How Time Flies!

My last post to this blog was in December 2012 ! Not that I have run out of things to say but there weren't many opportunities to sit down and organise my thoughts.

We sold our house in Ponte Vedra but started to regret it when we returned to pack up. So we ended up with another one - but a fraction the size. It was just the beginning of lots of activity and some agony - I needed to tailor it to our way of life and so ended up with having to deal with renovations.

I must have forgotten what we'd been through building our house in the first place and then renovating it several years later. Sometimes the mind conveniently buries past experiences especially unpleasant ones!

Or is it hope eternal that spurs one on?

Anyway it was all worth it, Lin and I are delighted with our new house; I had to drag him away to come back to Hong Kong and Singapore.

After all this, my Construction and Trades scorecard would read:  HK number 1, while old fashioned N-E Florida would be number 2 and ever-growing Singapore  number 3 (think of cutting edge architects and designers but third world workers).

It's a thought - in Ponte Vedra we are in a community of less than 600 families and yet several of our residents have written books.

In comparison, I can't say that I know of any published authors in our condominium complex in Hong Kong which has about 1000 families. A journalist who was given a drugged milk shake by a woman who bludgeoned her husband to death is the closest to a writer that I know of!

And, in Singapore, I can only claim to know or know of only a handful among them a past Prime Minister who has written a few books, a young man who writes books for children, a woman who wrote about her father, a renowned educator and a cousin who wrote about my great grandfather (to be precise she lives in Johor Bahru, Malaysia).

In Florida we are in a golfing community, with our own golf course. In Hong Kong and Singapore we are members of a golf club.

In an ideal world, for life to be replete, I'd have the Hong Kong Golf Club with the immaculate golf course we enjoy in Florida (not to demean either but to say that my perfect golf club would be a combination of the two). The golf club in Singapore is like a vast public facility (it boasts over 7000 members and double that number of users) with the atmosphere and environment to match.

Some Americans despair of President Obama and wish their economy would pick up. Some Hong Kongers distrust and dislike Chief Executive CY Leung and grudgingly put up with the influx of mainland Chinese. Some Singaporeans are no longer enamoured of the PAP government  and are unhappy about the rapid increase in population, mainly due to immigration.

I sympathise with all of the above! On the other hand Obama and Leung will not be at the helm for much longer.

To be fair, look around America. Where would it be if not for immigrants and immigrant workers, even today. Or should I say more so today. Singapore is in the same boat - we need people in almost all walks of life for businesses to run and families to cope.

Sometimes I think of life in the western world and how people cope with work, children and their homes. Well in the west there are house husbands whose wives are the main breadwinners, there are women to give up their careers for their families. And, significantly, there is infrastructure and 'software' in place to facilitate caring for young children while parent(s) are at work.

In much the same way that there are senior communities, home care, public and private initiatives for older people so that they can live and operate as they age. These are lacking in Asia.


While there are many good things about Singapore, I look forward to returning as much as I looked forward to returning to boarding school after the holidays!

Perhaps it is the attitude of those in power; it is telling that a well known Singaporean recently wrote: "..... American doormen who would look me in the eyes and treat an ambassador like me as an equal, and not act in a submissive manner like any Asian doorman would."

Not all Asian doormen are particularly submissive and as a matter of fact it depends on who is coming through the door; it's just that more Asian and particularly Singaporean VIPs (and those who consider themselves VIPs) expect servility and "insist on feudal-type privileges" (here I have borrowed his words and taken them out of their context to fit mine).

It's not beyond some to say,"do you know who I am?" and name drop to try and get their way.

Americans may be the polar opposite (and sometimes stridently so), but then they do not have to suffer employers, club committee members and self-important people who wield the rod.

The same writer went on to say. "The good news for our world is that this American egalitarian spirit is gradually infecting other societies, including Asian societies, and therefore making them less feudal." Perhaps when the Singapore Girl is allowed to become less of a doormat for demanding travellers!

When I was growing up we were told that we were 'the rugged society', we were the exemplars for the rest of Southeast Asia. Our government was never bested by any opponent, inside or out.

Somewhere along the line we slipped from our place as Number One. Maybe that's what bugs me most.

We don't lead and we don't want to follow. So we came late with more environmentally friendly taxis (HK had LPG-fuelled taxis years before Singapore introduced CNG taxis).

Public minibuses in HK are equipped with seat belts, Singapore's yet to make them mandatory in school buses.

Singapore reversed a decision to take their old London cabs off the road because this would have diminished transportation for the disabled.

Hong Kong has a small fleet of new taxis with tailgate lifts for wheelchairs AND a tiny fleet of all-electric taxis.

Nowadays, it seems we are better at talking the talk than walking the walk.

NO KIDDING: Squeezing Boobs Can Stop Breast Cancer

medical science
Dec 19, 2012 11:00 PM     2,267 14


Squeezing Boobs Can Stop Breast Cancer

 GIZMODO: Casey Chan
If you need another excuse to show some love to the mammaries, scientists have found that squeezing breasts can actually prevent malignant breast cells from triggering cancer. Yes, squeezing. Guys and gals, do your part in stopping cancer, please.

Gautham Venugopalan, a lead member on the research team from the University of California in Berkeley, says that experiments have shown that applying physical pressure to the cells can guide them back to a normal growth pattern, as opposed to just letting it follow cancerous growth. Specifically:

"People have known for centuries that physical force can influence our bodies... When we lift weights our muscles get bigger. The force of gravity is essential to keeping our bones strong. Here we show that physical force can play a role in the growth—and reversion—of cancer cells."
The experiment involved growing malignant cells within silicone and squeezing the silicone during the first stages of cell growth. Over time, those malignant cells started to grow normally. Venugopalan says that, those malignant cells just need "the right cues to guide them back to a healthy growth pattern". Squeezing them are those right cues. So, folks. Let's squeeze more. [Karramba Production/Shutterstock]

Warning for all re Ibuprofen use

December 5, 2012, 12:01 am  from NY TIMES

For Athletes, Risks From Ibuprofen Use

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Many active people use the painkiller ibuprofen on an almost daily basis. In surveys, up to 70 percent of distance runners and other endurance athletes report that they down the pills before every workout or competition, viewing the drug as a preemptive strike against muscle soreness.
But a valuable new study joins growing evidence that ibuprofen and similar anti-inflammatory painkillers taken before a workout don't offer any benefit and may be causing disagreeable physical damage instead, particularly to the intestines.
Studies have already shown that strenuous exercise alone commonly results in a small amount of intestinal trauma. A representative experiment published last year found that cyclists who rode hard for an hour immediately developed elevated blood levels of a marker that indicates slight gastrointestinal leakage.
Physiologically, it makes sense that exercise would affect the intestines as it does, since, during prolonged exertion, digestion becomes a luxury, said Dr. Kim van Wijck, currently a surgical resident at Orbis Medical Center in the Netherlands, who led the small study. So the blood that normally would flow to the small intestine is instead diverted to laboring muscles. Starved of blood, some of the cells lining the intestines are traumatized and start to leak.
Thankfully, the damage seems to be short-lived, Dr. van Wijck said. Her research has shown that within an hour after a cyclist finished riding, the stressed intestines returned to normal.
But the most common side-effect of ibuprofen is gastrointestinal damage. And since many athletes take the drug for pain before and after a workout, Dr. van Wijck set out to determine the combined effect of exercise and ibuprofen.
For the new study, published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands recruited nine healthy, active men and had them visit the university's human performance lab four times.
During two of the visits, the men rested languorously for an hour, although before one of the visits, they swallowed 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and also the morning of their trip to the lab. (Four hundred milligrams is the recommended non-prescription dosage for adults using the drug to treat headaches or other minor pain.)
During the remaining visits, the men briskly rode stationary bicycles for that same hour. Before one of those rides, though, they again took 400 milligrams of ibuprofen the night before and the morning of their workout.
At the end of each rest or ride, researchers drew blood to check whether the men's small intestines were leaking. Dr. van Wijck found that blood levels of a protein indicating intestinal leakage were, in fact, much higher when the men combined bike riding with ibuprofen than during the other experimental conditions when they rode or took ibuprofen alone. Notably, the protein levels remained elevated several hours after exercise and ibuprofen.
The health implications of this finding are not yet clear, although they are worrying, Dr. van Wijck said. It may be that if someone uses ibuprofen before every exercise session for a year or more, she said, "intestinal integrity might be compromised." In that case, small amounts of bacteria and digestive enzymes could leak regularly into the bloodstream.
More immediately, if less graphically, the absorption of nutrients could be compromised, especially after exercise, Dr. van Wijck said, which could affect the ability of tired muscles to resupply themselves with fuel and regenerate.
The research looks specifically at prophylactic use of ibuprofen and does not address the risks and benefits of ibuprofen after an injury occurs. Short-term use of Ibuprofen for injury is generally considered appropriate.
Meanwhile, the Dutch study is not the first to find damage from combining exercise and ibuprofen. Earlier work has shown that frequent use of the drug before and during workouts also can lead to colonic seepage. In a famous study from a few years ago, researchers found that runners at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run who were regular ibuprofen users had small amounts of colonic bacteria in their bloodstream.
Ironically, this bacterial incursion resulted in "higher levels of systemic inflammation," said David C. Nieman, a professor of health and exercise science at Appalachian State University who conducted the study and is himself an ultramarathoner. In other words, the ultramarathon racers who frequently used ibuprofen, an anti-inflammatory, wound up with higher overall levels of bodily inflammation. They also reported being just as sore after the race as runners who had not taken ibuprofen.
Animal studies have also shown that ibuprofen hampers the ability of muscles to rebuild themselves after exercise. So why do so many athletes continue enthusiastically to swallow large and frequent doses of ibuprofen and related anti-inflammatory painkillers, including aspirin, before and during exercise?
"The idea is just entrenched in the athletic community that ibuprofen will help you to train better and harder," Dr. Nieman said. "But that belief is simply not true. There is no scientifically valid reason to use ibuprofen before exercise and many reasons to avoid it."
Dr. van Wijck agrees. "We do not yet know what the long-term consequences are" of regularly mixing exercise and ibuprofen, she said. But it is clear that "ibuprofen consumption by athletes is not harmless and should be strongly discouraged."

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