Bulbit. Bulbit. The sound was coming from the forest on Victoria Peak.

It's a cheerful song from red-whiskered bulbul.

I was up there with my wife after skiving off work today. A peaceful and leisure walk on a Wednesday afternoon.

We've been there dozens of times before. The oh-so-picturesque footpath and the songbirds were all too familiar. The main difference from our usual hikes was that we were not bringing our daughter this time.

Want to hear the reason Jasmine wasn

Screen time statistics on our iPhone is not for monitoring kids. It's more for us. That's the reality of it. Let's not pretend otherwise. Many of us are too attached to our phones.

Being awake means that I am struggling to deal with the message notification alerts or sounds. For those coming from pharmacist or nurses, I really have to respond right away because the sounds come from my hospital phone. For those alerts from other sources like WhatsApp or corporate mobile application, I try

Tonight, I left in the middle of my senior's retirement dinner. That, it hardly needs saying, is not what I usually do. I did so because of my daughter's loss of her pet.

Our hamster died this evening.

Our family had talked about the short life span of hamster. One day she would have to leave us. We knew it. But even the fate is somewhat expected, it turned out that mourning was more difficult than I'd have expected. When my daughter

I am sure there are days when you come home late, when everyone is asleep. There is no easy way around this, aside from thinking of another occasion to reconnect. Rightly so: it isn’t easy.

Whew. Looking back, I find it hard to believe I had the first week of this month without a single chance to have dinner with family.

You read that right. I wasn’t able to go home for dinner for one whole week.

I felt my guilt. The hectic week

No matter how much I grow to love running, there are times when it's hard to keep running. The reason I skipped running for one whole month was that I'd been recovering from a knee injury.

As most runners know, such a break is, in effect, wrestling with addicts' withdrawal from coming off drugs or alcohol. Shakiness. Emptiness. Crankiness.

After doggedly following the ups and downs of a professional examination for the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians this week, I felt like

Finding the right way to communicate is not easy. If it were, we'd all live in a better world every minute of every day.

Many people don't know how communication works. Others will find the experience uncomfortable. A few will just roll their eyes. When you, like most of us, are boneheads in communication, settle for an easy-to-follow guidebook. I happened to come across The Communication Book written by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäpper. It's a fast

Injury during ski does happen, and I had mine in Hokkaido.

After buying an all-mountain pass, an electronic tag gave me access to all chairlifts and gondolas. I knew my standard pretty well and confined myself to beginners' terrain. That's what green circle ski slope rating symbol stands for. A green trail is de rigueur for those in search of adventure but not too thrilling one. Strange though it might seem, I still sprained the medial collateral ligament in my left knee on a green slope.

On the second day of our ski trip in Hokkaido, we were hit by a massive snow storm bringing gusts of wind up and plunging temperatures down. All the way below minus twenty degrees.

I was skiing on beginner terrain with my daughter. We passed each other. Our eyes met for a half second. Maybe less. Then we accelerated, turned right and left, concentrating on finding the way downslope. We seemed lost, dazed, as if we relied more on memory than vision to locate the path. Alas

We hear story after story of the extraordinary dreams which came true and flourished. Not too many stories get passed along, though. Not that great stories can't pass down from generation to generation, most of them can, but they never stick inside our heads as we get old.

Think Mary Poppins , a classic and evergreen story. We all remember the two cheerful children, Michael and his sister Jane. Who won't? Their names bring to mind supercalifragilisticexpialidocious flying adventure with a magical nanny and a chimney