'The Art of Being Home': Home and Travel in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Poetry

"'The Art of Being Home': Home and Travel in Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Poetry" is an exploration of Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poetics of travel and home anchored in a narrative tracking a day spent with the poet. It is a sequel to “Walking between Land and Water,” an essay published in Asiatic, in which I combine a personal encounter with the poet with an examination of the tropes of walking and liminality in her work. Here the focus is more on the motif and theme of home in the poet’s work, as the essay excavates the complexities and ambiguities of the meaning of home, from her first collection to recently published poems. This essay identifies the shifts in the poet’s idea of where and what home is, and examines how it forms a counterpoint to the poetics of travel and transnational mobility that informs her work. So far, critical attention has been more on her relationship with Malacca, her place of origin, than on her self-mappings in her adopted hometown of Santa Barbara. The essay gives a portrait of the poet at home, and highlights the increasing importance of Santa Barbara in her poetry.

The psychological well-being of elderly persons living in old urban areas of Hong Kong: A social perspective

Using the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15) and the short form of the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), this study found that the Chinese elderly who live in old urban areas of Hong Kong are at risk of suffering from poor mental health because of their relatively deprived social conditions. It was also found that the respondent's scores in the GDS-15 correlated with their social conditions, including type of housing, availability of helpers, financial status and family support. However, Chinese elderly people often avoid seeking help because of the fear of being stigmatised. There is a need for more research in the future to study their needs and problems so that social work practitioners can be well informed and culturally competent to help this disadvantaged group.postprin

For the eye altering, alters the all

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An exploratory study on utilisation pattern and costs of aged care in Hong Kong: implications for formal care in the community

SUMMARY: This paper explores the aged care utilisation patterns among elderly people in Hong Kong, and the relationship between the cost of aged care and the health of respondents. 450 persons aged 65 and above residing in public housing estates in the Southem District of Hong Kong Island were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. In the preceding six months, community-dwelling elderly had a higher rate of utilising medical/health services than community support services. Using the standard cost of each service supplied by the relevant departments, the average cost for those who used both medical/health and community support services was higher compared to those who used medical/health services only or community support services only. Using ADLs and self-rated health to indicate the level of health of the respondents, non-linear relationships were observed between the health of respondents and the average cost of care services. The number and nature of diseases reported, other than cultural explanations and individuals’ help-seeking behaviour, may explain this ‘unconventional’ situation. To conclude, affordable and accessible formal care enables many elderly people to live independently in the community. Preventive intervention may enhance the well-being of elderly people, rendering them less dependent on expensive medical/health care. Although there are limitations to this study, the study provides a premise forfurther discussion on assessing the cost of aged care and the health of elderly people in Hong Kong.published_or_final_versio

The Year of the Horse

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Measuring Drug Abuse: The Development of the Chinese Drug Involvement Scale in Hong Kong

The development of the Chinese Drug Involvement Scale for use in Chinese communities.Method: A battery of scales, including the Chinese Drug Involvement Scale and threemental health measures, were administered to 152 students of 13 to 18 years of age. Reliabilityand validity analyses were performed. The refined version was then cross-validated on a groupof identified drug abusers (N = 77). Results: The final version of the Chinese Drug InvolvementScale is a 22-item scale. Validation results demonstrate that the Chinese Drug Involvement Scalehas high reliability and a satisfactory level of validity. Conclusion: The Chinese Drug InvolvementScale is a global assessment of an individual's beliefs and values relating to drug use, apartfrom actual drug abuse behavior. The scale will be particularly useful for periodic assessmentsor outcome evaluation in treatment programs.postprin

Functional connectivity changes in adults with developmental stuttering: a preliminary study using quantitative electro-encephalography

Introduction: Stuttering is defined as speech characterized by verbal dysfluencies, but should not be seen as an isolated speech disorder, but as a generalized sensorimotor timing deficit due to impaired communication between speech related brain areas. Therefore we focused on resting state brain activity and functional connectivity. Method: We included 11 patients with developmental stuttering and 11 age matched controls. To objectify stuttering severity and the impact on quality of life (QoL), we used the Dutch validated Test for Stuttering Severity-Readers (TSS-R) and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering (OASES), respectively. Furthermore, we used standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analyses to look at resting state activity and functional connectivity differences and their correlations with the TSS-R and OASES. Results: No significant results could be obtained when looking at neural activity, however significant alterations in resting state functional connectivity could be demonstrated between persons who stutter (PWS) and fluently speaking controls, predominantly interhemispheric, i.e., a decreased functional connectivity for high frequency oscillations (beta and gamma) between motor speech areas (BA44 and 45) and the contralateral premotor (BA6) and motor (BA4) areas. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between functional connectivity at low frequency oscillations (theta and alpha) and stuttering severity, while a mixed increased and decreased functional connectivity at low and high frequency oscillations correlated with QoL. Discussion: PWS are characterized by decreased high frequency interhemispheric functional connectivity between motor speech, premotor and motor areas in the resting state, while higher functional connectivity in the low frequency bands indicates more severe speech disturbances, suggesting that increased interhemispheric and right sided functional connectivity is maladaptive