Remember the long queue in front of the telephone booth at the university dormitory? Not many - even though, as the common scene before the mobile phones have revolutionised the way we talk to our girlfriends and boyfriends.

If it's not because of the recent movie You're the Apple of My Eye , the picture could have faded in the society's collective memory. This movie has made itself a household name after its debut. There's no medium like the movies to give us the flashback pleasure of

Like many doctors, I dread the moment I give my own child the vaccine jab. It's not hard to see why: we are supposed to safeguard our kids but there won't be pain-free needles.

The task of giving Jasmine a quick stab wasn't that difficult. When my daughter learned about the seasonal flu jab, she didn't run away. My wife held Jasmine and I picked the right spot - and voilà - a peaceful indentation of her thigh. After that my

I was looking at the school photos with my daughter in front of our laptop computer. When Jasmine was so excited, she pushed the computer screen and hit the vase next to it. "WATCH OUT!" I screamed before calming my nerves to catch the vase.

When Jasmine found her father turning into shrieking grand mal, she stopped. Before she could find her words, she put her hand above the eyebrow, whispering the word sooooorry .

Immediately I realised I'd made a mountain out of a molehill.

Don't you find that you learn more about yourself when you learn to weather the changes with your baby? That happened with my recent reading of What to Expect: the Toddler Years .

Heidi Murkoff tells the story of a toddler who gets upset whenever the cracker has a piece broken off. Even a crack in the cracker can set off tirades. By listening to the quizzical compulsiveness about an intact cracker or biscuit, I thought I'm lucky to have my easygoing daughter. But wait a minute: isn'

How, my wife asked me, should we celebrate my birthday with Jasmine?

Spending two days at the small Pak Lap village, nestling at the bottom of a valley with a hillside behind it, seems to be the idea of an eccentric - and quite possibly crazy - person. Well, that idea is mine.

Lodging in a less-than-trendy hut equipped with colder-than-what-you-want-for-shower water, it's easy to make you feel like travelling through time.

One of my students asked me a question about an infection that classically strikes a limited area on one side of the body. "I thought that zoster (also called shingles) usually is confined to a single dermatome or overlapping dermatomes. What would be the significance if a supposedly immunocompetent (healthy) person has an outbreak over multiple dermatomes that cross midline and are not overlapping?"

"Find out if he or she is immunocompetent or not," I replied. "Screen for diabetes, HIV, et cetera. Simultaneous

I brought my parents handmade fist-sized snowy mooncakes this Mid-Autumn Festival.

For those of you, my mum included, who have no inkling of how to make mooncakes, you must swallow hard and believe that I learn the ropes of making mooncakes.

But - and I'm sure you expected a "but" - the true story is that we can't judge how difficult it is to create a product simply from how intricate it looks. Think about the diapers my daughter wears. It's

The idea that human decision and performance can be improved by feedback is never new, but has probably been forgotten.

The word feedback has hardly found a place in the field of corporate finance. When someone decides to buy a stock - or even an entire company - it may not be obvious for years that the move turned out to be a mistake. By then, those responsible for the mistake have often moved on to other places.

"True," you say. "But unless I move from being a doctor

How much distortion can we make in retelling a narrative? By a long way.

On most days, we tell stories from memories and in our own style. In other words, we create stories. To remember something verbatim is a difficult task, made more so when exaggeration and minimization aren't considered lies.

My recent conversation with representative from drug company provides a nifty example. A pharmaceutical sales representative came to solicit my opinion about the recent treatment guideline for prescribing an expensive anaemia drug. To help you set the

I went home by minibus after giving a talk to the interns last evening. I opened my book shortly after taking the seat, but I confess I was paying more attention to the people around than my book. And conversation of the passengers, in many ways, is about their stories in the hospital.

A couple sitting behind me started their conversation about a young doctor. That young doctor found profoundly offensive the idea that she was being addressed as a nurse - as most people did, I must say. "You