Aya's 14th Birthday

My daughter, Aya, turned 14 today. Congratulations.

She and I went shopping together to get her birthday presents. What I knew today is she is really into South Korea wave, so called "Hanryu." I am not sure why it's called Hanryu, not Kanryu, although it does not matter to us at all.

She was so excited while shopping with me. She is in the midst of being a teenager, where, in general, they want to be independent from their parents and want to go out with their friends. Today, she is different, just like an elementary school girl. We enjoyed hanging around and shopping with hands holding. 

It seems like she is a big fan of a pop group, TWICE. The unit is composed of seven young, beautiful ladies. More important, three of all are Korean, three are Japanese, and the last one is Taiwanese. What a wonderful combination. The majority of Japanese people do not agree there is a good relationship between South Korea and Japan.

This is, however, unlikely to be the case among teenagers including my daughter. I really hope they foster good relations to our neighboring countries, since we have a lot in common.

Anyway, happy birthday, my dear daughter. Maintain an attitude of enjoying all of you.

The 65th JCC

The 65th Scientific Session of Japanese College of Cardiology was held in my town, Osaka, Japan. I am honored to make a lecture, which title was "Basic heart sounds."

This annual session is one of the biggest meetings for cardiologist in Japan. More importantly, this conference was established to originally discuss heart sounds. In this context, the session I attended was a main stream of the scientific conference. The other three speakers in the session are well known in this filed.

I arrived at the conference room 30 minutes before the meeting started. I was overwhelmed to see lots of audience waiting in the conference room, although other rooms seemed almost empty.

One of my concerns is whether the sound files of my data work well; my presentation was full of various heart sounds. Luckily, I did a good job without any trouble during my presentation. What made me feel happy was that some doctors came to me and praised my lecture after the presentation.

A few days later, one doctor, who have good knowledge about auscultation, told me that my lecture was the most amazing in the session. I know she might have flattered me, but I was really satisfied.

I have to say I have one regret. I asked my colleague to take pictures of me during the lecture, since this experience would not occur to me again. However, he had forgotten!  I have no idea about the reason he failed, but I hope he was too be impressed by my lecture to take a shot.

As you can guess, I might be kind of an optimist.