Being a dentist, like all other jobs in the world, has ups and downs. I had a boring day at Tai Wai yesterday, having only a few patients to see. Recently I see 15-20 patients a day, but for some reason it’s just not the case yesterday.

One has to keep himself occupied on a free day. As I’ve decided, I need to improve my QoL, that’s why I decided to do some research on my top priority: driving. First it was the car park, and it’s fortunate to find out that car park in Tai Po isn’t really expensive — they can be below $1000. What about a car? Well, that also depends on how much you can afford. That is, how much you can afford to pay, plus how much you can afford your car to suffer from scratch, crash and the like. Hmm, let’s buy a cheapo car for practice first.

But, shouldn’t you at least get a license first, before you worry about such things as car park and the car itself? Right, getting a license is so damn hard. I don’t know about the actual exams themselves, but I already had a bad experience submitting a form. Two forms actually. Just as you thought you’ve prepped every document required and asked your friend who happened to work in the same building as the TD, you are told the form for getting a learner’s license and that for applying for exams are separate, you can’t help getting pissed. That’s exactly what Thomas and I experienced. Fuxk you, HK Govt.

Having only one patient every two hours, I eventually resorted to reading a fiction. I bought a 亦舒 book from Commercial Press, which somehow sucked. It was so thin, so light. Hey, I don’t need the MacBook Air of fictions.

I’m officially back from my trip to Japan, and is back to reality work. I tried not to use the word reality because I never consider a vacation something of a dream, nor do I consider my work a dreadful ordeal. To me, my job is really not that bad, so I shouldn’t complain.

But the thing is, before and after the trip, I feel some pressure for work. It’s not immense, but it’s there. Every morning when I wake up, and get on the train, I am worried by what I’m going to face that day. Will I commit something destructive? Will someone come back and complain about my wrongdoings? To be very honest, I’m a safe dentist. I don’t do anything unethical, and my clinical work doesn’t suck a lot. But the pressure is there, as if I’m going to lose my license sooner or later.

Perhaps it’s really time that I stopped feeling pressure for work, and started enjoying dentistry. Yes, I remembered about a year ago when I first started, I was less fearful about everything. I had even less experience back then, but I truly enjoyed my work, thinking I was indeed doing great things. Things that literally lessen others’ pain, things that potentially enrich people’s lives. OK, doing that takes time.

As some of you know, I went on a trip to Tokyo. It’s a long-awaited trip — I’ve been picturing it since during my U-life. The reasons that it didn’t materialize are plentiful. Not having money is one; not having the right travel buddy is another. (What about travelling alone? That’s a good idea — more on that later.) In more recent terms, it’s also a trip I’ve longed for, because work is really tough lately that I badly need a trip to stop and refresh myself.

Going on a trip is really a good way to reorientate oneself. When you’re in a different city, and you really leave work behind, your mind is cleaned for having new thoughts. Thoughts that make you realize what’s really important.

In my trip, the no. 1 thought was that I should really learn driving when I come back to HK. Work is tough, but you get nice return if you work hard. The best way to reward yourself is upgrading quality of life. And driving a car will open up a whole new world of possibilities of the way I live.

Another thought, or to be precise, struggle, was whether I should take those exams. I’m more sided with the “NO” side. Taking those exams would only degrade my QoL.

Yes, QoL is the new keyword. My new direction is to live a life of quality. No more compromises, no more sacrifices.

My life is rather in the extremes nowadays. Some days I see 20 patients, without no one failing appointment (meaning no time for rest), some days I’m supposed to be fully booked but then nearly half of those patients don’t show up. It’s always good to have a chance to rest, but a lot of times I just want to keep my hands busy.

My creativity is going to only one extreme recently, though — the negative extreme. My mind is so occupied these days that I don’t really have time to pick up the more exciting bits of my life. Looking at my old Facebook photos really makes me miss the old days, when I had the time to enjoy life, and to hate life. Yes, sometimes feeling sorrow is also a luxury. When life becomes too repetitive, you don’t really experience ups and downs in life.

And when one doesn’t have really exciting moments in life, one tends to resort to materialism to enrich life. Indeed, there’re a number of things in my wish list. But my conscience constantly reminds me that many of those things are unnecessary, or at best, premature purchases. Well, what the hell. Let’s waste some money.

With the recent shutting down of MSN messenger by Microsoft, one of the collective memories of the “post-90s” has come to an end. I was never a fan of MSN messenger, so I don’t share that sadness as many of my friends do. And thinking deeply, why should we miss that? The evolution of technology decides the life of a tool. As Henry Ho has said, things cease to exist if they become obsolete. Who still uses MSN messenger nowadays?

But that’s not what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about another collective memory of the post-90s — Xanga, which is also becoming obsolete, if not already.

I was never a fan of Xanga either. I coded and maintained my own site, Anzyme.com. But no matter what, personal blogs were a vogue back in the 2000s. Everyone used to have a blog, sharing bits and pieces of life. Some blogs were better than the others. For the majority of them, entries were just one or two lines of “status update” that are omnipresent in today’s Facebook. Typical examples include:

開工大吉 :) — Y.C.L.

LP at home — M.M. 31

猶豫…
還是比較喜歡現在的我 — A.W.

Those were not entries I invented. They’re quotes from real people’s Xanga site, which they have long forgotten. Another type of typical contents found on Xanga was photo updates. Both of these are now replaced by Facebook. That’s why Xanga has now become de facto obsolete.

But for a few people, like my friend Ronald, they take blogging seriously. Every entry is carefully written; sentences are beautifully crafted. They aim at spreading a certain message with their entries. Some are moments worth remembering, some are their personal excitement or sorrow. No matter what are in those entries, they become an important part of the blogger’s life, that when reviewed years or even decades later, they still make our hearts beat.

Those few people of course include me, Kevin Chan, who has maintained a blog for more than a decade. (Yes, a decade!) Serious bloggers believe in the power of words, because words are a tool to express magnificent ideas. What happens in a day or two may be too trivial to remember, but when they add up, we can see what we think in that period, and they suddenly become relevant. It is always important to live a poetic life, because only through the process of writing can we filter out the impurities in life, and find out what is truly important.

However, it’s not always easy to live a poetic life. The natural enemy of poets is stability. When one lacks excitement in life, few is worth recording. This is exactly what I’m experiencing. Even more unfortunate is that for dentists, the opposite is true. Their natural enemy is instability. From a shallow point of view, they don’t want to see unstable dentures/crowns/bridges. From a serious point of view, instability means accidents, errors, … We want to see none of them in our work.

So how do I balance my life? How can we continue to keep this site? I don’t know. But because I consider this site a collective memory of all, I’ll just keep trying, so that Anzyme.com doesn’t become another ICQ, MSN messenger, or Xanga.

I can’t believe it’s already April. I haven’t really had much excitement in life recently. That’s perhaps the reason I don’t write any new entries in Anzyme. Yes, perhaps one of the more exciting events of late is the 10th anniversary of this site, which contributed to the last entry.

Another exciting events I can think of is also related to this very own site – Anzyme.com. Well, I got business registration for myself, and what name did I use for this business? Is there any name better than Anzyme that can represent me? That’s why I named my business “Anzyme Dental”. I began using the domain Anzyme.com in 2004, only didn’t know at that time what I would become, let alone foreseeing that I’d one day own a business called Anzyme, thus making this domain relevant. Perhaps one day, when my business gets more diverse, I’d drop “Dental” from the name, to reflect the diversity of my business. That’ll be at least another 10 years later.

Let’s hope that this site will be present in another 10 years.

HNY! It’s 2013; the world didn’t end on Dec 21 2012, and so it’s time to move on and continue our long journey.

The thing is, life has really become rather stagnant in recent weeks. Work is nearly the same every day (except that we’ve reached the “peak season” for scaling), so is my leisure time. I’d really like to explore something new. Anything. So I’m considering joining some courses/start studying F.X.X.X.X.X and so on. They’re easier said than done, considering our long working hours.

But, hey, it’s new year, Kevin. We’re supposed to think positive. That reminds me of something we’ve long forgotten but was once a frequent guest in this blog – the half-full/-empty glass. This special glass has quite a history in this blog:

26/1/2009 — Actually, I have nothing to be congratulated, nor things to celebrate. I still remain the same – lonely and seeing a half-empty glass. And I’m afraid things will only get worse.

6/12/2009 — But none of these gives me the tiniest bit of satisfaction. I still see a half-empty glass of water.

8/3/2010 — Things have become a little complicated lately. You guys should know that I usually see a half-empty glass. But recently the glass turns completely empty.

2/5/2010 — The first thing was that I ordered a Grande Latte, but the latte was so foamy that “it was only actually half-full”, I thought. As soon as I said that in my mind, I realized something wasn’t as usual – I said “half-full”! I’ve been seeing a half-empty glass for years, and I just don’t know how on earth my attitude suddenly changed.. Anyway it’s a good thing.

31/7/2010 — If I look at this in the way I look at a half-full glass, I can remind myself that I just have to keep moving on. But the sad fact is that this, when translated into half-empty terms, means that it’s a dead end.

21/8/2010 — As a grown-up, I have, once again, grown up. The half-full glass is turning half-empty again. Let’s hope that things will just not get too worse.

10/9/2010 — …human relationships are so unpredictable… Look at this glass of water again. Is it half-empty or half-full? I’m not so sure anymore.

9/3/2011 — For a long period of time, I tended to believe that it’s half-empty. But for the past few months (probably after January exam), I tend to feel more positively again.

28/3/2011 — To conclude, while I enjoyed my visit to OP, I didn’t find it a cool experience going there alone. It’s just the better of two tragic options. Yes, this is me, one who always sees the half-empty glass of water, no matter how hard I try.

Alright, enough of that. This is the full story of the half-full/-empty glass in my site. It’s obvious there’re ups and downs in my life, isn’t it? The last time I mentioned this glass, it was half-empty. But a lot has happened in 2012. What really happened that has drawn me into the following conclusion remains a mystery, but I’d like to declare that I’m kind of a half-full guy now. Isn’t that something to celebrate?

Year 2012 is coming to an end. As one grows up, special days like new year eve become relatively less important. Why? Because there’re more other important days in life, such as work, play, love. There’s no need to enjoy life on new year eve. Nevertheless new year is something we should be waiting for, because a new beginning signifies hope.

I said earlier this year that when we look at the many regrets we have in life, we can safely conclude that, while most regrets are saddening, we still treasure the experience they brought. Adversities in life only makes us stronger. Have I experienced any adversity this year? Sure I have. And I kept my promise that I treasure those experiences, because when we look back, when we connect the dots, we’ll realize had it not been for those experiences, we wouldn’t have learnt. One thing is happening at this moment — life gets really tough, with so few holidays we have. So few that I don’t even have an early off on new year eve, no time for countdown as I’ve done in previous years.

But still, we don’t really need to count down for new year. As every day is a new beginning, if we miss the new year eve, we can always count down for Jan 2, and so on. Starting some time in 2012, I began to have a really positive attitude for life. Loneliness and busyness are no longer things I fear for. I guess this is the greatest achievement I’ve made in Year 2012. How will it be like in 2013? No one knows. Let’s hope I learn something, at least one.