“What comes after twenty-nine?”

That’s a question raised by Kya, a thirteen-year-old girl who knew more about tides, snow geese and eagles than counting to thirty.

I was reading Where the Crawdads Sing on my Portugal trip, during which we had birdwatching activity at the Tagus estuary, a wetland area similar to where Kya grew up. She learned layers of life - squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl - but not a single word because she didn’t

The unpredictable and arbitrary rages of a novel coronavirus make any society, no matter how peaceful, into a potential minefield. Ours has been in bedlam even before the landing of this virus. This sounds like an extra blow of tornado during a heavy snowstorm.

The city shook.

I started my family trip two days after the news of two patients diagnosed with the China coronavirus in Hong Kong. It felt frustrating and spoke to some truth I couldn’t express: survivor’s guilt. It reminded me the most recent

Everyone has to talk to strangers and deal with uncertainty, and I am no different. Even if you don't frequent pubs or parties, you might have been invited to play a game Werewolf recently.

That's a popular social deduction game in which you're being assigned different identities. Everyone else becomes a stranger. Then, little by little, night by night, you will have to figure out who is who. It's when, and only when, the villagers find out the werewolves without

Many friends of mine blew out the candles on their fiftieth birthday cakes this year. It'll be my turn soon.

Now that I've lived for nearly half a century, one of my birthday wishes would be having one less candle on the cake each year. I am not the only one who dreams about longevity, of course. There are lots of us aiming to stop the ticking clock.

For heaven’s sake, how?

One grows old, but never grows tired of looking up elixir or

The other day, my wife and I were discussing if it's good to get days off work during our daughter's term break. Without guilt, I mean.

For a moment, we hesitated. All around were many hardworking colleagues, patients to be seen, plus tasks to be ticked off. We felt as if we'd been caught trying to loaf about.

All right. I should say we won't starve if we put out feet up for a couple of days. And taking a

With the End in Mind is one of the loveliest books I read near the end of the year.

For unknown reason the pattern of my reading follows an interesting flow: most of my recent ones are about the end of life, coinciding with the last few pages of the year calendar.

I just finished a heart-wrenching memoir of a young mother who died of colon cancer spreading everywhere in abdomen: The Unwinding of the Miracle .

It may seem odd that I set out to read those deathbed stories: a young

Our children are living in the culture of playing digital games, which is so foreign to my generation. My daughter is a better video game player than me. Chances are your kids beat you in the sandbox game of "Minecraft" too.

Oh, how I would look like a nerd fumbling with the controller when my daughter watches my game going awry. If only I could negotiate a truce. But playing video games with children is a necessary part of parenting, too, so that's what I do now

There are two unspoken rules in my office. Both are weird, I know.

The first rule is I never have an al desko lunch.

W-w-w-w-what? You heard me. Actually, scarfing down quick lunch at our desk saves time, I have to admit. But, alas, eating is a social ritual. If time is running short, I'd rather skip lunch. If time is running just a bit tight, I prefer a run to the canteen and meet

My daughter is starting middle school next year. Chances are, middle school is all about change - new school, new teachers, new friends.

Come to think of it, change isn't happening overnight. Day by day, instead.

But we know. We know the change, say, when my daughter's favorite songs are no longer "Let it Go." Before I can remember the songs of Taylor Swift, her hit songs are now those of Billie Eilish.

Another obvious change I can notice