It wasn't too long ago when it is still a must for me to 'listen to my parents'. Now:
At BWI airport. Chinese take-out stall.
Dad: Give me the Shanghai Lo Mein lah! Server: ??? Dad: (Looks at me intently) HUH? Me: He wants Shanghai Lo Mein for here. Server: Chicken or pork? Dad: (Looks at me intently) HUH? Me: 你要雞定係豬肉呀? Dad: 雞啦! Me: Chicken. (Abridged...)
(Er - I thought he can use English pretty well. Until that day...)
Some time during the trip.
(For simplicity translated into English.) Me: Let me know what do you guys want to see! (I feel bad always dragging them around and not asking for opinion.) Mum: Go ahead and see what you want to see - we will just follow. We will be happy as long as we see you and we don't care what else we see.
(Like that also can - I am not surprised if they completely have no idea where they will be 12 hours later at any moment, despite I have already sent them the itinerary well in advance...)
A couple of days later I talked to my sister - she was telling me that they are like that even in Hong Kong. My sister has always been in charge of ordering food when they visit...! It is not only because they are not used to the American way of doing things...!
In some sense they are becoming less and less independent and confident - especially my dad. You should see how uptight he was on the day when they were supposed to go to Vancouver on their own because my flight to Baltimore was a couple of hours earlier. 22 years ago my mum survived for a couple of weeks with me in America with rather bad English, just like how I survived France and Peru and Germany now - and now they needed me to feel secure in a place they have visited so many times before.
不想長大? 要不想都不行. Reality speaks itself - unless all these is just a dream.
This is my stand on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM): written as a reply to someone else's post. I take a moderate stand such that while I believe patients should be given the freedom to pursue it, they must still be primarily under the care of regular doctors, and I still strongly believe in the doctrines and methods of medical science.
alright let me put this upfront as well - the point of me commenting is that i strongly believe that, as future doctors and scientists, we cannot afford to be outwardly hostile towards CAM, regardless of our personal beliefs. that is because we want our future patients to tell us honestly what sorts of CAM they have since used and are intending to use, and we do not want them to conceal such important information out of fear of being ridiculed, or simply distrust us altogether because the alternative practitioner sounds nicer and more convincing.
when i say 'uproot', i mean 'to remove completely from society'. has evidence-based medicine successfully done that? no - and i believe that it is because, as you and me know too well, there are too many things traditional scientific medicine does not know and cannot do. we do not know the cause of, let alone a definitive treatment for, devastating yet relatively common problems such as fibromyalgia (some people even suggest that this problem does not exist physiologically). and seemingly simple problems, such as a UTI, can develop into sepsis and become fatal. this provides a gap for alternative medicine to exist - unless traditional scientific medicine is able to solve everyone's problems, it is not going to remove alternative medicine, whether or not alternative medicine is effective or not.
well - it is your choice to be annoyed. however - note that it is because of your training and beliefs (okay it is also mine :P) that cause you to strongly think that qi and acupoints do not exist, and homeopathy does not make sense. traditional chinese practitioners are trained to believe that these things exist - from their perspectives, these things are real and this is how they view the human body. for proper practitioners, their intentions are not to trick you into believing something 'unreal' - what they want is to cure you using methods which they are convinced to work.
what patients are the most concerned about is whether a method works, and they will try any method that gives them confidence. we should see ourselves as a strong competitor of CAM - as long as patients have confidence in us, they will trust us and cooperate with us in terms of treatment. if a patient wants to try acupuncture to help with her arthritis, we should warn her of possible side effects and the absence of scientific evidence, remind her to adhere to her drug schedule and appointments, give her recommendations if possible, and leave the decision to her. as long as a procedure is safe, and the patient feels convinced that she should try it, she should have the freedom to pursue it as long as we are kept informed.
yes, i agree that CAM practitioners should be regulated, and should not be allowed to make claims suggesting that their methods are 'scientifically proven' while in fact they're not. this is up to the FDA to come out with something (in fact it has). but as long as they do not harm patients, i don't see anything wrong in letting them say that they might help with certain problems. the writer in the BCA lawsuit is appealing based on 'freedom of speech' - this is an interesting position to have...!
also, yes, placebos sometimes do cost a lot of money, and in the end it is not likely to work. but if the placebo gives the patient some form of hope and psychological well-being, and is not known to have adverse health effects, i believe that patients should be given the freedom to pursue it while being monitored by a doctor.
sometimes, even traditional scientific medicine functions this way. the point of palliative care for late-stage cancer patients is to do something to try to relieve symptoms even though it might not make a difference in the end. i have a case like that now, and my parents depend on me to decide what to do - i am advising them to put the patient's quality of life at highest priority and to do anything to maintain that, while i know anything would simply be an 'ineffective placebo' towards the disease. similarly, some forms of CAM, such as qi gong and reiki, can also help to give patients a sense of well-being and improve their quality of life.
well, do you know NCCAM (a branch of NIH) classifies prayer as a form of CAM too?
Discovered someone was very interested in my life last Saturday afternoon. If you see this message, thanks for being interested (I really mean it...)! I guess I am kind of exhibitionist to a certain extent too.
Following the links back to my old posts, I found this paragraph:
However there is one good thing about this: my expenditure has decreased significantly for the past week. When I opened my accounts book almost all the entries were 'Lunch' or food related, and it amounts to only around 5 bucks a day except grocery day.
It is posted 26 September 2006, which now I consider one of the saddest (or rather, the most 可憐) moments of my life.
Now? Errrr. 5 bucks a day?! I think I ought to reflect a little on how much money I spend these days. Need to be more alert on the free food search...
Right. When I go back to Singapore, I will be earning 1.5x more money and things will be 1.5x cheaper. But will have to give money to parents and pay my own bills still... I think I should just cut down on the amount of food I eat :P
There was once I was telling people how I do not prefer girls who wear (too much) make-up -
I was saying, using make-up for professional / courtesy / fun reasons are acceptable, but depending on make-up to define how one looks is not, and as far as I am concerned, I can somehow pick up hints of materialism and / or insecurity from that.
And I found a comrade who expressed this way better than I do!
He approached this from a different angle, but his message is similar to mine, albeit a lot more PC and way watered-down:
SEXY的確是很多女生追求的終極目標... 但是我敢保證男生真正喜歡的是PURE SEXY! [I do not understand this phrase.] 男生真正喜歡的也不是beautiful而已，而是natural beauty！ 當然不是叫女生不要化妝，化妝絕對是一種禮貌，甚至是一種變美的藝術。 懂得化妝和打扮很好！有時候能讓自己的際遇和心情都變的更好.... 但是我想說的是不要太過依賴外在附加的東西來提升自己的魅力，卻在不知不覺中，忘記了妳本來就有的魅力。 千萬不要覺得自己沒化妝或沒提名牌包就見不得人...
我相信每個女孩都是上天滴下的寶石！ 每個女孩都有自己最原始的魅力！ 講坦白一點...
妝總有要卸的一天。
假如妳對自己沒有自信，那就算是化了妝、穿了名牌，妳還是只能用面具掩蓋妳自己真正的魅力。
(That which touches guys the most is not all those extras that are external - those things are accessories at most. That which touches guys the most is definitely just the purest innocence. ... If you are not confident about yourself, even if you have worn make-up or branded stuff, you are still just using a mask to hide your real charm.)
He claims that 90% of guys will agree to this.
And I am a staunch supporter - just as I am a proponent for the campaign against bottled water...
Nachdem Sushi in der Bibliothek gelernt hatte, ging sie ins Zimmer ihres Freunds. After Sushi had studied in the library, she went to her boyfriend's room.
Rules: 1)Nachdem = preprosition that demands the tense Plusquamperfekt - past perfect. 2)Nachdem = preprosotion that requires verb order reversal - the direct verb has to be the last word in the sentence. In this case it is 'hatte' - 'had'. 3)Past participle is always at the back - 'gelernt'.
Thus normally, wihout 'nachdem', the sentence reads
Sushi hat in der Bibliothek gelernt. Sushi has studied in the library.
4)Ging = past tense of 'gehen' - 'to go'. 5)In der Bibliothek - because Sushi stays in the libary to study, the noun takes on the dative case after the preprosition 'in': der Bibliothek = the library in dative. The normal form (nominative) = die Bibliothek (gender = female). 6)Ins Zimmer: because Sushi has to move to her boyfriend's room, the noun takes on the accusative case after the preprosition 'in': ins Zimmer = in das Zimmer. Normal form = das Zimmer (gender = neuter). 7)Ihres Freunds: because the room belongs to the boyfriend, the second noun has to take on the genitive case: ihres Freunds (her boyfriend's). Normal form = ihr Freund (her boyfriend: gender = male).
German has 3 genders: Male (der), Female (die), Neuter (das) + Plural (die)
‘Denn wir haben alles, was das Herz begehrt, und wir brauchen uns vor nichts zu fürchten!’ - der Tiger von Oh, wie schön ist Panama
Das stimmt - ob wir nicht zu viel für unsere Leben suchen, und wir sind einfach und glücklich - was gibt uns Ängsten?
('Because we have everything, everything that the heart desires, and we do not have to be afraid of anything!' - the tiger from 'Oh, how beautiful is Panama'
That is right - if we do not seek too much for our lives, and we are simple and happy - what will give us fears?)
I am happy with the kind of life that I am leading now, and all I look for is to maintain it - also, according to projections into the future, I should have no problem maintaining it financially anyway.
So why worry? Just go find whatever I am being called to do and do it!
TEMASEK Holdings has been given a perfect 10 in a report on transparency among sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) published yesterday.
Is it better to laugh or to cry when presented with stuff like this?
There is more.
Zaobao, 7 March 2009 and there is no parallel found in ST, so I will translate.
From a guy who is an A-level top scorer, ranked first in IChO, PM book prize winner, LKY maths and science award winner, etc. goodness knows what (all according to the same article).
It might be better for my future if I were to go to a university in the US or Europe to learn cutting-edge science and technology, but for our country, I believe the experience gained from studying for 4 years in Tsing Hua University would be more important for Singapore's public service. Regarding this, I am willing to place our nation's interests before my personal interests. ...
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!
This guy is either VERY NOBLE, VERY NAIVE, A PLAIN HYPOCRITE (i.e. SUPER politically correct), his family are hardcore PAP loyalists, or the reporter is a word-twisting idiot whose act deserves banishment from civil society for 20 years.
Singaporeans are never that noble (how to be kiasu and noble at the same time?!); I would hope that he said that because he comes from a PAP background. If he is naive, he will regret what he said and probably his decisions a couple of years from now. If the reporter twisted his words - well he would have been flamed for nothing. If he is a hypocrite, I DO NOT WANT HIM IN THE CIVIL SERVICE...
ST is smart - no mention of that in it at all. They know - if they publish something like this, they will receive endless amounts of flame. Zaobao is a relatively safe place to publish this kind of thing, honestly, things that Zaobao readers care about are pretty different...
I have never believed in organic food. Asking me to buy food that has no significantly proven health, safety and environmental benefits but is twice as expensive sounds too much like a gimmick designed to con people who don't know what to do with their money.
And I always have this idea that there is more bacteria dotting organically produced food than conventional food. Since the US soak their chicken in chlorine to make sure that they are contaminant-free, probably they might have to soak organic chicken or even organic lettuce in a higher concentration of chlorine :|
Support locally grown/produced food though! Not only it reduces the carbon footprint of the food, it can also contribute positively to the local economy, and needless to say, the food has a higher likelihood to be more fresh. Haha we buy Maryland eggs and Maryland milk cos they are the cheapest.
I support recycling though. Hmm if recycling requires more staff and a higher cost to process the trash, it isn't necessarily a bad thing - it creates more jobs?
If you put my drawing up on the Internet, with the level of detail down to the colour of the tube I am wearing and the colour of the earphone cords I am using, the only thing I would want to do is to run as far away as possible...
The following passages are my attempts to write an essay under 30 minutes. If you can, try to comment on whether things make sense, writing style etc... Thanks!
Scientific inquiry is rooted in the desire to discover, but there is no discovery so important that in its pursuit a threat to human life is tolerable.
The spirit of scientific inquiry is our desire to know and discover. In modern society science is held in high regard not only because of the practical applications and technological advances that it can bring about; the fact that science can unveil more mysteries and solve more problems presented to us by nature is believed to be able to improve the human condition and make humans more powerful contributed to such an understanding as well.
Although scientific discovery is important to us as humans, there are certain limitations to what can be done and what cannot be. For example, when the process of scientific discovery constitutes a threat to human life, it might not be acceptable under most circumstances, especially if we limit our definition of 'human life' to adults who are unquestionably alive. For example, as people discovered that the special forces of Japan conducted experiments on their prisoners-of-war in China during the Second World War, they were widely criticised and the officer-in-charge was convicted of war crimes by the Allied tribunal after the war. In this example, the Japanese scientists who took part in the experiments wanted to know the effects of certain pathogenic agents on human beings, and one can argue that they were partly driven by the 'desire to discover' as well; however, the fact that they deliberately put human beings in danger and in actual fact killed some of them through their scientific process rendered their actions unacceptable.
However, under very limited and tightly controlled circumstances, a threat to human life can be tolerated in the process of scientific discovery. In cases where the effects of novel drugs need to be identified, the clinical trials designed would always place a certain level of threat to the life of the patient. In some instances, the threat can be very real. A few years ago, a young man died of an overblown systemic immune response when he received a dose of transgenic adenoviruses directly injected to his liver in a trial which aimed to correct a genetic metabolic disorder that he suffered from. Despite such problems, clinical trials involving novel therapeutic strategies are still continuing and are still widely accepted as an important means for advancement in medicine. That is because, other than actually trying these novel measures on actual patients, there is no other reliable alternative to test their effectiveness and safety before they can be widely used by patients generally. If such trials are not allowed, we will never have new strategies available to tackle the increasing amount of illnesses that people suffer from and will post a significant obstacle in the advancement of medicine and the standard of living of our sick.
Thus, it would be fair to conclude that in cases where an outright disregard of human life is involved in the scientific process, that scientific process should never be allowed, just like the case of the Japanese during the Second World War. Unnecessary threats to human life in a scientific process, such as in cases where there are alternatives other than the process proposed, should not be allowed either. Only in cases where there is no other alternative other than direct trials on humans that a certain level of threat to human life during that process can be tolerated. Even in those cases, carefully evaluated protocols regarding what can and what cannot be done has to be strictly enforced to minimise the health risks that the patients serving as test subjects has to bear.
Education comes not from books but from practical experience.
Mainstream education in most developed countries all over the world emphasises heavily on knowledge from books. The way assessments are structured and teachings are conducted nowadays requires books and textbooks to form a large proportion of a student's learning experience. For example, in universities in the United States, instructors often recommended students to acquire textbooks, either as optional reference texts or as an integral part of the course, and instructors often structure their course around the information presented in the text. Even in classes where textbooks are not required, reading passages and articles acquired from various books, magazines and journals often form an important part of the work that a student is required to do.
However, when we launch into a discussion about education, we cannot limit the definition of education only to what a student receives in classrooms. Education has a much broader meaning than that. For a person to be considered 'educated', other than knowledge from books, he ought also to learn how to live a life as a person, make morally sound decisions, be able to earn a living through acquiring skills that would be valuable, etc. Education is a multi-faceted entity, and certainly, classroom teaching in schools is only a part of it.
Thus, it would not be appropriate to say that education entails only the acquiring of knowledge from books. When we consider the other aspects of education, clearly books are not sufficient - it seems more likely that practical experience is also a major way for a person to be educated in those aspects. For example, in order for a person to know how to have a successful marriage, reading books on that topic is clearly not sufficient. He needs to talk to people who are experienced in that aspect, do some reflection on his own regarding his character and his behavioural patterns, speak to counsellors if necessary, and really live with his wife before he can be considered 'educated' in that aspect. If that person possesses extensive knowledge from books regarding how to have a successful marriage, but in real life he has had three divorces or he is not even married at all, generally he would not be considered to 'know' how to lead a happy married life.
However, it would be overly simplistic to claim that 'education comes not from books but from practical experience'. Although practical experience constitutes a major part of a person's education experience, knowledge from books cannot be discounted. As we have seen, knowledge from books is the main thing that educators in schools focus on, and in many instances, such knowledge provides the background for people to move on to acquire skills that will be important for them when they enter the job market. There is no way an electrical engineer can be trained if he does not know the basics of the physics of electricity; neither can a doctor in modern days be trained if he does not possess basic knowledge of biology and chemistry. Such knowledge can only come from books; although one might argue that what makes an engineer an engineer is still the practical experience he gathers while he is doing the job, the engineer cannot even start his practical training if he does not possess basic knowledge from the books.
To conclude, in order for a person to be considered 'educated', he has to acquire both knowledge from books and practical experience. Education does not only consist of one or the other. In some cases, a person needs to possess basic knowledge from books before he can undergo further training to become a professional. However, he cannot only rely on books for his education either; practical experience is extremely important to provide aspects of education that books can never offer. In the example of the married man, there is no way he will know how to lead a happy married life just from books; for the engineer, he can never be considered an actual engineer until he has done the job and knows exactly what is expected of him.
Remember that I have commented that the CHL is 'evil'?
My assessment doesn't change. Especially if you are a freshman with an interesting idea that 'thou ought to study because NS has corroded thy brain'.
In practice, the CHL might not be the thing to blame, but the idea itself can be rather detrimental.
But, if you are a junior with a dwindling bank account, any monetary input is considered awesome. Especially - I think I am only one sem away from a free holiday to Sabah and Mt. Kinabalu.
Haha. Tricks like senior option, S/U, dropping classes, etc. will all be used when necessary. They do no harm to people, they do no harm to me - it is just that, I will do all that is ethically allowed within the system to get my 4.0 next semester.
If you find this cute, that's normal. But if you think that this is something 'useful', you are most probably a vet or are destined to spend the rest of your life in a lab...
I have got better, but there is still this irritating cough that doesn't want to go away. It is not very bad, and I am still trying to rest and self-medicate. Hopefully it will go away soon.
Nothing much is getting across my mind these days... Though, if you want me to tell you about my research, and various other things that I am doing / have yet to do, I can probably talk for half an hour. However I am pretty sure you won't want to get me started on prostates of mice that have not even been born yet.
However for men out there this might be interesting information. My boss talking about nestin - and I am currently helping him to collect some related samples from Carnegie which are pretty interesting...
