One Nation, One Dream

I was flush with boiling (but impotent) anger and disappointment when I read the news about donations for the Sichuan earthquake being embezzled by local authorities and not being able to reach the needy. It happened before; and now it happens again after all those promises from the central government of helping the victims. Dimmit.

And what? There are now fake eggs on market? Doesn’t this invention involve lots of R&D that actually outweighs the few cents that can be ripped off from selling a real egg instead?

Some old stuff that I wrote last year came to my mind:

From the Olympic Games to the milk scare; from the space walk to the Sichuan Earthquake

For China, it is a year of national glories and international scandals.

The whole nation erupted in cheers when we joined the United States and Russia in the exclusive club of space nations and held the most expensive Olympic Games in history.

The day after the Beijing Olympic opening extravaganza, the photograph of Lin who sang Ode To The Motherland with a toothy smiley face splattered the front page of many newspapers, including New York Times.

It was meant to be a touching moment -- our hope of the future radiating in the glare of the world.

However, if you look at the opening ceremony closely, it is no more than a reflection of a typical shelf of food in a local grocery store: the stuff look fabulously food-like, just that they aren’t food-like enough to be consumed.

The girl singing in a sweet voice?

Fake. The voice belongs to another little girl with a chubby face and crooked teeth who was dropped from the opening ceremony in the national interest.

The children from 56 Chinese ethnic groups clustering around the Chinese national flag, demonstrating national unity as claimed by the official guide?

Fake. All of them were Han Chinese who is both culturally and politically dominant.

A breathtaking series of firework footprints across Beijing as shown on TV?

Fake. They were either computer-generated or pre-recorded though the authority insisted they were real.

The lip-syncing little girl has mirrored the prevailing cultural values in China: glamour and face is everything. It hurts when the Olympic Games was hosted like a scene in Disneyland, yet it hurts further when it is where our country is heading to.

We are drunk by our technological advancement and the pride of being a rising superpower. We are proud of being the host of the Olympic Games and our space missions because they demonstrate our new power.

Yet, not a word of social development or social values has been mentioned.

While the Olympic success and the space walk stirred up ecstasy across the country, two tragedies—Sichuan earthquake and the contaminated milk—hit home.

Although the Sichuan earthquake was a natural disaster, it was made worse by selfishness and greed. The shoddy construction of schools in Sichuan has unfolded the twisted gap between average life on earth and the glory on Moon.

What connects the flimsy schools in Sichuan province and the milk scare is the worst, but sadly common, type of partnership in China—corruption. Corporations have money; the government has power, and each of both has what the other wants.

What’s worse, the strict control of information flow makes such partnership unbreakable. If one is aware of how those comments regarding the lip-sync sandals are wiped from the chatrooms and websites hosted in Mainland China, one can expect similar handling of human beings in reality. Indeed, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy has reported that Zeng Hongling, a retired teacher, was detained after she criticized the shoddy school construction on a U.S.-based Chinese website. As for Chen Qigang who disclosed the lip-synching practice at the Olympic opening ceremony to the public…well, if you are wondering what I was wondering, here is the answer: Chen is actually a French citizen (an additional reason to love France).

Thinking that the milk scare is uncovered by someone who dares to challenge the authorities or corporations in Mainland China? Actually, the Sanlu group was aware of cases of babies having kidney problems as early as March and knew that its products were contaminated in early August. However, it was the New Zealand government who informed Beijing about the contamination of infant milk powder, leapfrogging provincial officials, after being told by Fonterra, the New Zealand shareholder of Sanlu, that the baby formula was contaminated with melamine.

Who can really enjoy the fruit of the booming economy of China? While the nation cheers for the success of the Olympic Games and the space walk; while we’re all blinded by our new found financial and political power and influence, who cares about those who are living in the shadow of such glamour; those who are exploited by those corporations who reap the benefits of economic boom but don’t even deliver what they are supposed to?

On the contrary of the glamorous image of the little girl who lip-synced in the Olympics opening ceremony, sadly and ironically, it is our new generation who is suffering.

We have been trying so hard to impress. We are desperate to show the world that we have risen from the ashes and the wounds of the Cultural Revolution like a phoenix. We want the world to look at our new ego being dressed in state-of-the-art infrastructures and technological breakthroughs.

However, we have gone the wrong way. For every step forward, there seems to be two steps backward.

There is still a long way to go before we can really cheer for our accomplishments in social development. It is this one dream that our nation dreams.

Dusk near my place

It suddenly dawned on me that I may not be coming back to this city a long time after I have finished my course this year and I feel the urge to capture some nice scenes here. However, I lost my digital camera charger! I'm not sure whether I left it in Hong Kong (my sister told me it wasn't there) or lost it in my room (it was nowhere to be seen!). So now I have to be very conservative when I use my DC. I hope that the battery can last until the charger pops up somewhere.

Anguish in the air

The sky has been a bit misty these days. The wind direction has changed again and brought the shower of ashes that the firestorm cooked up to the south where I stay. The smell of burning bushes and flesh has been filling the air. It is just too horrifying to imagine what the ashes once were and suddenly they all come so close to me, enveloping me in the acrid smell of misery and terror, right in the air I was inhaling into my body. The red moon hung low in the sky last night as if it were mourning for the woes.

The blazes are still raging and a few are yet to be contained. Newspapers and national websites are splashed with stories of the survived, the perished and the heroes, and investigations over suspected arson. Disasters are always made worse by a few derailed minds, yet they unite people as the human race. There is sorrow and anger, but there is also hope.

As the Valentine’s Day wears on, I hope we all can feel the love around us, or better, love those around us.

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The slippery slope

Statistically speaking, 82.2% of the population falls into the normal range. That means there are people bound to be abnormal, either in the upper ends or the lower ones. Yet, I wonder how many people fall in the normal range in ALL aspects of life—the very normal of the already normal.

This is an era of psychological pathology. The DSM is getting thicker with a diversity of freshly termed disorders which render everyone abnormal to certain extent. If there are those who fall into this the-very-normal-of-the-normal category, it is actually rather abnormal and should deserve a fancy label of disorder (say the Stepford Wife Syndrome? um...maybe not; it's too sexist). Although statistics rarity is not usually the sole diagnostic factor, it makes a clinician more comfortable of dispensing a label. It seems to have desensitized our sense of abnormality and created a slippery slope for psychological diagnosis.

Last week, I encountered a case in which a boy was having problems establishing social ties with his peers at school but got on fine with his mates in Scouts and his same-age cousins. His mum took him to a psychologist who has given him a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome but wanted to seek a second opinion from our team that consists of paediatricians, psychologists and speech pathologists.

He did fine in cognitive assessment and social language assessment. In fact, he could converse naturally with a stranger like me on daily topics with appropriate eye contact. Yet, the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome was reconfirmed by the team because his cognitive profile shows uneven development (though he scored normal in all domains) and he has specific interests like Star War. I’m still new in this field but I’m really uncomfortable with the diagnosis.

Asperger Syndrome is a lifelong condition and signifies severe social impairment. Yet is that possible that the boy is just having episodic problems with his peers at school? Or is it that his peers are being too harsh on him? There were always one or two students in every class who were being picked on by others when I was in primary and secondary schools and when I taught in a secondary school. Everybody knows kids at primary schools and secondary schools can’t tolerate much difference in interests or even personality. Conformity is the ticket to socialization in primary school and high school. As long as those different ones can make their way to university, they will know it is a place more tolerate, if not appreciative, of individual differences and distinct personalities.

The boy may not be very good at social skills or having small talks, but Asperger? He is not engaging excessively in his interest. He doesn’t take metaphors literally either. Uneven cognitive development (which is a statistics rarity) may constitute a concern but not a problem. So now being different is actually a disorder?

And isn’t it ironic that parents bring their kids to psychologists for answers when their kids are not getting on well with their peers at school? Shouldn’t parents talk with their kids and tell them how to be good friends and appreciate the uniqueness of themselves like parents in the past did? Somehow a label detaches parents’, teachers’, peer’s or even the kids/teenagers’ responsibilities over their own problems or difficulties as it is the disorder doing the evil.

If I had thought like a professional psychologist, I would have gone along with others on the team. But then I’m still too layman.

I realize there are kids who encounter severe social difficulties because of the way they perceive language and interpret social situations. And in that case, these kids need intervention and a label can help them understand themselves better. But sometimes we overinterpret a difficulty that almost every kid encounters in a normal course of development.

The more I encounter similar cases, the more I suspect myself having Asperger Syndrome.

P.S. I do think many otaku have Asperger Syndrome.

Insane weather

It was the hottest day on record in Melbourne: 46.4 degree Celsius (while nearby Avalon recorded Victoria’s high of 47.9).

If I hadn’t run out of food and had been starving, I wouldn’t have risked my life by basking myself in the blazing heat and intense sunlight out in the open area. The dry, unforgiving wind kept slapping across my face and the intense sun sapped every available bit of moisture out of my system while I was stumbling my way to the supermarket.

Yet, I was the lucky one.

With the relative humidity standing at 5% and winds gusting up to gale force, one could easily trigger a fire by just a snap of fingers. This is no exaggeration. In fact, bushfires have been ravaging towns north and northwest of Melbourne. A couple of towns have been wiped out and a lot more are in danger. With a change of wind direction, the bushfires may expand to other areas of the state. Up to now 26 lives were claimed and the death toll is still counting as policemen and firefighters can’t reach those trapped in their homes or cars yet.

The extreme heat has put the already critical water supply and the electricity supply under further strain. Power outages wreaked havoc across the state and left hundreds of thousands without electricity.

The flickering flames and storming ashes on screen were too heart-wrecking to watch, especially when you knew there were people somewhere behind the scene struggling to escape. My heart, as well as other Victorians’, is with the homeless, the injured, and the deceased.

Luckily the sweltering weather only lasted a day and the temperature drops sharply to around 20 degree Celsius with shower today. Nothing has come more refreshing and graceful than a cool drizzling day after the raging heat.

I hope that the shower and cool weather can relieve the devastating bushfires or at least put them under control. Back at home, I have learnt to stock up on snacks so that I can hide myself during extreme weather.

First Day of Placement

I’m still living in Hong Kong time.

Last night I tried to get myself to bed before midnight which I always did (before 11pm actually) before I got back to Hong Kong. But then I kept tossing myself in bed without a slightest trace of sleepiness. I ended up having 3 hours of shallow sleep before I headed to my placement on the first day which demanded my indispensable concentration.

Luckily, my pumping adrenaline pulled me through the day.

Morning –

Once I stepped in the paediatrics zone, I was like being placed in the middle of an ER scene—alright, not that chaotic or dramatic but everybody was on the run doing something important, though I didn’t get a clue of what’s going on. I was left in the swirl of confusion, trying to absorb the situation while being bombarded with different sorts of information. I was being lucky today as I was told that it wasn’t that busy all the time.

Despite that, I managed to (be dragged to) sit in two assessment sessions for two different cases and attend the discussion sessions that followed. I had to get myself readily blended with the team which posed a challenge to me, though all others seemed nice and supportive.

Lunch –

Australian laid-back style. Everybody packs their lunch here (lovely). I got my veggie sandwiches as well :)

Afternoon –

There’s a team meeting during which my supervisor dispensed new cases to us interns. While she was presenting cases after cases, there was a case that caught our attention: very little kid, minimal spoken English, grieving family, immigrant from developing politically unstable country, brain injury, genetic deficit. I felt sorry for the kid but that would be my dream case: it involves all aspects of complexities.

While my supervisor was going through the case history, I kept muttering under my breath: “Give it to me give it to me give it to me pleeeeaaaasssseeee give it to me…”

“Shan, can you follow up this case?” My train of wishful thoughts was broken.

“Sure.” I replied. Succinct. Professional. Cool.

Grreeeaaatttt! It’s mine! MINEEEEE!

When my excitement (and obviously my adrenaline) subsided at the end of the day, I felt drained and post-party-ly miserable. The day was a bit overwhelming to me. But deep down I know my inadequacy and it's time for me to work hard and sharpen my skills and judgment in this field.

I will always keep my fingers crossed for the days ahead.

春光乍洩

雖然身處在澳洲一小鎮，但想不到可在這邊的公立圖書館找到香港電影。人在異地，看到香港的電影不其然有點親切感。這也解釋了為甚麼在本土不屑一顧的電視劇可以在海外大賣（現在只要在網上下載就可以了，令電視台少了不少收入）。看電影或電視劇的要的不是劇情，而是一種回家的感覺、一種歸屬感，令人在異國也可代入香港的虛榮及繁華，卻暗地裡慶幸不用身處其中。

《春光乍洩》並非在香港取景的，但看見封套上的梁朝偉及張國榮及那四隻大大的中文字，反正是免費娛樂，沒想太多就借回家。

看王家衞的電影或多或少會抱著一種解迷的心態，情況有點像《國王的新衣》裡的群眾，每個人都在說國王身上的裝束有多華麗。看不見的就像那小孩，自覺眾人皆醉我獨醒，彷彿看穿了國王的謊話，嘲笑著他那沒美感的胴體。

我不太懂解讀電影，也分不清自己是小孩還是群眾。我只跟自己的感覺走。

每個人也有被生活膠著的時候。我們都在為生活尋找出口。

梁朝偉被一段感情及一個異地困擾著

張國榮　自己的obsession
關淑怡　一個男人
張震　　一個會唱歌的女人　

到最後能夠走出困局的都是願意放開的人。

王家衞式的獨白、杜可風的鏡頭、憂鬱的梁朝偉、不羈的張國榮（沒有腳的小鳥喔）──聽來令人納悶。如果這是發生在香港一男一女之間的愛情故事，怎麼也提不起興趣去看。幸好故事發生在一個西班牙語國家，還有同性戀作話題，為電影增加可觀性。有點喜歡梁朝偉反轉看香港的情景，其實 Buenos Aires 的緯度跟Sydney差不多（我卻身處在比Sydney還要南的Melbourne）。

然而在王家衞的電影裡，人物比故事吸引。

梁朝偉及張國榮的感情糾纏看得令人既傷感又煩躁。但看著螢幕上十多年前的梁朝偉及張國榮，眼睛不禁被他們吸引著，心裡暗道：「帥哥啊！」。然而牽動著內心的卻是張震的角色。在他身上有種一個人在途上了無牽掛的自由，還有那種隨處搭訕的不羈及那顆赤子之心。雖然他不清楚自己想往哪處走，但他在戲中卻是唯一一個不斷往前走的人。到達了最南邊的燈塔，聽著別人的故事及關淑怡的歌（我想關淑怡最後也在火車上為他唱了一首歌吧？），最後雖然決家回家，但回家的路又是另一個旅程的開始。他沒有讓自己背負任何情感的包袱，最後他將對關淑怡的掛念留在燈塔上（我想他在燈塔寫下的是關淑怡的電話吧？）。不要停下來，一直地走就是了。

其實我最想做的就是他。

關淑怡的角色是一個驚喜。她在戲中唱的西班牙歌令人印象難忘。老實說，關淑怡對梁朝偉的迷戀有點牽強，卻帶點王家衞式的浪漫。

《春光乍洩》我是蠻喜歡的。但要數我最喜愛的王家衞電影，《重慶森林》始終是我的首選。

Back in Melbourne

Life in Hong Kong has always been hectic and stressful to me, even when I was having my summer vacation in the past 2 and a half months. It seems that I have done a lot without my noticing until now.

What I did in Hong Kong:

« Covering for an ex-colleague of mine at the secondary school I used to work since the second week I arrived in Hong Kong until the school holiday for Chinese New Year began during which I confirmed that I made the right decision to quit and became an important friend to a student

« Worrying about and working on my ethics clearance which I had to obtain before I launched my research

« Obtaining my ethics clearance for my research automatically after a couple of nights crying myself to sleep in a sense of helplessness and just half a day before I intended to send the university human research committee heaps of required paperwork on which I spent 2 months. Despite the ridiculousness, I did feel relieved that it was finally done.

« Attending a wedding reception of a hallmate’s during which I met some other girls on the 9-ba team whom I hadn’t seen for a long time

« Watching the Nutcracker, a ballet show, on Christmas Eve which I had been nagging my friends to watch with me in past Christmases without success

« Visiting my relatives in Mainland China on New Year Day during which I went karaoke-singing and smoke-filled-café-hopping with my cousins

« Watching my first New Year firework show in Tsim Sha Tsui alone after having failed to brave through the crowds to meet my friends at a Chinese restaurant in Cultural Centre and being trapped on my way

« Seeing lots of friends and students (both current and former) and having lots of local food which I missed so much, e.g. 餅皮蛋撻, 腸粉, 担担麵, 雞蛋仔, 煨蕃薯, 雲吞麵, rice dumplings, home-made Japanese curry, ramen, etc.

« Going through a series of health checks with one of my best friends who was losing weight dramatically and mysteriously. But I was happy to find that she is fine.

« Watching the first season of Criminal Minds at home while taking care of my nephew at times (how could I manage that?)

« Shedding some weights due to stress and a lack of sleep (and maybe warmer weather as well)

It doesn’t sound too bad with work and coursework intertwined with reunions and gatherings and some personal time. Despite the tight schedule, I did enjoy my time in Hong Kong. I was home after all.

At some point, I didn’t want to get back to Melbourne. I miss my friends and family in Hong Kong. But when the day finally came, it wasn’t that hard. Somehow I know what is waiting for me here and I sort of know this place now, unlike last year when I was too overwhelmed with my former job and didn’t have time to prepare myself for all the upcoming changes. And actually sometimes I did miss Melbourne even when I was in Hong Kong.

I remember I was still working at school, trying to wrap things up, 4 hours before I arrived at the airport. It was freezing and drizzling throughout the day which somehow marked my emotions last year. I didn’t get a direct flight to Melbourne and had to transfer to a domestic flight in Brisbane which took me more than 15 hours to get to my temporary accommodation. My first class started on the following day and I didn’t even know how I could get to the campus which was so far away from the place I stayed at. And I was alone, in a foreign land and away from the Internet.

Things were happening so fast in the first couple of months that I didn’t have time to take in. Luckily I had Tracy, my former secondary classmate, with me in the first month (I know I kept repeating that) and I met a nice host family.

Well, it seems that I was lost in memory again.

Anyway, I was more prepared this time and I believe I can enjoy this year more than last year.

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My first Monday here

Just before I was back here, Victoria had been struck by an unprecedented heatwave for three days and the temperature hit a record high of 43 degree Celsius. I know that it was hard for many local Melbournians to cope (a spate of sudden deaths are believed to be caused by the searing heat) but I’m really amazed by their weather tolerance.

Growing up in a sub-tropical area, I know how freezing 10 degree Celsius can be to Hongkongers. However, judging from the fact that air-conditioners are rare commodities here and people wear the same outfit (a short-sleeved T-shirt and shorts/jeans in general) as long as the temperature doesn’t drop below 5 degree Celsius, it seems that Melbournians can tolerate a spectrum of weather conditions – from sweltering heat to teeth-chattering chill – using their in-born coping skills which I believe have already been extinct in the air-conditioned generation in Hong Kong.

Anyway, I’m glad that the heatwave passed me by. The weather was just lovely today with warm sunshine and cooling breeze in the evening. It is my summer.

I’m going to commence my placement at a medical centre this Thursday. I’m a bit nervous as it’s a clinical setting and I’m supposed to be very familiar with the assessment instruments (but I’m not). I’m also worried about my communication skills as I’m not an articulate person even when I speak in my mother tongue. I will practice on the assessment instruments as much as possible in these two days and will keep my fingers crossed.