My elder brother came to visit us recently, after working in the United States for more than ten years.

One afternoon I took his family to a food kiosk selling the local street snack "eggettes." That's real Hong Kong style mini-pancake made from special frying pan and served hot. I didn't realize that it is my brother's son, but not his father, who loves these eggettes the most.

Thinking about the changing taste with age, I am often reminded of my experience

My father asked me to go with him paying respect to our grandpa this Ching Ming Festival. His eyes were hopeful, his face eager. His son was ambivalent.

I'm sentimental about many things concerning my grandpa: the memory of going out with him when I was young, the time when I went to his home every day to have wound dressing for his foot ulcer, the night I accompanied him to have foot amputation at the operation theatre, the scene of buying him beer (alas, by the doctor

I bragged about my carefree way of living in my last blog. This is a guilty pleasure, I admit.

Confession time. For years, I have not the foggiest idea of what my shirt size or shoe size is. I wrote my birthday wrongly throughout my teens. After all these years, I have been mixing up the hot water tap and cold water tap until I ended up burning my hands with boiling water - each time.

Not that I love Mr. Perfect less, but that I like Mr.

It takes years before we became aware of what we did have, instead of obsessing about what we didn't. Better still, we'd have better life by not caring at all.

Our team was introduced a cutting-edge machine that is supposed to measure our body composition yesterday.

It goes like this: A current passes through your body and, within a matter of two minutes, the device will tell you much more information than the number of inches around the waist. Enter the details like your age

Who would have thought that the Oscar goes to the Indian film Slumdog Millionaire this year? And yet Slumdog shines.

As most audience realized, the film is based on a novel written by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. I'm not making a judgment about the writing of a diplomat – far from it – but rather noting the undiplomatic manner Jamal Malik answered the interrogation. Picture Jamal at the police station answering the accusation of cheating in order to win two million rupees - by a former street child with little education.

After

Yesterday morning, my students asked me reasons for the way certain diseases behave. "This is the way it is," I answered. "All that is ever asked of you is that you have to remember it."

This is my mantra – one I seldom follow.

Despite my teaching others to memorize this and that, I have to admit that my own memory is in decline. There is no question that creativity declines throughout all those years in the medical school. Hey, decline in creativity after rote learning

In many ways a doctor keeps stories behind their back – stories he's a part of, stories that happen to patients he take care of, stories that he has to live with after sleepless nights, stories nagging at him in the dark places of his mind. So I was not surprised to learn that Jerome Groopman, one of my favourite medical doctor writers for The New Yorker , has been haunted by his own tale.

Having finished his book How Doctors Think , I've learned his story of looking after

Almost everyone follows his or her own routine meticulously, so there's a good chance that you do too. And why not? Admit it. We have our own rituals of daydreaming, doing grocery, writing blogs, and even visiting the john.

Trust me, I am no expert on following the routine doggedly. But I've been keeping a habit weekly; I read the New England Journal of Medicine every Thursday for years. In particular, I never miss the case records of Massachusetts General Hospital or Clinical

As mentioned, I took a recent trip to New Zealand’s national park. On the coastal trail in the park, I carried with me the sleeping bag and stayed in the basic hut.

I said that the hut is basic, and it is. In a nutshell, bunk bed and mattress. We didn't have to share shower facility or electricity because there is simply none. Not much to share with each other really, except the sound of someone snoring.

You're probably thinking that I was

I had just returned from the Abel Tasman National Park Coast Track at New Zealand. Situated on South Island's northern shores, it was a long walk over 36 km, with primitive huts for stay overnight.

There is a wealth of awesome tramping tracks in New Zealand but this one is indeed classic. Throughout the track along the coastline, there are quite a number of tidal crossings which can only be passed within a few hours either side of low tide. That means we have to consult a tide timetable when