oliviatamccue

February is a short month with two festivals : Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.

Chinese New Year Eve, we had a lot of dishes for the two of us with leftover enough for the remaining week.  New Year Day, we drove to ChinaTown and served ourselves vegetarian dish. This tradition is hard to keep up in America, but we tried as much as possible.   Near Valentine’s day, we did a date-night cooking class with a 3-course meal and a creme brulee dessert.

Many days in this month I suffered from stomach bloating.  My gastroenterologist suggests the low-fodmap diet (FODMAP = Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols).  In simple terms, this diet contains a long list of common foods suitable, such as rice, banana, lactose-free milk products, a variety of vegetables and fruit), and also a long list of common foods that need to be eliminated.

Over the years, my stomach complains once in a while.  There was a period when I was a teenager that my mom cooked “bird-nest” congee which was considered very good for stomach. Believe it or not, it was cured and did not come back for years.  This stomach issue came back a few years ago, and was cured after some months of controlled diet. When I shared my health issue, the most frequent reactions from others have been “are you stressed?”  In my experience, the causation effect between stomach issue and stress has not been as obvious, though the health issue creates stress when the bloating pain can come anytime and is sometimes limiting the day-to-day activities.

My theory is that when the stomach is at a sick state, even if it is the same food that uses to cause no problem, the stomach  would randomly complain about. I have this personal challenge to put the stomach back to a healthy state, so that it is not as sensitive to what gets in it.    Coincidentally, I read the “miracle of mindfulness” for inspiration of mindfulness, just in case some relaxation can help along the way.

The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science
by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I read this after the award winning book “The Emperor of Maladies” by the same author.  A small book, written years earlier, when Siddhartha was a young, exhausted and isolated medical resident.   In this book, he identified the three key principles that govern medicines.

• A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.
• Outliers teach us laws
• For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.

I am not giving the book away.  Siddhartha has the talent of telling stories and explaining principles that makes his book memorable.  This book is a must read, whether you are in the medical field or not.

Sometimes Brilliant by Larry Brilliant

Larry has been selected as one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.   He was the  inaugural Executive Director of Google.org,[1] the charitable arm of Google established in 2005.  He became a co-founder and chairman of Seva Foundation, an international, non-profit, health foundation which has given back sight to more than 3 million blind people through surgery.

Decades ago, he went to India as a spiritual seeker.  His guru Maharaji called him “Doctor America” by his Maharaji, urged him to join WHO and prophesied the eradication of smallpox.   With an unwavering belief in the prophecy, Larry started this impossible adventure, which took him to WHO.   In this book, he chronicled how the team overcame the relentless social/political/business challenges to finally eradicate smallpox.   It is not only a victory of medicine but also the discovery of himself along the journey.

August has been a month of travelling for the family, I was in New York for a couple of days. With flight cancellation and delay,  I ended up spending more time in the airport than in the office. Later in the month, my family took a trip to Los Angeles and it was very enjoyable to stroll in Little Tokyo, Universal Studio and UCLA.

A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played
By Marshall Jon Fisher

Whether you are a tennis fan, I highly recommend this book.  

‘A Terrible Splendor’ serves as a history literature as much as a book on the greatest tennis match played in 1937 Davis Cup, on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon.  It was not only a match between world no. 1 Don Budge and no. 2 von Cramm. It was a match of America against Germany, democracy against fascism, on the brink of the World War II.   The humble hard-working Don Budge played for the pride of America while the aristocratic Gottfried von Cramm played for his life that a loss could descend him behind barbed wire back home.   And there was another tennis all-time great Bill Tilden in that era, an American surprisingly support the German team instead of the American team.

‘A Terrible Splendor’ feels like a prequel of “Strokes of Genius” on the Wimbledon 2008 final between Nadal and Federer as the greatest match ever played.  Just that it is hard to compare two great matches, it is hard to compare two books both on the “Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played”.  

‘A Terrible Splendor’ has more depth as the 1937 match had the historical significance that went way beyond sports; and the characters had the social struggle of the aristocracy, the working class, the gay community, and the economic crisis in that era of Berlin.   

The book absorbs the social and historical happenings in the athletic spectacle as the tennis matches played to its full five setters, and keeps us in suspense until the very end.  It is ultimately a tribute to the strength of the human spirit.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
By Marina Lewycka

It is about tractors, and it is not.  The novel is about a first generation from Ukraine to England, and the family dynamics through their journey from Ukraine to England.  When the recently widowed father announced his plan to remarry a Ukraine gold digger fifty years his junior, his two daughters need to set aside a lifetime of bitter rivalry to save him.   It turns out to be no easy feat as this Ukraine beauty leaves behind her husband and son in Ukraine, and will stop at nothing to pursue the luxurious western lifestyle that she dreams of. As the new marriage unfold, it unveils the never-talked-about family taboos, and the two sisters start to reconcile their differences.

I read not only about a novel, but how life has been in Ukraine for the last few decades.

Political Tribes – Group Instinct and the fate of nations
By Amy Chua

An insightful analysis how blindness of American foreign policy to tribal dynamics has caused us many mis-steps in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela.    Alone among the powers, America is what the author will call a super-group, a group open to individuals from all different backgrounds while not needing its members to shed or suppress their subgroup identities.   As the 2016 presidential election result shows, there is a chasm between the tribal identities, the left and the right, and inequality between the country’s haves and have-nots. Could America be immune from the same tribal politics that have torn other regions apart?   Are we doing enough to approach each other to heal the deep rifts that divide the country?

An eminently readable book on the topic of tribalism and its influence not only on the international fronts, but everywhere of the world.