Tips

VW mentioned in his blog some practical tips for the final examination (see http://vwswong.blogspot.com/).

Quite rightly he used the analogy of the military tactics. I would try to supplement by the following citation:

上兵伐謀，其次伐交，再次伐兵，其下攻城。
(孫子兵法-謀攻篇)

Translating into modern English, I would say:

• The best strategy is to avoid difficult questions.
• The second best is to know the answer of difficult questions.
• If not, at least know (and admit) that you do not know the answer.
• The worst scenario is not knowing that you do not know.

It sounds simple. Does it mean there are ways we could score high even without knowing the answer of those difficult questions ?

On that, you are wrong; one could only avoid these questions by knowing their answers exceptionally well.

PS. You cannot see the relationship between the orignal Chinese citation and its English translation ? Of course not - I make the latter up.

Freedom

Once I think of the right to do things at our free will (i.e. without the need to be approved explicitly by law), it seems unavoidable to talk about the recent event of Jackie Chan (成龍).

Seriously, I think his idea that "we need to be controlled ... (Otherwise) we will just do what we want" absolutely correct.

Don't panic. It's not just for Chinese; all men (and women, of course) need to be controlled.

The point is, however, most of us - the average citizen - have sufficient laws and regulations to keep us under scrutiny. It is just that some senior officials and the privileged class who often come up and claimed that they have exceptional moral standard and need not extrinsic control - or even inspection.

One notable recent example is certain Mr. Yam, who, despite the financial tsunami, gave himself an annual salary of HK$12 million last year. Does anyone seriously believe he needs not be controlled ?

Unless you consider those are not human beings.

Well, after reading The Animal Farm of George Orwell, I think you could be right.

PS. It is yet another management principle that we should never rely on the good will or exceptional moral standard of a particular person and do away with objective scrutiny.

As the old Russian proverb says: We trust, but we have to verify.

Moral

You may say: But what that little superman did was certainly wrong !

Yes, you may be right - what he did was probably morally undesirable. (I would not use the word right or wrong, in order to remind myself I may not know what is absolutely right or wrong, or if there exists an objective standard for them. I shall leave this question of supreme importance some time later.)

But, it is plain simple that the verdict should not be based on whether the action is morally right or wrong, but whether there is any evidence for the thing being done against existing regulations. If there are defects in the regulation and someone takes the advantage, make the incident as a lesson and amend the regulation (rather than saying that someone is guilty). The principle is: If a certain thing is not prohibited by law, you can do it - and not, as we are so fond of freedom recently, that a certain thing could be done only if the law explicitly allows.

You think this is not important ? As Francis Bacon said: If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

PS. I am not saying what that Mr. Li did was legally right; there is reasonable evidence to make it suspicious. The point for argument in the court, however, should focus on proving that those who voted for the buyout were people with concerted action (一致行動人士) to him.

Motive

During a casual discussion, AL, who is studying for her law degree, said that she was long to see the court verdict and detailed rationale on blocking of PCCW buyout by the Court of Appeal.

I must say I am not that interested.

No, I am interested in the event - as a lesson on financial tactics to say the least.

I am no fans of the little superman, and there are reasons to believe some of the transactions during that critical period appeared suspicious. But I could immediately tell the judges were probably not in their right mind as soon as I heard them questioning on the real motive of the buyout proposal.

Jove, who could tell and prove what the motive is for anything ? (Alas, in this case, probably we can all guess. Besides money, what else could be the motive of a business decision ?)

And, if our society has regressed to a state of deciding whether someone is guilty (or banning their action) according to their motive, the next thing we face would be The Ordinance of Silent Curses (腹誹) - as we had in the Han (漢) dynasty.

That's the road to serfdom.

PS. If I were the defending side for our Richard, I would declare his motive was a Freudian one: He just wanted to prove his exceptional financial skill to his billionaire father.

For once, I think I speak the truth.

PPS. Just this afternoon, CB sighed to me, saying that many of our junior colleagues wrote their medical report with too much emotion. Well, what do we expect when our experts in legal procedure behave in the same way ?

Limitation

The more I think of the essay of Wang Anshi (王安石), the more I realize the analogy of the awl and the horse could not stand.

It has long been a romantic idea that many hospitable nobles during the Warring States Period (戰國時期) hosted a large crowd of guests, each with mysterious and specialized capability, in order to take care all those X-men's job.

The reality of this guest system is, however, an inevitable step in the evolution of our society.

You know what, with the establishment of the noble class and a dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity (in that era, probably the result of using cows instead of man for the strenuous tasks, and a better system of water supply), the unemployment rate rose rapidly (the number of farmer needed to feed the whole country was much reduced), while the rich people has a whole lot of excessive revenue (i.e. agricultural product) to dispose with. Remember, it was the time before the gadget refrigerator was even thought of, and the systems of money and trading were in their infancy. The logical way to materialize one's wealth was, therefore, to host (alas, hire) a large crowd of subordinates and make use of their manpower to, as Adam Smith said, get all the convenience in life.

The very result of this system is, unfortunately, most of the guests are people who could not find a better way of subsistence in the country. In other words, there's usually no awl in the leather bag.

Well, you find this situation somewhat familiar ? The latest major advance in productivity along the history of mankind is the invention of computer and artificial intelligence, and the richest people in a modern society is the government ... I don't think I should say any more.

PS. The noble-and-guest system is not unique in the history of China. To say the least, England had the same thing. Have you heard of the story between Thomas Becket and Henry II of England ?

Cow

Further to my discussion yesterday, another common tragedy is to ask a horse who excels in the stables to take up the cow's job.

One notable, albeit not very well known, story comes from VW's citation itself. When Wang Anshi (王安石) talked about horses in his essay, he was referring to the story of Mao Sui (毛遂). The original story is this:

平原君曰、夫賢士之處世也、譬若錐之處囊中、其末立見。今先生處勝之門下、三年於此矣。左右未有所稱誦、勝未有所聞、是先生無所有也。先生不能、先生留。
毛遂曰、臣乃今日請處囊中耳。使遂得處囊中、乃穎脱而出。非特其末見而已。平原君竟與毛遂偕。
(史記·平原君虞卿列傳)

And what happened next was the famous story The Self Introduction of Mao Sui (毛遂自薦): Mao went with his master and helped establishing a treaty between Zhao (趙) and Chu (楚) - saving Zhao from the army of Qin (秦).

It sounds great, eh ? Do you know how did Mao die ?

Alas, after the successful campaign against Qin, Mao was quickly promoted to be a senior official, and was ordered to take up the post of an arm general soon - in a battle against Yan (燕).

And Mao cut his throat following the horrible defeat in that battle.

錐·馬·牛

VW made a comment on my blog on 15th April - but the quote was too ahead of its time and seems more relevant to my discussion on the following days.

His citation was a famous one: 人之有異能於其身，猶錐之在囊，其末立見。

For those who are not familiar with Chinese literature, the citation comes from Cai Lun (材論) of Wang Anshi (王安石). This classic essay begins like this: 天下之患，不患材之不眾，患上之人不欲其眾；不患士之不為，患上之人不使其為也。

The whole sentence of VW's quote should be: 世之蔽者方曰 "人之有異能於其身，猶錐之在囊，其末立見，故未有有其實而不可見者也。" 此徒有見於錐之在囊，而固未睹夫馬之在廄也。

Yes, there are quite many horses hidden in stables, but I would add a further story:

(周)瑜卒，(龐)統送喪至吳，吳人多聞其名。及當西返，並會昌門，陸績、顧劭、全琮皆往。統曰："陸子可謂駑馬有逸足之力，顧子可謂駑牛能負重致遠也。"
或問統曰： "如所言，陸子為勝乎？"
統曰： "駑馬雖精，所致一人耳；駑牛一日行三百里，所致豈一人之重哉？"
(世說新語箋疏, 中卷下, 品藻第九)

Alas, there are many good horses hidden in stables, but there are even more excellent cows we missed because they seem humble and concentrate on their work.

Kyogoku

Having Requiem from the Darkness (巷説百物語) of Kyogoku Natsuhiko (京極夏彦) as my bedtime reading recently.

Honestly, the book does not live up to my expectation. In the middle of the first chapter, when that handful of (apparently) unrelated people gathered in the little house for a torrential rain, and each told their own thrilling story, I was about to believe the book was a variant of The Decameron (十日談) by Giovanni Boccaccio.

But it was not. As the stories unfolded themselves, the book turned out to be a collection of (somewhat clumsily told) detective plots - topped with a dressing of ghost and mystery.

Ironically, there was nothing supernatural in the stories - but everything appears unreal (alas, unrealistic). The characters, the happenings, and the sequence of events all seem inhuman. In fact, it is the perfect opposite of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異) by Pu Songling (蒲松齡) - which is full of monsters and fairies, but all characters are thoroughly human in their personality, so much so I am inclined to believe these strange stories are more likely than the Japanese ones to happen in real world.

Well, even for a collection of short detective stories with a similar layout, I am sure The Thirteen Problems of Agatha Christie is way better.

PS. Of note, the most interesting part of this book is the cartoon The Nine Phases of Death (九相詩繪卷) on its inside cover. We should really use it for teaching our students forensic pathology.

Assistants

For a long time, I used to be convinced that medical education is expensive, and medical students should be creme de la creme.

The society should, therefore, restrict the number of medical student - which is a necessary procedure for quality control. For the small group of top youngsters that could get through, we could give them a free hand to practice.

"But that policy could not meet the huge demand on health care in the society !" You would object.

No, the majority of the demand are trivial problems that could be well taken care of by pre-defined protocols and semi-skilled people. That's the origin of physician assistants. Nurses in some countries are also allowed to make simple medical decisions and go as far as ordering investigations and making prescription according to in-house protocols. Places with physician assistants and skillful nurse need very few genuine doctors.

And it is plain simple that physician assistants are much cheaper to train (often a two-year diploma course) - and to employ. There's really no glory in it.

But, after all these years, now I come to realize that all we do is training graduates equivalent to physician assistants. That's why they not expected to be competent, not allowed to practice independently, have a low salary, and need to count on their working hours.

Now, you see, medical schools, in their traditional sense, are secretly demolished. The small amount of creme de la creme, if they are silly enough to choose medicine nowadays (it's self conflicting, I know), and if they could distinguish themselves from some surrounding scum that also rises to the top, could only receive genuine training to become competent doctors after they graduate - if there remains a training at all.

Well, maybe that's all what our society (or college) wants.

Expectation

You may say: There may be a short painful teething period if we change the format of our examination, but in the long run we could have our students much more practical and put their attention on clinical medicine.

Yes, you're entirely right. (At the moment, I would take aside the pragmatic question on who is going to bear the responsibility of that painful period.)

But, let's face it: Do we really want to have practical and competent fresh medical graduates ?

"What a question !" I could hear you scream.

Alas, by we, I mean the government, the society, and the general public.

In that sense, the answer is NO. Competence is, at least, not necessary - and probably not desirable. We ask house officers to do copy-and-paste, blood-taking, and other donkey jobs - jobs that could be understood and mastered by the brain of a donkey. Look, we don't even ask them to know what's going on with their patients so that they could key in the discharge diagnosis.

(Oh, I am wrong. Those are not their patients; patients are owned by the hospital. House officers are visitors and have no right to take care of any patient. They are merely pairs of brainless hands.)

The only possible conclusion, therefore, is: We do not need to have competent graduates, and our professional examination does not need to have any practical relevance.

Alas, you think my words are difficult to swallow and I am too cynical ? As TS Eliot said, "Mankind cannot face too much reality."

Practical

I may have diverged myself in the discussion of improving the system of education and examination.

Of course it seems logical to examine our students on practical things. That's how we could drive their interest back to patients and learning genuine clinical medicine. Examination drives learning is our motto.

Soon after the third year exam, however, I woke up one night and some light passed through my mind. (Alas, there was a thunderstorm outside.)

Do we really want to seriously examine our students on practical things ?

Don't laugh. As I talked to TL today during lunch, there is no difficulty what-so-ever to put up practical short case for the final examination. For example:

• This patient is diabetic and comes for routine follow up. Please ask relevant history and examine accordingly.
• This patient was admitted three days ago for heart failure. Please determine if he is still in heart failure.

You think they are easy ? The Royal College is moving along this line in one of the MRCP examination station, and I become abysmal when looking at the result of the test run.

Experienced examiners know just too well: candidates do not fail in difficult and complicated cases; they fail in simple cases with common medical problems - because there is no excuse for not doing well.

New

The sobering fact is: Setting up a new system is counted as an achievement, while doing an existing job well gives you no credit.

That's why we do not encourage our students to study available textbooks on the market, but infuse our energy and write a new one. The one for our own students. Yes, a grandiose proposal. Who cares about the quality ?

For the same reason, we set up new regulations - for the hospital, and for the city as a whole. When a problem appears, the solution is to set up yet a few other rules and restrictions. There is obviously a romantic idea that our society is a clock, and it could go foreword if, and only if, we are a swinging pendulum.

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For those who are interested in the theory of Management, the primary primary principle of investigating a problem is to make the diagnosis: Is it a one-off accident due to a series of unfortunate events, an isolated incident due to one troublesome staff, or the tip-of-the-iceberg of some recurrent problem ?

And only in the last case, we have to make the less important decision: What can we do to improve the system and avoid the recurrence ?

Go read Peter Drucker.

Revolution

Although I am not sure what we - or I - should do, but I am quite sure what not to do.

We should try not to have another revolution.

(It seems a contradiction to my usual self ? Not really. I'm unacceptably traditional and am never fond of any drastic change.)

The eternal problem is not solved by having an entirely new set of rule. Yes, it is easy to bring together an enthusiastic crowd and tear down the wall. We were all there and dreamed of a new flawless system (or society, if you like) from Utopia. Seduced and hypnotized, we came to believe all we need is to do away with the old school, and new equals good.

And it is tempting to give up the new system (which, unfortunately, does not take very long) when we come to realize it is not perfect. We pretend we have nothing to do with the problems, and infuse our energy to the next revolution - for yet another newer system.

Go read Sisyphus of Albert Camus.

Problem

Had a casual chat with VW and RM during the third-year OSCE on the various problems of our curriculum.

I shall not elaborate again what the deficiencies are; most of us seem understand that very well. Of course it is equally - if not more - possible that we are outdated and, as the old proverb says, have not changed with time.

VW did seriously ask for my opinion and suggestions, but I must admit my answers were nothing more or less than a brainstem reflex. (They were not spinal cord reflex but did go through the center of lower cranial nerves - for they were at least carefully articulated.)

My real concern was: apparently too many people have different sets of solution to the same problem. Just a few years ago, I would say changing the examination to focus on more practical problems, resuming out-patient attachment, emergency call rounds, and a handful of other measures would be the most important things to rectify.

After sitting through all the meetings and retreats and listening to hundreds of the proposed solution by the others, I am not so sure of what I think ...

... or whether I have to think at all.

Afterlife

I believe the professor must have said, "Microbiology may not be your cup of tea, but let's make it your bread-and-butter."

With much persuasion and encouragement, reluctantly Y took up the post and started his training again - as a microbiologist.

And it must have been fate. With all the clinical experience, he saw things differently from his ordinary peers. In a few years, he moved up the hierarchy of academy and, when the old professor retired, took up the chair of his boss.

You may ask, "What would happen if Y did not have hepatitis and remained to be a surgeon ?"

I don't know. At least I do not know what would happen to us. Maybe Y would continue to work in that peripheral hospital, which was badly struck some 20 years later by SARS - due to the very virus that was first isolated by the microbiologist Y.

Crossroad

Y was admitted to the hospital, and soon diagnosed to have severe hepatitis.

He was abstained from work for a long time. In fact, his physician warned him against doing surgery again because his health wouldn't stand. (Alas, those were the days before evidence-based medicine !)

Unwillingly he complied.

But there remained a problem for him: What should he do (to say the least, earn a living) ?

At that very moment, the professor of microbiology of his mother medical school rang him up. (Another improbable happening nowadays. How often does our professor know the phone number of a student who graduated for some years ?) To cut the long story short, the professor was looking for someone to fill up a junior lecturer post. Hearing the story of Y, wouldn't that be a win-win situation ?

Y hesitated - microbiology was not his cup of tea.

PS. I could understand Y's feeling. To a practising surgeon, microbiologists are merely inferior existence living in the basement.

Career

Since we are talking about the change in specialty in the middle of a career, it seems appropriate to re-tell a story that I heard from my colleague CB.

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

Y graduated as the top student from his medical school. In addition to a superb brain, he had a pair of gifted hands, which made him an ideal surgeon - the dream that he had ever since he entered the university.

After internship, he found a post of trainee surgeon in a peripheral hospital - partly because he wished to serve the poor people by working in a place with Christian background, partly because the surgical department of his medical school was too high-flying for a pragmatic doctor like him.

In a few years, he worked extra hard and fulfilled the training in FRCS. (That's some 25 years ago, long before the Hong Kong College was established.) Everything seemed fine, until one fine day he noted himself having tea-colour urine.

He looked into the mirror; his eyes were two pieces of lemon.

Field

Still many people would consider that a serious loss to give up the training and skill that my little friend acquired over the years. That may be true.

Nonetheless, who knows in what way would those skill and knowledge be applied to an entirely different area in her future ?

And there is no short of examples that people trained up for medicine but ended up successfully in a different field. To name a few:

• Sun Yat-sen (孫文)
  
• Lu Xun (魯迅)
• Tezuka Osamu (手塚治虫)
• Futaro Yamada (山田風太郎)
• Arthur Conan Doyle
  
• Michael Crichton
• Edward de Bono

Alas, you do not have to go that far. The experience, endurance, and (hopefully) logical thinking that one gather from medical school and physician training is an excellent education that would be invaluable for one to move on - wherever that is.

璞

A young colleague of mine came to my office in a evening and said that she prepared to give up internal medicine; she's heading for something else.

I was about to say that's a great loss. With all the years of training and experience, it seems a pity to scrap everything and start anew.

But I may be wrong.

Not only does my little friend has very good reasons to go elsewhere, but it is also too often much an obsessive idea to stick with something simply because you have spent some years with it.

Yes, it is true that we all begin from scratch, and gradually mold ourselves to fit a certain position. As to old Chinese sayings: 玉不琢，不成器。

Nonetheless, we often forget that we are the jade but not the instrument. There is no reason for any one of us to exist as one particular instrument - just that we have to always bear in mind that the very nature of us is the jade, not whatever utensil that we temporarily take up.

And, if the time comes and we have to move ahead for somewhere else, we follow the need and regress to our original scratch of jade in order to mold to there something else in need.

This is what Lao Zi (老子) said: 反璞歸真。

(釋名: 璞,未琢玉也)

Tool

Contrary to what I thought, PS did make an important point: Granting agencies are more willing to give you the money if there is a statistician in your list of collaborator.

The reason is entirely legitimate. The data are often complicated for mega clinical trials and epidemiological surveys, and you need a professional to handle the problem. As Adam Smith advocated, it is the division of labour.

Nonetheless, I am not at ease. Statistics is a tool we design to help us seeing the truth; it seems putting the cart in front of the horse if you excel at using some sophisticated tool but refuse to look by your own eyes what's happening in reality. What good is it to have an excellent calculation on some data you put in carelessly and collect from trials with shaky methodology ?

And there are precedents in the history. Logic was designed to facilitate discussion in philosophy. With Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, logic became symbols and arrows and abstract discussion that could be done without language - it lost touch with the reality.

PS. It is a romantic idea to bring together specialists of different fields in order to accomplish some grandiose project. I could only think of the Tower of Babel.

Remember, Plato, Newton, Spinoza (oh, my prejudice), Darwin, Einstein, Watson and Crick accomplish the work on their own. (Well, the latter two chatted with others in the pub; I have no objection to collaboration of this kind.)

Statistician

Lunch with PS; I was amazed to learn she was hiring a part-time statistician.

"It is more easy to get big grants nowadays if you put up a statistician as your collaborator. They give a sense of security (to the granting agency) because output (journal papers, she meant) is guaranteed."

Maybe she is right. That's why I never have big grants.

But I must confess I am never fond of any statistician. Yes, they may be completely respectable and trustworthy people - but they probably live in a different universe and communicate in an entirely alien language, so much so I prefer to learn the subject myself.

Well, I'm not trying to be the one who knows all. As I told PS, if you are a billionaire, you could afford hiring a cook or even a servant dedicated for preparing the dessert of your dinner. But for a poor university academic, I've got to make my own dinner, wash the dishes, clean the floor, and what not; I am the Filipino maid of myself.

PS. I am unacceptably superstitious and have a deep-rooted belief in reincarnation. For a long time, I am convinced that statisticians must be Georg Hegel three hundred years ago.

Poster

Appreciating the poster of each individual division that we recently put up along the corridor.

To an observer with paranoid personality disorder, it was really eye-opening. My first question was (as I asked AL): Who decided the layout?

Because they are such a vivid demonstration and comparison of the strength and weakness between divisions - in terms of manpower at least.

Nonetheless, a more profound question would be: Who was responsible for preparing and proofreading the content?

No, there's no secretarial or clerical mistake - AL wouldn't allow that to happen. Just that the posters are Freudian slip of each division head on how they treat their trainees and junior members:

• some call them residents and resident specialists
• others say trainees and MOs
• a few just completely ignore them

Can't you recollect which is which? 

"You see, but you do not observe."

Order

I still remember very well the conclusion of the priest:

"You don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary."
"Depressing view," said K, "The lie is made for the world order."

(This is a direct copy from The Trial, in the middle of Chapter 9. The original German wording of K was: Die Lüge ist für die Ordnung der Welt.)

Even if we take aside its philosophical meaning (which is the most important, and, I'm sure, the original meaning of Kafka), the phrase is a sobering summary of the reality - which I shall not be long-winded and would leave the interpretation to your own discretion.

But, when you have come that far, your feeling would be no different from that of Edward Elric, in Fullmetal Alchemist, when he was brought to the gate of the hell and could peep inside. You are thoroughly mystified and horrified - but you would have a different domain of capability (or vision in our case) for the rest of your life.

Law

I could not resist the temptation to tell again the story Before the Law. It was all too shocking when I first read it some 20 years ago:

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

A man from the country wishes to gain entry to the law court through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at that moment. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that that may be possible. The man waits next to the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper every now and then. The doorkeeper accepts the presents and money, but tells the man that he accepts them "so that you feel better". The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though many people come over the years, no one else has ever entered the court. The doorkeeper answers, "No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was only meant for you; I am now going to shut it."

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

The story is a parable within The Trial. The meaning? Well, it depends on whether you are a final year medical student or a Christian (or atheist). For lovers of philosophy, do not jump to the conclusion and make your own interpretation; go ahead and read the discussion between Josef K and the priest (who told this parable to K).

Their conclusion really kills.

Permission

"How could we go in ?" The children asked their teacher.

"Em... We need to apply through the formal procedure." He hesitated before he answered, considering the crowd of on-lookers and eavesdroppers. What else could he reply in front of the others ?

But in his heart, he and his subordinates knew just too well that, besides a few places that their children are legally prohibited, they can go anywhere by the following method:

• Dress properly.
• Look serious but be polite.
• Do not disturb the work of the others.
• Find some insider friends to bring them in.
• Always go by at least two, with at least one boy and one girl (see below for the reason).
• Try to please the one who keep the gate: If she is young, say that she is pretty; if she is aged, say that she looks authoritative; if that is a young he, say that he looks handsome; if he does not look young, say that he is kind.
• Apply the principle of magnetic pole: ask the boy to please any woman gate-keeper, and girl the male ones.

That's how things really happen on earth. Why don't people go through the proper channel ? Alas, do you know how long does it take for a message to be sent to Pluto and come back ?

As some malicious nephrologist always teach his students: If you really want to do something, go ahead and do it; if you need to do something that you don't really want to do, say that you will do it.

By the way, have you ever heard of the story Before the Law by Franz Kafka ?

31st

Receive a memo on 31st March from an extra-terrestrial:

Dear Physician,

You are the ward physician next month; MOs A and B will be under your supervision. Please note that MO-B will be assigned to other duties on the following dates and will not be under you:

1-9, 10-19, 20-23 and 24-30 of April

Sincerely, etc.

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

Dear Governor of the Universe,

Does your highness mean that there is 31st of April on the planet that you live ?

Your humble servant on Earth

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

By the way, you may find a very similar comedy in the last Chapter of Yes, Minister. Since I don't want to be thought of impinging the copyright of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, I must declare the above story is genuine.

Chrome

By a semi-voluntary mistake I changed the web browser of the computer in my office to Google Chrome recently.

Many of my friends know that I am a fan of Google. To say the least, I was one of the first few who put up Google as my homepage - back in 1998, when it was still the plain humble search-this-item kind of layout.

And of course I ended up using G-mail (even for the management of my university matters), Calendar, Notebook, and (as you're now reading) its blog page. In fact, I was using Mozilla Firefox as my browser all along - again promoted by Google.

It is not a sweet job to change your browser; you've got to revise your bookmarks and regular logins and what not. To complicate the problem, Chrome is not exceeding user-friendly; it is not compatible with the Google Toolbar (disappointing, right ?) and you cannot put up the Quick Notebook icon either.

It was the same sign that a dinosaur evolved to exceed its biologically plausible size, so that things happening at the tail took ages to make known to the brain - and therefore problems of the tail needed to be solved by a cluster of neurons at the buttock.

By the way, after this very step of evolution, dinosaur extincted.

Watch

One of my watches - the one that I often wear during holiday - had its battery used up. I took it to a local store to have it replaced.

I decided to try my luck and brought with me another watch to replace the battery. It was a Baby G-shock - a gift of my younger sister but had not been running for nearly ten years.

To my surprise, the Baby woke up promptly with the new heart. Like all patients waking up from coma, it was agitated and confused for a while - the timer kept running, and the date could not be re-set. (Oh, it came from the last millennium !)

But, after a bit of shaking and buttoning, it did show the date and time again.

And I find a new present for Euterpe.

PS. I know remotely the owner of the shop, but he was apparently out for lunch when I arrived. Two of his assistants stayed behind, and I could see them trying very hard to figure out how to replace the battery. Nonetheless, I suddenly realize how our patients feel when they see the consultant surgeon is not around and their operation is being done - under local anesthesia - by a junior trainee.

I decided to be a benign relative for once, and thanked them for their hard work before I left.

BBC

One thing that I often do when I am alone in my office is listening to BBC Radio 4.

My favourite program is the Parliament debate on Saturday morning. Being a fan of James Hacker, the real life version is no less theatrical - and definitely more educational.

I cultivate the habit when I lived in Bristol, as I had no TV or Internet in my room. It was BBC Radio 2, the music and entertainment channel, that I used to listen, but it is of course easier to focus on your work by listening to talking programs.

And no doubt the English culture is well promoted all around the world by the BBC. In the long run, it is more important to promote the culture of a great country by keep doing small things well, rather than doing a great job one day a year.

PS. I still remember the first song that came up from the radio when I arrived at Bristol was Yesterday of The Beatles, and, in the next minute I heard the first news report that I had in England - it was the death of Princess Diana. For a while, I suspected either my English was so poor that I misheard the message, or it was a joke with distinctly bad taste.

And the rest is history.

新衣

"We should be transparent in all of our information and decision."

Hearing this frequently stated motto of extra-terrestrials, I cannot stop thinking of the famous story of Hans Andersen: The Emperor's New Clothes (國王的新衣).

Alas, the swindlers nowadays are a cut higher than those in the ancient Denmark. They tell the king not that the new clothes could only be seen by wise people, but that wearing no clothes (i.e. being transparent) is the fashion.

So much so that the king does not only take off his own ones, but asks all his officers and citizens to stay nude with him. And he laughs at the king from the neighbour country when the latter put up an elegant gown during a meeting.

PS. Contrary to the original story, the most treacherous courtier, I believe, would tell the king that the clothes are transparent only in the eyes of the most ingenious person - but it appears to be an extravagant attire to everyone around. For sure the king would believe people are just lying if they claim not seeing any apparel.