Ten

十年生死兩茫茫,不思量,自難忘,千里孤墳,無處話淒涼.

縱使相逢應不識,塵滿面,鬢如霜.

夜來幽夢忽還鄉,小軒窗,正梳妝,相顧無言,唯有淚千行.

料得年年腸斷處, 明月夜,短松岡.

(蘇東坡 - 江城子)

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You may wonder why I put this up. Tomorrow will be my 10th anniversary of taking up the academic post. Most people would sigh at this moment and say time flies and so many things have changed. For sure I have the same feeling ...

but I am also disappointed to find so many things have NOT changed.

Useless

Despite of my suggestion yesterday, let me be nostalgic for a while.

For historical reason, I had six years in the medical school - the first of which was called the "pre-medical year", when we were under the Faculty of Science by administrative regulation, and we studied traditional science subjects (physics, chemistry and biology).

Isn't that a waste of time ?

We all thought so at that stage.

But no in retrospect. I took a course on human biology in the first semester and was well-fed on the evolution of skeleton; I took microbiology in the second half of the year. There were also courses on organic chemistry (with some relevance to pharmacology), food chemistry, psychology, Chinese, and physical education.

Yes, what really matters is whether we (alas, students) make a good use of the time. Planning and administration merely plays a small role.

PS. If you still see no value of them, there was at least plenty of spare time for us to pause and think and enjoy university life.

As Zhuangzi (莊子) said: The use of useless (無用之用).

Six

To be fair to whoever planning the medical curriculum, there has been an explosion of medical knowledge in the past 20 years, and the timetable of our students would inevitably be tightly packed.

That's why many people are long for the new 6-year medical curriculum (as a result of the new 3+3 system of secondary school).

But apparently no. It seems more likely that the 5-year core teaching would be continued, and the extra year left for general education.

I must admit I have difficulty to understand why we don't just put some basic science subjects for the "year-zero" student. For example:

• biochemistry
• molecular biology
• immunology
• genetics
  
• statistics
• psychology
• health care and social welfare system
• English (and Chinese, I'm afraid)

Isn't this quite sufficient for an entire year ?

Packed

The next day I sent KL those antique timetables, we met again in the corridor.

He looked entirely satisfied, and made a wicked smile to me, "You see ?"

"See what ?" I was at a lost.

"The emptiness of the timetable !" He went on and explained, "In the old days formal teaching session was sparse. In my days it was once a month. It probably became once or twice a week by your time. Just before the change-over, students still had 4 or 5 free sessions each week. Now, you could hardly find any."

He was certainly right. We all need some time to stop and think. After all, we are probably training up people to act like cows and horses and do the donkey job. You don't just feed them with grass - you must give the some time to ruminate and digest.

But, isn't more teaching a good thing ? That's what we achieved over the years, after considering the feedback from our graduates. Alas, we actually changed from feeding livestock to poultry - we now put a tube under their throat and force the nutrient down.

No wonder we see many doctors of the new generation run around like chickens of no head.

And they just duck when anything happens.

Timetable

Met KL in the corridor.

All of a sudden he put up a difficult question for me, "Do you still have at hand some of our students' teaching timetable 10 or 15 years ago ?"

"How could I ? I was still a kid 10 years ago." I tried to be evasive.

I heard KL murmured the term "old cake" - he must be talking about himself only.

But I conceded, "Let me look it up, just in case."

Ten minutes later I sent him a few antique timetables. Oh, not 10 or 15 years ago. (I was young, serious.) But these are the ones we used 6 or 7 years ago - before we changed the final year teaching to the "new curriculum".

PS. Thank goodness KL didn't ask for the case list and marking scheme of our final MB examination 10 or 15 years ago - I do have a few !

Spring

The spring is coming; we hope it would soon be getting warm.

But no. It is actually the coldest time of a year: the earth heat from last summer has dissipated, the sun shine is not long enough to warm up the earth, and the melting snow takes up much of the thermal energy.

As the old Chinese sayings: 下雪不冷融雪冷.

For the same reasons, the most difficult time of the tsunami is not during the collapse of many financial tyrants, but the lingering torture when the surviving companies (and countries) try to write off the loss and clear up the bill.

Nonetheless, the warm weather would always come. Let's have some faith.

Happy lunar new year.

PS. It is entertaining to read many of the so-called Chinese astrologists to predict the future by the date of Li-Chun (立春) - they don't even know there is something called the timing of Li-Chun.

For this year of Ox, the time is 11 AM, 4 February. The proper translation to Chinese astrological character would be 己丑,甲寅,庚辰,壬午. Alas, don't be too exited. There isn't even a superstitious theory on the use of this timing to predict the future of a country.

Glass

Just received my new pair of glasses; I'm still trying to adapt for it.

My previous pair was in use for nearly 9 years. You know what, during this time I developed quite a bit of presbyopia. While discussing what type of lens I preferred, my optometrist subtly suggested I needed something with a variable focus. (Yes, the type that you could focus on a distant object when you look straight ahead and on a close one when you look downward.)

I looked horrified and waved off the idea.

The friendly specialist then gave me a choice, "Do you want to preserve the ability to look far ahead, or the one to focus on objects near by ?"

That's an easy question for me, "Jove, I am only interested in the problem at hand."

Friends, next time when you find me at a distance, stare at your face and appear confused, don't feel offended.