This hill, at ~100 meters, is the natural high point in Kowloon. There used to be a red-and-white checkerboard pattern painted on the south facing side to guide landing planes to turn right, in order to align with the runway for landing.Hence the name.
There is a covered fresh water service reservoir at the top of the hill. Standing on top of the hill, one may not realise that one is on top of a reservoir.
At the top, one should be able to see practically all of Kowloon from the east, to the south, and to the west. Unfortunately, there is a fence all around the field on top of the reservoir and many trees outside that block one’s view.
Walking around the reservoir, and asking around, we did find and squeeze through a small hole in another fence to get to the south facing edge of the hill. We were essentially on top of the checkerboard pattern. The pattern has faded terribly and, in fact, covered by some construction work.
It was a cloudy day yesterday, a Sunday. But one can still see the whole of Kowloon under our feet. To the east, on our left, Kowloon City, the old Kai Tak airport and its runway, To Gwa Wan, Hung Hom and part of the harbour.
To the south, Kowloon Tong, Mong Kok, Tsim Sha Tsui.
Many tall buildings. Some recognisable to us. Some not.
To the West, Kowloon Tong, Tai Hang East, Mong Kok Stadium, Shum Shui Po, Shek Kip Mei, …
Many recognisable landmarks.
I saw a school that I used to attend. The original building was torn down and the space sold to a real estate developer. In its place is now some high price private residential buildings. The new school building occupies our old soccer field. I have never seen it from this angle.
There is a lot of construction on the south facing slope. The place may look very different in the future.
For many years, we have been taking our students to Rwanda in summer. We have installed a lot of solar panels.We have also setup electrical systems for hundreds of houses, giving each a big battery, wire up the house, install LED lights and phone chargers.Until 2019.In summer 2020 we couldn’t go, obviously.In summer 2021 we won’t be able to go either.Instead, we are preparing to train youths and students in Rwanda to do it themselves, remotely, and guide them in real time while they do the installations.
Obviously, it is a very challenging task. Our students are learning how to do it themselves. Some of our students are actually stuck in their hoe town, in Mainland China, India, … because of the pandemic. So our students are working together remotely already - good preparation for the real project in late summer. One student is testing a solar panel. At the same time, she is showing to her partner remotely what she is doing. Her remote partner is doing his part in designing the whole thing. They will have to work in a similar way with the youths in Rwanda in summer.
We have to purchase ta huge number of the solar panels and other equipment, do as much assembly as possible in Hong Kong, ship all the material and tools to Rwanda, and then train the local youths to finish the assembly and then the installation. Will it work? We are praying, and we are doing our best to prepare for it.
Authoritarianism is negative by nature. The establishment aims to preserve its privileged position by denying the opportunity to share power to others.It holds tightly onto its ill-gotten wealth and refuse to share it with the people who actually created it with their hard work.It prescribes laws and regulations to prevents the people from doing things that might threaten their power.It denies to others the routes to power that it has employed.
The opposition have to be creative by necessity. A lot of normal activities that can be perceived by the establishment as potentially threatening to their hold on power are banned by the establishment. To put forward their ideas and demands, the opposition must find ways beyond what the establishment can imagine. Due to their negativity, the establishment is normally not very imaginative. That leaves much room for the opposition, and the establishment can often be surprised.
Negativity is inherently ugly and oppressive. Creativity is inherently beautiful, satisfying to the creator and attractive to the observer. Hence it is very powerful in the hands of the opposition. It can also be very effective in winning over the undecided and the moderate, either among the opposition and the establishment. When the establishment is surprised by a beautiful, innovative new tactic, it often does not know how to respond, at least initially. Here the opposition can gain an advantage and perhaps build up momentum and make new converts from among the moderates and neutrals.
Unfortunately, the establishment may not be completely stupid. It will soon learn and come up with means to block the creative and temporarily-successful tactics. The advance hard earned by the opposition can easily dissipate. Hence the opposition must return to the drawing board, again.
Creativity is a powerful weapon but success may still be fleeting, as demonstrated in history again and again. Who will win in the end? Surely beauty, justice and love will prevail. God is just and love. We have to have faith. But we also have to do our part. Be creative and persevere. Love conquers all, eventually.
Standing on Chung Hau Street looking to the south-west, one can see the current campus of PolyU to the left. Nothing here yet on the slope between Chung Hau Street and the PolyU campus, to the west of Ho Man Tin Station.
Let us try to remember what it looks like now. In a few years’ time, this slope will become a part of the PolyU campus, and completely unrecognisable.
Ideally, the new campus will link up Ho Man Tin much better with Hung Hom and Tsim Sha Tsui. But only if the PolyU campus will be open to the public again. Will it? If will be a great pity if it doesn’t.
Many homes and restaurants cook with “petroleum gas” from canisters. The canisters are often delivered on bicycles through the busy streets of Hong Kong.
On one of my runs one morning, I spotted a man delivering one on Nathan Road going north. The canister seemed heavy, and he was going uphill.
Later on, I caught up with him when he was stopped at the traffic light at the junction with Austin Road. He was squeezed between the curb and the big double-decker bus.
I was surprised to see him again at the junction with Jordan Road. This time the space between the curb and another double-decker was just too narrow. He had to wait behind the bus.
In a minute, he seemed to have the junction all by himself when he crossed.
But traffic soon caught up with him.
It seems that they are all men. I don’t remember ever seeing a woman delivering these canisters.
My friend CC took us on an interesting hike in Eastern Lantau on Tuesday, the last day of the Easter-Ching Ming holidays. We started from the tool booths on the airport highway, skirted the coastline for a couple of kilometres, went up to see the Vase Rock which looks more like a dog’s head from a certain angle, continued to go up over the 270 meter hill and then dropped almost straight down to the tool booths again.
One of us who used to work in engineering at KCR/MTR pointed out to us some damage under the Kap Shui Mun Bridge (汲水門大橋). It does not affect the structural integrity of the bridge. But it does affect the pattern of the air flow across bridge.
It was pointed out to us a stone pillar installed at the edge of the water near the bridge - the 定海神針 (The Pin that Pacify the Ocean).
The bridge crosses over a busy channel of rapid, choppy waters. The pin was installed by the builders to ensure that the gods of the waters do not get angry.
There were many people fishing in the channel. They might appreciate the calming effect of the pillar.
A trawler passed between the fishing boats in the channel. Trawling the bottom of the sea has resulted in a lot of seafood. But it has also caused untold damage since they remove everything from the bottom indiscriminately. Since trawling in the Hong Kong waters was banned, it has been reported that the fish and other wild life has begun to recover. But then construction of the bridges, tunnels, new landfills, etc., are still going on.
We admired some of the small sandy bridges, and turned up the hill. Along the way a running poodle ran past us when we got near the big rock. It is called 花瓶石. But it looks more like the head of a dog. So I am going to call it 狗頭石.
Later, almost all the way down the other side, we saw the same dog again, again running up the hill! Apparently they were finishing and the owners wanted to put a leash on the dog. At that point the dog ran back up the hill. Smart dog!
At the top of the hill (花瓶頂), we were treated to some spectacular views all around. Particularly of the Kap Shui Mun Bridge and the Tsing Ma Bridge (青馬大橋).
At the top of the hill, I thought I found the end of the world. From where I stood, the stairs seemed to just disappeared at the edge of the hill. The people ahead of me seemed to just disappeared, falling off the end of the world.
It turned out that the hundreds of steps of stairs lead straight down to the toll booths of the airport highway. But they are scary enough for someone afraid of heights. I walked down gingerly, thankful for my hiking stick and good hiking shoes.
What we learned from the first cycle of the action research project was like a wake up call. We thought if we work hard to develop a challenging project with real beneficial impact for a community in a foreign country, the students will learn to be a better global citizen, with better cross-cultural skills, more interested in engaging with the world, and be more willing to take up the responsibility to address global issues. It turns out that learning does not follow automatically from exposure, not even if the exposure is immersive.We learned that we have to teach much more explicitly, and purposefully.Often we have to explain to the students what we are trying to teach them, why that is important, and how what they are being asked to do contribute to their learning.Armed with the lessons learned, some unpleasantly, we got to work.
The subject leaders involved designed a number of “interventions” driven by the lessons, and making reference to international best practices identified from the relevant literature. Teachers of different subjects took different actions as they consider appropriate for their own subject. The interventions undertaken included lectures on the concept of global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness; lessons on human geography, cultural and historical background of the local community; many weeks of global classroom (3-hour each) to enhance collaboration between students from Hong Kong, Cambodia, and the United States; nightly-written reflections to address the themes of global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness; visits to local attractions, museums and cultural heritage sites; local city hunts; home visit with local families; etc.
The interventions were adopted in the teaching on the next cohort in the following year. Subsequently, in the quantitative study on the following cohort, statistically significant increases were found in the students’ overall score on the Global Citizenship Scale, as well as their scores on the Social Responsibility sub-scale and the Global Competence sub-scale. There was a statistically significant increase in the score on the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale as well. Evidently, the interventions were having some positive impact on changing the attitude of the students as well as their skills.
Both cohorts showed increases in their Social Responsibility sub-scale scores between their pre- and post-experience scores. But the second cohort exhibit a larger increase that is statistically significant. On the other hand, no statistically significant differences were found between the two cohorts in their respective pre-post changes in Global Competence sub-scale, Global Civic Engagement sub-scale, overall Global Citizenship Scale, and Intercultural Effectiveness Scale scores. The data seems to indicate that improving attitudes significantly remain a big challenge. This is hardly surprising given how difficult it is to change deep-seated attitudes. The qualitative results corroborate the quantitative findings. More students from the second cohort reported gains in their intercultural effectiveness, global competence, and social responsibility; and many of them commented on the usefulness of the intentional intervention introduced by the subject teachers in helping them learn from the international service-learning experience.
After the explicit teaching of the concept of global citizenship during lectures and discussions in debriefings, students became more aware of the concept and why is it important to be a global citizen. A student, for example, stated that he had a realization with respect to the interdependence and interconnectedness of people, with implications on equality and social responsibility. He realised that everyone lives in the same globe and now believed that everyone should be treated the same way, and then those who live in a rich country have a responsibility to help those who live in a poor one. Students reported that they were inspired by the teachers’ sharing. For example, they could always make some differences in other people’s lives with practical actions while actualizing their dreams. One recalled that his teacher said that service-learning does not teach that one has to give up your job/career to be engaged in community service full time. Instead, one has to remember that many people need our help while we pursue our own career. Another student explained how nightly reflection could help him frequently reflect on intercultural competence and global citizenship. They were asked to write down their thoughts in a notebook. Not only what they did, but also how they got along and communicate with people from different cultures, background, and how they could help the community. Through frequent reflection, they learned hat it is their responsibility to help different people, even those of different races.
The study supports the belief that international service-learning can have strong positive impacts on students’ learning outcomes. After the improvement actions, strong positive impacts were demonstrated in students’ intercultural effectiveness and global citizenship development. The study reaffirms that action research serves as an effective strategy for teachers to monitor and improve the impacts of their own international service-learning projects on students’ learning and development. However, it is important to note that not all intervention actions work well. For example, one teacher team member devised an improvement action in which her students would bring local school children to a local history museum. However, the museum was very crowded on the day of their visit, and logistical and operational challenges meant that they did not have sufficient time at the venue. This also suggests that any improvement actions have to be well planned in advance with sufficient peer support. This, in itself, is no surprise.
It felt strange to spend a large part of Good Friday studying and debating abortion. It started from a recent study I have been doing on the “Separation of Church and State” for my Bible Study Group.One of the hot issues for Catholics and Evangelical Protestants these days is abortion.That seems to be the single most important issue for many - laymen, clergy, pastors, … - when they decide which politician to vote for.When a politician supports legalising abortion, he/she is automatically the enemy, no mater what his/her policies on other matters are.When one comes out claiming to oppose legalised abortion, that one gets the vote even if he is a bigot, cheat, liar, buffoon, instigator of violence and more.Why is that?
Then a friend shared a video on which a Catholic priest denounced the current president (2021 version) of the USA because the president supports legalising abortion. According to the priest, abortion equals murder. Hence a Catholic must oppose it, otherwise one cannot claim to be a Catholic. He would refuse to serve the president the Communion.
I believe abortion is inherently wrong. However, it is not a completely black and white issue. What if the pregnancy is the result of rape? What if the foetus is heavily handicapped, deformed such that it will lead a miserable life even it it survives? What if the mother’s health, physical or mental, is threatened? What if the mother is in extreme poverty or otherwise dire situations, and there is no help in sight? What if …
Is abortion really the same as murder? Is abortion really the same as murdering a child? Do they deserve the same penalty? If abortion is really so bad, why neither Jesus nor the apostles say anything about it in the New Testament, while so many other sins are condemned? In the Old Testament, the penalty for causing the lost of a foetus is less than that for the murder of a person. Does that imply the unborn life may not exactly be the same as a fully formed human being? The Christian teaching and treatment for abortion has evolve over the ages. Who is to say the current position is the best that we can come up with? In fact, has the Christian viewpoint been affected by political expediency over the past 50 years?
Politicians may wish to reduce complex issues to simplistic slogans. But we should not fall into that trap. While we hate evil, we should treat people with understanding and compassion. After all, we would like to be treated that way ourselves, don’t we? What would our position be if we were the one having to make a decision on an unwanted pregnancy?
Stepping back a little. There are so many other sins that we human beings commit: adultery, bigotry, cruelty, discrimination, exploitation, lying, cheating, violence, hatred, jealousy, … Why is abortion singled out to be seemingly the greatest?
Jesus Christ died to atone for our sins. It is proper that we reflect on what we have done wrong, and what Jesus’s death means for us. It is also proper that we realise what we are continuing to do wrong. What is the point of faith and confession when we continue to do wrong and not even be aware of it? What about the good that we don't do nearly enough of, which we are most aware of?
When I came out this morning, the air was still cool, but the sun was already bright and hot. It was evidently shaping up to be a hot and sunny day.For a second, I though I was in Cambodia.Because that is how it feels like, waking up in Cambodia.And when the weather gets hot, that is a hint that I should either be in Cambodia, or going there soon.
The reality is that we have not been able to take our students there in 2020, and will not be able to do that this summer either. Will I ever be able to return there? I have been going there every year since 2010. I have so many friends there. And there is so much more that we want to do over there. Can this possibly be the end? I hope not. But at the moment, we have no idea when we will be able to return.
Today, I can still run. So I did. Only so far as Tsuen Wan, however. The day is hot, I don’t feel particularly strong. And I lost my way a little. So I stopped at 17 kilometres, in Tsuen Wan, and took the MTR home. I will probably be back some other time, and hopefully I will go further.
I did find another mulberry tree. But the mulberries are too high to pick.
I still have the rest of the day to do some reading and writing. And think about Cambodia and Rwanda.
We started researching in this area with a small scale study on one of our international SL subjects which demonstrated that international service-learning could enhance students’ intercultural effectiveness development, as expected. However, it did not achieve significant increase of their global civic responsibility and global civic engagement scores. When we received the initial results from the study, it was quite an unpleasant experience to see the strikingly negative results on global engagement, even though the rest of the results were quite encouraging. It was particularly disappointing because our teaching team had put a lot of efforts into designing the project for a foreign country, preparing the students for the project meticulously, overcoming a lot of logistical and technical challenges and implementing the project successfully. We were achieving good learning outcomes relevant to service-learning overall, and very encouraging feedback from our overseas partners. Upon reflection, we realised that it did serve as a good reminder of the necessity to not take things for granted, and of continuous monitoring and evaluation. Besides, wide variations in students’ learning gains were observed across different international service-learning projects.
Subsequently, in 2016, we successfully secured a grant to carry out a larger scale follow-up, two-year, action research study. The study involved five service-learning subjects covering nine offshore projects from a broad spectrum of disciplines. The subjects were taught by the same subject teachers and conducted at the same service sites over the two years, to ensure that the consecutive cohorts are comparable as much as possible. The nature of the service projects varied among the subjects, ranging from English teaching, public health promotion, to installation of small-scale energy systems using solar panels. Those projects served a variety of different types of communities, ranging from primary school village children, to households in deprived urban areas, and rural village dwellers. The offshore service sites were in Cambodia, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Mainland China. Data were collected in two cycles, in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 academic years. with enrolments of 319 and 312, respectively. The study made use of quantitative and qualitative methods.
The quantitative and qualitative results from the first cycle of studies on the 2016/17 cohort were analysed and disseminated to all members of the research team. We wanted to test the commonly-held belief that international service-learning facilitates students’ global citizenship development. The data from the first cohort validates only partially that belief. There was indeed a significant increase in the students’ overall Global Citizenship Scale score. But the increase was mainly attributable to the large increase in the Global Competence sub-scale score. There were no significant increases in the Social Responsibility and Global Civic Engagement sub-scales. We were somewhat surprised to learn from the qualitative interviews with students that many did not know what global citizenship was and very few of them reported improvements in this aspect. Upon closer inspection, however, this phenomenon was not that surprising since the students were not taught explicitly those concepts in their classes. Results from the first cohort confirmed the difficulty in changing students’ attitudes and beliefs in a short period of time - teaching/learning a skill (competency) is much easier than changing a deep-seated attitude (responsibility and engagement).
Furthermore, although global citizenship is deemed an important goal of international service-learning, many teachers participating in the study admitted that they had not explicitly included global citizenship in the intended learning outcomes or the syllabus of their subjects. They also made little conscious effort to actually foster its development through the international service-learning experience. That could be due to the common but implicit belief that an immersive international experience will automatically engender much of the desired outcomes. In addition, it is believed that some items on the measurement of the global civic engagement dimension might not be suitable for Hong Kong. Civic engagement may take many different forms in different communities. The tools were believed to have been developed in an American context. It may need some adjustments for the Asian/Hong Kong context. Further investigation is necessary.
The results from the first cohort were discussed extensively in our community. Practices, experiences, problems and observations in the first round were shared among the subject teachers. Possible ways to improve students’ learning in the areas where the expected results were not achieved in the next round were proposed. One critical finding was that while all teachers favoured the nurturing of global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness through ISL, these were generally not consciously and explicitly incorporated in their teaching practice. There was a lack of awareness or understanding of civic learning outcomes, global citizenship and intercultural effectiveness as important goals of international service-learning and how these can be achieved. In some cases. there was also only limited understanding of the history and culture of the served community, and little opportunity to interact closely with local people of the served community.
