My Hong Kong Blog

The House of Dancing Water

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:56:34 +1000

I am the first to admit that Di and I don’t get out often enough to enjoy cultural performances. It is one of the hazards of being the Head of a boarding school which has its own very vibrant artistic and performance life, creating a busy schedule of (thoroughly enjoyable) duties that precludes much of the participation in wider community life that I enjoy so much.
And so it was a particular joy on Thursday evening to take a quick trip to Macau to attend a performance of ‘The House of Dancing Water’.
It is difficult to classify this spectacular performance, which is quite unlike anything I have ever seen before - part musical, part circus, part comedy, part aquatic sports, part morality play, part daredevil, part confusion, part East, part West - but thoroughly compelling throughout.
There is a story, although I found it to be a little obscure in parts. According to the official information, “The House of Dancing Water is an epic story that transcends time and space. Set in an extraordinary Kingdom where nature's magic reigns, the show aims to take audiences on an awe-inspiring journey through the heights and depths of human emotion; from the abyss of Sadness and Anger, to the heights of Desire and the summit of Joy, between the cliffs of Fear and through to a glorious resolution where Love triumphs over Hate and its sinister forces.”
Yes - having seen the show, I can see how those claims make sense.
Performed in a specially built theatre in the City of Dreams complex on Taipa Island, the show was certainly memorable, and Di and I are still talking about it.
I have assembled a gallery of photos to give you some idea of this very surprising performance, and I invite you to take a look HERE.

House hunting in Houston

Sun, 5 Jun 2011 12:18:39 +1000

Di and I have spent this week in Houston house hunting - or more precisely, looking for a place to live when we move to Houston at the beginning of August. It was a very successful (and quite efficient) process. After a day and a half, we had found what we think will be our perfect home, and by the end of the week, the lease papers were all signed, we had met our landlord-to-be, and we finally allowed ourselves to start getting excited about the arduous process of packing to undertake another international move. For those of you with access to the password-protected section of this website, you can see images of our new home HERE.
Knowing that I was coming to Houston for house hunting, the board and senior staff at Awty saw a golden opportunity for me to perform some other tasks to prepare for the coming year, and before I knew it, my week had been filled with a plethora of meetings, appointments and ceremonies. And I loved them all!
One special highlight took place on the late afternoon of Tuesday 31st May (at the end of our only full day of actual house hunting) when I participated in the groundbreaking ceremony for our new three-storey classroom and administration block that will form the front ‘gateway’ to the school when it is completed in July 2012. The new 65,500 square foot building will comprise 33 new classrooms, administration offices, a new multi-purpose dining area, two art classrooms a digital photography classroom, several meeting rooms and other facilities.
The groundbreaking ceremony included several short speeches, followed by the actual breaking of the ground using golden shovels. I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but one of my first official acts at Awty has been to start digging up a soccer field! Nonetheless, the need for this new building is acute to replace some old facilities that are no longer state-of-the-art, and what makes it even more exciting is that this is just the first of a huge four-phase building program that is planned to be completed during the next few years.
After the hectic week of looking for houses and participating in various meetings, it was a welcome relief yesterday (Saturday) to have a day off and be able to do some sightseeing. Di and I took the opportunity to drive south from Houston to Galveston, a historic beachside city on the Gulf coast. Although I had to put up with Di attempting to sing (and remember the words of) Glen Campbell’s 1969 hit “Galveston”, it was a great day as we explored the two most interesting facets of the island - the congested beach resort (left) and the beautiful Victorian buildings of the historical precinct (below right).
Especially interesting for me were Galveston’s carved oak trees. In 2008, a major hurricane blew through Galveston and destroyed about 40,000 old oak trees. Some of these have since been transformed into carved sculptures, and the collection continues to grow. Most of the carved trees are found in Galveston’s beautiful historic precinct, and my only regret was that I didn’t have more time to explore them all.
Overall, I had a great time in Houston this week doing something that I love doing - meeting great new people. The warmth and hospitality of everyone’s welcomes have been extraordinary, and deeply appreciated by both Di and me. I always think that the most important factor that makes or breaks the quality of life in any place is the people, and the Awty community is quite simply an extraordinary group of committed, passionate, articulate, idealistic, hospitable people with whom I can hardly wait to start living and working.
Footnote: A few weeks ago, The Awty International School’s student newspaper (“Rampage”) ran a front page article based on a Skype interview conducted with me a few weeks ago when I was in Hong Kong. You can read the article by accessing the pdf file HERE (655KB).

Farewell LPCUWC

Sun, 29 May 2011 17:37:23 +1000

Last Monday was certainly a night to remember! We held the graduation ceremony for our students, and used the occasion also to farewell the departing staff - including, on this occasion, me. The evening had an extra level of significance because this was the first event we have held in our new auditorium, and for many of our students, it was the first time they had seen the interior of this fabulous new facility.
It was a long ceremony, starting at 6:30 pm and not finishing until 9:15 pm. And yet no-one complained; it was a spectacular and fitting conclusion to two years of IB study for our wonderful group of graduating students. I was thrilled that as our graduating students had spent two years watching the construction of the auditorium, we could send them away with the experience of having a graduation ceremony as the first event in the (almost finished) new building.
It was a memorable night of awarding prizes, of reminiscing, of recognising and acknowledging some outstanding contributions, and of course, of saying all those ‘good-byes’.
Speaking personally as one who was being farewelled after seven years at LPCUWC, I really appreciated the Chairman’s gracious and generous comments, as well as (of course) the extended standing ovation given by the students. I felt honoured to have the opportunity to thank all those who had made my time here so memorable - the two Board Chairs with whom I have had the privilege of working, the Board members, the teachers, the non-teaching staff, Di (of course!), but most of all, our absolutely sensational students.
As I mentioned in my ‘thank you’ address, Di and I have loved meeting the students, getting to know the students, talking to the students, feeding the students, learning from the students, taking the students on trips, teaching the students, supervising the students, and just being with the students.
As you can probably gather, Di and I will miss the students enormously - but we are assured that many LPCUWC graduates go to study in the US, which should make keeping in contact in the years to come much easier when we are in Houston.
I have put together a gallery of 60 images of the graduation ceremony and the farewells, focussing on some of the moments that meant most to Di and me. You are welcome to have a look and share the moments by clicking HERE.

The Joy of One Red Flame Tree

Sun, 22 May 2011 21:40:13 +1000

We have just completed our final week of classes for this academic year, and despite the heavy rain and thunderstorms, we are currently enjoying a weekend of reflective activities before events culminate with the Graduation Ceremony tomorrow evening – the first public event to be held in the new auditorium!
This is usually one the busiest weeks of the year for me, with meetings, speech writing, report writing, minutes writing, processing the overseas enrolments and finalising the Hong Kong offers (to be released in a couple of weeks), completing several documents for the UWC International Office, and so on. The past week has been no exception. Indeed this year, the week was even busier than normal due to a combination of factors – trying to catch up after attending Di’s mother’s funeral last week, conducting several overseas IQ student interviews (by Skype for some, but involving an overnight trip to Macau for others), short-listing the applicants for the Director of Studies position (from 82 applications received!), preparing advertising for two exciting new part-time positions that the Board has just approved, and working on some of the UWC/EDB review group reports in preparation for October’s visiting teams. Oh yes, and spending quite a bit of time on Thursday meeting with the three short-listed applicants for the College’s headship next year; they were visiting the campus for a tour and to meet with a selection of staff and students.
Like all the staff, I have felt I have been running on empty this week, trying to get through on just a few hours of sleep each night. Our students, on the other hand, seem to have been running on adrenaline for much of the week, and this was demonstrated during the excellent 90-minute long CAS reflection yesterday afternoon and the wonderful two-and-a-half hour long show that the IB1 students prepared and performed for the departing IB2 students last night.
Amidst all the busy-ness of the week, I had to walk from my office back to my home on Friday morning to get a file from my home computer that I needed in my office. As I walked along our driveway during a rare moment of sunshine amidst the week’s heavy rain, the brilliant colour on the red flowering tree outside Block 4 caught my attention – a rare aesthetic moment in a week of bureaucracy.
I didn’t know the name of the type of tree until I checked the internet. Most websites simply describe it as a ‘red flowering tree typical of tropical areas’, or sometimes a ‘flame tree’. One website identified it as a ‘Royal Poinciana’, but that label might need to be confirmed by a horticulturalist. Anyway, this ‘red flowering tree typical of tropical areas’ gave my heart the lift that it needed this week amidst all the work, the tensions and the exhaustion. That is why I have given it the honour of my photo of the week.
The colour red has different symbolism from culture to culture. In western societies, red tends to represent passion, blood, anger, pain and sacrifice – many of the emotions that approached some of my feelings as I tried to catch up with all the paperwork this week. Here in China, on the other hand, red (红: hóng) carries positive connotations of courage, loyalty, honour, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion - and summer. Perhaps the promise of all these positives was one of the reasons that the Chinese Communist Party (the ‘Reds’) gained so much popularity during the Chinese Civil War, and perhaps it is why the bright red of the flame tree also lifted my spirits so much this week.
Our weekend finished with a lovely surprise on Sunday evening when a group of students came around to our home to share a gluten-free ‘farewell cake’ that they had baked. Lovingly prepared this afternoon by Samsuda and Michelle in the student kitchen, the cake was still warm when the group of students arrived. During the time they were with us, some students had to leave and others arrived (typical of LPC’s hectic multi-tasking lifestyle), but we had a great time relaxing and chatting with the students - a prefect and much appreciated end to a far too hectic week.
As Di and I often say to each other, we will REALLY miss the students when we leave LPC!

Remembering Di’s Mum

Sun, 15 May 2011 22:41:56 +1000

Last Sunday evening - Mother’s Day - Di’s Mum passed away.
It was a sad loss for all who knew her, perhaps made only a little easier by the many happy memories of great times spent with her. Di’s Mum was a lovely, gracious lady, who especially loved her grandchildren - which is why I wanted to remember her in this week’s blog with a photo of her doing one of the things she enjoyed most - playing with our daughter Liesl (photo taken back in about 1983).
Her funeral was on Tuesday, which meant a very quick trip to Sydney, returning far too soon to the overly hectic bustle of Hong Kong and the College late on Wednesday evening. Di returned to Hong Kong last night.
Although a funeral is hardly a social occasion, it was good to catch up with many members of my extended family, and especially my own four children and two grandchildren.
It has been a very busy few days trying to catch up with all the meetings, report writing, admissions processing, marking, speech writing, and so on, that characterises the penultimate week of the academic year. I am still running late with some of these, but I’m catching up, and I hope people will continue to be understanding and nice to me. ☺

Photogenic, no - but important, yes!

Mon, 9 May 2011 00:10:50 +1000

It is hard to imagine a less photogenic week than the one that has just finished, which is why I have resorted to using a photo in this blog that was taken a few weeks ago.
On the other hand, events that are not particularly photogenic may be extremely important. For example, this week’s news was dominated by the death of Osama bin Laden, an event that we know was certainly not photogenic even without the photographs being released.
There was a light comedic sidelight to that event here in Hong Kong when the South China Morning Post confusingly reported: “Obama bin Laden is dead.” The paper corrected itself the next day: “In a headline on page A2 yesterday, the US president’s first name was erroneously given instead of that of Osama bin Laden.” As the paper perhaps needlessly pointed out, “Obama” is the US president’s last name. The SCMP then noted “mistakes happen”, like the time the Kazakh central bank misspelt its own name on its currency.
Anyway, back closer to home, Wednesday afternoon’s Staffing Committee meeting and Friday morning’s Board meeting immediately spring to mind as additional examples of the “not really photogenic but very important” category of events this week.
In both cases, some very significant decisions and far-reaching commitments were made for the future of the College, especially in approving the appointment of some additional staff, ratifying a hard-fought and tough budget, agreeing to some building changes, introducing a new Fundraising Policy, and… well, enough important decisions to fill several pages with tightly written, point form summary notes that I will need to expand into a more formal report in the coming days.
No less important, and yet no more photogenic, were the planning meetings we have started this week to prepare for the UWC self-evaluation visit and the EDB external school review visit, both of which are scheduled for the last week of November this year.
We have assembled 15 groups to look at various facets of the College. The groups comprise various mixes of teachers, non-teaching staff, board members, students and alumni. Each group has begun the task of articulating our present practices, self-evaluating our performance against a set of external indicators, and then reflecting on shortcomings and propose ways to address them. This work will continue during the coming week before being taken up again when everyone returns after the summer break in mid-August.
As I said, none of this has been very photogenic, but all of it has been, is, and will be fundamentally important to the future of the College.

Smooth Sailing

Sun, 1 May 2011 23:15:52 +1000

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!

Let’s hope that education in UWCs helps prevent tragedies like Chernobyl

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 23:34:43 +1000

At 1:23 am on 26th April, 1986, the Number 4 Reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. This coming Tuesday will be the 25th anniversary of what most people now recognise as one of the world’s worst human-induced environmental disasters.
The name “Chernobyl” remains a household word 25 years after the explosion, and indeed the recent problems in Fukushima (Japan) have revived memories of the immeasurably worse (so far!) tragedy of Chernobyl.
Back in 1986, Chernobyl was part of the USSR. More specifically, it was situated in the far north of what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, just 16 kilometres south of the border with the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Belarus). Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the city has been officially known by its Ukrainian name of Chornobyl (Чорнобиль).
Stories of the history, the heroism and the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster will no doubt be repeated at length during the coming week, and my aim in discussing Chernobyl here is not to repeat the far more encyclopedic information that can be found elsewhere.
I remember the day when the Chernobyl explosion first occurred. I heard about it in the form of news reports on my car radio saying that Swedish scientists had detected unusual amounts of atmospheric radiation heading towards Sweden from the south. Given the wind direction at the time, they suspected that the radiation was indicative of some form of radiation leak in the Soviet Union.
At first, Soviet officials denied the accusations, and as “evidence” that everything was fine, the annual May Day parade went ahead as usual in the streets of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev (now Kyiv), just 130 kilometres to the south. We now know that radiation levels in Kiev’s atmosphere posed a significant threat to the health of everyone involved, and all newsreel footage of the 1986 parade in Kiev has vanished from the State Archives. Finally, on 2nd May, the scale of the disaster was acknowledged and the Chernobyl area was evacuated.
It is likely that thousands of people suffered unnecessarily as a result of the Party’s cover-up. In a recent television interview, Mikhail Gorbachev (then General Secretary of the Communist Party) revealed that the seriousness of the disaster had even been kept from him for a week after the explosion; he was learning about what had happened through the foreign media! Gorbachev used this tragic incident to add impetus to his programs of ‘glasnost’ (openness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) in the face of the considerable opposition he faced at the time – perhaps one of the few positive outcomes of the Chernobyl disaster, although even that was too little, too late.
The nuclear power plant was named ‘Chernobyl’ because that was then the district’s name where the plant was located. In fact, Chernobyl was at that time just a small town with approximately 15,000 people located about 18 kilometres south of the power plant. The precise location of the plant was Pripyat, a relatively new “atomgrad” (nuclear city) of 50,000 people built just a couple of kilometres from the power plant specifically to provide labour for it.
Last Sunday, I visited Chernobyl and Pripyat.
It was not an easy exercise. I needed to clear several security posts with my passport to enter, and I was tested for radiation contamination upon leaving.
I had spent all the previous day, Saturday, flying to Kyiv via Moscow in order to assist the UWC National Committee in Ukraine with its selection of students. The visit was at the request of the UWC International Office, and as LPCUWC is the only the College to have offered Ukraine a place for 2011 entry, it was really impossible for me to refuse the request for help.
I arrived in Kyiv at a little after midnight on Sunday morning. The selection interviews were due to begin first thing on Monday morning, so I had allowed Sunday to rest after the long flight in order to be fresh for the interviews. That plan changed when I discovered that I could have the opportunity to see Chernobyl for myself, and the only possible day I could visit Chernobyl was that same Sunday because the site was due to be closed for the coming two weeks to accommodate an array of official visitors for the 25th anniversary.
So Sunday – my ‘day of rest’ – was spent from 8 am to 8 pm travelling to and from Chernobyl in a bus and exploring the 30 kilometre diameter ‘exclusion zone’ around the nuclear power plant. The exclusion zone is said to contain the most contaminated land on the planet that will take thousands of years to become healthy again.
It is hard to describe the sickly emotions I felt when I saw the iconic Number 4 reactor, now partly covered in a heavy (though deteriorating) sarcophagus to contain the radiation. Similarly, it was an eerie feeling to drive through a section of forest to the immediate west that had been destroyed by the initial blast of radiation and hear Geiger counters going crazy because of the high levels of radiation still in the trees, the grass and the soil of the area.
However, what made the most impact on me was the sight of the nearby towns and cities that had been abandoned.
Pripyat, once a lively city populated with young families, is now a city of deserted shells of buildings with decaying walls and broken glass where nature is rapidly reclaiming the land. Houses and paths are disappearing as the forest takes over. Even in the town’s main public square, trees sprout through the cracks in the concrete, surrounded by moss that is perhaps the area’s greatest hazard as it holds the highest concentrations of radiation. And with no people, the wildlife is also returning, including a nest of tens of fairly rapid snakes right in the middle of the main public square. It was like standing in the film set for a post-apocalyptic movie, except that this apocalypse was real!

In the abandoned school, many books are still on the shelves where they were left in the hurried evacuation of 1986 (although many others have been strewn across the floors by 25 years of summer winds and winter blizzards. The floor of the school canteen is strewn with gas masks and radiation overalls. In the store-room of the city’s theatre, Soviet-era propaganda posters, flags and portraits lie ready for the next political event that will never come. The indoor pool is empty and filling with wind-blown dirt, and the dodgem cars lie rusting away in the fun park where they were abandoned by children as they left to escape the radiation, 25 years ago.

Perhaps the most poignant sight for me was at an abandoned kindergarten at Kopachi, a small abandoned town two kilometres south of the nuclear power plant. Many of the houses in Kopachi were bulldozed and buried to stop the radiation escaping into the atmosphere, although geographers now warn that this poses a radiation hazard for the area’s groundwater supplies that feed the nearby river. However, the kindergarten remains standing, and as I entered the grounds, past the yellow and red radiation warning sign, I looked down at the pile of accumulated leaves. I could make out the rusting remains of some metal toy trucks, and I instantly imagined the laughter that they once brought to the little children in the kindergarten who were, at that time in 1986, exactly the same ages as some of my own children. And then, as I looked more closely, I could see, looking back up at me, the face of a little girl’s abandoned doll - a speechless, , contaminated, radioactive witness to 25 years of loneliness.
They were just a few remnants of life “BC” – Before Chernobyl - and you can see what I saw in the photo at the top of the blog.

As you might imagine, I slept very well on that Sunday night following the long and tiring flight from Hong Kong and my intense, almost overwhelming ‘day-of-rest’ at Chernobyl. I was thus genuinely bright and ready for the start of the UWC selection process on Monday morning, conducted under the enthusiastic leadership of Olena Yanchuk and her team of volunteers in the Caves Monastery Museum.
The students I helped to interview were, of course, not born when the Chernobyl NPP exploded. They were not even born when the Soviet Union collapsed. Their modes of thinking are clearly post-Soviet – global, idealistic, curious, articulate and enquiring – just like young people in most parts of the world today. As I always find when I speak to young people, whatever their home country, simply meeting them was energising and inspiring - a tonic of optimism for the future of our planet!

And, perhaps most importantly of all, after an exhaustive selection process, the Selection Committee unanimously agreed on an outstanding student who will receive a full scholarship to study in Li Po Chun United World College from September this year. As the first Ukrainian to attend LPCUWC in Hong Kong, I have no doubt that our pioneer student from Ukraine will be a brilliant ambassador.
Chernobyl contains many lessons for those with the ears to listen – lessons about unfounded faith in human technology, lessons about the need for true openness (‘glasnost’), lessons about the environmental consequences of human actions, lessons about the need for humility in the face of arrogance, and so on.
Twenty-five years after Chernobyl, people in many parts of the world still suffer because of the impact of twisted versions of reality that are the products of state media. As an article in last Friday’s New York Times commented, “Dictators make controlling the news media a priority for a reason. For most authoritarian states, state news media, especially television, have helped leaders stay in power by creating a parallel reality for their populations and depriving dissenters of a wider audience. Tunisia’s news media environment was routinely ranked among the world’s most stifling in Freedom House’s annual assessment of press freedom before this year’s revolution. In Egypt, state television stood steadfastly behind President Hosni Mubarak, deceptively playing old video of an empty Tahrir Square rather than broadcasting images of the millions protesting there. Autocratic governments spare no effort to ensure that their state news media provide their audiences a steady diet of regime-friendly news and information.”
With their emphasis on education for peace and sustainability, I sincerely hope that our United World Colleges are doing their share, and more, in educating young people for a different world - one that is capable of preventing future tragedies such as the horror of Chernobyl.

N.B. As usual, all 29 images in this blog can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Two different dinners

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:42:26 +1000

In a very busy week with many highlights, two dinners stand out in my memory.
The first took place on Tuesday evening when Di and I hosted the last of this year’s student dinners in our home. It has been our practice for several years now to invite groups of about 10 to 12 students to our home at various times through the year as a way of getting to know the students more deeply, giving the students a home-style family dinner (including Di’s famous desserts), and providing the students with the chance to ask questions or discuss issues on any topic they like. Of course, it is also a very pleasant time of exchanging stories and experiences, and having a relaxing time sharing each others’ company at the end of a busy day.
In most ways, Tuesday evening’s dinner was just like all the others we have enjoyed through the year, but it was no less special for that because every ‘typical’ dinner has been so enjoyable. However, this dinner was our last one - not only for the year, but as we are moving to a new school at the beginning of August, also the last one we will host in our Hong Kong home.
As a special gesture to the students who attended our final dinner, we brought out the chocolate fountain for dessert, which was perhaps the one and only way we could ever hope to quieten the animated and curious conversation - our students’ questions seem to stop for nothing other than delighting in a liquid chocolate dessert.
The second of the week’s memorable dinners was on Friday night, and it was certainly much grander in scale than our simple home dinner! On that evening, we celebrated the last day of lessons for our graduating class by holding the annual graduation dinner at the Novotel CityGate Hotel.
This was a sensational event, with great food, fantastic company, inspiring speeches from two of our students (Jia Jun and Zakita) as well as an address from a board board member (Mrs Ruth Lau), all ably co-ordinated by two student MCs, Nsika and Christopher. My hip, which is gradually getting better from its recent injury, was unfortunately not good enough to join in the dancing, although as I was sitting near one of the main speakers I was able to feel the music (literally) through every bone of my body, and especially my tender hip, which seemed to resonate to every amplified beat of the thumping music. And yet, even with a bad hip, I felt totally at one with the spontaneous energy that erupted into dancing as soon as the music of “Waka Waka” began, and the entire student body as one followed Ximena’s lead in performing a dance that Shakira herself might have envied.
Every year, I try to craft my graduation speech specifically to suit the special identity of the graduating group of students. This year, the theme of my speech was the life of our UWC President, Nelson Mandela, focussing especially on his example of patience, humility, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, pure generosity, absence of vanity, and readiness to serve others. I focussed my remarks around one particular sentence of my speech: “In years to come, I think you will be proud to say that you were in a UWC when Nelson Mandela was its President!
I concluded my speech with a challenge to the graduating students that was based on the opening words of Mandela’s 1998 draft autobiography (that will almost certainly never get finished). Mandela’s words, and my challenges to the students, were these:
“Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. It would seem that they never existed at all. Others do leave something behind: the haunting memory of the evil deeds they committed against other people… (But) there is universal respect and even admiration for those who are humble and simple by nature, and who have absolute confidence in all human beings regardless of their social status. These are men and women, known and unknown, who have declared total war against all forms of gross violation of human rights wherever in the world such excesses occur. They are generally optimistic, believing that, in every community in the world, there are good men and women who believe in peace as the most powerful weapon in the search for lasting solutions… It is such good men and women who are the hope of the world.”
I hope that it is my students that he is talking about!

Hong Kong’s next young UWC ambassadors

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:58:00 +1000

No - clearly, those of us in the photo above are not Hong Kong’s next young UWC ambassadors!
The photo shows Hong Kong’s UWC “ambassador selectors” - those eight of the nine members of the UWC Hong Kong Selection Committee who were able to be present on Thursday afternoon for an extremely important meeting at Yew Chung International School in Kowloon Tong.
All volunteers appointed by the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) of the Hong Kong Government, the committee members are smiling because they have just completed an enormous and very challenging task that began last December. That task was to finalise the list of 71 names to be submitted to the UWC Hong Kong Committee in the last week of April for consideration as students to enter United World Colleges in September this year.
Three of the members this year were UWC graduates themselves, and the other members of the Committee were selected by the HAB to represent a broad cross-section of interests and expertise that reflects Hong Kong’s society.
Starting with a list of several hundred names of applicants, the Committee managed to oversee the aptitude testing in January, Challenge Day in February and over a hundred panel interviews during March.
If the 71 selected names are endorsed by the UWC Hong Committee in late April, offers will be made to students applying for overseas UWCs immediately, while students selected for Li Po Chun UWC in Hong Kong will have to wait until mid-June for their good news.
This meeting was not the end of the interviewing process, however. Although the interviews of Hong Kong applicants have now been completed, several interviews remain to be done of IQ (International Quota) students. These will be conducted at various times over the coming two months.
After seven years serving as Secretary of the UWC Hong Kong Selection Committee, this was my last meeting before moving to the US at the end of July. It was thus with special gratitude but a deep sense of humility that I accepted an invitation from the Chair of the Committee, Dr Betty Chan, to attend a small dinner in my honour following Thursday’s meeting. It was wonderful to be able to relax and discuss broad educational matters, a stark contrast to the very focussed and intense process of interviewing student applicants.
I will certainly miss this experience that I have enjoyed for the past seven years, contributing to the selection of hundreds of young men and women to attend United World Colleges around the globe, opening the doors for them to serve as ambassadors for Hong Kong while at the same time gaining a world-class education to prepare them for a full life of living the UWC values.

Friday evening music concert

Sun, 3 Apr 2011 19:14:49 +1000

The frustration of last week’s hip injury escalated this week, culminating in my being admitted to hospital for two days. The good news was that all of the suspected serious causes (stress fracture, tumours, and so on) were eliminated. The problem seems to be a combination of effects from my old long-distance running days that led to some bleeding into the bone, exacerbated by a bike accident last November that tore some cartilage, all of which were aggravated to the point of causing acute pain a couple of weeks ago when I was doing lots of walking and carrying some unusually heavy loads. The bad news was that I have to remain on crutches and anti-inflammatory medication for another couple of weeks, and even worse, I am supposed to rest! Not good - I don’t like doing that!
Everyone here has been very gracious in accepting the inconvenience my hip injury is causing to them. My students have been coming to my house for their classes, and teachers have been making the long trek to my home when they need to see me. The messages of goodwill have been abundant and deeply appreciated. Unfortunately, I had to miss chairing Wednesday afternoon’s staff meeting - which I hate doing at any time - because it clashed with my stay in hospital.
And so, after the week I have had, I am sure you will understand when I say that the truly positive highlight of my week (apart from getting out of hospital) was the students’ music concert that was held in our home on Friday evening.
Music concerts in the Principal’s home are a long-standing tradition at LPCUWC that preceded my arrival seven years ago. However, they have really grown enormously in popularity during the course of this academic year, and Friday evening’s concert attracted just over 110 students to our living room - a record number - with the overflow spilling into the kitchen, up the stairs, and at one point, out the front door. That number represents about 40% of all the students in the College!
The reason for the popularity was obvious for all to see on Friday evening. We have an incredible range of musical talent among our highly talented students, and their willingness to share that talent generously with their friends was wonderful to see. And the range of performances and musical styles was sensational - indeed, eclectic!
I even had the chance to experience one of the finest performances I have heard of John Cage’s three-movement composition, 4′33″ - right in the comfort of my living room. I must confess, however, that it was not until Jack’s performance of that very mellow piece began that I realised how many students we have with bad coughs in the College at the moment.
Usually when Di and I host these music concerts in our home, I make a point of getting photos from a range of perspectives, both upstairs and downstairs. Being confined to a chair by my hip injury on this occasion meant that my photographic creativity had to be curtailed somewhat, although I am sure my appreciation of the music - and our students’ efforts - was enhanced as a consequence.
I have uploaded a gallery of 24 images of the concert (all from the perspective of the same seat - sorry!). Please enjoy them by clicking HERE.

NACE 2011

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 02:27:09 +1100

This week has been quite frustrating. Because of a hip injury, I spent most of last Monday at the Union Hospital, and then the rest of the week confined to home on crutches. Fortunately, living on campus, I was able to teach my classes (in my somewhat crowded living room!), my correspondence and paperwork were delivered and collected by the janitor twice each day, and I was even able to conduct the Head of House interviews in my living room on Tuesday afternoon. Chairing Wednesday afternoon’s staff meeting was, of course, not possible in my home, but relocating the meeting to Room 106 meant I could drive to the Courtyard and walk the short distance to the meeting using crutches. As you might imagine, my number of e-mails - already high under normal circumstances - skyrocketed this week. On the positive side, being largely confined to home was a good opportunity to clean out some stale food from our kitchen cupboards.
By Friday afternoon, my hip had recovered to the point that I tried walking without the crutches. Although still very tender, walking did prove to be possible. With the confidence of that experience, I walked to the Courtyard yesterday evening for the biennial North American Cultural Evening.
And I was so glad that I did! The two-hour long cultural performances were vibrant, energetic, diverse and thoroughly entertaining. They gave an excellent insight into the varied cultures of North America as well as providing amusement, commentary, laughter and reflection. Unfortunately, after standing for two hours taking photos, my hip began flaring up once again, but I don’t really mind as I would not have missed the performances for anything!
I have assembled a gallery of 66 images of the cultural performances - please have a look at the images of this sensational event HERE.