RIFLE RANGE BOY

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Powerman Malaysia 2022 SK does not know whether to laugh or cry. If he laughs, it hurts. It is painful when he moves, and he is even afraid to sneeze. Ever since he cracked up a rib in a freak accident, he senses that his naysayers, who have been telling him to slow down with all those extreme sports at this age, are having a field day. They are secretly happy that he is grounded. Short of saying, 'I told you so', he can see the sheer delight in their eyes. Some are even emblazoned to ask, " why this Kolaveri ?** " Yeah, sometimes SK too asks himself, "WHY?" In the same breath, he also replies to himself, "why not?" Homosapiens, by design, have been made to be agile and mobile. Through many prototypes which failed and multiple disastrous trials runs, Nature has remodelled and re-fashioned Man to be ambulant with such ingenuity. Only over the past 30 years, through the same thinking caps that make Man leap to greater heights, have we become couch po...

©FG You tell yourself the citizens of the country sponsored your medical studies. With a fragment of the cost of what you really need to pay, for peanuts, you got a degree. Of course, it was no easy walk in the park on your part, either. All that midnight vigil, the missed outings with buddies and the humiliations at work by seniors later on in life were your sacrifices. You were convinced that your job description would read as crucial as a bomb disposal unit. Your vocation would turn the direction of the country, it seemed. Not to forget the stresses and guilty feelings that haunted you as your patients died in your tour of duty. You can but not complain about your predicament as it was entirely your decision to plunge head in. Some reverence comes with the job, nevertheless. Those, however, were too few and far between. The same hands that express gratitude to you would be the same ones that point accusatory charges against you. You thought they were placing you on a dais like they ...

Sir Robert Hutchison Father of clinical methods A friend, during our stint as house officers, told me about an incident that happened during his medical student days when he was studying in Manipal, India. An American elective medical student had joined the group's ward rounds. The old Professor of Medicine was showing them the correct technique of examining the respiratory system. He laboriously punctuated the teaching rounds by asking basic science questions and snarling occasional sarcastic remarks, for not understanding the basics. He was showing the green medical students the art of inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation. The American student, failing to see the point of such a laborious examination of a single patient, raised his hand. "Professor, wouldn't it be better if we just send the patient for a chest X-ray?" he quipped. That is the state of medicine now. We have lost the art of practising medicine. It is just about diagnostic proc...

Swans in Venetian Canal  Credit @filterjm Probably for the first time since Man started giving salutations to the feared forces around him, he has been asked to stop all kinds of religious congregations in big groups. For aeons, Man believed that maladies take place because the Divine forces have been angered. In their simple understanding, the only avenue left for them to correct the tragedy is to appease the Divinity by glorifying it to high heavens; hoping that He would throw us His Grace. Hence, despite appeals by the authorities, practitioners of various faiths continue to put their trusts in the forces above, not in rational thinking and the sciences. They feel that people have been misled for far too long. The way the human race appears to be heading does not assure them of a happy ending. Too many have placed self-interest above salvation to expect altruism to prevail. There are groups of people who are hellbent in finding scapegoats. In their minds, many if not mos...

The Farewell (2019) I first heard this story as being narrated by Lulu Wang in the podcast 'American Life'. It tells Lulu's story of how her family dealt with the news of her paternal grandmother's diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. It describes how Lulu's parents, together with her uncle's (father's brother) family in Japan, gathered in China, where the grandmother lives, to bid her farewell. The twist is that the whole family decided not to tell the patient, Nai Nai as she is affectionately referred to. The family, from three countries, descended upon Nai Nai's house under the pretext of celebrating Lulu's Japanese cousin's wedding. Lulu's role is portrayed as an early 30s Chinese American student who goes to China in a soul-searching journey to rediscover her Chinese identity. She learns to appreciate the traditional family values. As their old values dictate that the happy mind would give a healthy body, the family thought that not...

The Game Changers (Documentary, 2019) I grew up trying to ward off suggestions from animal-loving vegans who tried their level best to convince me that structurally humans are supposed to be herbivores. They justified their assertions, with seemingly scientific support about our dentition. I would tell them that if we were born to eat just plants, our facial structures would look a goat's. And that I loved my animals too much that I eat them every day.  In the late 19th century British India, Sikh and Muslim soldiers were favoured over the Hindus to serve the Crown. Apparently, the Hindu soldiers, being mostly vegetarians, lack the prowess that made a bloody thirsty sepoy. Meat consumption had always been linked to muscle power, athletism and aggression. Now what this documentary is saying is that we have got it all wrong. All the things that we thought about being vegan are actually just the opposite. Consuming plant-based products and avoiding meat, fish and eggs are the sur...

Time is cruel! © DKLA At the pinnacle of their career, the Beatles must have had an existential crisis. McCartney and Lennon must have wondered how they would be at 64. Their vision of a 64-year old man, from the lenses of a person in the 1960s, must have been quite depressing. With bad teeth, bad eyesight and bald, it must be a picture of melancholy.  Luckily, growing old in the 21st century is bearable. The 60s is the new 40s. One can still lead a productive life in the senior citizen / geriatric age group provided the bus does not come to pick you up prematurely. After completing 633 km of cycling from Seoul to Pusan in 5 days, we had a couple days to unwind in Pusan. Immersed in the euphoria of completing our gargantuan task, we thought that our feat must be something that we, the seven of us, would be talking for a long time including reminiscing about it in our twilight years. We would probably be savouring each photo that we took along the way, trying to remember each ...