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Showing posts from June, 2024

By the shore

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Like most people I know who, like me, live an hour away from the sea, I think of vacations as days by the beach. 

Where to?

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When I'm in a foreign place I use Google Maps all the time, but intersections give me headaches. To be honest I'm not sure if my navigation skills will take me anywhere if you handed me an actual map. The app tells me, say, to right in one corner, but I won't be certain if I'm in the right place until I see the blue pin moving in the screen, approaching the correct vector. You will see me walk straight for 10 meters, scratch my head, go in another direction, and continue on if the arrow tells me I'm doing it right. I did that on my way to Gwangjun market. The old Korean man wondered what I was doing.  [Google Maps works best with mobile data, which I activate through esims. Holafly or Airalo (thanks for recommending, Sir Will !) offer the best deals and can go cheaper than roaming.]

A full day in Seoul

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    While watching—or pretending to watch—the changing of the palace guards in front of the Gwanghwamun Gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, I overheard two sixty-something Ilongga women in thick, colorful hanbok say to each other, "Daw malipong na ko. Puli na ta." Like me, they hid under the shade of the police lookout station. "Taga-diin kamo, Ma'am?" I asked. "Sa Roxas kami," the older lady said. I then met Abby at Homie Café. The small store displayed a portable typewriter and served great coffee. The writer Jessica Zafra wrote about how easy it is to score a good cup of coffee in Seoul than in anywhere else she had been to, including Italy. Now I see her point. Abby, who graduates from internal medicine training this year, is our chief resident from St. Elizabeth Hospital. She had just presented our case report in a huge oncology meeting in South Korea today. When I met her yesterday, she was apologetic. She got los...

Two friends

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Mural along Judge Alba Street.

A dad's sperm affects his son's metabolism, Nature study says

I'm always on the lookout for illustrations that might find some use in the classroom. Here's one, for example, about how diet affects epigenetic expression.  A dad’s sperm records his diet — and this record affects his sons’ metabolism, according to a study of mice and humans. Giving male mice a high-fat diet raises levels of some types of RNA in their sperm, the study found. The research also showed that the male offspring of male mice on this unhealthy diet had metabolic problems such as glucose intolerance, a characteristic of diabetes . The sons of human dads with a high body mass index (BMI) exhibited similar problems, according to epidemiological analysis. The study was published in Nature on 6 June.