Assassin

While watching Bodyguards and Assassins, I could not help to think of Hassan-i Sabbah.

(For those who are not familiar with the system of ancient middle Asian people, it means the name is Hassan, he is the son of someone called Sabbah.)

You have not heard of him? You probably did. Let me give you a slightly convoluted description.

Hassan was a Persian missionary in the late 11th century. After doing study and training in Egypt, he spent most of his time in the heart of the Alborz Mountains of northern Iran. The place was called Alamut, and there he founded a group that spread throughout Iran and Syria, and came to be called Hashshashin or Assassins.

When his name spread to China, it was translated into "霍山", also known as The Old Man in The Mountain (山中老人). Yes, he was the legendary character who invented Qian Kun Da Nu-o (乾坤大挪移) according to Jin Yong (金庸), as described in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber (倚天屠龍記).

Bodyguards

Shortly before I finished with my paternity leave, I had the rare opportunity of enjoying a quiet evening and watch a movie on the TV.

It was Bodyguards and Assassins (十月圍城).

The film was quite a hit when it was on the theatre; I believe many of the audience here would have watched it. In fact, I knew the plot well, and I turned off the television after an hour or so.

Let alone its artistic achievement, I must say I was thoroughly impressed by the story. (You know, I have a slightly weird definition of impressed.) In essence, Mr. Sun Yat Sen arrived Hong Kong in October 1905; the Qing Empire sent out an entire troop to kill him during the short trip, but the plan failed in a tragic way because Sun was protected by dozens of bodyguards from all walks of life.

The happening was, of course, nothing more or less than the romantic imagination of the producer. After no more than ten minutes of watching, I began to ask myself, “If the plan of assassination was so well known to Sun’s people, why didn't they advise the father of our country to take a safer route, or, why did he insist to come?"

Alas, the pursue of democracy may need some sacrifice - sometimes of our life. However, risking your life to support a giant in politics - irrespective to what he does - is not democracy.

In fact, it invites dictatorship.

PS. Exactly because the story was not real, the idea on revolution and democracy presented represents our contemporary opinion – that’s the worrying bit.

Introspection

The story goes like this:

When the strike first came, it was very mild. In fact, a few of the affected got away with it soon afterwards - without being hurt.

Then the situation became stagnant. The time seemed to be frozen.

All of a sudden, the culprit turned mad and tried to kill. It was at this juncture the team realized how urgent the situation was, and they tried to help.

But, in no time they found that their effort was a laughter; they had no proper training (or they'd forgotten the training), their instruments were outdated and rudimentary.

And, that's the making of a tragedy; many people died.

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Oh, don't be mistaken. I'm not talking about the incident in Philippine.

I am thinking of how our medical graduates treat their patients.

And, therefore, don't blame your maid so much.

As Jesus said: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? (Matthew 7:3)

輓

In general, I try not to do simple copy and paste in this blog.

But today is an exception:

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邊城使心悲，昔吾親更之。

冰雪截肌膚，風飄無止期。

百里不見人，草木誰當遲？

登城望亭隧，翩翩飛戍旗。

行者不顧返，出門與家辭。

子弟多俘虜，哭泣無已時。

天下盡樂土，何為久留茲？

蓼蟲不知辛，去來勿與諮。

王粲 《七哀詩》

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釋名: 七哀，謂痛而哀，義而哀，感而哀，怨而哀，耳目聞見而哀，口歎而哀，鼻酸而哀。

Spoiled

Paranoid audience may note that I seemed to be inferring the phenomenon of spoiled Hong Kong kids to our medical students.

Don't go that far. There are, in fact, two problems here:

1. mistakes that we committed while planning the medical curriculum
2. delinquent local medical students

But, the presence of the two does not necessarily mean a causal relationship. When you come to think of it, some of our students are likely spoiled - as a result of their parents and secondary school education - before they get into the university. We have nothing to do with those problematic students.

Well, yes, we do contribute.

We produce spoiled doctors.

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At this point, a scene of Beneath the Wheel (車輪下) of Hermann Hesse came through my mind:

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."

Parents

On a second thought, I might be at the wrong.

When I went through Wong’s book a second time, there were actually sub-headings that outline parents’ wrongdoing along the case scenarios. Here is the list:

• easy availability of money and (in the terms of Adam Smith) other convenience of life
• easy availability of information
• easy availability of opportunity (for example, to learn)
• help them to reduce stress
• help them to memorize less
• fail to allow them to be independent
• fail to allow them to have their own opinion and decision
• fail to exercise discipline at home
• favoritism of stupidity in the society

Some of my colleagues may find this list somewhat familiar. Yes, they are almost exactly the same as the list of objectives when we planned the current curriculum of our medical school.

Child

While Vivian was staying home for the maternity leave, CC - her handkerchief friend (if you know what I mean) - came for a visit.

She brought a few books for my wife to kill time (mine were considered too boring). The special recommendation was Hong Kong Kids (港孩) by Wong Ming Lok.

I took the chance and read it. In fact I heard of it some weeks ago – which middle-class parent in Hong Kong didn’t ? The younger generation seems so spoiled nowadays and Wong managed to describe typical types in the first half of her book. In the subsequent pages, she outlined the problems of the new system of secondary school (notably those of liberal education) with vivid examples.

How did I find this book ?

Seriously I was slightly disappointed. Yes, it is a real vision to have the prototypes of delinquent children elegantly described. Nonetheless, we all echo with the pages exactly because we – as parents, teachers, and, more often than not, merely onlookers – have encountered similar scenarios; I am not interested to know how spoiled our children are (as a university professor, I know just too well), I want to know why.

In other words, as parents, what could we have done wrong to cultivate children who are apathetic, self centered, dependent (both physically and intellectually), and could not take care of themselves ?

PS. For those who are familiar with the Black Cylinder Experiment, I mean I could not settle with a level one understanding of the problem.

Disparity

If artificial intelligence could not replace most of the jobs, what would actually happen with a minimal wage?

Would that affect local business and company profit ?

Don’t be silly.

Would the unemployment rate go up?

Not necessarily. From the society point of view, the demand of labour should remain constant. As many of our noble council members say, the work has to be done.

Then, would CEOs and senior administrators cut down their salary?

Of course not – if you put yourself into their shoes, you would rather cut down the salary of the middle class. (In practice, it probably means firing someone with a monthly salary of HK$20000 and hiring another to take up that job by HK$15000 per month, so that the HK$5000 saved would compensate for the minimal wage business.) The effect is easily concealed; the number of employee remains, the balance book stays the same, and, even the middle class themselves may not notice.

In other words, beginning with the beneficent intention of helping the grass roots, we end up damaging the middle class and promoting disparity of wealth in the society.

Yes, that’s pass-pointing – a sign of cerebellar lesion.

I shall not predict what would happen when it gets going.

PS. Discerning readers may argue it is only possible for large firms to cut down the salary of the middle class and make the compensation; for small business with just a handful of employees, the owner would have to swallow the bitter fruit of increasing the wage to the minimal standard. From the perspective of the society, that actually means we are enhancing small companies to be taken over by large conglomerates – another inadvertent effect that we may not like to see.

Supply

In reality, what I found on the notice board was there exists a genuine demand for such a poorly paid job.

Why? Because that’s the actual value of the amount and nature of the work. More importantly, the demand is now met by a corresponding supply – there are people who would agree to take up such a low-pay job (because, in the terminology of Warren Buffett, that’s the worth of their productivity; more commonly, there are other non-monetary gain of these poorly paid jobs – notably the opportunity of having some special training or “getting into the system”).

You may argue, “But, many of the low-pay jobs are the result of capitalist’s exploit !”

Well, that may be true. But we have no way to tell which one represents the fair value and which is deliberately brought down by a malicious boss.

More importantly, exploit does not only exist in workers who are poorly paid; the situation is actually worse amongst the class with a mediocre salary (for example, someone with a hourly productivity of HK$100 but a salary HK$60 per hour).

And we happily turn a blind eye – if not closing both – to them.

PS. The idea of non-monetary gain is not new. I still remember shortly after I became a house officer, one of my classmates told me that the job of intern is hell – because the hourly pay was (in those days) lower than those working in McDonald.

“That may be true,” I replied, “But there’s hardly any other job whose salary would always increase by four times a year later.”

Labour

After admiring the advanced artificial intelligence, Euterpe and I found ourselves at the entrance of the Labour Department. Yes, that’s the place where you could find hundreds of job vacancies on the notice board. Trying to teach her reading Chinese, I put Euterpe on my shoulders so that she could see some of the vacancy notices, and I read it softly aloud (if you know what I mean) for her.

To my amazement, many of the job had a salary well below the proposed minimal wage of HK$33 per hour – even for many jobs in NGOs (non-government organizations) and other not-for-profit establishments.

You may wonder: Why shouldn’t those not-for-profit organizations give a better salary to their employee, who, as many local practitioners in politics advocate, should get a sufficient sum to allow the subsistence of a family?

In no time, you would answer: Because their budget is tight.

But no. Salary usually accounts for only 60 to 70 percent of their expenditure, and there are always means to save some money in other aspects – for example, how about cooling down the salary of their senior administrators?

There’s a more simple reason.

PS. Maybe that had skipped your eyes, there is a profound implication of the suggestion to cut someone’s salary. We shall come back to this point later.

Robot

Around two weeks after the birth of Adler, I went to apply for the birth certificate.

For those who are not yet parents, I could go alone without Adler or Vivian; the appointment was booked ahead on-line. As expected, I took the opportunity and went with Euterpe.

We arrived nearly an hour earlier than our appointment. Conforming to the usual behaviour of government servant, we were asked to come back at (no earlier than 20 minutes before) the time assigned. (Alas, to be fair to them, they have to wait also – because there weren’t very many other applicants.) Since the place was in a government building complex, I brought Euterpe to visit the office of other departments – as a kind of general education.

After a short trip to the Post Office, we went to the Immigration Department. There is never short of empty chairs in its lobby, so that Euterpe and I could take some rest.

In no time, we recognized we were sitting next to a robot.

I’m serious. It was a metallic creature for the application of passport; applicants were guided step-by-step throughout the process, the gadget could even collect the passport photo, check the fingerprint, and scan the face (to make sure it matches with the photo submitted, I suppose).

My mouth was wide open. Our society has lost yet another job to the artificial intelligence.

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On a second thought, I was less worried. The robot probably costs more than a million dollars; not very many companies would choose it to replace human worker.

In fact, if we assume a minimal wage of HK$5000 per month, and a gadget with artificial intelligence could work for five years (for example, selling tickets in a fast-food store), it should cost less than HK$300,000 to make it financially neutral. In reality, even if a machine of this kind does seem to save money by simple calculation, one would still prefer employing someone with flesh-and-blood (soul is not necessary) because you can always ask him to take up another task should there be a need, and he could easily be disposed in case you want to close down the business.

We do not have to worry – yet.

舊書

During the holiday, I tried to clear up my book shelf. Vivian suggested to give out some old volumes as a donation; I eagerly agreed.

Here is the (incomplete) list:

• Getting Start in Security Analysis by Peter Klein
• Investing the Templeton Way by Lauren Templeton and Scott Phillips
• The Crash of 2008 and What it Means by George Soros
• Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff
• The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
• The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek
• The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
• de Bono’s Thinking Course by Edward de Bono
• Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono
• How to Solve Mathematical Problems by Wayne Wickelgren
• The Moscow Puzzles by Boris Kordemsky
• Penguin Writer’s Manual
• Sohpie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
• 1587, A Year of No Significance by Ray Huang
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• The Velvet Touch by Edward Hoch
• Thirteen at Dinner by Agatha Christie

華佗

Talking about Zhang Zhongjing (張仲景), you may be more familiar with the other giant of traditional Chinese medicine at the same era: Hua Tuo (華佗).

But, you know what, Hua was a mysterious existence. Unlike Zhang and other contemporaries, Hua's name or remedy was not mentioned by other mainstream Chinese medical literature (if I could use this term at all) in the following centuries. The life and doings of Hua were outlined by Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志) and Book of the Later Han (後漢書) - both formal historical records. But, the two descriptions were substantially contradicting. For example, his year of birth differed by some 80 years.

Discerning readers would note that both the Records and the Book were written around the time of Wei (魏) and Jin (晉) - an era when the major interest of Chinese scholars was Qingtan (清談), which, translating into modern Cantonese, is blowing water (吹水).

Some modern scholars, notably Chen Yinke (陳寅恪), believed that Hua was merely a fictional character; the name Hua Tuo was the phonemic translation of Agada - the god of medicine and toxicology - in Hindu. (The usual way of translating Hindu to Chinese during the Jin dynasty was to omit the first A sound, and Agada would become Gada.) I believe that's too drastic an explanation. A flesh and blood Hua Tuo likely did exist (although his real name we never know), and he probably learned Hindu (also known as Ayurveda) medical techniques from Buddhist missionaries, which accounts for his slightly extraordinary treatment.

傷寒

My recent bedtime reading (believe it or not, I could still keep this habit after the birth of Adler) was Treatise on Cold Injury (傷寒論) by Zhang Zhongjing (張仲景) – the giant of traditional Chinese medicine in the Eastern Han dynasty.

Oh, I didn’t read the original text. It’s an illustrated and modernized version by a Chinese publisher; I bought it last year when I was in Chengdu. I intended to learn nothing. Just that the theory is interesting, and there is a good collection of common remedies that may also prove useful for clinical practice.

In addition to common cold and conditions resembling viral illnesses in western medicine, there are descriptions on several modern infectious diseases in this Treatise, such as cholera, malaria, and (what appears to be) ascariasis.

For those who are not familiar with traditional Chinese literature, the original classic written by Zhang, titled Treatise on Cold Injury and Miscellaneous Diseases (傷寒雜病論), has already been lost. The preserved chapters were reassembled in the Sung dynasty into two volumes: the Treatise on Cold Injury focused on general diagnostic approach and infectious diseases, while the other is known as Synopsis of Golden Chamber (金匱要略), which deals with other chronic medical conditions.

Seasoned audience would note that the arrangement is very much similar to Harrison’s Principle.

Only

If you think my story of Dwight Eisenhower is slightly out of your reach, let me tell you another one within our circle...

... and with a twist.

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In late 1960s, a surgeon in a public hospital - let's call him W - was accused for demanding a huge sum of money from the family of his patient, in order to facilitate the treatment. (Note: It was before the time of ICAC; getting some red pocket money was a norm. The amount that he asked for must have been astronomical)

The case was brought to the court, and the evidence was unassailable; W was ruled guilty.

There's no point to appeal.

But, before the judge announced the sentence, W submitted a letter.

It was written by his consultant. (He was an SMO at that time.)

No, it was not the kind of modern bureaucratic document saying that W was a good person and came from a renown family. (Well, he was.)

It only states that W had gifted hands and was a master of several types of difficult surgery. (Apparently, W was one of the three who could do certain life-saving operations at that time - in the entire system of public hospital.) In fact, the government had put up so much money to train him up, and it would take several years to train up another one. Without him, the service would collapse, and many patients suffer.

What would you do if you were the judge ?

PS. In this particular incident, W was released. The annoying bit was, of course, he resigned from the government soon afterwards.

Forgive

The most recent example of a good person making a serious mistake is, no doubt, the incident of GC.

I shall not give the details here; it is well described by the morning paper, and many of our colleagues know even better.

The principal question is: How should we treat ourselves if it happens on us?

Let me tell you a story:

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In September 1944, the Allied army - led by General Eisenhower - began in Netherlands the largest airborne operation of all time, with an aim of seizing the control of Rhine, so that the Allies could gain direct access to Germany and end the war before Christmas.

The idea was excellent - just that the plan didn't work out. Dwight Eisenhower (and Bernard Montgomery, the British commander) underestimated the German defence in Netherlands, and the task they demanded from the British First Airborne Division was a mission impossible. The project fell into pieces; the result was 16000 casualties for the Allied side (nearly half from the British First).

I don't think I have to elaborate on what happened in Europe in the following months; the campaign was eventually successful - under the leadership of Eisenhower. No, he did not resign from military practice; he knew just too well he made a terrible mistake, but he remained the best person for this job. (Well, fortunately, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt also agreed on this point.)

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It used to be said that it is most difficult to forgive your enemy. No, it is even more difficult to forgive yourself. Unfortunately, the line between knowing you have done wrong but you forgive yourself, and a complete lack of insight and introspection, is faint and not often discernible.

PS. The battle was latter known as the Operation Market Garden. Although the title seems humble and sounds like a detective fiction by S.S. van Dine, it represents the Allies' most infamous chapter in the War, the details of which we may discuss later.

Good

To me, the most eye-opening part of the argument for setting the judge's niece free was: She is a good person.

That is against the modern principle of jurisdiction: Decision (on whether someone is guilty or not, and the sentence) should by and large be based on what is actually done.

Yes, occasionally the judge should also consider the purpose of the doing. (For example, slapping on someone's face for self defence - if that's at all remotely effective - or giving someone's chest a headbutt after being insulted - like what Zidane did four years ago.)

But, legal decision (and, in fact, all decisions) should never be based on whether someone is a good person - not because there is no objective definition for such a creature, but because a pure species of this kind (and its opposite, a bad person) does not exist.

Otherwise, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Hideki Tojo (alas, I won't name the fourth) should all be ruled innocent - because (they all believed) they were good persons.

Go read Dale Carnegie.

Invisible

An excellent demonstration of applying personalized treatment recently is, of course, the case related to the niece of a judge.

To many who know the personality or previous records of the Magistrate, the result is expected.

(Don't be mistaken. I have all my respect to this Mr. Yuen. He has an excellent record of treating nicely - not fairly - persons charged for arguable reasons.)

The question is, therefore, not why the case ends up this way, but how it began with this particular Magistrate. As Hercule Poirot said (in Murder on the Oriental Express), was it by chance, or by design ?

To a distant observer, the case seems a superb example of discrete reporting of conflict of interest: personal acquaintance was claimed by every hawk but not dove. What a coincidence (or, if it could ever happen, how remarkable a personality for a woman who make friend only with hawks).

That's the thrilling bit.

Personal

Don’t be mistaken. I am not saying I support what happened.

On this, I would be more worried in case they sell our travelling and spending record to a third party – so that they could design personalized advertisement for each of us.

The most horrifying scenario of this kind appeared in the movie Minority Report: As soon as a woman passes by a LCD screen in the street or underground station, a voice appears to address her, followed by showing her some advertisement that would presumably be of her interest.

You think the idea too far fetched and our technology has not advanced that far? Quite the opposite. The best example within our reach - both in terms of distance and the time axis - is personalized medicine.

What I mean is: At this moment, simple artificial intelligence could advise against the use of some medicine (for example, penicillin) in some specific patients - based on their history of allergic reaction. You may know that certain genetic polymorphism in our DNA would preclude the use of certain drugs (notably carbamazepine, and, more recently, allopurinol) because the risk of severe skin reaction is very high. With time, computer could design specific treatment for each of us - based on the genetic as well as behavioural information.

That sounds great, eh? The catch is: making an individualized advise of this kind inevitably involves a lot of personal information - a database that is exceptionally attractive, not only to business people, but more so to any potential dictator. (For example, how about knowing your political opponent has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism ?)

In short, a personalized treatment always involves a privacy problem.

Privacy

After Paul, there is another famous octopus that appears on the heading of our morning paper.

I mean our Octopus card – or the scandal around the selling of our personal data by the company.

Discerning reader would note that I said personal, not privacy data. In fact, it is an innovative idea that disclosing our name and contact information to a third party impinges on our privacy.

Alas, if you are not familiar with the definition of privacy, let me show you the one from the US Constitution:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In other words, the concepts deals with eavesdropping, tapping of phone lines, and activities of a similar kind by the government or other secret agents (and therefore a protection against excessive power of the government or dictatorship) – not disclosing your name or phone number to the others.

If you have an obsession to protect your privacy of the latter kind, you should not allow your friends to call you by your name in public.

NNT

You may wonder why I said a healthy diet does not reduce the number of people with chronic medical diseases.

Let me give you a quiz on statistics:

For convenience, let’s take acute heart attack. Suppose the mortality is now 20%, and a new treatment would reduce the mortality to 10%. How many people do you have to treat so that one could get some benefit ?

“The number-needed-to-treat is 10.” I could hear you say.

Wrong. (That’s how most of us are fooled by thick-head statisticians.)

Look. We need to treat 10 to prevent one death, but the number of people who would get the benefit is much bigger.

Don’t you see the point? Here. One in ten patient should have died without treatment and now survived – with a class IV heart failure. Another patient in that ten who should have class IV heart failure without treatment now have class III, and so forth and so forth. If you are an administrator and just look at the numbers, for any ten patients, there’s one fewer death, and one more entirely healthy person – but actually the distribution curve of the cardiac status of the whole population shifted, and it is not the one who ought to die becomes completely well.

The point is: The total number of patient with some heart failure within that population remained the same. From the society point of view, it does not save any money – except that for a funeral. (I shall omit the social cost should the survivor is an elderly person.)

The same argument holds for your good old healthy diet.

Poison

(continue from yesterday)

Where are we getting at ?

Here, here. A responsible government should promote public programs for the prevention of premature deaths (for example, vaccination for children). However, it should not waste effort to prolong blindly the life span of its population (as long as the median span is above the age of retirement).

In fact, from the government point of view, it seems more desirable to have a population who remains healthy throughout the working age (so that people would pay the tax) but would die shortly after they retired. Ideally, there should be a tasteless chronic toxin so that the government could add into the drinking water and do the deed.

Short of this poison, tobacco is, maybe to your surprise, the second best: It is heavily taxed (in fact, it is doubly taxed – by the customers to support prohibition of smoking, and by the company for its exceptional earning), and it causes chronic lung disease, heart disease, and cancer, mostly in their late sixties and early seventies.

Unfortunately, the trick of Philip Morris and similar companies is too obvious and do not work very well now. What’s next? Yes, let’s promote tasty, fatty, salty, and sweet food. They are not fast food – they kill you rather slowly (at least after you paid thirty or forty years of tax).

PS. You may argue although a healthy diet and other similar measures would increase the number of our elderly population, it should not be the (sole) objective of a society to conserve productivity and collect tax, while leaving the care of the old people aside. Yes, you are probably right. But, in that case, please be slightly less aggressive when you ask for more resources to support the university education, unemployment subsides, and so forth; more importantly, do not use the argument a healthy elderly population would save money – it never does.

Burden

Following on my malicious suggestion yesterday, why shouldn’t we propose a healthy diet so that everyone could live longer and healthier?

Alas, it is a romantic idea that the burden on the health care system (and other social resources) depends on how healthy the population is.

That’s utterly wrong. The major determinant is the average life span of the population.

The explanation is simple. First, everyone would succumb, sooner or later, to one fatal disease. (Otherwise we should still be able to meet Ying Zheng [嬴政] or Mr. Mao today !) The cost to the health care system is, therefore, constant.

You may say if everyone becomes more healthy, the cost of treating chronic medical diseases would decrease.

That idea is more than romantic – it is naïve. Since the actual number of elderly population increases with the life span, there would be no change in the count of diabetic or hypertensive patients.

As Hercule Poirot said in Murder on the Links, if you do not see this point, you could not see anything. Well, maybe I could explain the logic some time later, but, at this moment, please accept it as a mathematical certainty.

PS. I suppose it’s self evident that the cost to other social resource hinges on the number of old people.

Diet

You may think it is to the advantage of the health care system – and therefore to the society as a whole – to promote a healthy diet.

Alas, don’t be too confident yet.

Well, yes, there’s overwhelming evidence that obesity is becoming an epidemic and diseases related to atherosclerosis are now top killers of our society. There are also convincing data on use of a healthy diet in alleviating high blood pressure, obesity, and major vascular diseases. (In fact, the term coronary artery disease was not yet included in medical textbooks a hundred years ago. Epidemiological data on heart diseases in those days mostly referred to rheumatic heart disease.)

In other words, with effective public programs for promoting a healthy diet, we would reasonably expect our life expectancy would increase, and we would live healthier.

But, is that what we want ?

From the society point of view, NO.

I could hear you scream.

Let me take you through the slightly convoluted explanation tomorrow.

PS. As a starter, please note that I said from a society point of view. Translating into ordinary day English, it means I want myself to life longer and healthier, but not (most of) the others.

Eat

One major idea that Marion Nestle outlines is this:

All advices on a healthy diet could be summarized into two words – eat less. But, they are exactly the words that the (USA) government does not want to advocate publicly – because that would be detrimental to farmers and people related to the food industry.

In fact, competition between food companies is more or less a zero sum game; the population is fixed. One strategy to improve their profit is, therefore, to make us eat more.

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In the competition of a limited market, big companies are in a better position to take advantage from any government policy – such as food labelling. Not only because they have the resource to produce labels at a lower cost, but also they could easily put up products with (blinding and) attractive labels for health conscious customers.

For example, what do you think of biscuits with no fat and extra vitamin (but with tons of sugar)?

Food

While I stayed in the hospital to take care of Vivian after Adler was born, I brought a book with me to kill time.

It is Food Politics of Marion Nestle – a detailed account on how government policy and dietary advice are influenced by political forces.

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Although I did some cookery since secondary school, I extended my interest to food chemistry and related matters when I entered the university. In year one, I took a course with a curious title “Guided Study” for general education.

And, all we had was two dozens of students took turn to do a presentation on any topic that we felt interested.

My topic was about instant noodles and physiological effects of night food.

Invigilator

Because of some earlier arrangement, I had to be the invigilator of the College examination in an afternoon while Vivian was staying in the hospital.

This was not the first time I had to take part. Seriously it was the most boring seven hours you could have. The papers were checked, distributed, and collected by some experienced secretaries, and all that we had to do is to read the instruction before the papers started, reminded the candidates on the time left at certain points, and announced the examination ended. There's also a pile of papers for us to fill in - I suppose the College is also doing some kind of accreditation exercise?

The only "irregular" happening of the afternoon was this: Someone raised his hand and asked my co-invigilator if there was some misprint in the answer of one particular question - because he could not find the (what he believed to be) correct answer.

My colleague came back to the stage and asked me to go through with him that question. In no time we both identified the correct answer, and off he went.

"Don't worry, at least every question book was the same," he told the puzzled candidate.

PS. It was the day when we had the Black Raining Signal. Thank goodness the rain was much less heavy by the time we finished with checking and photocopying all material.

People

After working in the field for nearly twenty years, it was impossible to meet nobody I know while hanging around in a private hospital for a week.

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Met CW while waiting Vivian was waiting in the nursing station. CW is my university classmate and a urologist. There's always rumor between him and his wife - I dared not ask.

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Met AH during lunch time, while waiting for hospital shuttle. AH and I worked together for some ten years. In fact, we took the college examination in the same diet. He's now practising in a group with CW - my first consultant after I graduated.

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The most embarrassing bit was I met someone whom I recognized his face, but could not recollect his name, the year of his graduation, or his specialty.

How did I get around?

I asked for his new name card!

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PS. Slightly to my surprise, I did not meet TW.

肥婆凳

While Vivian was staying in the hospital, I had much opportunity to sleep on the hospital sofa.

Although you may consider that not very comfortable or relaxing, I am accustomed to sleep in a sitting position. In fact, I used to sleep that way throughout my secondary school days - because the place I lived was too small and my bed too short.

Awkward as it seemed, there was an unexpected advantage: When I first became an assistant intern during the summer holiday before my final year, sleep was, for god's sake, highly precious. There's little time for it, and it was not easy to find a reasonable bed - not even for the genuine houseman - in those days.

But I was saved when I found in the ward a large armchair, which we usually called by the nickname fat woman's chair (肥婆凳) (because the nurses usually put overweight post-operative patients to sit there, in order to prevent lung atelectasis and bedsore). There was no fat woman sitting on it at night, and I could happily get a half-an-hour nap - sometimes even longer.

And I kept this habit throughout my physician training.

PS. Fat woman's chair disappeared from the hospital ward around the time of 1997 handover. To me, it is a tiny bit of sweat memory in the good old colonial days.

Name

Between Vivian and I, there was quite a bit of discussion on what name to choose for our new baby.

The name of our first daughter, Euterpe, was my choice. It represents the muse of music and poetry in Greek mythology. (I learnt the name from Ellery Queen’s The Tragedy of Y, where Euterpe was described to be sitting on the shoulder of Science – a scene that particularly interested me.) Although there is a meaning on its own, her Chinese name, Yu Tak (妤德), is by and large the phonemic translation of the English one.

My original plan was to called our second daughter Urania – the muse of astronomy and the youngest sister of Euterpe in Greek mythology. The Chinese translation would comfortably be Yu Wai (妤慧) – “德慧雙修” is a classical teaching of Buddhism and a good principle for our children to bear in mind.

But, Vivian did not like Urania (for obvious reasons). I agreed. After all, the name also gives rise to the famous radioactive element Uranium, which accumulates and is toxic to the kidney; it doesn’t seem to get along well with a nephrologist.

This is the time when I could be superstitious.

PS. We finally settled with Yu Wai as the Chinese name, but Adler in English (suggested by Vivian). For fans of Sherlock Holmes, yes, that’s the name of the woman.

Delivery

The weekend passed quickly, and my wife was admitted for the delivery of our second baby.

To me, it is no less excited as compared to the time when Euterpe was born – although Vivian is better prepared this time and the wound is much less painful.

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Many of you know that I have a personal interest in Chinese astrology. You may wonder: Did I choose a particular date and time for the delivery ?

Well, yes and no. I picked two or three particularly bad days to avoid, and then left the final decision to our obstetrician.

But, when I was waiting to witness the Cesarean section, I met another five fathers-to-be – all having their babies to be delivered at the same time. All of a sudden I realized that, although these children – and thousands of others all over the world, with very different backgrounds – have the same astrological signature, it would be impossible for them to have an identical fate.

There are better times to be superstitious.