I happened to open an old e-mail when I tried to find the address of an acquaintance of mine. I read on.

It's a story of my laptop computer being stolen during my overseas training in Montreal. This is a hard story to swallow, and I skipped meals for two days, as what people do after having a heart attack. Two days isn't a long time, but it was long enough to see me rewrite a manuscript (over four thousand words without a backup copy)

How many people would be surprised to hear that Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy after struggling to adapt to an increasing digital world? I'd bet it isn't a lot. Since the digital photography technology has improved in leaps and bounds, I never dream about buying the traditional films (who does?).

It's obvious now that we are getting used to digital camera. And for good reason. We are accustomed to the beauty of digital photography. Take film speeds; once fixed for each roll of

Everyone wore business attire (suit with neck tie for male colleagues, tailored trousers or skirt for females) when the team took photo with our hospital chief executive this Friday - it's just that a handful of us were wearing shirt and white coat. I meekly hid in the back when I found that my white coat didn't blend in with all those dark business suits.

It's not the first time that I feel that the dressing code means an entry ticket to a certain position. I still remember

There are few experiences as common as that minor ailment known as common cold, where you sit on a train with people staring at you like an extraterrestrial creature, abashed with water running down your nose. And at the same time, you're running out of tissue paper.

Common cold is going to happen to everyone of us. You may feel a little as if having a cold is the sine qua non of having a winter. But, you might ask, why the heck do we sneeze when we catch

Close your eyes. Picture a bumble bee foraging inside a room.

That happened with my daughter visiting the indoor play centre within a stone's throw from my home. We had bought the ticket for that place with an iconic logo of bumble bee some months ago, and yet didn't bring her there until the admission ticket was going to expire. I suspect that my procrastination may have been a hunch that my daughter won't be too excited to be an indoor bee.

After the indoor game, my

A little one near the end of her toddler months is about learning to pick up new skills in her rapidly expanding world. Now, if you ask me, what's about growing up with a little child is that we learn to enjoy the world of freedom, making way for more relaxed interaction. But you can't do that if you're not looking through the kaleidoscope of children.

Take a minute - and maybe a deep breath too - and imagine a kid stomping on sand castle, wearing nappy

It's hard to believe the magic of deadline.

Deadly as the name may sound, it is quite impossible to live without deadlines. To me, this is an absurd state of affairs. How could I have finished so many things like reviewing two journal manuscripts and writing reference letter for my intern before I took my week off? How could there have been so many applications just before the grant submission closes? Did I have to mention the deadline for tax return?

There is now little doubt that, in evolutionay

My patient leaned over and stared, her eyes wide open but not at me. She was paying attention to her laboratory test results on the clinic computer screen.

Natural though it seems, the patients' laboratory results in public sector hospital aren't supposed to be released to them. You'd better bring a notebook and a pen if you want a copy of the results. For that matter, the laboratory results sound like PowerPoint slides of a lecturer, who felt that keeping the lecture materials from the students is

What could be more dogtired than to sit through eight hours of lecture straight? What I have done, under the circumstances, is to either sleep or read other materials.

When I decided to attend an eight-hour parent educational class last weekend, I knew I have to bring with me quite a number of medical journals, just in case. And when I sat down in the classroom, I knew I should not have carried those journals.

The class isn't a ho-hum parroting of theories; it

Think of telephone keypad, and for both push-button and touch screen cell phone users, what come to mind is the standardized grid layout.

Imagine a scene when the telephone factory is running out of certain numerical keys, leaving the manufacturers no choice but putting whatever numerical keys available to fill up the keypad. With such undecipherable keypads, someone could still make use of memory (not many of us) to dial the right number. And I will not say I hate and smash such messy telephones but I will not