Yi-Jien MIA

Oh FUCK. They're scaling back the search for Yi-Jien.

My cousin Hwa Yi-Jien (or Yi-Jien Hwa, depending on which country you're in) went for a hike in Glacier National Park while his wife was in Hong Kong visiting relatives. Solo. Jien can be pretty stubborn sometimes about doing dumb things - like "wandering around Queens with a camera at 2am" (during a trip to NYC a few years ago).

This is different though.

We've been keeping this among family and friends for the last few days, but as of today it's been a week since he was supposed to report back, and 15 days since he was actually last seen. Anyway the story's finally broken in The Star after being in the American news for several days.

Jien is a student at Asbury Theological Seminary, along with his wife Lau Siu Yin from Hong Kong. When they got married in '06 it was the first - and so far only - Hwa wedding of our generation. His younger brother commented that he'd found a woman with "a difference of 10 years [older] and 10 inches [shorter]". Siu Yin and his mum have flown to Glacier. Aunty Kim Guat is a well-loved person in Christian youth work in Malaysia. She's one of my "cool aunties". Her husband, my father's brother, and the father of Jien and his two siblings, was the President of the Trinity Annual Conference (English-speaking Methodist churches in Malaysia) before he got hit by a lorry and died in 2001.

So you can see why we're all hoping this is just going to be another "funny Yi-Jien story" in the end, but...

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• Jien's public Facebook page.
• Family friend Karcy's LJ entries about the search for Yi-Jien.

For the Tongkat Ali believers

This is the worst example I've seen recently of the mainstream media completely mangling scientific findings - not only exaggeration in this case but a complete reversal of the facts. You know I normally like theSun but which ever reporter wrote this story got it completely backwards:

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http://sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=24775
Untreated erectile dysfunction can cause death, says urology specialist

KOTA BARU: Men suffering from erectile dysfunction must seek treatment fast as leaving the problem untreated for two years can be fatal.

Subang Jaya Medical Centre urology specialist Prof Datuk Dr Tan Hui Meng said a scientific study found that men with erectile dysfunction risk getting chronic heart diseases which can cause death in one or two years.

"Erectile dysfunction is closely linked to the health because it is the heart which does the pumping so that men get excited. Men who have difficulty keeping their partners sexually satisfied carry early symptoms of cardiovascular diseases," he told reporters at the 2nd Sexual Health Conference here today.

"Most men aged 40-45 years have this problem. It can only lead to death in two years if it is a continuous problem and left untreated," he said.

However, men aged 20-30 years-old need not worry as the erection problem is only temporary and not over a continuous period.

He urged men with sexually linked diseases to refer to doctors quickly to avoid more serious diseases.

Those suffering from diabetes and hypertension should control their food intake and seek treatment to prevent it from worsening as it can lead to erectile dysfunction. -- BERNAMA

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*bang head on table*
I have seen articles on the same topic from other news agencies in the past (can't be bothered to look them up right now). The REAL story that doctors are advising older men on is that HEART DISEASE can cause erectile dysfunction, not erectile dysfunction causes heart disease. This Dr Tan's comments are slightly unclear as quoted but it still completely boggles my mind as to how the reporter got it completely backward. This is a gold mine for anybody selling Tongkat Ali, fake Viagra, etc.

Anyway...I wrote to my dad about this...I dunno what his and my mum's sex life is like and I don't want to know but I thought I'd give him a heads-up since he's a pastor and people tend to forward a lot of silly stories to him, and sometimes he uses me for fact-checking.

Lots of "tampon"

I found a Western blot protocol on our French postdoc's bench in which the word "tampon" appears a lot. Naturally intrigued, I looked at it for a minute and came to the conclusion that "tampon" in French must mean "buffer".

It looks like I was correct and not only does it mean "buffer" in the chemical sense, but also the computer science sense. (Babelfish is not much help because these are technical jargons. Google Translate, however, gets it right.)

I'm tempted to re-label all the bottles in the lab to make the American guys uncomfortable.

For a while we had Fetal Bovine Serum tubes labeled not only "FBS" but also "SBF" (suero bovino fetal) and "SVF" (sérum fœtal bovin)...the joys of working in a multicultural lab. It's also very cute to hear D (Colombian lab tech) and W (the French guy), who are a couple, talking to each other in broken English.

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You know, I could just go and write 胎牛血清 (tāi níu xuè qīng) on all the tubes...

Leaky pockets

OK I've finally done my accounts again for the first time in more than a month. My credit card and cash accounts are nicely balanced, but according to Microsoft Money, my checking account is $200 less than what sanity and Chase.com say it should be. The virtual money went MIA some time in June - I've traced some of it to MS Money downloading the same transaction twice in several instances, especially for cash, but I'm really baffled. I've looked through my checkbook several times and can't find any checks unaccounted for, so I'm sure it's not some long-forgotten check ready to bite me in the backside (that happened a couple of times during my freshman year of college when I was new to the world of having more than $5 per week pocket money).

Remember my New Year's resolution to match all spending on non-essentials with donations to secular humanitarian and Christian organizations? I'm still trying to decide whether or not to include the $400 I spent on my stolen bicycle in that. =(

If I do, I have no hope of keeping that resolution. If I don't, I'm doing pretty well.

Still have to match spending on the cat with donations to animal welfare and wildlife conservation though...Princess Hairball got some vaccinations and heartworm preventative in May that cost quite a bit.

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I'm still sad about the bicycle, and I still look at all the bicycles I pass every day to see if one might be mine.

Critical reading

I don't think I've EVER seen or heard a better piece of advice on reading religious literature:

It is Truth which we must look for in Holy Writ, not cunning of words. All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written. We must rather seek for what is profitable in Scripture, than for what ministereth to subtlety in discourse. Therefore we ought to read books which are devotional and simple, as well as those which are deep and difficult. And let not the weight of the writer be a stumbling-block to thee, whether he be of little or much learning, but let the love of the pure Truth draw thee to read. Ask not, who hath said this or that, but look to what he says.

- Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, First Book, Chapter V

In case that didn't all sink in, let me break it up into bullet points and add italics:

• It is Truth which we must look for in Holy Writ, not cunning of words.
• All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written.
• We must rather seek for what is profitable in Scripture, than for what ministereth to subtlety in discourse. Therefore we ought to read books which are devotional and simple, as well as those which are deep and difficult.
• And let not the weight of the writer be a stumbling-block to thee, whether he be of little or much learning, but let the love of the pure Truth draw thee to read. Ask not, who hath said this or that, but look to what he says.