When we fall in love with arguing with people, it is a good feeling that will lead to a darn bad effect. Dale Carnegie claimed that we can't win an argument. We can't because if we lose it, we lose it; and if we win it, we lose it. Why? As often happens, the moment we triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes in an apparently landslide victory, we feel good. But that particular person gets hurt and resents our

I would be lying if I told you that I never pay attention to the whims and words of others. It is not that the external opinion is the gold standard of judging ourselves. We are simply human beings who tend to fall prey to the others' view. When the story of our hospital or unit appears in the press, I simply can't ignore it and then answer like Socrates who was once asked if he would worry about being called names, "Why? Do you think I should resent it

My boss showed me his recent discussion with one of the chair professors concerning our patient last weekend. It was not very long – or, I should say, deceptively simple.

"Thank you for asking me to see Mr. X. We did review him on daily basis. As a matter of fact, the blood test requested today was not yet received and hence the parameters are all as yesterday."

"Thanks for your information. I am sure he is in good hands but the patient is very concerned.

At the end of a year - at least according to the Chinese lunar calendar - we are supposed to toss away the used items. Time to clean up.

Before the advent of such smart gadgets as personal digital assistant, I used to copy my friends' address and phone number in my diary anew each year. I had never learned to love this painstaking ritual of renewing my friends yearly.

As for me, friends are never meant to be used items for cleaning up.

Why is there such a need to delete

When a friend of mine recently heard the radio news story about the failure to rescue a dying heart attack patient on the doorstep of a public hospital, he almost drove off the road.

Over the last two days, much has been written about the moral of this tragedy in the newspaper editorials and by the bloggers. I believe, however, that this is one of those evergreen bits of wisdom that we can never quite get enough of it.

Still, I dare not tell my friend another story because he would be

After reading a story of Hewlett-Packard recently, I learn that we may lose our trust without even noticing it. Trust is the easiest to lose and the hardest to survive without.

The story goes that its cofounder William Bill Hewlett stopped off one weekend at a company storeroom to pick up a tool, only to find that there was a lock on the tool bin. This was, as a matter of fact, contrary to the explicit practice the Hewlett-Packard company had established from the very beginning to keep all

It took forever for medical doctors to reckon that we should avoid doctoring our loved ones or family members. It has taken even longer for me to learn to toe the line by not acting as the doctor of myself. I suppose that most of doctors want the privacy when they get sick. By treating my own illness, I am further tempted to expedite the care by pulling strings within the health care system.

Which means that, over the years, I have been confusing my professional and personal roles, for example,

I found out recently that, among all those characters in the Mr. Men series by Roger Hargreaves, my wife loves Mr. Bump the most, ever since her childhood.

It didn't take me long to realize the reason.

For those of you who haven't read the children's literature of Mr. Men, Mr. Bump fell out of his bedroom window and bumped his head, leaving him wrapped up in bandage and loss of his memory. He keeps his looks after the injury and just

During a sharing session with the medical interns this afternoon, our consultant taught us to be generous in offering a helping hand in hard times.

It brings to mind the fascinating story of vampire bats who, like our medical interns with their pockets full of syringes, feed on blood. Besides, the fact that both vampire bats and medical interns seldom have sleep at night suggests that these two species share more than simply a common ancestor. They look enough alike that I could see they are related.

Time and again, vampire

My mentor speaks of medicine's interest in the similarity and difference between individual patients. With huge variation from person to person, it is never possible to consider medicine in the same scientific way as Newtonian physics. To paraphrase the old saying, medicine is knowledge, judgment, experience, and luck.

It is ironic that as we are getting a better picture of how epidemiology studies get closer to predicting illness (or recovery from an illness), we are learning at the same time to realize how irrelevant the scientific statistics