The recent 123-page World Health Organisation (WHO) Report on the origins of the Covid-19 coronavirus was disappointing for some people, but did not surprise most professionals and scientists in the healthcare and medical community.

The Report judged that the most likely and plausible scenario was that the virus had made a direct leap from bats to humans (or via an intermediary), when compared with other theories.

The key theory that the virus was somehow imported in frozen food into China was considered “possible” but very unlikely.

Repeated claims by the United States (US) that the virus escaped from a research…

Yanis’ (name unknown) little eyes were sunken, all white and punctuated with a tiny black dot where his pupil and iris should be. Barely a month old, he seemed malnourished and dehydrated from severe diarrhea resulting probably from consuming “unclean” milk from his mother’s poor personal hygiene. The doctors in my Medical Team checked him and their prognosis was that he would not survive the evening. There was nothing that we could do. Yanis was not responsive to the doctors’ probing as he lays sprawling in his mother’s arms. And they had walked nearly 5 hours to our medical station.

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Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Life is transient. The new normal is anything but normal. The old normal is gone, never to return … relationships, dreams, careers, ambitions and life plans. The new kid on the block is A.B. Normal, the harbinger of permanent change. Ironically, he has always been around but hidden in plain sight. No one notices, none cares about him, most ignored him and the rest simply did not bother.

This is not the first pandemic since we actually co-exist with a million viruses and bacteria. Never in the modern history of man has a coronavirus infected…

Beginning on 30 December 2020, Singapore’s COVID-19 program has progressed steadily. It began with healthcare workers, other frontline workers, seniors and then public transport workers. As at 30 March 2021, 943,307 had received the 1st dose of the vaccine, and 375,605 had completed both doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

I received my first dose of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine about 4 weeks ago, and my 2nd dose recently among the 1,318,912 total doses administered. Nearly 12% of the Singapore population have been vaccinated by the beginning this month.

MY SECOND VACCINATION EXPERIENCE

Here’s my 2nd dose experience against the background of the Science…

Mental health relates to learning how to manage and deal effectively with life. Dealing with the challenges in what life imposes upon you — worry, pain, sufferings, unhappiness, loneliness, grief and negative emotions. Our responses to these determine the state of our mental health.

Mental health is the struggle against reality as it confronts you. You cannot change what has happened or is happening; the only effective solution is to face it with a Wabi-Sabi mindset.

It is not that life is existentially imperfect. Life is just life. Our hopes oft-times that it can be definitely better make us shout…

It’s morning after his funeral yesterday. Yesterday’s feelings continue to echo. The mourning lingers. Grief comes and went in waves. Hope was in the air. We were not afraid. He has prepared us well for the future without him.

Lee Kuan Yew died on 23 March 2015 at 91 years old. Within 10 years after our independence from Malaysia in 1965, Lee transformed a Third World Singapore into a First World modern nation par none, characterized by economic prosperity, law and order, national security, housing for all, world-class education and full employment with social justice, with continuing prosperity over the…

Today in 2015;

The Funeral of Lee Kuan Yew,

Founder and Father of Singapore

And all Singaporeans;

Rains poured from the skies from the early morn,

Restrained for the past 6 days when he passed;

Washing the streets ahead of his procession

From Parliament House passing City Hall

Along the Padang to Trade Union House,

Through Bukit Merah, Queenstown, Commonweath

Before reaching University Concert Centre at Kent Ridge.

PROLOGUE

Tibet before 1959 was a feudal serf society. The serfs had no freedom, no land, and were often hungry. The democratic reform abolished serfdom and enabled millions of serfs to master their own life.

The impoverished population in the region dropped from 590,000 in 2015 to 150,000 in 2018. The net annual income of rural residents has reached 10,330 yuan (US$1,540) per person by 2017, a 13.6-percent increase year-on-year. The region’s GDP more than doubled in six years to 131 billion yuan (US$19.5 billion) in 2017, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) eradicated absolute…