Many people in our office have been working from home, just like more other work places.A few come to the office often, others rarely.Some of them I have not seen face to face for weeks, if not months.The office continues to function, busy as ever.Work is being done.Classes continue to be conducted, online. Projects are being conducted, or being planned.Research is being done, and papers are published.We communicate through email, WhatsApp, phone calls, meetings online, …Yet we all know we are missing a lot.We cannot simply walk across the aisle or drop into people’s office for a quick question, or briefly chat.There is no more serendipity.One cannot pick up gossip easily.One feels isolated, disconnected.Many things take longer to arrange.
In the mean time, we have been creating virtual worlds for teaching, conferences, exhibitions, and more.Someone recently created a virtual world for our office.At first, it was just a simple layout of rooms and desks.Each person is invited to create an avatar.When your avatar is near another, you can hear each other and chat.If you turn on your camera, you can see each other and do more.Some start decorating their space.In just a few days, simple desks become elaborate habitats.People start moving around and chatting.Meetings move to the virtual office from other platforms.The office feels much more alive.Physically most people are still working from home.But it seems that just seeing others as avatars brings people much closer.
It is difficult to predict how it will turn out.But technology keeps surprising us.Very often the technology is developed for one purpose, but one can use it for another.Others can further develop further technology for better functioning.One thing leads to another.And it can develop into a virtuous cycle.
Technology is a powerful tool for change.Those who have the access and are savvy with it can thrive.Those who do not will suffer.If we do not wish to see the world becoming more and more unequal and unjust, we have to purposely change it.Change the way the technology is developed and used.Change the way the technology is made available.Change the way people are educated about technology.Among so many other things.
This is a truly dynamic dim sum place. In Kennedy Town, at the western end of Hong Kong Island, where I grew up. It is dim sum not just as food, but also entertainment. Something is always happening.There is never a dull moment. You can get a lot of things you won’t get at other dim sum places.
Where can you watch the dim sum master at work while you eat? With a flick of the wrist, he flattens a lump of dough into a flat skin, using a chopper. Then the stuffing is wrapped inside the skin. The edges are sealed. And a dumpling is made, all in less than a minute, right in front of you while you are eating, seated at your table.
In another minute, someone calls out from the back, where the dim sum are being steamed: “Dumplings are ready! Come and get them!”
A server carries out a tray with a stack of steamers, crying: “Shrimp dumplings! Spare ribs! …” The tray of steamers are destined for the front of the restaurant, where eager customers are waiting for their take-out orders.
If you want one of the dishes, you have to intercept the servers. If you hesitate, they are gone, never to come back again. To eat, one has to be alert, keeping ears open to the call of dim sum, and eyes open to watch for the servers coming out, carrying the dishes.
When you order your tea, you can specify whether you want it light, or dark.
Many of the customers seem to know each other. If you show interest, and humility, they may share with you which are the best dishes. A man claimed that he has bee coming for 40 years, since the days when he studied at HKU.
The food is good but not fancy. It is traditional dim sum. They don’t dress it up with gold foils. Not enhanced with fancy stuff such as bits of scallop, abalone, …, to justify charging you exorbitant prices. The best thing about them is that you get to intercept them the moment they come out of the steamer, piping hot. Food does not get more more honest than that.
We were so excited that we ate way more than we should. But the experience is so exciting there are no regrets. We will be back.
Putin claims that he is invading Ukraine because the Ukrainians are Nazi’s who are persecuting ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. He also claims that he has to strike at Ukraine because Ukraine is joining NATO’s effort in encircling Russia, that Western countries led by USA is threatening the survival of Russia. Many Chinese are supporting Putin, admiring the strongman, applauding him for striking at the Western countries to make his country “great again”.
That sounds familiar. Because it has happened before.
In September 1939, approximately 83 years ago, Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland, kicking off the Second World War. What was Hitler’s pretence? It was that Poland was persecuting ethnic Germans living in Poland. That Poland was planning, with its allies Britain and France, to encircle and dismember Germany. Historians generally believed that both were false. Evidently Hitler did not care. It was just a pretence. His real motive was power.
Why does that sound so familiar? Because it has happened, again and again.
Strongmen are obviously obsessed with power. But why are people seemingly separated by a great distance, with little obvious link to the strongman, so easily seduced by the aura of power? Surely, they do feel the need to pay lip service in acknowledging the plight of those who suffer in the war. Even to the extent of saying “I am absolutely against war.” But in the next breath they go on to say “I will go to war when I have to.” Just like the strongman, they mean. Sad, and scary, isn’t it?
Why is that for so many, power always trumps compassion? God has mercy on us.
Went through a small section (near Tsuen Wan) of the old road between Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long. This was supposedly the major trail for travelling between Yuen Long and Tsuen Wan before the opening of Castle Peak Road.
Soon after setting off near the Adventist Hospital, there is a huge, sprawling banyan tree. Unlike banyan trees in the city, the government does not bother to come here to chop off the air roots. Here they are allowed to drop from the tree to reach the ground, thicken into trunks to support the thick branches, which drop more air roots, which thickens, … One tree becomes a forest by itself. Truly spectacular.
After getting up a steep hill to Ha Fa Shan, one is treated to wide vistas. I was struck by how many bridges there are within sight. There are at least 6 in the area. Tsing Yi North Bridge, Tsing Yi South Bridge, and Stonecutters Bridge on one side to the east. Ting Kau Bridge, Tsing Ma Bridge and Kap Shui Mun Bridge to the west. Has Hong Kong suddenly become a city of bridges?
In the 1960s and 70s, when I was growing up, Tsuen Wan was this “satellite city” that was being built. It sounded and felt like a far-a-away place where one goes to visit relatives at Lunar New Year once a year, or school outings once in a long time. Now it is a vibrant city in its own right, and part of the urban area at the same time.
Yet a short hike takes one back to the countryside. It is far away enough to feel surrounded by trees, flowers, and birds. Yet close enough to still see the buildings, streets, and traffic. Pulling away, one gets panoramic views of both in the same frame.
The rain cut short my hike. But not before seeing the flowers named after birds - 禾雀花, 白花油麻藤, Mucuna birdwoodiana, and many others.
The rain also produce other interesting sights. But they do not last long.
My flatfeet, poor balance, bad ankles ravaged by many injuries from playing soccer and the running, plus the 12 kilometre run the day before made the hike more tiring than it should. My feet was a bit shaky and the ankles hurt - towards the end of the hike and on the way home. I was so relieved when I finally reached home, and was able to take off the shoes and put my feet up. But it is worth it. Today the pain is gone already. What remains are good memories. I am so thankful that I can still do it, with my wife and good friends. I will continue to do it until that day when I positively cannot do it anymore.
On Sunday, I hiked the Great Wall of Hong Kong again. I was there with old secondary school mates many years ago. It has not changed much since, apparently.
It is actually an old military road 上水華山軍路 following a series of undulating hill, including Wa Shan 上水華山, running east-west north of Sheung Shui 上水.
Looking to the north one can see, across the Shenzhen River, the high rises of LoWu in Shenzhen.
To the south, Ng Tung River 梧桐河, villages houses and the town of Sheung Shui.
To the east, in the distance, the new Heung Yuen Wai 香圓圍 Highway. Beyond that, the North East New Territories Landfill 新界東北堆填區.
There is a popular check-in point marked by a big stone.
Another stone marks an event a couple of hundred years ago, in the days of the Qing Dynasty, when people pray for rain.
There is another marker of the days of the British. A large, brightly painted insignia of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) 皇家香港軍團(義勇軍) on the side of a hull facing south.
It was hot, but not too too hot. The road is quite steep at some points along the way. Really interesting sights all around.
I started the day writing down the dreams I had last night. Then I sat under the trees on campus, with a cup of tea and a book, listening to the birds chirp.They have taken over the campus since all the people stay away. Which I do not mind a bit.
Today I may turn another piece of palm tree leaf, discarded as junk, into something beautiful. I may revise a little of the book on the story of service-learning at our university, which I have been working on for more than a year. I may do a little more of the fascinating mind-consciousness-soul study that I have been doing for some time. I am reading a little more of the book “NOISE - A flaw in human judgement”, by Daniel Kahneman. I will read a little more of the book “The Master and His Emissary - The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World” by Ian McGilchrist. I will certainly respond to the birthday wishes from my friends.
I am being amused by some of the old homework by our daughters - dug up by my wife just now - which shows traits of their character and talents at a very early age. I may call my aunt who lives alone. I may ask my wife to send some money to Ukraine. I will certainly pray for Hong Kong, Ukraine, and Ethiopia, and Yemen. I may still go running. I will surely do some pushups. … I may finish writing this article.
I may not be able to do all of the above. But I will certainly do some, even a majority of them.
Today is just like any other day, with the pandemic still raging, war in Ukraine and other places, outrageous injustice in many places in the world, including Hong Kong, much work to do and only 24 hours to do them, … On the other hand, today is also unlike any other day. Not because it is my birthday - since it is just an artefact of the calendar, a result of the way people decided to measure time. But because the day is still just unfolding. I can decide to make it a day to forget, a day to regret, or a day to feel fulfilled, a day to remember. We cannot control what happens to the world. But we can control how we perceive it, what we make of it. Today is my day.
When we started building our service-learning program in 2010, SL was, and has always been, conceived of as a pedagogy for academic teaching and learning in which service and learning are integrated, to achieve important outcomes in civic education. We have come a long way in that direction in the 10+ years since, as is described in some detail in this book.
Along the way, we have also discovered that SL can be much more than that. In the first place, SL can help us change from a relatively fixed and closed mindset to a more fluid and open mindset. Normally, academics teach a fairly fixed set of courses with a defined syllabus. Occasionally, we have an opportunity to revise the syllabus, or design a new course, depending on the developments in our discipline. In SL, we have much more reasons for change - opportunities to look for suitable social issues and needs that we can address with our disciplinary expertise. Surely, once we get started, one can still choose to teach the same SL course and assign the same project to the students again and again. But there is really a very wide range of social issues to choose from, communities and partners to work with, and solutions to adopt. Real world problems are rarely fixed and cleanly defined. They challenge us to come up with innovative solutions, and refine the solutions as we gain experience.
SL also challenge us, as teachers and students, to ground academic knowledge in the real world, when we try to solve these real world problems. Through trying to develop solutions, students achieve a much better sense of how their chosen discipline in specific, and their university education in general, is relevant (or not) to the world. Often, after taking a SL course, students come back and say they are now more motivated to do well in their studies, so that they can better tackle the community’s problems, providing better solutions. Others become most purposeful in their studies, knowing better how the academic knowledge is relevant to the real world. While learning to be better citizens, they also become better professionals in their own disciplines.
SL naturally complements and strengthens cross-cultural learning and internationalisation. SL is, by definition, cross-boundary, where the boundary can be economical, age, physical ability, language, ethnic, national, or otherwise - making it cross-cultural in some form. This is evident in almost any Sl course, whether it is young students serving the elderly two generations removed, Chinese students serving migrant workers from Philippines and refugees from Sri Lanka or Congo, … It is also well known that big cross-boundary challenges are correlated with strong learning gains in SL. Hence the increasing popularity of international SL. Surely international SL is resource-intensive, in terms of finances, personnel, and risk management. But the impact is obvious and potentially tremendous.
SL, particularly international SL, needs and strengthens international collaboration, between universities as well as universities and non-governmental organisations. The benefits have to be, obviously, mutual in order to be sustainable. These relationships can become platforms for other forms of collaboration: student exchange, collaborative teaching in other subjects, research. Many such examples abound in this book.
SL can stimulate cross-discipline collaboration in teaching and research. Real world problems are rarely one-dimensional. Poor health, unclean water, poor diet, poverty, lack of jobs, …, are not separate issues but are highly correlated. A civil engineering team may work on filtration to provide cleaner water, a public health team may then assist the village in improving sanitation with the cleaner water, a food safety or hotel management team may then advice on a healthier diet, a business management team may be able to help the villagers to set up an income-generating business to make the projects sustainable, etc. The issues also provide strong motivation for some relevant practical research. Surely, purposeful coordination and planning is needed to make it happen. But the need and potential can be easy to visualise.
SL can be a great unifier for the campus. A successful SL project often require the collaboration and support from multiple departments: the academic department offering the specific course, the academic departments where the attending students come from, the medical clinic providing advice for the location/community/country where the students serve, the finance office helping to finance the project/trip, the alumni office helping to raise the funds supporting the equipment/material/travelling, the alumni providing the actual funding, the administrators basking in the accolades received by the institution, etc. A great SL team can galvanise a campus just like a successful sports team.
Of course, none of these is automatic or inevitable. These are opportunities and it is up to us to take advantage of them. There are SL teachers who found an issue, developed a project, build a course and continue to do the same project year after year without much change. The course is not without impact - each year a new batch students learn from the same course/project, creating more impact. But it is also an opportunity lost. In this book alone, there are numerous cases in which teachers in a SL course drill into a social issue and develop better and better solutions, enriching the learning experience for successive generations of students, building up a strong bond with the community, expanding into a variety of related projects. Some have started small but gradually expanded into multiple teams for different sites. Others are expanding into multiple courses covering related but diverse topics or communities.
Similarly, there are students who take one SL course and consider it done with. There are also many who graduate to work in corporate social responsibility in their profession, work as a professional for non-profits, become a teacher of SL in their chosen discipline, build start ups aiming at a public good utilising their professional expertise, etc.
Throughout this book, it should be obvious we found many exciting opportunities of cross-cultural and international collaboration. These are very exciting for many students and staff alike. No doubt they are also very challenging in many ways and perhaps not for everyone. But they are also very stimulating, eye-opening, hugely satisfying and potentially life changing. Many of the students involved in them have since graduated to move abroad, to study, to work, to get married, and more. In te process, we have encountered numerous individuals and groups who are similarlily eager to connect. In some situations we are primarily learning from them at the beginning, but the relationship gradually change into a more balanced, reciprocal relationship. In some our partners are initially primarily learning from us; but in time, those also change into a more two-way relationship. Ultimately, all are mutually beneficial. In many cases, we create projects, pedagogies, courses, programs together. Groups form naturally and dynamically.
We found leaders every where, at all levels. At first these are usually select course leaders and project leaders. Then there are students who come up with ideas, or who stand out because of what they say or do, questions that they ask, or challenges that they pose. Administrators who ask questions and make demands or challenges. They are the drivers of change and innovations.
Hence SL can, and is becoming much more than integrating service and learning to achieve civic learning. It requires reframing of SL, from an end in itself, into a tool that can enable other important objectives for higher education. Innovative universities are already taking the steps to realise the potential of such reframing. To summarise, starting as
a pedagogy that integrates service with learning
to teach civic learning
Service-Learning can be reframed as a platform for
changing from a closed, fixed mindset to an open, fluid mindset - for both staff and students
enhancing students as professionals in their chosen discipline
complementing cross-cultural learning and internationalization
These days there is much to be sad and angry about. A strongman invading another country for no good reason, causing extensive damage, untold misery, loss of many lives, despair all around. Sycophants laughing at the victims of war and blaming those who come to the victim’s aid, but praise the invader strongman. Racism against black Africansand dark-coloured Indians in the middle of the war. On-going wars in Ethiopia, Yemen and elsewhere.People in power making policies without due regard to the suffering and anguish inflicted on the people right in our city. On-going injustices here and elsewhere.
While it is hard not to react to injustice, we have to try to not give in to hatred. While some of the perpetrators certainly seem sinisterly motivated, some may only be misguided, lacking in discernment or judgement, or misplacing priorities. In any case, hatred does not solve the problem. It will only worsen the problem, create new problems. Hatred perhaps hurts the hater the most.
That does not mean that we do not care about what is happening. That does not mean we turn away and pretend that these injustices have not happened. It does not mean we cite some bland platitudes and absolve ourselves. It does not mean we close the door and live in our own little world only.
It may mean that we make our concerns, reasoning and judgements clear, as far as practicable. It may mean that we stay calm but make our case firmly and reasonably. It may mean that we do what we can to help. It may mean that we take some risks - if only risks in the form of personal criticisms, loss of friendship, …, perhaps more than that, depending on the strength of our courage. Do the right thing even when others don’t. God will be the ultimate judge.
You cannot see them, because they are small and they are high and deep in the trees. But you know that they are there. Because they announce themselves enthusiastically.
It is also because the campus is otherwise very quiet, even though it is a Tuesday morning in the middle of the spring semester.
There are so few people on campus that I can probably pick an open space, close my eyes, and walk a long distance without bumping into anyone.
It is very pleasant to hear the birds, particularly in the morning when one comes to campus. One can pick almost any spot, read a book, write a paper, sit and think, or just sit, … accompanied by the birds. For a moment, it feels like a university where you can do whatever you want.
But what is a university without students? As pleasant as it is now, we would much rather have the students back, on a noisy campus, doing the teaching, learning, exploring, creating, dreaming together.
