Beat

While we were watching the TV news about the death of Michael Jackson, Vivian and I had a brief debate on the actual sales of Thriller, and which of his songs we loved best.

On the latter topic, I would pick Billie Jean.

But it was Beat it that I remember best. It was fortunate that the collection was released in 1980s, when we had very little scrutiny on the media, and its MTV could be shown hundreds of time on the television. If it were today, I'm sure some concerned parents would fire a complaint, and our tender loving nanny officials would ban the song - because it advocates fighting.

But no. The lyric does not support violence. Maybe you are not aware of how Americans use the term; "Beat it" has, in fact, an entirely opposite meaning.

Here is the definition I copied from an on-line dictionary:

Beat it (informal): to depart; go away.

As Sherlock Holmes said: If you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing ... to something entirely different.

Dumb

First, let me tell you a short story:

Emily Arundell was a woman of a considerable fortune who was surrounded by grasping young relatives. She died of natural causes (or so it was believed), and her estate was unexpectedly left to her companion, Miss Lawson. That was a substantial fortune, and the will was a very recent changed one. Under the previous will, Emily's nephew Charles Arundell and nieces Theresa Arundell and Bella Tanios would have inherited.

Was the new will a fake ? No. Emily Arundell was tired with her nephew and nieces and worried that they would poison her for the money; she made the new will as a gesture so that her relatives knew that it was to their disadvantage if she died. She wished to change the will again immediately before she died - but she had no chance of doing so.

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

You find this story similar to what you read on the paper recently ? This is, in fact, the summary of Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie.

As Sherlock Holmes said: There's nothing new under the sun; everything has been done before.

PS. The crook must be exceedingly thick if he prefers an elaborated plan to fake a will but in fact he could easily get a few billions of dollars from the pocket of his master while she was alive.

Written

I may not have make myself clear yesterday, and the rule of the game that had changed may skip your eyes.

The very point is, with the development of words and a written language, men do not have to live long to pass an experience. They could simply write it down - their wisdom become immortal.

Turning the table around, it also means that the younger generation do not need to learn all the knowledge from old people (alas, their teacher !) - provided that the students could read. In fact, once put down on paper black-and-white, information from different sources could be compared and analyzed; knowledge becomes way more accurate (rather than, as in an ancient tribe, the master dictated his knowledge; there was no means to challenge him).

Now, you see, we are stuck with a long lifespan (as compared to other similar species) because the evolution of our genome is slower than that of technology. Age has very little advantage - if the young ones are willing to read and learn by reading.

And, therefore, children, if you learn largely by lecture, you are no different from the ancient Neanderthals - go and read up on your own in case you wish to excel all those senile STOOL.

PS. I was enlightened by my friend TW: STOOL stands for space and time occupying and obstructing lesions.

Knowledge

The very point is: If one could pass his knowledge to the next generation by language, being able to live longer would be a distinct advantage in terms of competition with other species. The longer you live, the more experience you could accumulate and the better you could enlighten the youngsters.

No, you do not need everyone to live longer. In the setting of small tribes and communities (alas, the structure of early human society), to say the least, a few seasoned members would be highly valued and could often give important advise for the survival of the whole tribe - for example, in the situation of having an exceptionally bad flood or drought.

It therefore goes without saying that when two similar species were competing in places with a harsh environment, the one that could attain more knowledge and pass to its next generation excelled.

That's why our tradition have so much respect to the elder generation: experience !

But, friends, lend me your ears: With the development of a written language, the rule of our game changed. In fact, it was fortunate for the Homo sapiens that the Neanderthals had not invented some kind of words. Otherwise, we should be the extinct species !

PS. Modern men developed written language some 4000 years ago, long after the Neanderthals were wiped out by us.

Neanderthals

While we are talking about words and capability of reading, you may not be aware of the relationship between evolution of language and the lifespan of Homo sapiens.

You know what, slightly before the rise of modern men at around 200000 years ago, much of the Europe and Asia were occupied by the Neanderthals - also belongs to the genus Homo.

This sister species of us was not so-so. As compared to modern men, they are exceptionally strong and muscular. Their brain was in fact slightly larger than ours. They have tools and primitive arts. Although it remains debatable, fossil records suggest that they probably had some kind of spoken language (the structure of their hyoid bone, larynx, and middle ear is very similar to Homo sapiens).

The very point is, therefore, if they are comparable to our ancestors in almost every aspects, and being physically much stronger, why were they gradually taken over by the latter and completely disappeared ?

There are several hypothesis; the one that I believe is: Neanderthals had a shorter lifespan. (Like most other mammals, they do not usually live after the prime of reproductive age. On average, they died at the age of 30 to 40.)

Why should that matter ?

Read

Before started reading Rakuen, I just finished with How to Teach Your Baby to Read by Glenn and Janet Doman.

(I borrowed this book from my sister Jenny, whose daughter is two months younger than Euterpe.)

To me, the ability to read is an urgent thing we have to teach our children - it is probably the most important component of an education. If children could (and love to) read, they could learn the rest of the human knowledge by themselves.

You know what, every time when I am alone in another country (especially in an airport) and, say, looking for my way, I wholeheartedly feel warm and fortunate for having the chance of receiving education - and am able to read the signpost. Yes, someone was here some time ago, knew the way, and left a written instruction. There is no need for me to meet him and ask - he may actually be a pile of bones or ash now. But, all the same. He showed me the way and I could follow.

Thank goodness.

Rakuen

One special activity during my week of leave was to bring Euterpe visiting Vivian's parents.

We take it as a kind of Putonghua lesson (my in-laws are native mandarin speakers), and I am all too happy to have an hour or so retiring to the study while my daughter is enjoying the time with her grandparents.

Naturally I brought a book with me; it was Rakuen (樂園) of Miyabe Miyuki (宮部美幸).

The study was no more than 60 square feet; it used to be the bedroom of Vivian before we got married. After making myself comfort in the small armchair, I flipped through the pages under the afternoon sunshine from the window; all of a sudden a scene in the Norwegian Wood (挪威的森林) of Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) came to my mind:

After the father of Midori Kobayashi (小林綠) died, Toru Watanabe (渡邊徹) spent a night at her house. When Midori fell asleep, Toru tiptoed to her father's study and - just to kill time - he picked one book on the shelf by random and read.

It was Beneath the Wheel (車輪下) of Hermann Hesse.

PS. The last chapter of this little German novel was indeed remarkable:

The teachers sighed, "How could a brilliant student turn into a mess like this ?"

Pointing his hand to those teachers, the shoemaker at a corner told his friends, "They are the ones who made the mess."

Cartoon

My Indonesian maid is having a holiday to see her family; Vivian and I each take a week off and look after Euterpe.

It is my turn first.

No, I did not bring my daughter to visit local theme park or museum. We spent most of the days visiting supermarkets and exploring our home. (I had some good time enjoying cookery experiments too.)

One of the favorite activities of my daughter is watching videos of Mickey and his friends in You Tube, especially the ones in 1930s to 1950s. You know what, although the resolution was poor and the sound track was often fragmented, cartoons from that era are surprisingly entertaining - even for a modern audience like me.

Those were the days when the producers did not have to make sure the films are educational and no hint of (sexual, racial, or by any other possible and impossible interpretation) discrimination.

Alas, if we seriously want to make our next generation bubble babies and prevent them from seeing "bad examples", we should do away with all newspapers - and the subject called History in their school.

Classmates

Went to the funeral of HT.

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

Met JW at the foyer when I arrived - he was about to leave. (LH, JW's wife, and Y used to work together. I was never aware of that.)

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

The hall was flooded with people. I saw KT standing at a corner - he was a classmate of HT, and his wife is a close friend of Vivian. (For my relation with KT, see: ccszeto.blogspot.com/2007/12/confidence.html)

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

I sat next to HF, a secondary school and university classmate of mine. We were both silent for a while, then he whispered at my ears, "Do you remember DY ? He passed away last month."

"You mean ... our secondary school classmate DY ?" I was incredulous. DY was one of our head prefects and worked in the Immigration Department after he graduated. His office was, according to HF, the biggest amongst our class.

"Yes. Lung cancer ..." HF was always to the point, typical of a ENT surgeon, "Bone met already when he presented."

"How could that be ? I don't think DY smoked ?"

"Quite true. But it was adeno."

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

I took the shuttle with LC when I left. We tried to pull ourselves together and talked about our children. (I met LC just a few months ago; see: ccszeto.blogspot.com/2008/12/interview.html)

We both needed the other to divert our attention.

As TS Eliot said: Mankind cannot face too much reality.

Example

An excellent example that a small working class has to support the living of a large population was the Shu (蜀) empire during the Three Kingdoms period.

Even fans of Luo Guanzhong (羅貫中) may not know that the population of Shu was 900,000 and around half of them were at the working age. (Although aging was not a problem, the proportion of children was much higher than the society because mortality in the pediatric age group was a considerable number. Ironically, this is a situation when the government should provide extensive free medical care, with an aim to prolong the population lifespan.)

The problem is, women contributed much less in the ancient farming economy, which depended heavily on manual labour, and there were 130,000 soldiers (and another 20 to 30 thousand government officials) within the empire. At the end of the day, each ordinary man had to provide the daily needs for the subsistence of 8 persons.

(The summary is simple: War is not a good thing for the economy because military demand drains up the working class.)

The result ? Of course Shu fell to the hands of Wei (魏). However, you may not know that besides a small number of exceptionally loyal officials, the overtaking was much welcome by the Shu people.

That's why after the decline of the empire, Liu Shan (劉禪) said: 此間樂，不思蜀。

Solution

You may think I'm just obsessed with economy. Why does it matter if our people of the working class have to support the living of many others ?

In fact, with the agricultural, industrial, and information technology revolutions, the productivity of each person is much increased, and it seems now at least theoretically possible that the many mouths could be fed.

But, hold on. From a society (or country) point of view, how could the subsistence of a large population depends on a small number of working hands ?

There are a few possible solutions:

1. heavy tax - if most of the country's revenue belongs to the people
2. dictatorship - if the government owns everything
3. communism
   

(I leave it to your interpretation whether solution #3 is actually the variant of #1 or #2.)

More so, even if you accept solution #1 and accept the scenario that the majority of the revenue and productivity of a society belongs to a small group of people, and there needs a high tax rate, you have also to face the accompanying wealth gap.

Housewife

Feminist may argue that my blog yesterday had a discrimination against housewife and claimed that this important group does not contribute to the economy.

Not at all. (It is obviously a division of labor; without someone taking care of the dinner and laundry and children, how could the working husbands focus on their job ?)

Nonetheless, we could learn from Adam Smith that only there exists only limited number of methods for a society to provide material for the subsistence of its people: labor, product of the land, rent and profit. (I shall not go through their definitions here.)

And, if you consider the economy system of the whole society, housewives do not "earn money" as such.

You comprehend the problem now ? With the same consideration, doctors and nurses are no different from housewives in terms of the country's economy: We do not earn money (unless, of course, you profess at taking care of tourists and foreigners).

The inevitable conclusion is: any increase in lifespan would translate to an exponential rise in the number of personnel we need for medical (and, more importantly, nursing and other routine) care, and therefore the number of mouths need to be fed by each working class person.

Support

If you think my calculation yesterday out of your reach, let me show you a simpler version:

Let's assume a society has a stable population structure, and the death rate after perinatal period is small. In that case, there should be a equal distribution of all age groups in the community - from infant to elderly.

If most of her citizens begin their working life at the age of 20, retire at 60, and have a lifespan of 80, approximately half of the citizen should be "the working class" (40 years out of 80).

In other words, each working citizen needs to support the living of two.

But no. There is a considerable number of people in the working age but are housewives, unemployed, and disabled; their living also depends on the others.

And each working citizen would therefore need to support the living of three to four people.

PS. This estimation is obviously based on the naive assumption that the age structure of that community is stable - which, in general, asks for a birth rate of 2.5 per couple. In countries with very low birth rate or an one-baby policy, the burden of the working class would be much more heavy.

Longer

(cont'd)

What would happen if our lifespan rises from 80 to 90 (which is close to what happened in Hong Kong over the past 20 years) ?

In that case, we need around $2.7 million at the time of retirement, and we need to save $3700 to achieve that purpose - a nearly 40% rise in the amount of regular saving.

More so, if we could start working from the age of 25 rather than 20, we need to chip in nearly $4500 each month.

Now, what would happen if could live for another 5 years ?

Alas, we then need slightly more than $3 million at retirement, or $5000 for monthly saving (i.e. half of our desired expenditure).

You think this kind of calculation irrelevant ? It is one of the major reasons why GM, the giant of American industry, falls. Obliged to take care of all living and medical expenditure of her retired employee, and with an ever-rising lifespan, the company could go nowhere except filing for Chapter 11.

PS. Of course the strategy of GM on handling the increasing pension is nothing more or less than absurd; they rise the price of their product - so that their market share inevitably falls.

Do they ever study secondary school economics ?

Lifespan

You think my suggestion of limiting our lifespan crazy ? Let me give you some finger counting calculation:

Say, if you start working at the age of 20, retire at 60, has a lifespan of 80, and assume you wish to have HK$10000 each month to live on after retirement, how much money do you need to save ?

Let's further assume we always put our money on some kind of conservative investment and has a yearly yield of 2%. (You may consider the yield way too low - but that's 2% on top of the inflation rate, which generally would translate to a nominal yield of 5 to 6%.)

Where does our calculation end up ?

Well, we need $1.98 million at the age of 60, or roughly a monthly saving of $2700.

In other words, we need to chip in slightly more than one fourth of our desired monthly expenditure after retirement.

PS. A serious mathematician would point out that, for example, if the nominal yield is 6% and inflation rate 4%, you cannot simply use 2% (i.e. six minus four) as the actual yield for compound interest calculation. Nonetheless, the error is minimal in the range of figure in real life, and I shall stick to this imperfect and comprehensible estimation.

Acceptable

Let me state the questions again: Should the public health care system offer the best level of care to all patients ?

The answer should be NO. A responsible government should offer the minimally acceptable level of free medical care to its citizen - everything else should (at least partly) come from patients' own pocket.

(For example, in our present scenario, if we define care by a junior specialist is the acceptable level, then there is no need for the senior professor to see all patients again - even though the professor may offer a better care.)

The reason is not only a completely free-of-charge public health care would drive out the private sector, result in monopoly and inevitably inefficiency. The consideration is more fundamental: A righteous society should promote the health of its people and work to prevent premature death, but it should not (alas, may not want to) aim for endless extension of her citizens' lifespan.

PS. Don't be mistaken. I am saying a responsible government should aim to offer a minimal standard of health service to the community; each individual clinician should, however, offer the best level of care within his own capability. Many philosophers and honorable council members could not discern the difference between the two - so that they often bark up the wrong tree.

Best

The argument put forward was, "Does a doctor with 7 years of experience offer a standard of care as good as a chair professor with 30 years ?"

I would go back one step and ask: Do we - the public health care system, I mean - seriously want to offer the best level of care to our patients ?

I could hear you scream.

But let's consider, if we agree the chair professor offers a better care than someone who just completed his physician training, and we should always offer the best possible level of care to all of our patients, the inevitable conclusion is we have to ask that poor chair professor to see all patients.

For similar reasons, we should ask the best endoscopist to treat all patients with gastrointestinal bleeding, cardiologist to do all catheterization, and surgeon to repair all hernia. Not only is this strategy a nightmare to that poor specialist, it is actually harmful to the patients:

• For the current patients, they have to see an overworked burn-out specialist.
• More importantly, for patients in the future, training of doctors would be severely impaired.

You may argue, "We are talking about supervision, not asking the senior physician to do everything."

True. We shall go through tomorrow some considerations more serious than training.

PS. I am not saying we should leave our fresh qualified fellows on their own. Senior physicians should always be available to give advice, but the young generation should have, as much as possible, a free hand for independent practice - of course with the corresponding shouldering of (legal) responsibility.

Experience

Attended another gangsters' meeting today. One of the items on the agenda was: Could we spare fully trained fellows to do regular ward round with their consultants ?

A senior consultant made a remarkable comment, "Do you think a doctor graduated for 7 years could offer a standard of care as good as a chair professor with 30 years of experience ?"

I hiccuped - human diaphragm would unavoidably develop muscle spasm if it tries to laugh and vomit at the same time. Regular visitors of this blog would know my answer to the above question is obviously no - it is at least equally possible that the younger doctor could offer a better care than the senior professor.

Yes, experience does count, but the relation is far from linear. Some physicians are thoroughly competent with a few years of training; a few others remain at a lost after decades in the field ...

... especially if the experience is spent with administrative matters and meetings.

But, I am against the argument raised by my senior colleague because of a more serious reason. I shall elaborate tomorrow.

PS. I would not describe the whole of the colorful discussion here. For medical legal reasons, the answer would be an inevitable negative. In fact, it often amazes me to see people handling problem of this kind: If there is an overwhelming factor in determining the decision, it would be very little point to waste time and discuss.

For those familiar with Chinese history, you may recollect that's how Du Ruhui (杜如晦) fixed up most of the (apparently) complicated decisions for Li Shimin (李世民).

Open

While we were driving back home after our Saturday lunch, Vivian asked me a casual question, "Would you mind if Euterpe, say, 10 or 20 years later, tells you that she wishes to join the 35th May gathering at Victoria Park ?"

"Oh, of course not." I thought for a while, and went on, "But we should not tell your mother - she would go mad."

Vivian chuckled. If I am an atheist in politics, my half mother is a head-to-toe non-believer, and she has every possible and impossible paranoid idea on all misfortunes after a gathering of this kind.

"On the other hand, there would be no problem to tell your mother - she is absolutely open-minded." My wife added.

"Quite true," I agreed, "In fact, she is so open that she would not object if her children or grandchildren go for a meeting to support what had happened."

Although I'm not sure that's a good thing or not, I must thank my mother for bringing me up in such an atmosphere of freedom.

How

Reading How to Say It at Work by Jack Griffin as my bedtime reading recently.

I bought it as a bargain book few months ago, thinking that it was about English writing. Of course I was wrong; it was mostly about verbal communication - the title of the book told you that much.

You may ask, "There are so many books of this kind. Why do you pick this one ?"

The answer is simple, the book was in its second edition. The principle is: books of this kind do not stand the test of time, and only good ones could get into latter editions.

The next question is, "Was it good ?"

Following the 20-80 rule, the best of the book is the first fifty odd pages. In fact, books of this kind almost always have merely one or two chapters worth reading - and they are usually in the front.

It is perfectly reasonable: Authors need the first two chapters impressive in order to convince the publisher to get the work on to the market, and many of us - including me unfortunately - often practice cursory reading on the first chapter or two before actually buying it from the bookstore.

Lesson

I must admit I learnt a great deal from the man who used to have a moustache.

The most valuable skill that he showed me was the indirect methods to achieve your goal. One favorite story that I was fortunate enough to take part was this:

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

In the era when the moustache-man was still working north to the harbour, one day, he received a supposedly confidential mail, sent as fax to his own office, from some overseas organization. To cut a long description short, the fax contained valuable information (oh, no, not examination questions) for trainees and junior doctors.

The problem was: How could he let the others know if the document had a CONFIDENTIAL mark on the top ?

It probably took him no more than 5 seconds to find a solution.

He brought the fax, went out of his office, hold the paper in its full length, and (good luck for me) saw me walking along the corridor.

He eagerly waved at me.

I walked towards my boss, but found him talking (slowly) on some irrelevant trivial matters.

"What's really the matter ?" I asked myself.

In no time I noticed the long piece of paper that he was holding, and began to read it. I could see it plainly that he was not hiding the document from me.

It took a while for me to finish, and, all of a sudden, my teacher stopped talking the trivial matter and dived back to his office.

And it became my job to tell the important message to the others.

Mentor

One of the guests whom I met was the man who used to have a moustache.

I did not have a chance to dine with him for some 12 years - since he moved to the other side of the harbour. (I would not reiterate the story between a mischievous senior nephrologist and his malicious student; it's not a romantic story.)

Alas, while my friends KM and VW talk so freely about their mentors, I have difficulty to do so: the two supervisors who wrote on my training record 15 years ago broke up with each other.

And I had to turn away from both of them ...

Well, as an adoring student, I should be secretly satisfied with the dinner yesterday, because my teacher did appear very happy and told elaborated stories to entertain the others.

Or was it merely a sign of loneliness ?

PS. For a long time, I have a deja vu feeling that he is Ren Woxing (任我行) and I being Linghu Chong (令狐沖). By coincidence, The Smiling Proud Wanderer (笑傲江湖) was written in the year that I was born.

Gold

Dined with a group of senior physicians - this was the rare occasion that I have to attend some kind of socio-political function.

(I shall leave the social and political stories later.)

The menu was chosen by the host. One of the dishes was Fried lobster fillet with egg white and gold flakes.

Since most of the guests were nephrologists, there was a surge of discussion when the shiny gadget was served. Many of us hurried to pick up the paper-thin pieces of metal and put it away:
Some did worry about heavy metal poisoning, a few could not accept the idea of swallowing something that is supposedly not edible, others have various excuse ...

For me, I was too much taken in with the story I heard in the secondary school: Socrates committed suicide by gold poisoning.

Of course I would not follow.

(The story was not entirely true. Our great philosopher was actually killed by hemlock. But what we learn as a child inadvertently affect our behaviour in the latter years - however illogical it is.)

PS. I could not remember who first started using gold flakes for Chinese cuisine. Yes, it is a nice decoration, and it gives an excellent excuse for the restaurant to mark up the price. Even if we consider the latter purpose, however, I am sure the same lobster meat topped with nanograms of truff or saffron would be much wiser choices.

Help

You find no problem with the list ? In that case, you must be at least 10 years younger than me.

I shall leave aside the questions why on earth they wished to measure body fat in those earthquake survivors, why they preferred UV light rather than antiseptic solution for hand washing, what "螢火粉" is, and the problem of a short notice (the faculty knew of the list 5 days before the deadline, including a weekend).

The real problem is: Why can't our university students, who are about to be practicing doctors in a few years, solve a problem of measuring tapes and spare batteries ?

To be fair to them, there are a few possibilities:

1. It is a gesture that they do not really want to go, and this "voluntary work" is merely a kind of window dressing of some senior officials.
2. Our students are actually highly skilled bureaucratic administrators; the sole objective of all their activities is to get the rules and procedures right - result is not in their consideration.

Maybe I've read too much Humphrey Appleby.

PS. When I told this story to LS, she reminded me that students were actually soliciting donations for this Sichuan work some weeks ago.

She was right - I donated HK$1000 myself.

List

While I was digesting the new theory on how the universe is going around myself, a friend showed me a email that he recently indirectly received.

In short, a group of youngsters are going to Sichuan for some voluntary project on health promotion, and, a week before they set off, they wrote to the Dean and tried to borrow some of the equipments that (they believed) they needed.

Here is the list, quoted verbatim:

1. 磅 x 2
2. 血壓機 x 5
3. 軟尺 x 3
4. 脂肪機 x 3
5. 後備電芯 (血壓機用)
6. UV燈 (洗手過程用)
7. 螢火粉 (洗手過程用)

I have no idea whether they did get what they want - I'm just too impressed with the list.

Y

I must admit I did not quite recognize the name of that missing pediatrician - until I came across his photo a few days after the body was discovered.

He was the husband of my classmate Y.

And Y is no ordinary acquaintance of mine: We did dissection together dring our first year of the medical school. (I still remember my perusal over the old hand-drawn Grant's Alas while she kept challenging me to identify a correct nerve or blood vessel with the new photographic version by Rohen and Yokochi.) We were again in the same group during the third year, sharing much difficult but happy moment in teaching rooms converted from containers.

When and where did we last meet ? It was at the bus terminal next to our hospital, probably two or three years ago. We were both busy and could not afford a longer chat.

Sigh ...

悟彼下泉人，喟然傷心肝。
王粲 《七哀詩》

Herb

One remarkable phenomenon I observed in the student project was there were quite a few on herbs.

Most of my friends know very well that I have very little objection to traditional Chinese medicine. More often than not, when my patient ask if I agree to their trying of some herbs, I would ask to have a look on the original prescription before putting up a green light - just to make sure there's nothing harmful.

Nonetheless, I am most against studying Chinese medicine with advanced technology but shaky research methods.

For example, what good is setting up all those cell lines to test the cytotoxic or anti-cancer effects of some herbs - if appropriate controls (e.g. the effect of the solvent) are not included ?

More so, if the results turn out to be negative, the explanation is the herb exerts some cytotoxic effects that could not be detected by the current technology.

(Such as effects mediated via aether ?)

And, of course, if you are brave enough to point out the flaw in their design, you would be labelled as paying no respect to traditional Chinese culture.

橘越淮而枳.

I'd better keep my mouth shut.

PS. It must be a coincidence that almost all prescriptions of Chinese medicine that come to me are written by students of Zhang Xu (張旭). My friend KM loves to quote that "a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind". I'm sure handwriting is no inferior in reflecting the brain.

Code

Attended the presentation of our students' research projects; I was one of the judges this year.

(It used to be BT, who happened to be out of town this time.)

After the poster viewing, we moved to the auditorium and several groups of students were chosen for a oral presentation. I sat in the front row.

My immediate question was: How could I write down the score of each presentation while being surrounded by a crowd of youngsters ?

(It's not for confidential or privacy reasons; just that I didn't want the score of those previous groups affecting the presentation of the subsequent ones.)

I decided to write down the score as follows:

• sky
• pond
• fire
• thunder
• wind
• water
• mountain
• earth

You do not comprehend what they mean ? Of course, they are in fact Chinese numbers in binary code.

I learn it from I Ching (易經).

Log

You think my description yesterday weird ? Not at all. My friend KB told me a even better one she heard from another planet:

A newly promoted unit head said to all his subordinates, "You've got to prove you are productive and using all you office hour for business. Please keep a time log and record what you do every 30 minutes."

And he did come around and check.

(Do you know the distance between the words activity and result in the Collins English Dictionary ?)

By the way, a pound of minced meat is quite different from 16 oz of prime steak - however good every tiny single piece of the former is.

PS. I should not laugh at them. Extra-terrestrials of our own solar system do ask us to key in all (minor) procedures to "reflect our activity".

Yes, activity, not result.