If Workshop






Can Workshop







Buffet


Award???


Dinner at school for many nights
and i know i always know my mum cooks really wellll



Finally, homeeee



home

May is always a busy month for students as we have a lot things to wrap up, but I have done some interesting things during this time.

HC Workshops

They are the workshops organised by students from Honours College, us, for the year 1 students in UMAC to know more about the concepts and skills of leadership. I am responsible for the “IF” workshop held at 5 May 2010.

You may ask what’s the meaning of “IF”? Actually, it’s very simple – inspiration and facilitation. Holding this workshop, we hope to inspire year 1 students to know more about themselves and also leadership. We also hope to help them to set some goals for their future. On the other hand, this workshop is also a chance – facilitation - for us to exercise what we have learned throughout the leadership course and to reflect ourselves. It is also a chance for us to get inspiration from the participants, from whom we learn a lot as somebody once said leadership is a reciprocal process. Thus, “IF” is the suitable name for this workshop.

In this workshop, my position is MC. It’s not my first time of being a MC but it’s the first time for me to hold an event for 4 hours. At the beginning, I was a bit worried as I didn’t know whether I was able to handle this. Nevertheless, thanks for the encouragement from my fellow classmates - I have more faith on myself. Undoubtedly, being holding the event together with James also helps a lot, inasmuch as I have learnt a lot from him. For instance, he has a sense of humour which I do not have much. Also, he can manage his time so well that he can do a lot of things together. That’s what I am trying to improve.

Nevertheless, there’s still room for improvement in this workshop, for example, the schedule can be less condensed and the participants should have more time to reflect on themselves. However, I am proud of what we did and I want to say thanks to all my group members for their effort and hard work in this workshop!

Press on!

In the HC class last week, Dean told us the information about the study aboard next year and the requirement of certain universities in America. (Although I missed that part owing to work, some helpful classmates kindly volunteered to tell me afterwards.) Undoubtedly, we need to take the TOFEL but I am not very nervous about it and I don’t think we need to be very nervous. Just relax and be well-prepared, then everything will be okay. Nonetheless, I suggest we should read more news – international news – to keep us more informed about what happen around the world and to broaden the vision.

Furthermore, this class was also an honour forum sharing series and a guest speaker – Dr. King Keung Wong – was invited to share his experiences and stories with us. Dr Wong is a prominent engineer and a successful entrepreneur, who is also one of the three founders of University of East Asia (the former of University of Macao).

picture from http://image.wenweipo.com/2008/03/07/ch0307d2.jpg

In the sharing series, he talked about his experience stories in building University of East Asia, meeting with officials from China’s Republic, and his passion in Chinese culture. What I can’t agree with him more is about being humble and courageous. Being humble is really important as there are always some people who are better than us and chances to learn from others. If we are so self-centred or conceited, we may not be able to seize the chance to improve ourselves. He also talked about courage in communications as he said that his mandarin is not very good but he dared to speak with the Chinese officials in mandarin and they understand him. I think this is the key in intercultural communications – it is not about how well and fluent we can speak in the lingua franca but it’s about our bravery and sincerity to express the message.

By the way, my group mates and I also submitted the VIP project this week. Even though there is still room for improvement in the product, we are proud of what we have done.Thanks for my fellows and the interviewee, Ms. Ho.

Last week is another quite busy week for me as I had a speech, a research assignment, a design project to prepare and submit. Nevertheless, I am glad that it has passed in a smooth way with my patience and others’ help and cooperation. Anyways, every week is busy in different sense.
In the HC class of this week, we were taught that being a leader, we need to try to show WHAM, WHAW, SHARE and CARE. They just look like simple acronyms but they all have a deeper sense in meanings.

WHAM stands for Whole Heart And Mind

I think it’s absolutely correct as whenever and whatever we are doing, we need to devote our body and mind to it so that a good outcome can be reached. Furthermore, when we are doing like this, the other members in the group can feel our enthusiasm and zest, and they may be induced and evoked to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the work, too.

WHAW stands for Work Hard And Well

Needless to say, working hard does not guarantee our success but finding a way to do things fruitfully and productively is more important. That’s what I am trying to improve.

SHARE stands for Smile, Help, Advice, Resource and Ears

It’s important for us to listen to others – to listen to their needs and their complaints. Moreover, it’s more important to listen to others without any judgement. We tend to judge others and reach a conclusion of an event before listening to others; we tend to judge others basing on our own frame of reference; we tend to listen to the judgement made by ourselves but not others, when we are supposed to listen to them.

So Reserve Your Judgement and Listen to Others More before You Fully Understand the Whole Thing or Somebody.

CARE stands for Concerns, Acceptance, Respect and Empathy

We should not only be self-centred, but also care for the others by showing concerns, acceptance, respect and empathy. It’s not only about how we say it but about how we do it.

We also celebrated Cathy and Shelly’s birthday by singing a birthday song and sharing chocolates (owing to Ray’s surprises). Happy belated Birthday to them!

In the end of the class, an American stand-up show about differences between women and men was shown. It’s always good to know and understand the difference between people but what we need to be careful is not falling to the trap of stereotypes. Don’t judge anybody before we have fully known them and understood them. Furthermore, it’s not really big deal for somebody not finding this video funny and humorous. You can fully understand the clips without finding it interesting. It’s not the problem about the language but the culture. Without interrupting your routines and communication, you don’t need to force yourself to be in love with every aspects of a certain culture. Even with your own culture, there is an area you like the most while there is an aspect you hate or you feel boring. So I can assure some of you that it is just okay.

Besides, we were also what we have changed after joining HC. Well, after some deep thoughts, I think one of the changes of me is about the wordings in speech. Before, I tend to say what I want and think directly. After joining HC, I become more careful with the wordings in speech as I care the concerns of the others - it may hurt somebody’s feelings or cause somebody’s embarrassment without my noticing. Thus, I am more careful in speech. There are some more and I may share it with all of you next time.

At last, I think every HC students have received the news about Prof. Doris Mok. So I want to say you have my best wishes and I really admire and enjoy your lecture.

In the last two weeks, I was actually quite busy at doing some academic assignments. Well, some of them are enjoyable and funny while some of them really suck. Nevertheless, I especially enjoy at doing the assignment for visual comm., which is about taking sets of pictures illustrating the mainstream value and the value against it.
It is interesting because when you are doing this assignment, you will find a lot of images or concepts in the advertisement are stereotyped or that we take for granted. For instance, only hot men and women can sell the fashion clothing, accessories and shoes; only men can buy diamond ring for women but not vice versa; only a man and a women with similar age can be together and happy ever after… The list can be endless if we have more time to think and discuss. These all form our preconceptions and the so-called “consensus” in our society. Anyways, what I mean is you really need to think outside of the box. This is also what we need to practice more.
Anyways, again, I have finished taking my pictures and want to say thanks to my models, Patty, Eliza, Rayji and Lindsay, and who has lent me the camera (I don’t have one), Cris and Andi. Without any of you, I can’t take any of the pictures. I am really thankful and grateful for all of you! Also, I want to give my warm heart to one of the greatest models, Yummy, which is a dog – a huge dog like a tiger.
Actually, I am afraid of dogs – I can stand with them being at the same room with me but getting close with me or licking me or nuzzling me is another thing. Don’t ask me why I chose a dog to be my model. I just think that it’s a good idea regardless of my fear towards dogs. What makes this photo-taking scarier is that Yummy is a huge and gigantic dog. Basically, at the beginning of the photo-taking, I didn’t dare to approach Yummy and keep a distance between us, as she might have bitten me. Nevertheless, despite of her size, Yummy is very obedient, submissive and cooperative - when her owner or I gave her an order or a command, she would do it. This made the process easier and I became less afraid of her. Or I should say I found her a little bit adorable though she’s really huge. I enjoy this shot, I enjoy this little challenge and I enjoy doing so. My fear towards dogs has certainly decreased too.
Due to the process of grading, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to upload those photos but I will show you a photo of Yummy to let you all know that she’s really huge!

Catch up with you later!

This entry I want to talk about my visit to Children’s Home at Mong Ha with other HCSA members at 20 March 2010. It’s been the second time I visited this kind of children’s home; I remember I have visited an orphanage with other fellows in my secondary school life.
This time I visited the home with 13 other HCSA members to have a fun time with around 20 children whose family have some economic or domestic problems. Looking at them, you wouldn’t find any difference between them and the other children. They are just normal – lively, energetic, and enthusiastic. They like to make some jokes with you; they like to challenge you; they like to make troubles. Nevertheless, these all make them human, children.
What we need is patience and perseverance to deal with them and understand them. To understand why they do this and behave like this. We can’t compare one child with the others and say, “I don’t think you are that sad. Comparing with other kids, yours is nothing.” Every child is different and every situation is different. How can we deny his or her feelings, when we are not at his or her shoes? How can we say he or she should be like this when we don’t even understand him or her? This attitude also applies to leadership. A leader should understand his or her members fully before he or she makes any judgement. How can leaders say their members are not busy when they aren’t at their situation and don’t understand them? A leader, who is not self-centred, must at least learn not to deny the members’ feelings and to be in different perspectives. I am learning it and everyone is learning it because it is natural for humans to make judgement just basing one their frame of reference.
See you next time!

In last week, the lecture of leadership development discussed something about charisma. Being a successful leader, he or she must have had enough charisma to persuade people to do something, to empower people to change, and to make people to listen to him or her. Talking about charisma, I immediately think of one of my friends, Kitty. She is really the person I know who has that kind of charisma. It may be due to her personality that she is helpful, maternal, and visionary that people will listen to her and follow her orders and commands! Anyways, like what I always say, Kitty is somebody I can look after.
In this lecture, there was a video clip about the fact that many people die every day owing to hunger and we saw a family eating the leftover collected from the rubbish bin of a fast food restaurant. This clip really makes me think how lucky and felicitous I am. I am healthy, I have enough food and clothes, and ... I have more than enough. I know I can’t help everybody in the world in this situation but I can try to do my best – to live my life gratefully and meaningfully and to help others whenever I can. That’s why I have participated in the visit of orphanage organized by HCSA to try to bring happiness and hope to the orphans. Last weekend, I attended a workshop about this.
In the workshop, we knew more things like the characters of children and teens, their behaviours and their personality. Even though we are still somehow teens and we have been children, the children and teens nowadays are subtly different from what we have been. The children now may be more media-savvy, more connected to virtual world, more daring but less communicative. This workshop can make us more prepared for the visit in 20 March.
Furthermore, we also played different kinds of games and designed what kinds of games were suitable for the children. At first, I think it is easy as the children only want fun and any game is appropriate. After this workshop, I know that it is not that easy. We need to think like children and experience the game like children; in other words, we need to be in the children’s perspective. Some games may be too complicated for them as their analytical skill is limited; some games may be too boring for them as they like to move around; some games may be too long for them as they can’t concentrate at a thing for a long time.
I really learn quite a lot from this workshop and I believe being a successful leader is that he or she is always able to handle an event in somebody’s shoes – he or she is able to look at a thing at many different angles. That’s what I am trying to do too.
Catch you up later and I am looking forward to the visit.