My Bicycle Commuting - Imagine some of these car drivers ride a bicycle instead

Slow traffic along Tanglin Road is common in the peak hours. It always feel good to ride pass cars in jams :)

(20140108)

My cycling in Singapore experiences - Why not ride to work?

I read a new nicely written e-book, LET’S BIKE TO WORK, SINGAPORE: A QUICK START GUIDE by Calvin Boo. In it there is a list of reasons why many cyclists think they cannot cycle to work. I would like to share my views on them here.

Why [Not] Ride To Work?

Ten and more reasons …

Start a conversation with any cyclist and most can churn up at least ten reasons why they cannot cycle to work: 

on Evidence Based Medicine

Medicine or drug? Western? The ideal or your ideal body temperature? Diagnosis = guesses? Below are some of my quick comments on the above.

Get Back On The Bicycle Saddle | Men's Health Singapore

Get Back On The Bicycle Saddle | Men's Health Singapore

Indeed, cycling can be fat burning or not. For commuting purpose, cycling is between walking and brisk walking. Thus, one can choose to sweat less or more.

Recently I re-started cycling longer distances (~10 km per trip) for 2 trips per week and I think my weight is down by 3-5 kg.

Is number of disabled people moving around related to developed-ness

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of NMEDA. All opinions are 100% mine.

So far, I have yet to see a wheelchair on Wheelchair Accessible Buses (WAB) in Singapore, while I saw them during my short trips to Manchester (only took a bus twice), UK and Honolulu. May be, many of them drive, while most of them at home.

I work within a hospital, and frequently passes by a shop that sells equipments for patients, or people with mobility problems. As in many other cases, efforts to improve quality in USA by organisation such as NMEDA will eventually benefit the people here.

NMEDA stands for National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association, but also includes driver rehabilitation specialists, and other professionals dedicated to broadening the opportunities for people with disabilities to drive or be transported in vehicles modified with mobility equipment. Thus, it doesn't sell things, but only their dealers do the selling.

NMEDA dealers help you in additional training or product refinements, if you still need to, after a personalized “in-person” evaluation to ensure you are getting the right driving solution customized to your specific lifestyle and needs.

It is the only association promoting safe driving and equipment for disabled people. Their members adheres to safety standards of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Furthermore, to satisfy customers consistently, companies must have a systematic and documented approach to quality. So, there are the Quality Assurance Program (QAP) dealers, where QAP is the only nationally recognized accreditation program for the Adaptive Mobility Equipment Industry.

I tried to find out any of their dealers nearby on their website (hit the dealers locator and type in your ZIP code), but too bad, I am in Singapore.

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Which floor?

The question commonly asked in a lift. I am starting to answer more often by "yeah" or "ok" or "that's it." No, it isn't that I have been more lucky to be going up with neighbors on my level. I started doing so because I need to exercise more. Thus, when their level is not too far from mine, e.g. 3 levels or less, then I would just climb up/down a few flights of stairs.

The other advantages are saving energy and other people time.

Wholesome solution is lacking

A recent experience on the imbalance of modern medical therapy approach. Son is coughing and some kind of smoke treatment is given, but son doesn't like it. However, as the nurse stressed we have to insist, and anyway, the medicine has already been dispensed, i.e. paid for. Thus, we forcefully held son throughout the process.

Later, we were asked to buy a very simplify and easy to use equipment, which is also used for asthma, for the similar purpose. Too bad, we didn't manage to use it because the earlier incident has left a terrible impression and son is unwilling to sniff it. We are also very unwilling to hurt our bond with him.

Between spiritual/social and physical, I value the former much more.

KPI

Recently I have some thoughts about KPI. KPI is a quantifiable measure to reflect progress. To progress is the real objective. To have a nice KPI is not. If there is progress but KPI doesn't reflect, the KPI needs to be tuned or changed. On the other hand, if there is no progress or even regress but KPI suggests progress, then more important to correct the KPI.

However, very often, attaining a nice KPI became ...
the objective instead, while the real objective was forgotten. I am seeing this happening all over the places, in different fields, from education (test/exams), management, and etc. Here, lets just look at fever.

Fever in itself is not bad.

The so called western medicine is also termed as evidence based medicine. It has its strength as drugs are tested. The problem is the limitation of tests. Usually, they are targeted at a single symptom. Furthermore, may even only based on one or very limited quantitative measures of the symptom. A typical example is body temperature. As time passes, the measure is being seen as the problem. Instead of focusing on restoring health, it became focusing on restoring these measurements.

By the way, 37 degree Celcius, the so called normal body temperature is actually the average temperature. Each individual probably has his/her own normal body temperature.

Finding safe products for mother to be

Do you find it difficult to find suitable products for pregnant women? Most products that are not targeted at pregnant women typically advise against being used by pregnant women. Why is this so? I have a guess ... .

In this era of evidence-based medicine, the need for evidence is a necessity. Researchers conduct scientific studies to gather data and hopefully can arrive at statistically significant results. When a product is not targeted at pregnant women, they would not want to take extra risk to test it on pregnant women. Therefore, no data, so there is no evidence. It is also quite difficult to get pregnant women to volunteer to be their "guinea pig".

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I feel the need to mention that, I did not use it (obviously!), and neither did my wife.

No excuse

For people who are still open to cycling to work, don't let these excuses (page 18) stop you from doing so.

Poor smokers

They are under bombardment. Increasing price/tax, uglier packaging, more non-smoking areas, etc. However, without similar efforts to encourage them to quit smoking, they end up smoking more in new places.

I noticed more of them are smoking while ... walking. By the logic why many places disallow smoking, when walking behind someone smoking along a narrow walkway, especially one with shelter, it is difficult to escape from the second hand smokes.

Recently, there is also second smokes in my bedroom late at night. Very likely it is from some smoker neighbor one or two floors down who smoke heavily.

Can we enforce smoker to use a filter, both for the exhale and the cigarette? Or wear a mask?

I most dislike are those who holds a lighted cigarette but not smoking it. This is pure pollution to environment, burning of money, and irritation to non-smokers.

A bit late when we see symptoms on skin

Ironically, the 7 Cream with Manuka Honey description starts with:

The develpoment of 7 Cream may seem like something of a contradiction because I have stressed many times on this site that the healing of skin conditions has to come from within.

I agree. What we see on the skin is similar to ... the iceberg we see on the surface of the ocean. However, as the site name is Natural-Skin-Health.com, it is worthwhile to make a visit there.

Post Sponsored by Natural-Skin-Health.com

There are many more side effects

To all cyclists, potential cyclists and non-cyclists out there, read this ... : Warning! Riding a Bicycle Can Have the Following Side Effects.

Ego & rain coat

I attended the talk on 22 Feb, "HINDUISM REDISCOVERED: A Religion in Vogue" by Vivekacharya Pavan Choudary, CEO, Vygon India.

It was interesting during the Q&A session, where he shared his wisdom in answering the questions. I would like to share some of them here.

Wisdoms from a talk by Vivekacharya Pavan Choudary -- Part 3

Someone was telling [or showing off] how he has learned so much from many gurus. He finds them mainly teaching ways to get rid of ego. He was talking for quite long time.

When the speaker finally has the turn to speak, the first statement was roughly saying that all his teachers don't qualified to be gurus. Ego is something that you cannot get rid of. Ego is ... like rain coat, keep it at home, use it only when necessary.

I think this applies to many other things such as anger, unhappiness, desires, etc. How to manage them is the way, while getting rid of them is an illusion.

Similarly, relating to health, we need to learn and be trained to live with and overcome sickness, bacteria, virus, fever, pain, etc. instead of finding ways to live without them. In recent episodes of the drama series Heroes, the cheer leader (what's her name?) with never die capability was complaining that she doesn't feel pain after Syler opened her brain. Then, later, during an eclipse when all lost their special capabilities, she was wounded and later died, not directly from the wound, but from infections. Why? The nurse/doctors asked why she doesn't seem to have any immunity? Don't tell me she hasn't been sicked for her whole life?

Part 2

Which are of more concern? Detected or undetected HIV carriers?

35 HIV cases detected. What a mild and unalerting title for a piece of Breaking News!

I loves maths, and thus, let me do some simple maths here.

Known figures are:
35 HIV cases detected in 6 months in the CHANGI General Hospital (CGH) among 3 out of 10, or among about 6500 people who opted to be tested.

What does this imply?

It means there might be in total 35 * 10/3 = 116.667 HIV positive among the 6500* 10/3 = 21666.67 patients who visited CGH.

By further extrapolation, it means there might be 116.667 / 21666.67 * 4M = 21538.46 HIV positive people in Singapore.

OK, there is a bias here ... , as patients cannot be used to represent general population. Thus, it needs to be corrected by multiplying by the proportion of people who visited hospital in the past 6 months in Singapore. I don't have it, but let use a low ratio of 1/100, there are about 215.38 HIV positive people in Singapore. This ratio of 1/100 seems too low since 215.38 is only about twice of 116.667 while Singapore has more than 2 similar or larger hospitals like CGH.

Thus, if we use the number of hospitals in Singapore of similar size, which I also don't have the exact figure, but can safely state as > 5, considering SGH, TTSH, AH, CGH, NUH, and many smaller clinics. Then, the number might be 116.667 * 5 ~= 583 HIV positive among only those who visited hospitals in the past 6 months. Note, this is only the estimated number of HIV positive patients, NOT general population.

What we need to pay attention to is not the 35 HIV cases detected. We really need to pay attention to the possibly 116-35=81 undetected HIV cases! From the above estimate, we need to pay attention to the possibly 81*5=405 undetected HIV cases! And if considering the whole population, there are possibly much much more than 405 undetected HIV people who have not visited hospital in the past 6 months, i.e. they are likely to be healthy people.

What are they doing? Without knowing that they are infected, they are living their normal life. What's their "normal" life? At least quite a few of them have a "normal" life of having regular casual sex with multiple partners, including their spouse.

After the first posting, I read this part:

...many of those who did not want the test were elderly or repeat patients who had been tested before. Tests were not offered to those under 21 years old, the age of consent.

OK, seems not as bad, but even after discounting, the estimated HIV positive, healthy and sexually people out there who don't know they have the virus are still among the hundreds!!!

We need Actions Against AIDS?

When asked about the results of his fight against Aids,

“We have hardly moved from the time we began 20 years ago. The number of infected people has been growing. The trend these last few years shows a jump which is alarming — 357 in 2006, up from 317 the year before,” he (DR ROY Chan) says. Last year, the figure shot up to 422.

And on the question “WHAT MORE MUST BE DONE TO HELP THOSE WHO HAVE HIV/AIDS?”

Three things — HIV sufferers need help to buy expensive retroviral drugs, employers must not discriminate against employees who contract HIV, and three, educational programmes must reinforce the drive for safe sex.

1. I have mentioned before, he and his Action For Aids is not fighting against AIDS. He is fighting ... for the wellbeing of people with HIV/AIDS.

2. Instead of admitting that the approach is not working, many other things were being said, with implications existence of intolerance, discrimination, inappropriate laws, etc.

3. The first two things mentioned have nothing to do in fighting against AIDS. These are about the wellbeing of people with HIV/AIDS.

4. There is no such thing as safe sex! Sex has always been dangerous in terms of viral infections. That's why it should only be done between life trusting people, i.e. husband and wife.

5. I further feel that the possibility of safer sex due to another not exactly related technology in contraception, started and caused the spread of many STDs. Thus, promoting safer sex cannot be the way to go.

My cycling in Singapore experiences - time rebates

This is expanded from a comment on MrBrown's blog entry Oh you ride bicycle ah? No money buy car, issit?.

For more than a decade, I have been hearing and getting looks that say, "Oh you ride bicycle ah? No money issit?" and sad to say, I can't deny it 100% :(

However, it is ... what led me to cycling? time that led me to cycling.

And absolutely, yes, it is FUN because it is terribly not fun to wait for bus, wait for train, and walk another few more minutes to and from busstops and train stations. Indeed, after few months, once my tyre, or more correctly, tube punctured, I flagged a taxi when I had gotten impatient because the bus hadn't arrived after I waited for 5 minutes!

Once, I drove my brother's car for a few days to NUS while he was overseas. Although it took me only about 20 minutes from my door to reach campus, but another few very slow minutes circling around carpark looking/waiting for parking slots. I think I can get to NUS in roughly 35-40 minutes.

I am no environmentalist, or health nut, or bicycle athlete. Nevertheless, I was touched by a Professor in Hong Kong rides instead of drives because of his concerns for the environment.

Coming back to the topic of time, it is precious. Thus, many people are doing something while they are traveling, be it listening to MP3 while walking or driving, or playing games or SMSing on a bus or train. However, most of these activities are not that necessary, and can be done if given the time and not necessarily during commuting. In short, these activities are mainly to kill time :)

Whereas for cycling, it is an exercise by itself, and we are being encouraged to exercise regularly. However, many people find it difficult and taxing to squeeze time out to exercise. That's why during the few years when I rode 80 minutes weekly to and from NTU (my route), I classify the time as part of my weekly exercise time. So, I didn't spend a single minute in traveling to NTU = it took me 0 mintue to reach there = this is as fast as a teleportal machine :)

Nevermind if people want to call it Ah-Q spirit, or creative accounting.

How's your Diabetes IQ?

How much do you know about Diabetes? I don't know much. I got only 5 out of 10 correct in the Diabetes Quiz at found at RD.com - Managing Diabetes. One particular thing I learned is that none of these are off limits to Diabetes patients ... : coffee, alcohol and fruit juice. Nevertheless, these are still not advisable to be consumed abundantly.

Indeed, another thing I learned is that obesity is the main reason for developing Type II Diabetes. At least, I am correct that downing sugary snacks, desserts, and candies do not cause Type II Diabetes directly. Thus, the definition of the disease, and the Chinese name of the disease seem misleading, and over emphasizes on sugar, while the reason that causes this abnormally high level of sugar should receive more concern.

Nevertheless, diet for Diabetes is becoming an industry as I can find shelves of food items suitable for Diabetes. Here, RD.com also have a Diabetes-Friendly Foods section that has a regularly updated list of latest Diabetes recipes.

Just like to add a final note about sugar. This seemingly natural ingredient that is extracted from plants such as Saccharum officinarum or Sugar Cane, as it is commonly known probably after the discovery of extracting sugar from it, about just a few centuries ago, isn't that natural for people lived before its discovery.

Approaches are different

It started from an article about youths and teens getting AIDS/HIV in Singapore last week. The author prefers safer sex message over abstinence. Then, there were three articles published in oppose to her article, all published on Monday. Next came two articles highlighting the issue in relation to business organisations, on Tuesday and Friday.

All of them concerns about AIDS/HIV. However, there are two groups being concerned here, the employees, who are typically adults, and the youths and teens. As such, I question is the approach towards employees by corporate management for the sake of business, suitable? ... when applying to the youths and teens.

Employees are adults. Thus, management won't want to influence their attitude towards their sexual life. Employees are not with the company for life. Thus, management is mainly interested in their wellbeing during the years they are serving the company. In the corporate context, the main concern is business performance. Thus, if an employee, regardless being HIV negative or not, can remain productive for the company, managment is happy.

Youths and teens are not adults. Thus, adults of this society share some responsibility in their good wellbeing and upbringing. I agree that judging others by our standard is not nice and unproductive. However, that doesn't mean that we should shunt from expressing what our standard is. I am quite sure that in general, no extra-marital sex is still the best preference by vast majority, even though many may not think that this should be the only preference.

Youths and teens will be in this society, or world whole of their life. Thus, our concern for them shouldn't be limited to when they are young, although our influence on them will be very limited when they are older. When they became adults, they will be influence the youths of their time. Thus, our concern should also not be limited by the youths of our time, but all youths at all time.

In society, we are here to live our life, and work is only a part of it. Getting married with our life partner, building a happy family, and parenting next generation are some of the other parts. Thus, being infected by HIV is not simply a health issue, but it affect many other parts of one's life.

I can understand that managment doesn't have the position and the need to promote abstinence lifestyle to their employees. Doing so has little or no business value for the company. It is also quite unlikely that employees will care about such messages as these are not job or career related.

Thus, from the perspective of management, it may be OK as long as the employee is productive during the employment with the company, and the company can manage when many of them are infected with AIDS/HIV. How getting AIDS/HIV would affect the employee life, family, future, next generation (if any) are quite out of the scope of the management.

However, youths and teens are learning and observing about this world and what is life from those who have been here longer than them. They may not like us to indoctrinate them, but they are still being influenced by adults in many ways since the society they live in have been built by us.

Thus, as adults who care about the society and its future, our concern is much more than that. We don't want just to delay their extra-marital sex behaviors until they are old enough, but we should at least mentioned that extra-marital sex is bad. We don't want just to reduce their risk by teaching safer sex, but we must clearly present the simple logic that risk avoidance is much better than risk managment.

Thus, the corporate's approach in raising awareness about AIDS/HIV among their employees should not be used when targetting youths and teens.