As the Head of any United World College will tell you, there is no such thing as a week that is not busy.  And most of us would not want it any other way!

Nonetheless, this past week would be a strong contender for my busiest week of the year - as is the case every year in the last week of April.  The reason is that 1st May is the annual deadline by which UWC Selection Committees around the world must notify us of their nominations for new students to come to us in the following September.

So, wearing my hat as Li Po Chun UWC’s admissions director, I have been processing and approving tens of application forms in a huge range of formats and languages from all parts of the world that have been submitted in time to meet the May 1st deadline.  That job is far from complete, as I know there will be another rush of “just slightly late” applications during the coming week which will have be juggled around all the normal tasks of running a school, teaching classes, preparing board reports, and so on.

At the same time this week, wearing two of my other hats (Secretary of the Hong Kong UWC Selection Committee and Consultant to the UWC Hong Kong Committee), I have been finalising the list of students that we have selected to represent Hong Kong in the overseas United World Colleges from September.  The final step in the selection of students was completed on Wednesday afternoon when the UWC Hong Kong Committee met in Li Po Chun Chambers to approve the scholarship funding in support of this year’s Hong Kong nominations.

At the end of that meeting, I was surprised and delighted to be presented with a farewell ‘thank you’ gift from the UWC Hong Kong Alumni representatives, expressing their appreciation for my efforts over the past seven years.  The gift was a beautifully presented traditional Chinese sailing boat, which is a symbol of prosperity since sailing ships symbolise the transporting of richness into a house. 

The boat is inscribed with the characters “一帆風順” (pronounced yī fān fēng shùn), which mean “smooth sailing”.  The literal meaning of the characters is, “Once you raise your sail, you will get the wind you need, and it will take you where you want to go”.  Another way to translate it is “Your sail and the wind follow your will”.  As these boats represent excellent gifts for sailors, adventurers, or people starting a new career, you can probably my delight in receiving this beautiful gift.

Furthermore, as it was explained to me, the way that the sails hold the air and the wind has great additional symbolism, as full sails holding the wind symbolise problems being stopped from entering the house.  Thus, the sailing ship is said to help those around it by keeping problems away from them.

I am delighted to say that the boat presented to me had beautifully full, wind-blown sails.

Thank you Alumni of United World Colleges!