Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

A patient asked me why I’m called “New Age”. Am I trying to say that I’m young? No, it was Ris Low asking, but the term “New Age” is not well understood by the majority in Singapore. Does it represent youth? Modernity? Not quite.

In fact, a lot of New Age concepts are rather ancient from an Asian point of view. It’s only from the Western point of view that religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, philosophies like Cosmology, Gaia Theory, Yin-Yang Theory, Five Element Theory and practices like yoga, meditation, qigong, various forms of traditional healing are all considered “new age”.

Derived from the rebellious hippy mentality of the 1960s, the New Age Movement represents a rejection of traditional or conventional religious dogma as well as rigid social structures and protocols. In recent years, this rejection extends to the fields of conventional medicine and scientific theories. Unlike the hippies, modern New Age Movement “activists” tend to embrace a more moderate, down-to-earth lifestyle.

Wikipedia:
The New Age Movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheism through classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, and panentheism to polytheism combined with science and Gaia philosophy: particularly archaeoastronomy, astronomy, ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, psychology, and physics. New Age practices and philosophies sometimes draw inspiration from major world religions: Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism; with particularly strong influences from East Asian religions, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Thought, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Universalism, and Western esotericism.

Calling my clinic “new age” has something to do with my interest (I’m not an extremist) in the New Age Movement, my inclination towards Eastern religions/philosophies, my belief in TCM, qigong and fondness for New Age music which often include sounds from scorching deserts to the freezing Himalayas.

While our youngsters celebrate Halloween like it’s the coolest thing to do, many young Western professionals in the New Age Movement actually find our Taiji symbol to be the coolest thing on earth.

Oh no! I had a drop too much of Knock Out Beer and I’m dreaming again. I bought a horse in Australia (the girl is part of the package). I wanted to keep it as a pet. Then I found out that it was used for racing (the girl was the jockey). So I sold the horse …

Yao mo gao chor ah?

If I find out that a horse has been used for racing, then all the more I should keep it in my own stable, my own ranch (with a decent room for the girl) and not sell it. But then, this was just a dream and dreams don’t have to make cents … I mean sense.

And I also dreamt that I spent millions upon millions of other people’s money to build a titanium building. Then angry mob came to tear down the building, melted down the titanium and the expensive metal was turned into thousands of dental implants for edentulous patients who would otherwise not be able to afford it.

More Knock Out Beer. And another dream. This time, I dreamt I was CEO designate for some company running a sovereign wealth fund. I panicked. I didn’t know anything about managing SWFs. The job was killing me. I was losing billions and people were staring, pointing fingers at me. I had to find a replacement, a scapegoat if you will.

I found him. But the guy was too smart to be a scapegoat. He soon realised that like Obama, he’ll be inheriting a disaster in the making. He quits over “strategic differences”. Whatever that means. It’s just a dream. I’d better go back to work and stop horsing around.