good seat

hot out

smoothie in

new year's eve's eve

people watchin'

niceeee

the year in perspective 2

i read a whopping number of non-trade books this year thanks to the e-library and my trusty smartphone app. HOM drags me to the gym every few weeks which is a damn sight better than two years back. the DSLR continues to supply the dust bunnies despite a brief attempt to take it out from the cabinet.

on the work front i get paid to do stuff that is not a chore and is even mostly enjoyable which of course excites vague feelings of unworthiness and guilt. my pleasure to engage young people, i always think. i walk with some patients to the end of their journeys. it is my utmost privilege.

O has a health scare which jolts me into considering an alternative life with no live-in help and perhaps shortened hours at work. against the odds stacked against her by age and imaging she emerges unscathed and HOM and i breathe a collective sigh of gratitude and relief.

HOM and i steal short trips which actually add up to quite an almost embarrassing number. heh.

new synapses

how to reformat the blog layout:

• go to design
• scroll thru every option
• take the plunge and change the formatting
• chicken out and leave
• repeat
• dislike how the new format looks
• ask google how to get the look i want
• follow steps 
• discover they were steps for wrong look
• discover new command to tweak
• ask google how to get the look i want on mac
• follow steps 
• voila!

in the new economy:

• google sure knows a whole lot
• what's not to learn

year-end visit

we visit with J1 Y and J2.

they make time to go around with us. as it should be, my friends tell me. really? it always amazes me that people would take their time to match mine. thank you!

how are your children? people ask me. alive, i say. they appear busy and happy. i am thankful enough. 

J1 and Y are in the heart of the city. J2 is in the heart of farm country. so different and so strong in different ways. our children but their own persons. 

my hope is unchanged. be clear-eyed and brave, my children! remember who you are and where you come from. walk with honor and courage. rejoice in the journey. and my God, who has supplied my needs, is He who will supply yours.

taipei impressions

• it's a city to walk and subway in, if only because the traffic snarls are unending
• the smokers are ubiquitous and the most innocent looking pedestrian will light a ciggie at the drop of a hat
• they have pedestrian crossings across the widest streets and they tell you how much time you have to get across and they give you plenty of time!
• its messy gangly solidly mid-century and nothing-beyond-the-eighties architecture brings back  memories of the taiwanese tearjerkers of yesteryears
• their people are beautifully courteous in a way that refreshes your spirit after a year in the trenches of work peppered with news of protests and marauding scooters
• for reasons HOM and i cannot fathom, we expect taipei to be cheap so needless to say we are disappointed
• it was a lovely visit to rival the best year-end vacations in memory

the year in perspective

"i have satiated the weary soul, and i have replenished every sorrowful soul."

- jer. 31:25

weary sorrowful satiated replete

beleaguered broken redeemed restored

impoverished provisioned

broken. grateful

TA-DAH! product of the century-to-date

presenting the social water bottle, which has come out from the obscurity of non-existence to current omnipresence in the best company, as an expensive accessory doing what the mug used to do. and really, i don't see why you need to take gulps of water as we converse.

madame fourcade's secret war - lynne olson (2019)

exciting spy stuff.

forgettable writing.

with an ending that could imaginably be more satisfying. (for e.g., what happened to her son? and her other children? and her eventual husband?) 

only in my list because it gives a different view of the world war efforts against the germans and the japs than the other book code girls (liza mundy, 2017) which was equally smashing stuff and with a more gratifying ending too.

how not to be a doctor and other essays - john launer (2007)

sometimes you read a book and tell yourself you wish you could write with such wisdom (not, of course, c.s. lewis' books, or bonhoeffer's, which you read and then simply surrender to superior wisdom and poetry.)

this is such a book. he writes with wisdom and poetry on a swathe of topics but especially on topics close to my experience and frustration - the limitations of our self-important constructs as doctors the effectiveness (and otherwise) of our hallowed ways of doing things in healthcare and the song we sing in human to human discourse. 

this be a book practicing doctors ought to read, if only to get us more in touch with other people's painful reality.

(much belated) ruili impressions

small city off of kunming at the china-myanmar border built upon the gem-trade, to which HOM persuades me to go back in august:

• there is a bewildering selection of cuisines, none of which is my tried-and-tested beloved cantonese. picky eater that i am, this will be weight-reducing if i have a prolonged stay
• the loos work! and they are clean! in fact, they rival the best functional loos in other parts of asia. (you can imagine loos have been a reason i have long resisted a visit to china)
• we are amazed by the sheer hospitality of the people we meet. that is to say, i am amazed and humbled. HOM says he has always known this and that i need to jettison my pre-conceived ideas and prejudices. (you can imagine people have been another reason i have resisted a visit to china)

• the night markets are rip-roaring deafening fun. especially the ones from which the live-broadcasters ply their ware
• it is fascinating to see the jade roughs up close and personal at the rough markets, where people walk around with powerful handheld LED torches and comment on random pieces of rock. despite the close contact i remain ignorant and illiterate
• and anyway plebeian me is most excited over the completed jade pieces at the prettier stores at the peripheries of the action

• here they don't appear to have any traffic rules whatsoever particularly if you are a scooter, in which case you may share road and pavement with car and pedestrian, only at their respective speeds. which, surprisingly enough, works
• the corollary is that crossing the road as a pedestrian becomes an act of steel-hearted faith even when the light is in your favor, but hey, we survived!
• and the seat belts in their cars appear to be optionally functional

• they have traffic cameras everywhere. that is to say, all along the roads. so that you can pretty much get tracked relentlessly. uncle Sam has nuthin' on this
• they even have a camera at the hotel check-in! i find this unnerving and an assault upon my (un)developed sense of privacy, coming as i do from the premier nanny state in south-east asia

• what i say is, you can't beat chinese airlines for efficiency. they board you on the dot take off on the dot and tend to arrive ahead of time. a girl's gotta love this

the rosie project - graeme simsion (2013)

this is a little jewel box of a book, quirky and charming with gems scattered generously so that you cannot skim read. 

the hero is immediately likeable, he who personifies all of us klutzes who have been socially awkward in our time. even better, he is not cringing at the awkwardness of it at all. 

the heroine is, of course, the most beautiful woman on earth, if a little messed up psychologically. but then so is he and aren't we all?

the plot tension is nicely wonderfully understated and draws you in before you remember that you dislike plots that depend on disingenuous behavior because they stress you out too much.

to top it all off the psychology of high functioning borderline autism is fascinating and eminently plausible and hence makes this intellectually as well as emotionally satisfactory.

this has got to be most enjoyable novel i've read in a long time.

a grief observed - c.s. lewis (1961)

how long does it take to gather the courage to read a book? in my case for this book, perhaps twenty-odd years. it was as if i feared the very reading of the manuscript would precipitate the tragedy of which he writes.

having finally got on with it, i learn that the dread of anticipation exceeds the pain of plowing through it.

for one thing, it is mercifully short. four chapters and he is done. for another, he is honest and provocative and vulnerable and bare. but not, as perhaps i feared, stuck in the rut of his pain. 

bereavement, he posits, is as much a part of love as courtship and marriage and the honeymoon and the loving. 'twas a time such a posit would have been unthinkable. having known so much joy and fulness with HOM, i am willing to begin to consider this may be so.

we look through the glass darkly. sometimes we are granted to misunderstand a little less completely.

God's hotel - victoria sweet (2012)

this book is gentle and sharp and measured and incisive and slow and inexorable and rather subversively inspiring.

it reminds me of the community hospital where i get to spend some time, where we don't have the latest or the fastest or the most detailed, although we have a phlebotomist and radiology, much like sweet's hospital.

it tells me that there is value in learning the patient's story and examining the old fashioned way like i was taught and the way i try (sometimes in vain) to teach it, because it can be kinder and cheaper and more accurate.

it teaches me a new word, inattendu. to be a pilgrim, sweet says, is to know the beginning and the end, and to have adventures in between. the unexpected in the in-between is not unwelcome because it is part of the journey.

dancing with dementia - c. bryden (2005)

an almost unbelievably upbeat book about that most feared of all diagnoses, dementia.

several points strike me as i speed my way through this book in the wake of the odd aftertaste of another dementia book, before i forget by b. smith and dan gasby:

• in the interest of accuracy, she has FTD, not Alzheimer's.
• she sees herself as the embodiment of three layers - the cognitive who and what that is most visible and is lost soonest, the emotional with which she engages others and over which she is losing control bit by bit, and the inner core of who she is in her spirit, which she does not lose. dementia takes her memories and her thoughts but has no power over her core self. i suppose, having lived with dementia for twenty-three years (by 2018, not 2005), she has some authority in this.
• and she says, why does it matter if i cannot remember... if i enjoy your visit, why must i remember it?... let me live in the present. if i forget a pleasant memory, it does not mean it was not important for me.

a remarkably wise book, this. it reminds me of that old promise that nothing shall separate me from the love of God.

hear ye, HEAR YE!

the easter affirmation, to be read in progressively louder tone as font size increases.

one cannot help thinking that the triumphant proclamation upon which the christian faith is built deserves more considered and innovative treatment than that of decibels alone.

easter morning thoughts

there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins

and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

e'er since by faith i saw the stream thy flowing wounds supply

redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till i die.

- william cowper

the cross and the resurrection redeem me from more than i care to consider

and make me worthy of more than i will ever grasp.

thank God.

good friday

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief...

i make a startling realization in the wake of the familiar words. when i say God, this is my heavy heart and the bitterness of my spirit; what can you do to sweeten it? really he is telling me child, i know your sorrow and your grief. i drank the cup you could not drink.

he shares my burden.

surprised by joy - c.s.lewis (1955)

he calls it joy, this ephemeral longing that comes upon him and catches him unawares when he reads a passage of a book, or when he contemplates a scene, or when he remembers a memory. it is the pursuit of this, he believes, that leads him to God.

why does he call this joy, i wonder. when we usually think of joy as an uplifting of the spirit and countenance, why does he link it to this elusive feeling that needs to be described almost laboriously? i begin to realize that the opposite of joy is not, perhaps, sorrow, but longing. and if longing, then joy must be the fulfilment of that longing. there is a logic to this strange nomenclature.

and i have felt that joy too. i have felt that unexpected burst that expands my soul and gives me, momentarily, a glimpse of something far bigger than i am, when i chance upon an empty road, or when the storm clouds come in their ominous glory, or when i hear danny boy, or i join in a chorus of how great thou art. so joy is my glimpse of the eternity that God puts in my heart, and i am the richer for having read about it.

the four loves - c.s.lewis (1960)

amazed delighted and blessed yet again by the man a shop-girl described to me once as a rather old writer, isn't he?

affection, he says, grows out of proximity. a common product, but not the only possible product. nor necessarily an enduring product. this brings me relief, for the many times my unredeemed affection would go no further, and could go no further. 

and affection corrupted becomes a most ugly perversion indeed, whether it be an inordinate need for, or an abnormal desire to give. i have seen both the passive aggressive neediness and the smothering distortion that yet bears the name of love.  

friendship, he says, is the most unobligated form of love. we love in friendship because we share common interests hopes or values, not because we are thrown together or because we admire each other. in the bible we have God the father and Christ the husband, but only Abraham is called God's friend. the love of friends is not a common descriptor of God's love. but oh! on earth the love of friends enriches me indeed.

charity is God's love. it is the form to which the human loves turn, in God's time and with his guidance. the charity of receiving in gratitude what we do not deserve and the charity of giving beyond what we are able come from our heavenly Father and only with his help. may i learn to love with charity.

i am amazed by his insights and delighted by his easy language. and sly humor.

sand in my shoe

here we are at nearly the end of the first month and here are the things that have been irritating me:

• people who talk at the top of their voices on their cellphones on the train
• people who talk to each other at the top of their voices on the train
• people who play music on their personal devices at maximum volume on the bus
• people who have a formal encounter with you and find it acceptable to suddenly fish out their water bottle for a swig
• gentlemen who run to risque in their taste for jokes and conversation

quite clearly the common theme is human.

good reads (and not)

two rip-roaring satisfyingly meaty jolly good reads. destiny is a sweeping tour of world history that incorporates the middle eastern moslem perspective. not your usual western media stuff or even the world history according to western writers stuff, so this is a fascinating account.

adds up is a whirlwind review of mathematics as i never knew it. and i studied math up to high school! and actually i passed college biostats! and right in the final chapter i discover a new thing - mandelbrot sets. it is delightful.

this one, though, is not quite my cuppa tea. i may like ideas but that socratic method is a tad slow for me. perhaps another day.