Of all the words a proud, jovial daddy might use to describe her daughter after a holiday trip, perhaps only I would choose quiet .

It's no secret that as a toddler continues to grow, so too will the list of parents' surprise items. The very last thing that a toddler needs is our suggestion to make up a thousand ways of playing. The toddler learns the trick by herself.

Hear that thumping sound? That's my daughter's game of flying pillow (when we stayed in

I never delight much in the Chinese New Year.

The feeling of emptiness occurs when you know that even the daily newspaper will come to a break. Newspaper stops, shops are closed, and a lot of hospital services come to a halt. Everything stands still, the way a city stays behind after all the clocks vanish and the minutes quit their orderly tick. Pause.

I can also remember all those legendary words of greeting one has to say in front of the elderly. It isn't that I hate to

One of my colleagues got a bout of serious gastroenteritis last week.

When we went through the patients together during the morning round, he could hardly walk. His stomach hurled heavenward, bile and acid scratching his throat as he told me the discharge plan for our patients one by one. He talked as if his tongue turned into flypaper; he walked as if he trousers would fall. My poor friend stopped after each patient (which he seldom has to) before he could go on, insides cramping.

But, and

Telephone manner cannot be found within the undergraduate medical curriculum, but it's something that doctors have to learn throughout the years of medical training.

Doctors are regularly called upon to answer pager. Some are summoned to resuscitate patients whose hearts stop beating, while others are called because their patients have difficulty with counting sheep. Several of them are paged in the middle of a concert. The question could sometimes be about the doctor's indecipherable handwriting, or else, an unnecessary intrusion into the doctor's sleep. More

I began to get a pretty good sense of kids' stories. Mary Poppins is a case in point. That's one of Jasmine's most favorite stories recently.