking about his experience in applying a famous local school, sighed, "They consider nothing but the social status of the parents. You know what, one of our consultants had his son straight-in. The associate consultant of the other department had his daughter on waiting list. And I, a humble senior medical officer, my daughter was not even on the waiting !"

(For those unfamiliar with our system, senior medical officer is the same grade as associate consultant; you get the former title if you were promoted before early 2000s. Obviously the latter sounds better - that's what we call title inflation.)

Although I should be secretly rather happy with this system, by no means I'm at ease in such a society. If the chance of receiving (good) education depends on your family background rather than ability, what hope could we hold for our society in the future ?

PS. The major presumption of the above discussion, of course, is that those discriminating schools do provide good education. I would leave it to your judgement.

Election

Lunch with LS and FP; our discussion somehow touched on the recent election of certain society chairman north to the Shenzhen river.

"You know, although there are no less than 10,000 members of the society, there are no more than 20 who could vote for the chairman." I said.

"True." FP considered for while, "but general election would hardly solve the problem. It may actually make things worse."

I must admit there is much truth in it. And all of a sudden I realize it is never a problem of small circle election - as long as the one being elected could fulfill the dedicated task.

Of course fans of general election would argue that a truly democratic system could make sure an inappropriate ruler has a (bloodless civilized) mechanism to step down. Nonetheless I suspect a small (talented) circle could bring down any potential dictator equally well.

Alas, am I having a deja vu feeling of proposing the senate system of the Roman empire ?

Story

While we considered what to present in the medical grand round, the inevitable conclusion was to ask one trainee of ours to present the case history, and the other to review the literature.

After the division of labor was fixed, KM reminded me to take a careful look on the slides for the case presentation, which I hastily agreed. Alas, by no means we thought VK - our trainee who was responsible for the first part - was less competent. It was just that we were both convinced it was actually more trying to present a coherent and comprehensive history than to give a (brief) talk on the book knowledge of a certain subject. The latter is simple: you pick a good review article or two, perform certain copy-and-paste function, and the rest is done. In a neuroanatomy sense, it takes the Wernicke's and the Broca's areas and some connection bundles - but you can do away with the rest of your cerebral cortex.

But presenting a case history is different. You've got to give out the information bit by bit while trying to make the next happening a logical sequel of the previous step. If it happens to be a diagnostic problem, important clues would be put in an obvious place with an innocuous manner, so that when the climax comes the answer seems surprising but also inevitable.

Oh, I read too many detective fictions, I know.

But, look, the best narrator of detective story is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - who obviously cultivated his superb skill of telling a story in the medical school.

Dinner

After Vivian's boss left, we had our family gathering three days later for the Winter Festival - in a local Peking restaurant.

(No, it was not the Spring Deer. We went to the one a block next to it.)

The main dish of this event was a beggar's chicken. We deliberately avoided all expensive stuffs. I'm sure many of the audience of this blog are the same as me and are tired of the menu of a traditional Chinese banquet, with sucking pig followed by hot dish followed by shark fin followed by abalone followed by steamed fish followed by chicken followed by rice and noodles ...

(Oh, the menu seems endless; it just put an end to your coronary artery with tons of cholesterol.)

Alas, don't have the impression that traditional Chinese people were all that affluent and they had the same list to go through in a wedding ceremony a hundred years ago. If you take a look on a banquet menu 60 or 70 years ago, you would be impressed to find the dishes were less elaborated but in fact environment friendly. (One classic example is to use crab meat for the noodles because that's what left after using the claws for the hot dish.) It is, in fact, all those restaurant owners who make this kind of lengthy and costly menu seemingly indispensable.

This is, alas, a kind of product bundling (綑綁銷售) to increase the profit margin.

Banquet

Vivian's boss in Tokyo had a brief trip to Hong Kong - we held a small reception dinner for him in a famous Cantonese restaurant.

I must say our Japanese friend seemed not all that impressed with the food. As an expert in mind-reading, I could see several problems with a traditional Chinese banquet:

• The food is too salty (even for someone coming from Tokyo) !
• The menu is too long - our friend was probably full by the middle of it.
• The soup is always shark fin in a kind of suspicious viscid liquid.
• Everything, be it deep-fried or steamed, is covered with a layer of shiny oil.
  
• Why are Chinese so obsessive with (abalone and) sea cucumber ? (Once chopped into pieces, it looks perfectly the same as the vomitus in The Alien or The Exorcist !)

No wonder why so few local restaurants won a star in the Michelin Guide. There are thousands of excellent Chinese dishes with all sorts of ingredients - but they're just not the kind of thing that we feel precious and would show to our guests.

Risk

I do not wish to elaborate on the potential risk of having a doctor with (active) psychiatric disease. It was, however, argued - by certain extra terrestrials, of course - that it would be safe if these problem graduates do not take care of real patients.

They mean radiologists or pathologists or microbiologists.

Hold on. Are you really at ease to have a radiologist who keeps having funny visual hallucination, or a pathologist who locks himself (with all the specimens and slides that need urgent comment) in his office for several days ?

(Oh, there are already some existing ones at the moment - probably because of a different cerebral pathology. That's another story.)

In that case these graduates should not even become involved in all aspects of clinical care. Then, what's left ?

Maybe health administrators in the headquarters.

Oh, maybe many did already.

PS. You may well complaint I have discrimination. But, while putting up this fully justified accusation, I would politely ask you and your family to be cared by a schizophrenic doctor next time when you have to see one.

May god bless you.

Survive

I always wonder what would happen if she didn't jump.

In fact I do not have to imagine. There was no short of examples that our students turned psychotic or depressed and continued with the study (or, on a few occasions, doctors developed mental problems and kept on the practice).

You may consider that good news. It is no doubt better than losing the life. Nonetheless, the disease and its treatment both adversely affect the concentration as well as mental sharpness. (Let's face it. This is a disease - it won't go away simply because her parents paid more attention or her friends talked to her more. And, despite of the advances in psychopharmacology, drugs that treat a brain problem would affect the neurons.)

The inevitable result was those survivors always struggled in the medical school. Some even sat on the rooftop of the student hostel or put a knife around his neck and said, "Let me pass the final or I would kill myself."

And our man from Pluto did put up green lights obediently.

I shouldn't say any more.

News

Read the blogs of several students on the morning. Surprised to find many of them put down "RIP" - I learned why that's the case later the day.

I read through the blogs of her classmates; no one seems really know her well.

I checked with the list of students in the faculty mentorship program; hers was not there either.

Her name was actually removed from the student list of our curriculum web site on the same morning. Alas, I'm not aware of the fact that administrative people could be that efficient.

On one hand it gives evidence that she was withdrawn and isolated. On the other she seems to leave without a trace.

悄悄的我走了，正如我悄悄的來; 我揮一揮衣袖，不帶走一片雲彩。

Or, maybe this one is better: 背燈獨共餘香語，不覺猶歌起夜來。

Study

Reading New Asia Life before I went to bed: There is an article on the life of Ch'ien Mu (錢穆), recalled by his wife.

As a studious academic, this founder of our university spent much of his time reading and writing. A favourite story of his, re-told by Mrs. Chien is this:

After Ouyang Xiu (歐陽修) retired at the age of 64, he continued his daily study until late evening. His wife tried to tease him, "Why are you so hard working ? Are you worried that you would be punished by your teacher tomorrow ?"

Ouyang made a seminal answer, "I'm not worried about my teacher of course, but I'm afraid that people in the future would regard me as having a big name but actually knowing very little."

*******************

While working in the university, Ch'ien used to be engaged in all sorts of administrative matters in the day time, and could only focused on his serious study after work or during weekends. Life of an academic seems not to have changed since then.

Anniversary

First, let me tell you a slightly boring story:

Willard Huntington Wright, born 1888, was a famous art critic and journalist in America. In 1923, he felt sick because of overwork (and possibly cocaine abuse, like Sherlock Holmes) and, for over two years, was ordered by his physician to be confined to bed. In frustration and boredom, he began collecting and studying thousands of volumes of crime and detective fictions. He came to the conclusion that if other people could earn their living by writing stories of this kind, he could certainly do it better.

He was right. Since detective fiction was considered a "second class" literature in those days, he disguised himself in the alias S.S. van Dine. His first fiction, The Benson Murder Case, turned out to be a great success. Many of his subsequent stories remained best sellers. Philo Vance, the great detective that Wright created, soon became a landmark character in the history of crime fiction.

*********************

One year ago, after reading hundreds of blogs of all kinds, an university academic thought he could write better things.

That's how this blog came along.

Like Wright (disguised as van Dine and Vance) who loved to show off his knowledge in art and literature, I have an irresistible tendency of a similar kind.

Please bear with me.

Language

JW rightly pointed out that my seemingly brief answer to the kindergarten's questionnaire may not be well accepted.

I forget who taught me this very fact: Language could express your thought, conceal your thought, and often replace your thought.

After all, lengthy description is trendy. (Look at our discharge summary and consultation letters.) It gives the audience an impression that there is much substance in your answer (by the definition of physics, air is a substance - so is faeces) and, in case there's anything wrong, it could be well hidden in the jungle of words.

(It is probably of the latter reason that hand writings of doctors are so difficult to read - you can never prove they have given a wrong drug or mistaken the dosage.)

And, seriously, my friend, if (the headmaster and teachers of) a school could not appreciate a clear and brief answer, I would have much reservation to let my girl study there. Let's leave the place for the children of senior officials who live outside the solar system.

PS. I made an (almost) equally brief written response to the question "Why do you want to study medicine ?" in the application form when I applied for university some 25 years ago, and was fortunate enough to have it well received by a professor at that time.

He was the King of the round table.

Contact

Before we could actually meet the kindergarten teacher to have the interview, there was a questionnaire for us to fill in. Naturally Vivian left the task for me.

In addition to some usual stuff, one question goes like this:

"How do you think the school and the parents should contact with each other and exchange their opinion on teaching and child development ?"

I peeped around for what answer people nearby put down. Oh, there was no lack of suggestion. Most wrote three or four lines with a Times New Roman font 8 - one composed a half A4 page synopsis.

(Oh, they must be senior government officials.)

I considered a while and decided it was not a time to show off my (limited) English grammar.

And therefore I wrote:

Talk directly.

PS. When I was learning Chinese calligraphy in secondary school, there was an important principle:

筆劃少處力量要足以當多,瘦處力量要足以當肥.

Interview

Went for (yet another !) kindergarten interview on a Saturday afternoon.

It was somewhere in Kowloon Tong. Our scheduled time was 4:45 PM; (after preparatory work of nearly the whole afternoon) we arrived at 4:15 PM. To our surprise, there were no less than 80 people lining up outside the gate - waiting to be interviewed.

Don't get me wrong. The kindergarten was open - just that the whole of its garden and classrooms and corridors and every gap between the furniture were fully filled with anxious parents and suspicious-looking children. I had a gut feeling that this kind of place is not meant to be squeeze in by vertebrates.

"Should we back off ?" I asked myself.

Before I could figure out an answer, a familiar voice drew my attention, "Hi Szeto ! Nice to see you here !"

I took some time to recognize it came from the middle of the line. She was LC - my university classmate who I did not meet for at least 10 years.

"And you come for the interview as well ? What's the time for you ?" She knew just too well I have expressive dysphasia, and tried to ask a simple question.

"4:45 PM; and you ?"

"I'm 4:30 PM. You should be on the other line." She pointed to another queue.

I suddenly realized it didn't look good to quit in front of an old friend.

With that, I joined the line and waited to meet my fate.

Disturbance

Went to the Academy on a Thursday afternoon: It was the written paper of the college examination and I was the invigilator.

Most of the things were actually taken care of by some brilliant secretaries. The two invigilators were merely responsible for checking and signing on relevant documents. The papers took three hours in the early evening (so that it was concurrent with the candidates in London). During this period we switched off our mobile phone and silenced our pager. There was no Internet connection in the hall. And we have to sit there.

In other words, we had a few hours of undisturbed time.

For those practising clinicians and parents, you could appreciate how rare this happening could be.

PS. You may wonder what I did during that three hours. Sometimes you don't need any. Have you heard of the dialog between inspector Japp and Hercule Poirot in the Plymouth Express ?

"I've done some good work. And you ?"
"Me, I have arranged my ideas."

Light

You may think the story of Ivan's brother illuminating - but let's be careful where the light leads us to.

Consider the followings:

1. Was happiness the result of poverty ?
2. Was greed and other dark characters of human beings caused by affluence ?

Now you see, what the story does is inducing us to have the impression that lack of money would give you satisfaction, and getting rich is a sin. It was Leo Tolstoy who wrote the story and soon afterwards Russia turned a communist country.

And all of a sudden you realize the light is merely ignis fatuus.

Alas, how about the amount of teaching for our students ?

Ivan

While considering the effect of excessive teaching and loss of self initiative, I came over a note posted in the Facebook.

It is a short story from Ivan the Fool of Leo Tolstoy. Here is an amateurish translation:

The brother of Ivan used to be a poor farmer and led a peaceful life. The old devil, with a wicked intention, sent one of his juniors to disturb the man's life.

The little Satan turned the farm into stone-hard. The old farmer put up much effort to work with it - without any unhappiness.

The old devil sent another young one, who took away the bread and water from the farmer.

But the latter was unmoved - in fact, he was quite happy if the bread was taken by some others more in need of food.

A third representative from hell, and a really bright one, was sent. He became a friend of this farmer, told him the change in weather and every trick in business. The farmer became immensely rick in a few years and, alas, he lost all of his good characters: He counted on every penny, shouted at his servants, and did all dirty things to crave for more money.

The devil was right: The more you have, the more you ask for.

Education

You may think the story of Templeton weird.

Not at all. I have a similar first-hand experience.

Most of the early graduates of my medical school would recall for several years our internal medicine teaching did not include hematology. Well, we had some fragmented idea from our pathologists, pediatricians, and oncologists - but there's just no one dealing with blood diseases in adult.

We realized this at the beginning of the final year. There were 10 of us in a group, and I forget who made a (later proved to be) brilliant suggestion: We choose three (or four, I cannot recollect) group mates to study one major topic each and do a seminar presentation every (I believed) Thursday afternoon. (My topic was approach to bleeding diathesis.)

That was still the time before Bill Gates invented PowerPoint, and we had to use either overhead transparencies or white board / sign-pen for presentation.

And that story reminds me: our students could (should ?) settle many problems themselves. No baby would ever use the toilet if you keep them on a napkin.

PS. Of course (part of) the problem now is our baby doctors are wandering in 5-star hotels build of precious stones; management consultants would never take the risk of soiling the floor by removing the napkin from a baby !

Teach

Vivian is back from Tokyo and I went to the airport to meet her. On the way I was reading "Investing the Templeton Way" - it was my birthday present from my sister.

The book is so so, but a story of this pioneer of global investment is remarkable:

When the later-to-be great investor was in his high school days, he was convinced that Yale was the best university. Given his excellent grades and all that, there should be no problem to get entrance. To his amazement, however, he found that the admitting examination of Yale included a paper of 4th grade mathematics - a subject not taught in his own high school.

The determined student made his first move - he went to see his headmaster and seek for advice.

"We need at least 8 students for a class."

In no time Templeton persuaded eight friends of his to fulfill the quota and take that class.

"And we have no suitable teacher."

The fans of Yale was not easily moved, "I shall teach that class !"

To the credit of the headmaster, he put up green light.

And the rest is history.

Learn

You may think my grumble yesterday irrelevant. Let me give you a story that KM told me just recently.

Well, our great teacher was involved in a crash course organized by certain super-physicians. Before he did the teaching, he - like tens of the other teachers - received a standard textbook (written by creatures of some other genus) some weeks ago and was asked to go through the details carefully.

My friend duly complied.

And, as Winston Churchill said, it was the end of the beginning.

A few days before the actual teaching, he got a slightly threatening email from one of those lovely creatures, reminding him that although my friend might not absolutely agree with everything of the book - which of course was the case because some details do not conform to the ordinary practice of genuine physicians who treat Homo sapiens - he must and must only follow what's written on the book and should never inject any personal opinion - in order not to confuse our students.

I think they should actually teach by tape recorder or DVD ...

... or, if it happens that our students are literate, just leave them with the book !

PS. Some of our non-primate friends are so eager to share their knowledge but, as Hercule Poirot said: they could never learn new things.

Eager

My department is calling for nomination of an award "The most eager to learn", to be given to a basic physician trainee during the Christmas party.

The criteria, as stated in the invitation, are:

1. attends most grand rounds
2. learning attitute
3. share knowledge with colleagues
4. eager to teach interns

I must say I have difficulty to understand the relevance of the last two points. People who love to share (or show off) their knowledge or teaching (alas, cheating somehow re-arranged) may not be keen to learn new things.

In fact, more often than not they are the ones who shut themselves in an ivory castle.