10/24/12

老太太走了，走過兩個星期的安寧治療，悄悄地，走了。 今早查房，已經出了類似air hunger的徵狀，提高輸氧和止痛藥，才漸漸安定下來。 兩個星期來，安寧治療也許也是對家人的一種撫慰。 常常質疑自己的能力，也許，如果我真的不適合治生，治死也何嘗不是一條路。 2012.10.24 Stephen

10/23/12

昨天主治給我許多建議，也讓我重新思考了許多面向。 也許我能輕易克服身體上的疲勞，可確沒能輕易地克服心態上的倦怠。 得繼續堅持下去啊。 醫療是一門分分秒秒都要縝密思考的工作，我卻終於意識到自己的思考漸漸地疲乏。 得好好加把勁了... 10.23.12 Stephen

好走

就在他拒絕腹部電腦斷層的那晚，病情急轉直下。經過將近一個月的治療，於昨天告一段落。 我似乎從沒能說服他，從沒能讓他打心底接受我的建議。

A tatoo

在老人科見習已經一星期，昨日在門診看了一位年逾九旬的猶太老太太。他穿著櫻花般粉紅底和白色 polka dots 的上衣，和入時地鐵灰色七分褲和褐色亮面尖頭鞋。 如此盛裝，原來看完診後，女兒要帶他提早慶祝生日。我不經意看見他左前臂內側，有著青色數碼樣的刺青，心底多少起了疑。

雖然他已有些健忘， 還是指著自己的刺青，向著護士問：你知道這是什麼嗎？護士忙著為他量血壓，點點頭。沒想到他也回頭來問我，我不願假設性的承認，卻也不願細問她刺青的歷史，深怕撩起那不堪的回憶。我搖搖頭，支支吾吾地說: Is it...？我望向他女兒，他向我點點頭: It is from German ...

之後，老太太也問了來自印度的實習醫師，終免不了在眼眶盈滿淚水。他13歲進了集中營，喪母，那之後，究竟還有多少縱使阿茲海默都不可磨滅的回憶？



後記: 老太太看著來自印度的實習醫師，問他: Are you from Taiwan. 囧

高雄

前兩星期的綿綿不停的大雨，才讓我在心底想，這雨下得有台灣的味道。沒想到，上星期竟然地震了。坐在書桌前，還一時會意不過來，畢竟在美東沒有聽說過地震這檔事。看著窗外的車也搖得忽前忽後，才想說這地震錯不了了。

地震過後，想不到颶風也難得的掃到紐約來。颶風夜想說念書念晚點去買些菜好過週末， 到了超市真是傻眼， 諾大間超市竟然快被搬光了， 排隊付錢像排隊買演唱會門票。 有沒有這麼誇張， 不就是＂颱風＂唄. 本想說買串香蕉和條麵包之類地， 沒想到我也被那種世界末日的氣氛上身， 雜七雜八買了一大堆。

雖說紐約市並沒有太大的損失，我的生活倒是被這 Irene 颶風吹得一團糟。　Step2 被取消，緊接著有要趕緊申請內科住院醫師，改期的日期也和之後的實習有衝突到，也只能硬著頭皮，關關過吧！

從朋友那看到這介紹高雄的短片，心裡想著，高雄變真多。可究竟是高雄變了，還是我看他的角度、心態，都不同了？

Stephen

八年

八月十九，詫然驚覺，出國滿八年了。八年前，好像被阿明和偉寧在ＪＦＫ撿到一樣。漸漸著，摸索出自己的一條路，而在這趟旅途中，我的任性總不斷被包容著。

究竟是怎樣的心情，八年來，執著於眼前和腳下，漸漸地和過去有共同回憶的朋友們疏遠了。一轉眼，朋友們結婚，生子，而我依然如片浮萍般，飄無定所。

究竟是怎樣的心情，八年來，朋友們漸漸定下來了，自己卻聽起張學友那首紐約的司機駕著北京的夢。


Stephen

Flash mob

從朋友那，看到這個很特別的flash mob，最喜歡片中一位父親就地而坐，而他的女兒，也高興地貼著父親坐下來欣賞這突如其來的音樂。

也喜歡片尾愛樂樂團的退場，諾大的車站大廳，頓時又回歸平凡；生活中的許多事，是不也像一齣flash mob? 過去了，船過水無痕。

那些年

好聽的電影主題曲 by 胡夏

那些年, 我們一起追的女孩

高中，真是一段快樂的時光！

http://www.appleofmyeye.com.tw/

前導:


Trailer Part 1:



Trailer Part 2:

Vanilla Twilight

Vanilla Twilight
Written by Young, Adam
Vocal Owl city

The stars lean down to kiss you
And I lie awake and miss you
Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere

'Cause I'll doze off safe and soundly
But I'll miss your arms around me
I'd send a postcard to you, dear
'Cause I wish you were here

I'll watch the night turn light-blue
But it's not the same without you
Because it takes two to whisper quietly

The silence isn't so bad
'Til I look at my hands and feel sad
'Cause the spaces between my fingers
Are right where yours fit perfectly

I'll find repose in new ways
Though I haven't slept in two days
'Cause cold nostalgia
Chills me to the bone

But drenched in vanilla twilight
I'll sit on the front porch all night
Waist-deep in thought because
When I think of you I don't feel so alone

I don't feel so alone, I don't feel so alone

As many times as I blink
I'll think of you tonight
I'll think of you tonight

When violet eyes get brighter
And heavy wings grow lighter
I'll taste the sky and feel alive again

And I'll forget the world that I knew
But I swear I won't forget you
Oh, if my voice could reach
Back through the past
I'd whisper in your ear
Oh darling, I wish you were here

一頁台北 Au Revoir Taipei

I accidentally found this movie on-line, and I really can't help but finishing it in one shot despite the upcoming shelf exam for internal medicine next week.

It is such a cute story, and it makes me miss the scenery of Taipei so much.
It is also hard to believe that those years living in Taipei have been so many years behind. Looking back, very much likely the city of Taipei has become a turning point of my journey.

I still feel regretful occasionally that I haven't been able to keep in touch with many friends in Taiwan, especially coming across those nostalgia-elicited ... scenes.

The fault is mine.

Footnote: Have to say my favorite character in this movie is 高高. XD

Psyché ranimée par le baiser de I'Amour

Antonio CANOVA - Possagno, 1757 - Venise, 1822

@ Musée du Louvre

"Psyche becomes the bride of Cupid, but knows neither his face nor his identity. To discover who he is, she spies on him as he sleeps. "Love cannot live without trust," he admonishes her before fleeing. Abandoned, and forced by Venus to perform a series of superhuman tasks, Psyche falls into a deadly sleep from which only Cupid's kiss can awaken her..."

Paris Rendezvous

It was a short meeting with my family in Paris. Living on different continents for so long, a short moment together is what even Paris's beauty cannot match.

With love from Paris,

Your son, and brother

That Girl by David Choi

Memories

I finally got to watch Departures (送行者) after second year medical school came to an end. It made me rethink many questions again. Questions such as how can I live up to be a doctor that I portray myself to be? Will I lose my passion or be distracted by whatever will occur in the future? How can I rejuvenate my passion whenever it starts to wither?

Maybe, the respect of death will be part of my answers.

Memories by Joe Hisaishi (from the OST of Departures)

Sixth Station

I was trying to find a song from the movie, Departures, from youtube. Surprisingly, I also found this piece by Joe Hisaishi (久石讓). This song has been my favorite from Miyazaki's animation. The melody and the scene, one-way train to the unknown land on far water, make me feel...myself.

Sixth Station by Joe Hisaishi (from the OST of Spirited Away)

A little birdie told me...

by Sally

Sally and I made it to the tidal basin early in the morning. I found this little birdie nesting in the cherry tree trunk and scouting the passersby. Quite a cute scene!

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale

I had this exclamation running up my spin when I walked in this rare book library. I wasn't able to have a tour inside the first time I visited Yale. On my second visit, the chance to see the inside of this library alone worths the trip.

The library is a windowless rectangular shape building. Built with danby marble, the building gives out a cold feeling outside and, yet, warm and rich color inside. The glass box in the middle that contains all the rare books and manuscripts provides a exhibition taste. It's the coolest library I have seen, design-wise.

Gordon Bunshaft is the architecture of the Beinecke Library. It is interesting to realize that his original idea is to build the library with onyx, which provides better translucency and protection for delicate books from the sun. " I happen to love books, especially bindings, and I thought it ought to be a treasure house..." he said. The idea had to be given away due to cost and some issues beyond control.

It's one library that does give out a treasure box feeling.

The fringe benefits of failure by JK Rowling

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Valentine

Happy Valentine Day!