Ramen

Yesterday, I was craving Ramen. So, after work and on my way home, my wife and I went to a well-known Ramen restaurant. We were surprised to see dozens of people standing and waiting in line for the Ramen but it never discouraged us. Ramen is terrific for me.

 

Ramen is a Japanese word. It is a kind of noodles. I guess that it originated in China and was developed in Japan. Ramen is quite popular regardless of age and gender in Japan.

Ramen consists of three essential elements: noodles, soup, and toppings. These are generally served together in a single bowl, as shown in the picture - I took that yesterday.

In my opinion, the quality of Ramen is assessed by the combination of the three essential elements. The taste would be be undistinguished if each ingredient is excellent but the combination is awful.

Of course, we should remember that there is no accounting for tastes. Actually, between me and my wife, there were differences in rating of the Ramen we ate yesterday. There is no definite way to estimate Ramen. It is not book reviews or Internet ranking that counts. The point is, the best Ramen for you is one that you think the taste is No.1.

Medical article

Here are two sample sentences. Which is your preference?

Sample A
An increased body wight was associated with an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes.

Sample B
Obese people with high blood glucose had heart disease more frequently.

The answer may be different on a situation to situation basis. Basically, these two sentences have the same meaning, but sound differently. I was taught to make a sentence like Sample A but not Sample B when I write a medical article. I believe that the same goes with almost all fields of science.

Some might insist that Sample A is more accurate than Sample B, although Sample B is easier to figure out in practice. I used to think so, but recently, I have been wondering whether the difference between Samples A and B should be considered academically significant.

I believe that articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is the top journal in clinical medicine, can be a good role model on how to write scientific articles. According to my experience of the journal for more that 15 years, the trend seems to favor Sample B, although most sentences are still in an area of Sample A.

Simple is best. This is what my mentor told me when writing manuscripts. In my opinion, academics tend to like using difficult words to understand in addition to jargon. I would not be happy if I were such a person. So, I have to keep this golden rule in mind: the easier it is, the more it works.

Favicon

It was just last month when I heard of the word "favicon." My response was "what in the world is it?"

A favicon is an iconic symbol referring to a website. Let me show you a round-shaped, red fish as below. I made it by myself. It was vary easy to create, taking 10 minutes or less.

 

You can find the same image at the top of your screen (not in the right-side bar). As you guess, small images on the tabs of browsers are called favicons. I would say that a favicon is very useful in encouraging you to visit the website again. I am going to omit the detailed explanation because more informative websites than my explanation are available, e.g., Wikipedia.

My colleague told me that my blog's favicon was fantabulous and no doubt better than Google's favicon that has been recently released.

All I wish is that the word of favicon is getting more and more popular since it may be too cute to miss. From now on, you can pay more attention on a favicon.

Operation

I am a doctor, cardiologist, and often perform operation, such as angioplasty or pacemaker implantation, for patients with heart disease. Operation is going to be today's topic on my blog, but it is not associated with my career. Today is the day for my mother to be scheduled to undergo orthopedic surgery.

My mom was a very active person. She enjoyed swimming over 1,000 m almost every day, but recently prefers indoor activities because of pain in the legs. A diagnosis of lumbar canal stenosis was made in the hospital where my big brother works. She told me that she has tried some alternative treatments, e.g., herbal medicine or acupuncture, with little improvement

I am not sure that I am familiar with the field of orthopedics, but I have no worries because my mother's surgeon is a close friend of my brother and an experienced orthopedist. What a relief! Complications cannot be completely avoided when it comes to surgery, but I believe that her operative course is uneventful.

In general, people think that a successful operation can be confirmed at the end of surgery. However, I disagree with this concept. Whether operation is completed successfully or not depends on the operation itself as well as the postoperative course. There are some serious complications that could develop days later. Make sure that patients and their relatives have to wait and see until the patient is discharged from the hospital in a stable condition.

I am looking forward to the moment though doctors including me are not patient.

HTML

Have you ever heard of the word of "HTML"? If you are already familiar with HTML, I recommend that you spend your time more productively instead of reading today's my blog. Just to let you know, HTML stands for hyper text markup language, and is a basic language that is used for creating websites. Sample HTML descriptions, partially quoted from Yahoo.com, are below. 

<div class="bg-container">
   <button class="intl-selectorfull" aria-haspopup="true"> 
      <span class="ti pos-a">Select Country Site</span> 
   </button>
</div>

Some two years ago, I was determined to create a web content regarding electrocardiography (ECG) for less-experienced medical staff, but I had next to nothing about how to write a computer program or HTML. Looking back, I used to handle simple codes as a high school student, but my skills as a software engineer, if any, were not associated with HTML, and all of them has already evaporated from my head.

My idea about an ECG website was proposed to our hospital but unfortunately, and as anticipated, has been denied due to lack of a budget. It would cost a few million yen or 20,000 to 30,000 dollars to have a program made by outsourcing. Almost sounds like that I had no other way but to give up my idea. Of course, I had no intention of surrendering!

To make my ideas into a reality, I started to learn HTML by myself. Luckily, a bunch of information on the Internet enabled me to become a self-taught software engineer. Now I am able to write standard source codes, although it is still difficult to make complicated, sophisticated ones without any help. I would say that the barrier of HTML is not as undefeatable as you think that it would be. You can do it as long as you keep on HTML.

Electrocardiography

I am a cardiologist and quite used to reading an electrocardiogram or ECG. Actually, I have been in charge of teaching ECG to young doctors in our hospital for more than 15 years. Believe it or not, however, it is true that cardiologists do not always have a good ability to interpret ECGs. I thought that I had had a good knowledge regarding ECGs, but I have realized during the process of ECG education that my expertise was not competent. Let me make sure that the world of ECG is so deep that mastering ECG is quite a challenge even to an experienced cardiologist. No wonder I am still learning.

In my hospital, an ECG conference is held every Wednesday and I have managed to operate the meeting. One day, a young doctor in his twenties told me that the conference was informative but not so convenient due to the time schedule. He complained that there were a lot of things on his plate on Wednesdays. This made me decide to create a website where you can learn ECG anytime and anywhere. If you are interested in the field of ECG, why don't you click here? No charge is required!

Software engineer

I am curious about the situation of being a software engineer, whose job is simple, e.g., just to write a program, but very important because modern devices such as iPad and iPhone would not work well without appropriate software. It seems like that competent programmers have been short-handed and they would be in more and more demand in the future. In this context, it is no wonder that Millennial generation is expected to be good candidates for talented programmers since they are "natural internet users." They were born in the situation of which the Internet has been available. Surprisingly, my 8-year-old son is capable of handling with my iPad and Internet surfing without any help.

If you are interested in the field of software engineering, I encourage you to listen to a Podcast "Rebuild" by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, who is a Japanese programmer and has lived in San Francisco for about 10 years. You can enjoy his chats with his colleagues about tech, software development, gadgets, and, once in a while, Japanese anime. Maybe the Japanese are limited with his Podcast because they speak only in Japanese on the Rebuild. Those who are fluent in Japanese language may have fun with this Podcast, but I have to confess that some parts of the Podcast are still difficult for me, a native Japanese speaker, to understand because of a bunch of technical terms and Internet slang words. It has, however, never ceased to fascinate me. Good luck with Rebuild and Mr. Miyagawa.

First submission

I decided to start my blog, with no specific reason, just 20 minutes before, when I was eating breakfast with my family as usual on weekends. The title of my blog "A school of fish swimming under thistles" comes from the phrase that I read on the newspaper a few days ago. I have never heard of this sentence; it may be a well-known proverb originating from ancient China. It basically means that we should not live only for ourselves but try to contribute to the society that we are all part of. I was in a stressful situation with my daily work at that time, but getting to feel well after I came across this phrase. Since then, I always try to remember it to control my emotions.

The goal of my blog remains unclear, but it would be cool if I would be impressed when looking back my first submission years later.