Kuan Chung prefers to do many things all at the same time

When Chung was at secondary school, he and his friend wondered what the best way was for them to learn. This question led them to a technique developed by Richard Feynman, an American physicist and Nobel Prize winner. He says you know that you understand a concept when you can explain it to a child in your own language. “Very simple really”, Chung says, but it impressed him enough to read Feynman’s book The pleasure of finding things out a few years later.

The pleasure of finding things out is a collection of Feynman’s lectures, interviews and speeches and gives the reader an insight into the author’s life as a scientist. In this book, Feynman argues that ideas are important, not rewards. When Feynman was a young graduate, he boldly told Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr that he didn’t care who Bohr was; Feynman wanted to know what Bohr had to say. “That perspective on life, being interested in ideas and not listening to men in suits, that did inspire me”, Chung says.

Chung himself struggles with authority. This caused some unrest between him and his parents sometimes  – ‘because of my Asian background’. But even when he had been living away from home for a while and doing internships in a hospital, he still had to bite his lip every now and again. “I’m not the type to look up to a cardiologist simply because he’s higher up in the hierarchy. I take everyone seriously, regardless of who they are. I’ve seen hospital doctors look down at cleaners; but they’re people with families, hobbies and personalities too.” Today, Chung is a trainee GP. He says that although the various forms of leadership and supervision this involves have created new power relationships, he has learned to embrace them. “I move with the system; that’s just part of the learning process”, he explains.

As a trainee GP, Chung is learning about the difficulty he has channelling authority, but he’s also getting to know himself better. There are roughly two types of GPs. One will start a patient’s treatment almost straight away, while the other will consider the situation for a while first. Chung is the second type of GP. “You’ve often got time on your side,” he says. “Many things go away on their own after a while.” This isn’t really a perspective that he learnt from his parents. Although his mother might sometimes say something with traditional Chinese medicine in mind. “For example: you get mouth ulcers from eating fried food. There’s probably a grain of truth in it, but I don’t use it in my work.”

Chung does believe in the power of healthy eating and exercise, but only gets 15 minutes with each patient. So, there’s often no time to discuss a patient’s lifestyle habits. Let alone have a conversation about someone’s ideas, Chung’s own diverse interests or about ‘the pleasure of finding things out’. The clock never stops ticking for a GP. This requires a results-oriented approach, which Chung is having to get used to.

Chung’s pleasure of finding things out remains intact. In his free time, he organises the Science Café, ‘to make science accessible to everyone’ and recently started a book club ‘to broaden his book choices’. This leaves Chung 15 hours a week for sport. He is currently training for a triathlon and wants to do an Ironman one day (a 3.8-km swim, 180-km bike ride and a 42.2-km run, ed.). He’s already thinking about what he’d like to do after that. Long-distance cycling perhaps. Because cycling is his favourite thing to do. But if he could choose any sport, it would have to be surfing.