Passion for culinary art runs in my family. Once my son Vic asked me to write a cookbook. The way I cooked must have confused his methodical mind because Chinese cooking is versatile – he saw no method to my madness! In point of fact, the recipes in this anecdotal cookbook are not carved in stone; they are not meant to be meticulously followed. On the contrary, a wide range of flexibility and creativity is encouraged based on mastering the basics. My eldest son Victor was only 35 years old when he passed away in Boston in January 2010. The news was shocking, confounding and unbelievable. It had to have been a mistake. People who knew Vic describe him as a man who did all the good, by all the means, in all the ways and places to all the people for as long as ever he could. It is thus I am reminded of John Wesley’s counsel. The anecdotes of the book emphasize the fact that nothing can be drawn from a vacuum: As the old Chinese saying goes, it takes ten years to shape a tree, but one hundred years to cultivate a man.” – a job of three generations! When a disease like Long QT is often diagnosed only after an individual has died suddenly, it is incumbent upon us to question why more effective and better means of detecting its presence are not available to us. Our family learnt that the Faculty of Medicine at University of British Columbia had recruited one of the world’s premier researchers Dr. Andrew Krahn who is internationally recognized for his work with cardiac arrhythmias like Long QT syndrome. It is important to me that Dr. Krahn and his team in the UBC Division of Cardiology be supported because ultimately, a family should not have to lose one member to save others. The profits made from selling this book will be donated to the Victor Thay Long QT Research Endowment Fund & The Canadian Registry of the Canadian Genetic Heart Rhythm Network at the University of British Columbia.
