[Image: Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto] 

I love my kids’ simple, frank and insightful words. They remind me to speak the truth openly. I can divulge a few here.

Jude has been taught the basics of stranger danger, but he’s still a trusting 3 year old: 

“Hello Mr. Neighbour Ollie!” [To our neighbour at Brookline]

“You funny, Scary Man!” [To the cable guy]

“Julia Babysitter!” [as introduced]

“Why you say that Daddy? I miss Christian!!!” [Jude bursted in tears when I said that Christian would choke and be asleep if he’d danced around at dinner]

Christian the 5 year old tries to teach Jude:

“Jude, it’s RRR-e-mem-ber, not VVV-e-member!’

“Boogers: it’s full of protein.”

“Mummy, Jude’s choking!!!” [he screams when his brother is actually choking blue on a lollipop in the living room]

Emmanuelle the 7 year old was saying stuff when she was just a few years old to her little brother:

“Jesus died on the cross so we won’t die!”

In her journal she’s named the four places she’d love to visit:

“Tokyo, San Francisco, Omaha, Paris” [I was offered a job amongst others in Omaha a few months back]

_______

I love their honesty. 

I picked up a well-worn copy “Of mice and men” by Steinbeck in our Boston apartment last week. Danielle warned me of how good but disturbing it is. This must have been a popular high school text here, for the owner’s son’s name was on the in-slip and many phrases had been underlined. It’s set in the Great Depression California Valleys, where ranch-roving stiffs eked out their living, season to season.

Its central poetic theme is George’s chase of dream of living on one’s own piece of land, not roaming, but settled, and be ladened with possessions and pets to tend for. He’s simple, big but filled with uncontrolled physique and force. His only friend Lennie had taken to himself to look out for him after George’s Aunt died. George’s dream of tending to pet rabbits on his own land is etched into his psyche, and is his only comfort along with Lennie’s friendship, which he hopes to share for good on their own land. The sad reality is equally poetic, and prophesied by Crooks (a black, crippled stiff, stuck in this particular ranch): no-one ever gets to this land.

Many things can be said about the vivid characters, the realistic spoken language of these men. But what I loved most was the artistry in the foreshadows of Lennie’s eventual betrayal of George’s trust and dream. The story begins with the partners running from another ranch because George had unwitting touched a girl’s velvet dress. Lennie warns George that if the same thing happens he is to hide in a distant hill to wait for him. The stationmasters’ son’s – Curley’s – wife soon enters the story, and we are given another dangerous foreboding of her stirring George, as he childishly eyes her, just as he does with pets, furs and velvet dresses. Candy, another stiff, sullenly lets his fellows put-down his companion old dog, simply because he stinks. Yet the regret confessed by the owner Candy is that he didn’t put the dog down himself, being its owner, companion on friend, who would have compassion in the act of ending. Also, from the beginning to end, George innocently kills every pet mouse, pup or creature given into his hands: his own hands destroys the shadows of his dream life.

When Lennie is finally driven by an angry mob to hunt for George after he innocently breaks Curley’s wife, it was the foreshadowed end to the unfulfilled dream, most tragically by the dream-weaver on the dreamer. The owner, rescuer, soother and friend, betrays the simple follower and believer with a crack of the revolver. Lennie recounts George’s dream, so that in the act of his imagining and near consummation of that dream, he may be spared of the false hope. I couldn’t point at finger at Lennie, who at the same time was ending his own child’s struggle, with the compassion that it won’t suffer and despair for life.

So my Christian response is to thank God: that in His promise there is a Heavenly Mansion, where all the simple-hearted believing children will go, dine and live. And that this promise has been realised, for it was purchased by the sacrifice – the exact price for eternal life – of His own Son. The Father, giver, comforter, Lord and friend would give us the guarantee of His own Spirit, who lives in the heart of His children to remind us of our ownership in His inheritance (Ephesians 1-4). Even in present struggles, or at worst, physical death, do not remove us from that hope.

Danielle warned me of Steinbeck, but then I found myself surprisingly prepared for another incomplete verdict on the human condition that has been penned or envisioned, because (Ephesians 2:18-20)

“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on … the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone”.

It’ll be a great Place to be a part of.

Time, strength, clarity of mind and insight was obviously ripped out of my being, but God still left me with the most important parts of life, namely, the His enduring indwelling in Jesus His Son, my family and the necessities (and much more) of living. It taught me how I had been tethered by non-essentials of living whilst in Sydney, for many, many years, even as a growing christian. They would consume my time, strength, clarity of mind and insight. Things like these (in this post I won’t be specific, for I am bound to offend and be misunderstood, but more personal specifics will follow in future) dilute my passion, love and energy for people and matters that deserve my utmost and highest, as Oswald Chambers would have put it.

It is pretty clear what I have dedicated more time to when I look back at 2014 now, in the winter of the first year of my post-33 half. I have had so much more time with family and increased concentration at the anaesthesia work at hand; however we have only slowly gotten back in to church community life. And as for growth in the theological knowledge of God, that which I’d pursued so wildly earlier, I have learned that academia, does not equate with all-knowledge, least of all in a personal relationship with God. More slowly-brewed reflection has happened, as opposed to caffeine-fueled consumption of books; but the pendulum probably needs to swing back to the middle for my growth in godliness. I look forward to reading more this Christmas in LA during our family reunion, actually.

So what sort of things have I had to cut? Too many to count. I find that I am noticing a lot of “old habits” I have forgone when I glance briefly around me. May be others have more time than me, or probably not. What I fear in some youth around me is that perhaps we are wasting our time, valuable time, which we will learn to regret. But time dedicated to knowing God, growing in personhood after His Person, in the family and at work that makes a difference – that time will not be wasted, and that labour will not be in vain, however you look at it and from whichever time-point you look back on it.

p.s. one nice practical thing I picked up, surprisingly at a department meeting from a paediatric anaesthetist, was to “Only Handle It Once”. This is a bane of both my dad and my own habit. So I will leave this blog as it is, after a quick spell-check.

(Distillery District, old Dodge)

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child and walked like a child,

But when we grow up, we put our childish ways behind us, and see things as they are, and as they ought.

So I thought.

It will be Christian’s first day in school in Canada tomorrow. He enters JK, that is junior kindergarten. He has already had some pre-schooling in Hong Kong. But it’s proper schooling this time, with full days, full weeks, and he will physically leave infancy and uninterrupted dependence on mummy and/or daddy behind. I was initially filled with excitement and that alone, but as the minutes draw near, there is the sadness of growing up – particularly with the thought of seeing him less – welling up in us. No parent should wish their child to stop growing, to be stunted, to be dependent “all their days” (one of Christian’s favourite phrases of emphasis). God Himself is no less than a Father, as Paul would put it in the letter to the Ephesians – the Father from whom all Fatherhood comes. His example of patience, love, perseverance and fatherly wisdom is unsurpassed. For starters, He would spend the whole lifetime of a child of His to fashion and mould into a true son or daughter of His, someone bearing His likeness, His character, His desires and joys. He is great encouragement and source of strength to us, who are parents fumbling on the particulars of nurturing, teaching and sending. So our highest hope would be for Emmanuelle, Christian and Jude, to be less dependent on us, faltering parents, and to be totally dependent on the Father of Fathers, on whom we have banked our trust as grown-ups.

There will be times when those childish fears are true: the loneliness, the injustice, the lack of attention, but in all honesty, Christian will probably thrive and enjoy the fascinating world of play and learning in a place of freedom and care. We must thank God if not only for His placement of our family in this milieu, with the opportunities availed to us all. This was not our doing, but a great gift of grace on His part. But most of all, we must thank Him that in those times of need of encouragement, comfort and wisdom, He will be there for Christian as much as we will try to be as His imitators and trustees in the glorious business of raising up children.

And of course there will be Emmie, a big sister who will sort out anyone trying to pick on her little brother!

Like those recovering from traumatic life-events, I didn’t realise how long (now seven months) it would take until I felt normal or awake again. By God’s grace I have mostly forgotten all the hardships of Hong Kong health’s system in 2013: they have become a blur for me. I learned very little medically, but I learned much more on what was important to life, health and peace. I feel like writing, running, swimming and getting on with life once again.

Thus I appreciate all the more the freedom, learning, space and normality of working in Canada in 2014-2015. The privileges available to citizens and foreigners are – really – second to none.

Praise God for His reprieve. I do pray that our family will make the most of every opportunity, and prepare ourselves for the work ahead as we traverse Canada-USA, Ontario-Massachusetts, and eventually Hong Kong-Australia bound.

* Le Chateau Frontenac, Old Quebec. We spent our previous long weekend (now our fourth) in Quebec. This French-British fusion is truly fantastic. More on this to come.

This truth certainly struck me, when I walked passed a room on the male surgical ward at Tuen Mun Hospital one evening and I saw four grown men in hospital pyjamas, sitting up in their beds, laughing. These ward rooms were the last places in Hong Kong where I’d expect to find laughter. Usually they were filled with jaundiced malnourished patients reeking of bilious odours. These laughing men were of course not those type of patients, because they were on the mend, and they looked ready for discharge. They in fact, shared a common hope, which allowed them to laugh. Yet it is most often in the times of common suffering that sufferers are brought together. They understand the hardship that is mutual, and if this trial has an end-date, an appointed finale, they can spur one another onward, build each other’s character and even ignite courage. That is why “the-best-group-of-interns-to-ever-leave-Tuen-Mun-Surgery”, aka the group which I was allocated into for the previous three months in my HK internship, became good friends. We had a common prison, common hardships, common deprivations but also a common hope: the end of Tuen Mun surgery, or even better, the end of HK internship. It is an amazing gift of God, to have laughter in the strangest places. It wasn’t just for the patients about to head out, it was also for us who were heading out of HK internship. And even more amazing for me, was that God was using this place to teach me truths, which I would not have learnt elsewhere and else ways. I now, as someone who has the Christian Hope, read Paul’s encouragement in Romans 5 with another layer of relish:        

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not [disappoint], because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

      ===

*The writer was of course CS Lewis, and the idea was read from “The Four Loves”  

Near ICA, Central where many film crew go shooting.

2 surgical MOs were on their way to the TMH OPD.

They saw people waiting outside their clinics and one MO decided to challenge the other MO to a game of spot diagnosis.

MO1 looks at the 1st person in line: “I bet you this guy has cirrhosis, I mean, he stinks of alcohol, he’s got the belly of ascites and all these red spidaes on his face.”
MO2 flips through the file: “Yup, Alcoholic Cirrhosis”

MO1 looks at the 2nd person: “This man can’t keep still, he’s fat, and he’s only sitting on his left buttock. I bet you he’s got a right buttock abscess.”
MO2 flips through the file: “Yup, right buttock abscess.”

MO1 looks at the 3rd person, feeling pretty confident: “This man’s as yellow as a light bulb, thin as a stick and has this bag of bile on his lap. I bet you he’s got cholangiocarcinoma.”
MO2 flips through the file: “Right again Sherlock, cholangiocarcinoma.”

MO1 looks at the last person: “Hmmm, look at this poor guy, he’s young, but pale as the moon, cachectic, he hasn’t shaved in days, smells like he hasn’t showered for a while, and looks as tired as a dog. I bet you he is some palliative care patient with intractable cancer.”

MO2 smiles, “No, you’re way off. He’s the new houseman, he was on call last night.”

Lamy pen, one of many things I want to keep permanently.

This year, I mean to forget many things, including useless data and useless dates. So many more things deserve memory space, reflection and action.

This is a “meaningless” set of work (anaesthesia and intensive care) rotations which administration needs reiterated. As I type them I plan to forget them:

Isn’t it a surprise that as we age, time increases in speed and life is viewed in larger epochs? These individuals days, seemed so important (perhaps to others more than myself at the time as I would always be looking ahead at their ending, I tend to view the present as though I have already finished it and am reviewing it from the end) then but seem to me just a blur now.

I’ll refer interested readers to Ecclesiastes 1-3, whose Teacher says it better.

What was the point of such endless work? That I might know Him better, that He be made known as He ought, I think that’s the point of the days.

***

Apologies for the somber tone, I am going through some radical change, am praying it’s a regeneration and not a deconstruction.

student drawings in Red Eye Express cafe, Toronto

Tonight is the first night in ten that I’ve taken myself off amitriptyline for pain, so I hope to write a little on this theme that has been hovering over my mind of late.

How do you know that you know someone, or know something? This sounds so simple but is so important. Have you ever questioned whether you really knew someone or something. I do, constantly. I just want to be sure, about the big things of course, and about the small things.

I think I know a little about medicine and human physiology, a little with a huge chasm of ignorance to fill. I also learned about pain in my anaesthetic training. But did I really know it? Sure in a sense. I learned about how to manage neuropathic pain in chronic pain-patients at Nepean Hospital in 2009. The knowledge stayed with me such that I was able to reproduce treatment on tens or even hundreds of patients. But I really knew neuropathic pain, when I went through it myself. I am currently having treatment for neuropathic pain of my left ulnar nerve, which has been triggered by a fractured pisiform (small, moveable) bone in my left wrist. I understand just what the quality, intensity, the relief you could get from gabapentin, only in this first-hand sense through going through it. I can say I know what neuropathic pain is like with more certainty now.

The same applies to an extent to any real relationship, not just professional collegiate but something like siblings, or a friendship, or even more personal, a courtship, a marriage! There. Nothing tops marriage in terms of relating to someone not yourself right? (perhaps, but not if you believe in the Trinity) How do you know the other? I could read biographies, emails, texts, watch you tube videos or even talk with those closest to this Other Person of interest. But does any of the fans know who President Obama is? Any follower know who Adele is and what her heart aches of? No. Not unless you have actual relationship with this Other Person, you know really know a thing or know for sure. A conversation, at least a meal, a group function, simple shaking of hands, or walk side-by-side, leads to a knowledge you can gain through mere data retranslation, no matter how detailed that data is.

I detest just knowing about someone AND thinking that I know that person or subject. Data and facts don’t matter, in this personal and spiritual sense, as a relationship. That’s why I give thanks for people who genuinely reveal themselves. THis is not an advocacy for selfish dumping of emotional burdens, but honest, self-revelation. Because it allows another to know The Other truly, with vulnerability. Friends, Brothers, Sisters, and even acquaintances take on a whole new level of trust when self-revelation does happen. Does it then surprise some of you that I seem open on this ever-evolving social network? It probably makes more sense as I AM revealing my thoughts in this blog.

I am most thankful for God’s self-revelation. I could have studied, contemplated, dug deep into the heart of the earth, looked as far back and forward into the Cosmos to search for some truth about Him. Romans chapter 1 speaks of this way of knowing about God. But nothing beats knowing God. He is an awesome guy. A Father, A Friend, A Sympathetic Spirit, A Lord, A so, so and so. We do relate to HIm in many ways. Even as our Judge. Oh, on that Day we will really know HIm. But He’s always self-revealing back then as He is now. I know Him by hearing HIm in His Word. I can’t even begin to reject His person and personality if I haven’t heard Him properly. So I’m kind of saying you can’t know HIM enough to reject HIm just by reading about HIm through… say Richard Dawkins. You can’t even know HIm throughout the greatest and truest theologians, let alone through this blog.

But if you’ll have the grace and justice to hear Him, as He speaks and as is recorded through His Word in the Bible and talk to Him in response by prayer, then that is enough to kindle a real relationship. And that is a relationship no one can afford to ignore.

p.s. I have never found HIm cold, distant or silent. He is welcoming, yes honest, but always willing to relate. Jesus said: “Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened. Ask and it will be given.” He refers to the Kingdom of God (God’s very own self, presence and best blessings) in Matthew and Luke when He promises this of His Father. And that is exactly how I have found him.

they’ve seen a lot of time and people

I’m writing under a little time pressure. After recently fracturing my left pisiform bone from a bike-stack, I’ve been having neuropathic (basically burning nerve) pain in the inner part of the left arm, forearm and hand. In short, the night dose of amitriptyline makes me sleepy within 1hour: I took it 45minutes ago. I also need to rest up before a 12 hour drive with stop tomorrow.

We’re moving to Melbourne for a year as of tomorrow. For work, for adventure, for learning, for growing, for closer relationships and for challenges, but ultimately for what? Why leave home, friends, family and most of all comforts? Things were, and God-willing, nice, easy and just right.

My family and Danielle’s family have been families of wanderers. Not pointlessly, not unwillingly, but certainly big movers. Danielle had spent several years in rural NSW and San Francisco in her childhood; I of course migrated from Hong Kong with my family and have moved homes 4 times since settling in Australia. All the places we had been to were made “homes”.

But as a Christian, I honestly never feel at home, not here, not there. Yes, I have a single residential address, I am an Australian citizen, a permanent citizen of Hong Kong. I also enjoy relaxing in a place that lets me put my feet up, like those Victorian husbands. But, I am still looking for home. Home is this collective memory that we hall have but all realise we haven’t got. It’s forever elusive. If the place you’re presently at is home, then, why change, why modify, why move interstate? Why wander?

I’m not really moving in a sense, as we have our home in NSW still. We have plans to return, to rebuild and to provide stability for kids. That’s because I want to give the children a sense of home. More than that, by the Grace of God, I wish they will see that the truest home for all people, not just Christians, is Heaven itself. Now that’s HOME, a mansion with many rooms for the children of God, all having access through the Lord to the Father of the mansion, the Centre and Life of the party.

Once there, I will, we will, not wish to move out. It’ll be a place where all, once made perfect, will enjoy perfection forever. Paradise, who wants in? And who would wish to leave?

For 2012, Melbourne will do just fine, and have I said that it is a better place than Sydney? As objective as I can be, it is better in many ways. But whilst on Earth, I have earthly vestiges, I linger on the idea of home, so Sydney, however imperfect it is, will be home for now. But I’m clear, that my longing lies elsewhere and further than here. I remain, inwardly, a wanderer.

Good night, the amitriptyline and Danielle are calling me to sleep. I can’t even stay up to watch Federer lose to Nadal in the Australian Open semifinal.