The year that was 2020
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Minutiae of my every day since 2004.
Feierabend isn’t just a German word for ‘work-life balance’. While it’s related, ‘work-life balance’ is a term that can often end up just as nebulous in meaning as the problem it’s trying to correct. Instead, the German approach seems to acknowledge that there will always be tension between the work self and the private self. Rather than attempting to reconcile the two, the disconnection that comes with Feierabend establishes boundaries between them. It also usually creates a path between the two states, like dressing for the office and changing after work . . . .
When I did my medical oncology fellowship in Manila, I made a conscious decision to live as far away from the hospital as was allowable. I got curious glances from people when I said I spent an hour or more of commute from Mandaluyong to Philippine General Hospital. I could easily have rented a condo unit nearby if I had so wished; a lot of my colleagues did that. But I wanted the clear separation of work and rest to be established. I did not want to see the hospital from my window. My experience in med school showed me that proximity to the workplace was a bad idea. Because the hospital was just right across the street from my Taft condo, I did not feel like I had gone home at all.
In retrospect, those long commutes proved to be worth it. I finished reading Calvin's The Institutes, listened to Tim Keller's preachings, enjoyed New Yorker Fiction podcasts, and heard myself think. The view from the 20th floor did not consist of the hospital. Save for two or three incidences, I did not see anyone from work. My Mandaluyong neighborhood consisted of cafés devoid of medical students and doctors. The streets were cleaner. I could do long walks at night without fear of getting stabbed. I was anonymous. On Saturday mornings, when I did not have to report for work, I was like every one else, sipping coffee and reading with pleasure.
I understand that for doctors, it is a challenge to separate work and life completely. I could not do that. My phone rings on odd moments. I receive SMS updates about patients that I must respond to. But the ritual of the long commute gives me the illusion of distance: I am home, and the hospital is elsewhere.
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"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)
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I trust that beside the well which had been dug
By my elders, a storm lamp had been placed,
Lighting up the path toward home, the lamp-
Lighter minding the first law of neighborliness:
To help one another as best as one can in daily
acts of living, for if the lamp were put out, unlit,
Someone passing by might stumble or slide,
Fall into the neighborhood well and die.
When I pass by the well I will draw water and drink,
Give thanks to my unseen neighbor for the light.
Labels: books/reading, daily
Labels: books/reading, daily
Just received an email that the diplomate exam in medical oncology will be held in regional testing areas on January 2021. Suddenly I feel like an elementary pupil again, about to compete in a regional contest in Davao (when South Cotabato was still in Regional 12, and we had to defeat the smartest kids from Philippine Science High School - Southern Mindanao—but they mostly won!)
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Apan-apan in the Ilonggo dialect means grasshopper. Back in the days when the verdant fields of rice were still pesticide free, farmers would catch the deluge of grasshoppers infesting the rice crops with a large net.The grasshoppers are then cooked to be eaten as sumsuman( a drink accompaniment)when the farm folks gather to drink at dusk after a hard days work or, as a dish on the family dinner table. With some degree of hesitation I was able to taste this dish many years ago when somebody from Mindanao dropped us a bagful. It was crunchy alright but the discomfort of thinking that you are munching on a grasshopper somehow made the eating experience a bit stressful.No stresses from me!
In southern Mexico, grasshoppers, known as chapulines, are eaten in a variety of dishes, such as in tortillas with chilli sauce. Grasshoppers are served on skewers in some Chinese food markets, like the Donghuamen Night Market. Fried grasshoppers (walang goreng) are eaten in the Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, Java in Indonesia. In America, the Ohlone burned grassland to herd grasshoppers into pits where they could be collected as food.
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Access to biopsy services is a limiting factor to timely lung cancer diagnosis in many areas in the Philippines. On-site pathology evaluation allows for rapid diagnosis and helps ensure adequate specimen sampling. In our institution, its utilization and impact have not yet been evaluated.
By analyzing 112 pathology reports from 88 patients, King et al. had the following conclusions:
On-site pathologic evaluation was associated with an earlier lung cancer diagnosis, a reduced need for a repeat biopsy, and a higher proportion of patients eventually receiving treatment. Efforts should be undertaken to increase the utilization of this service in order to optimize the quality of care for these patients.
Labels: medicine
The author, who died on Saturday, “had a knack for language of every variety,” our critic Dwight Garner writes. “His books hum with the flavorful and recondite language of espionage.”
On a recent Saturday morning in February, two dozen or so scent hounds streamed through the streets of St. Buryan, a small village in Cornwall, England. Behind them drifted a loose formation of men and women perched atop well-groomed horses and wearing boots, breeches and hunting coats. As the fox hunt clopped through town, John le Carré, the pre-eminent spy writer of the 20th century, sipped from a paper cup of warm whiskey punch, doled out by a local pub to riders and spectators. At 81, he remains an enviable specimen of humanity: tall, patrician, cleanlimbed, ruddy-complected. His white hair is floppy and well cut, so much so that the actor Ralph Fiennes, who starred in the 2005 film version of le Carré’s novel “The Constant Gardener,” badgered him for the name of his barber.Here's an old paperback of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy owned by Auntie Badid, my mother's close friend and source of many books I read in childhood.
Labels: books/reading, daily
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As 2020 winds down and we look back at our pandemic year, it’s possible, through the murk of loneliness and illness, to see the few bright spots that existed for people who love books. We had the chance to peruse a lot of strangers’ bookshelves — nearly every time we turned on the television or began a video call.
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On the 4th of December 2007, we were in this very place, surrounded by epidemic, and without our kids, facing uncertainty and loss. 2020 is not the worst we have seen.
13 years ago Ebola Bundibugyo boiled up in this little pocket of the world. Dr. Jonah was in his first year post-internship, and had been examining and treating patients with Dr. Sessanga, PA Scott Will, and us, all of us lulled by the negative Ebola testing into the assumption this was a particularly bad typhoid epidemic. However, it was a new strain of hemorrhagic virus, requiring a new test, and by the time the CDC announced this discovery Nov. 29, Dr. Jonah was already shivering with fever and depleted with vomiting in Kampala where he had gone to pick his daughter Masika up from school. We put our children and team on small planes on the grass airstrip to evacuate them from the risk of being near us if we also succumbed, and tried to keep on responding to the epidemic as larger organisations arrived to help. Dr. Sessanga also fell ill with Ebola, and Scott went to his home to check on him. On Dec 4th we received the stunning, unbelievable phone call from Jonah's brother: he was dead. Within a day, the toll for Bundibugyo health workers climbed, and five from the hospital died. We buried four of them in a memorial plot at the hospital together, only a few of us attending, the whole district blanketed by fear and grief. Those days were so raw, running on adrenaline, wondering if we would all die.
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52 Things I Learned in 2020 by Tom Whitwell, one of the best things I read this week. Some notable items in the list (and a few comments).
1. Most cities plant only male trees because it’s expensive to clear up the fruit that falls from female trees. Male trees release pollen, and that’s one of the reasons your hay fever is getting worse.—In my city, trees are cut to make way for highways.
2. In China, 🙂 doesn’t mean happy, it means “a despising, mocking, and even obnoxious attitude”. Use these, instead: 😁😄😀.—Not the biggest fan of smileys. Some friends use smileys as punctuations. I think they're overcompensating, making sure the person getting the message doesn't get offended.
9. Money makes people happier than psychotherapy.
—Having three square meals a day and a roof over one's head takes off the stresses of daily life. But too much money might give more headaches than happiness.
11. Euro English is an evolving pidgin English used by EU administrators, for example: using ‘Handy’ to mean mobile phone (from German), ‘Non?’ to turn any sentence into a question and unusual plurals like ‘expertises”.—Reminds me of the Mindanao version of Tagalog. Lots of people in Gensan and Davao now speak a combination of Tagalog and Bisaya. Linguists should do a thesis on this.
14. The inventor of the pixel died in 2020 aged 91. He always regretted making pixels square, describing the decision as “something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.”—Round pixels, the cause of this world's suffering.
30. In Warsaw’s Gruba Kaśka water plant there are eight clams with sensors attached to their shells. If the clams close because they don’t like the taste of the water, the city’s supply is automatically shut off.—Best water I've tasted: tap water at Gruyère, "service water" at Garahe (karinderya near UP Manila and St. Paul University), and the "service water" at Mary Grace—with sliced lemon and ice. Water quality in Marbel is poor.
38. 報復性熬夜 is a Chinese term that roughly means ‘Revenge bedtime procrastination’ — when “people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours”.—Matulog ka na lang!
44. A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of death. Just being alive is about 24 micromorts per day, skydiving is 8 micromorts per jump.—Micromort sounds way better than disease free survival!
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Met with Ronald and Althea yesterday. Ronald is a kind and brilliant internist who's deployed here for the meantime. We last met during Katrina's idyllic wedding, where he and John Mark left me at the reception area, leaving me no choice but to join in the games to represent the "friends of the bride." Well, anything for Kat.
Thea is a nurse of the highest order; she is also a college professor, mother of two, and is working on her PhD. Her husband and I might be related. I hadn't seen her for 16 years. She messaged if I had free time for coffee. I had just woken up from a postprandial nap. A few minutes later, her car was in front of the gate. I was surprised that she remembered where I live. She said her kids went to daycare at St. Gabriel, in the next block. The kids would go around the neighborhood during mini-parades. I was surprised that there was a daycare center.
We remembered Ronald, who I'd been meaning to meet. We used to ride the same sundô—the Tamaraw FX—on our way to school. Ronald arrived a few hours later; he had to take care of some matters in the hospital.
It was such a joy to finally meet them. There's nothing quite like friends from way back to keep one grounded. I'm inspired and encouraged by their outlook and priorities. One thing we learned: spontaneous meet ups are more likely to push through. We might be cooking up the next meet up.
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The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject,” Tolkien insisted. “He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones.” Thus, Tolkien advised his young son, then 21, that the sexual fantasies of the 20th century were demonic lies, intended to ensnare human beings. Sex was a trap, Tolkien warned, because human beings are capable of almost infinite rationalization in terms of sexual motives. Romantic love is not sufficient as a justification for sex, Tolkien understood.Fascinated by handwritten letters, I looked up JRR Tolkien's handwriting. He must have used a stub nib in this letter, sold for auction at 8000 dollars. I read in a forum that the English professor used dip pen and ball points.
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The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders—and we should—but all of that is a means to an end, and that end is “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim. 2:2). The goal is not that the arena of the state would be ground-zero for meaning in our lives—much less for excitement and interest. When the civic order is going well, we should pay attention to it out of duty—not out of constant existential crisis. Those are not always the times we have, but those are the sorts of times for which we should pray. The point is not that we should hope for a boring decade so that we can be bored. The point is that we should pray for a boring decade so that we can be rekindled with interest and affection and passion for the things that ought to fuel such things—the kingdom of God, the gospel of grace, the love of family and friends and community, the glory of the ordinary, which is where, after all, the best of real life happens. We have all seen that this year. It’s hard to find the joy we need to find in being the church, in being families, when we have to constantly wonder whether a vaccine will be ready in time, whether the next telephone call is that an elderly relative is now in the hospital.
Moore to the Point is one of my favorite newsletters, like blog posts delivered to my email each week.
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In all the years I’ve been writing I have never had to type words more difficult, more devastating than these: Yesterday the Lord called my son to himself—my dear son, my sweet son, my kind son, my godly son, my only son.The responses on Twitter are sources of encouragement.
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Wardens have limited access to the mainland during the winter months, aren’t guaranteed fresh running water, and often live under the threat of harsh storms and perilous currents that can leave them marooned for weeks at a time. Food is delivered once a month by boat. It’s not a role that many are suited for. And yet a growing number of people are dreaming of this simple way of life, seeking to trade the madness of our busy cities for a self-sufficient life among nature.This excellent article (with beautiful photographs by Alex Ingram) reminds me of Larissa MacFurquhar's piece on the British Falklands:
It is a place to retreat to in a time of plague. Outside the town are miles and miles of empty land, and few roads. Nothing anywhere but whitegrass, dark, scrubby bushes growing close to the ground, and rocks. Only low mountains and no trees, so there’s little to block the incessant wind that blows in from the sea. It’s very quiet, at least when the wind dies down, and some people find the silence and the emptiness hard to take. Before the war, in 1982, some of the bigger farms employed dozens of men, and there were settlements with forty or fifty people living in them, but most of those people are gone now, either moved or emigrated. These days, there is one person for every twelve square miles. Some of the old houses are vacant and derelict; others were hauled out of the settlements, leaving not so much as a gravel track behind, because the people who lived there rode horses.
At the edges of the two big islands, East Falkland and West Falkland, are more than seven hundred smaller islands, some empty, others inhabited by only one or two families: a couple of houses, some generators, a landing strip. There is plumbing and Internet. With a big enough freezer, you could stay here without contact for months.
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