Nou se mond la...

Last time, on Jan 12, 2010, Haiti was struck by a magnitude-7.0 earthquake. It is reported that more than 200,000 people had died, an estimated 300,000 injured, and an estimated 1,000,000 homeless.

It is sad and painful for every one of us. Yet life is just like that, sometimes it is strong but sometimes it is weak. People always say that we should believe in our fate. When everything is smooth going, we just enjoy ourselves and forget what's happening around us. When things go bad, we start to realize that things will not remain good all the time. However, for us, being HC students, we should change this custom, and do what Mencius reminded us - "To thrive in calamity and perish in soft living; life springs from sorrow and calamity, death comes from ease and pleasure."

This time, in Chile, on February 27, 2010, at 03:34 local time, a magnitude-8.8 earthquake occurred. It is the seventh strongest earthquake ever recorded, and far more forceful than the Haiti earthquake.

Although we are not strong enough to help them rebuild their home, we can donate and pray for them. Not only that, what we can do more is to let our surrounding people know what's happening in our world. Let them know that other places in our world are being suffered. And hence we can inspire them to always remind themselves with these painful news.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi. Let's gather into one and help to change our world.

HC Series

Today I joined two forum series. These series enrich my life so much.

One was organized by HCSA, called the "News Discussion Forum Series I". I was glad to be one of the helpers for this series as I could learn more from others and get familiar with this kind of discussion forum. The topics discussed were "General Education in UMAC" and "Macau Youth's addiction to computer".

Through this forum, we could have chance to share our opinions with each other and listen to others' ideas. It was also a good practice for our leadership skill as a good leader should have an altruistic mind to share what he has and an open heart to receive other's ideas. We HC students should have more activities like this and be a public one so that we can let other students know what we are thinking. I am sure I will be one of the participants for the next discussion forum because it does really useful to my experience.

Another one was an "Honours Forum Lecture Series", we had a sharing session with a successful local leader, Dr. Chui Sai Peng. His topic was about urban planning. Being an engineering student, I was interested in his topic and it did show me how engineering relate to leadership.

To me, the idea of urban planning is to improve our social environment. It should include the consideration of land using and residents being. And as Dr. Chui said it took time to apply because not every planning and ideas could be accepted in a short time, especially for our Macau residents. Therefore we had to be longsighted and patient. These were also essential qualities that one good leader should have. In addition, every engineering professions may involve in one planning, so how to organize them is one of the big challenge for the urban planner. This implies that a good leadership skill must be possessed, not just for the civic planner but all of the supervisors of each professions.

Moreover, Dr. Chui gave us an idea that we would act as competitors in our society in the future. Thus, we should be prepared for our future and he showed us the reality of our society where it was really different to our school life. The four main indexes affecting our social life are interpersonal relationship, creativity, knowledge, and luck. I really agree with him. Imagine you are the boss of a company, and many people ask for employment; then since everyone look like the same, how would you choose the best one to work for you? Well, these four indexes work as the employer assessment. To be a capable competitor and a good leader, I think we should try our best to obtain these indexes.

Lastly, as Dr. Chui taught us, we have been trying to reduce the amount of the usage of natural sources as they were limited, we have been trying to absorb more and more knowledges as they were unlimited, but we forget one thing - our life is also limited. We should learn from our history and be more creative. These recall my memory of a sentence from Guass -- "It's not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.". We should enjoy what we have and treasure our life in a better way. That's what we are going to do in the rest of our life.

Don't Give Up

Today was a beautiful day. We had the second HONR202 lecture by Udani. That was a touching lesson.

In the beginning of the lesson, Udani shared us a meaningful song -- Don't Give Up (You Are Loved).

Yes, we are all loved by our parents, our friends. We should never give up anything. There must be someone who are hearing us. Of course, to be a good leader, we should also love our surroundings, and keep on encouraging them not to give up anything easily.

Before the lesson ended, Udani had shared another two touching stories to us.

The first one was about a child's parents, who just liked to watch TV, always ignored their son. And one day the child prayed to god and asked god to make himself become a TV so that his parents would pay attention on him. It was a short but yet meaningful story.

The second one was more touching. One day, a child asked his mother to give him 25 dollars. As his mother had just come home after working for a whole day and was going to prepare the dinner, she didn't accept his son's request. However, when the mother was cooking, she felt very guilty. Thus, she went to his son and asked him why he needed that 25 dollars. The son answered, "I only need 25 dollars more and then I will have 300 dollars. With 300 dollars, I can pay you for one day..."

After Udani had finished talking the stories, my eyes got wet as I felt shame and very sorry to my mother. Even a child knows how to care his mother, but I have never say 'thank you' to my mum for giving me this colorful life. So from now on, I promise myself that I will try my best to reduce my mum's burden, and try my best to become the leader of her, and my warm family.

Finally, here is another impressive song I want to share with you. Hope you will enjoy it. =]

Retreat..

Last semester, because of my symptom of h1n1, I could not join the first HC retreat in Westin. This semester, I have this opportunity to go up on the Macau Tower and try out the Skywalk X. To me, this is my first HC retreat, and I have to say that this is the most exciting and wonderful activities I have ever enjoyed.

Although the weather was not quite good today, our mind was not disturbed, as we knew we were going to stand on the top of Macau and defeat our fragile soul. It was the first time for every one of us to have this kind of extreme activity. Of course many of us were afraid of this, but we had to breakthrough this. A leader should face every challenge and try the best to finish it.

Skywalk X, as its name suggests, we have to walk in the sky. Before we did that, Albert asked Udani, ''How does the Skywalk relate to our development of leadership?'' This was a good question which led me to some reflections -- Why does leaders always keep on trying to breakthrough extreme challenge one by one? Does this kind of challenge improve the leadership skill? Does it mean that if we cannot solve this task, we cannot become a good leader? Obviously, we have found out our own impressions through this challenge.

During the Skywalk X process, we have stood at the top of Macau, walked around with our eyes covered, and passed through the cloud. We were strong, brave and fearless. We would not be afraid of the sky anymore. We have built up our self-confidence, which is Udani's answer to Albert's question. Self-confidence is one of the most important things that a leader should have. Udani wished all of us could build up, or I should say, strengthen our self-confidence. Most of us, including me, even want to try out the Bungee Jumping, because we had the confidence and we were dare to face it.

Sport climbing was another big challenge for us. We had to climb up on the wall of Macau Tower, and tried our best to ring the bell. It was a very difficult exercise as it needed us to have both physical strength and willpower. Through this challenge, three 'spiderwoman' were born. They admitted that without our instructions and encouragements, they could not succeed in this challenge. In fact, during the process, Udani continuously asked us to cheer the challenger up. He knew that encouragement is a powerful tool, and it could help us to focus on what we are doing and increase our willpower to finish the task. That's what a leader should always do.

Today's victory, tomorrow's history... Yes, we were the victors today. We have learnt many things from Udani. We have built up our self-confidence. We have improved our english communication skill. We have enhanced our relationship with each other. Although the retreat lasted for one day only, that's not the end. Remember what Udani told us? That was just the beginning -- the beginning of the rest of our lives. And we are going to solve every new challenge together in the future. So keep going on, my HC mates. ^^

Welcome

Hey, welcome to my new online blog. Like the others, I am a lazy guy so I haven't updated my last blog for a long time. Nevertheless, I will start writing this new blog to share my thoughts and feelings.

Yesterday was the first lesson of HONR202. Our course facilitator, Udani, gave us an interesting beginning. During the lesson, we were not just sitting there listening to Udani, but we have shared our expectations and had some activities. I like this kind of interactive lecture very much as it can improve our communication skill and also we can learn from the others through the interaction.

One of the ideas that Udani taught us in this lesson quite impressed me. As I am major in engineering, I learn from the mechanic of materials that force will be concentrated at the weakest point of the material. Udani applied this theory to group working -- the weakest one in a group will thus be the most important one. This always happens when we are having group work; we always ignore the weakest one in the group. However, if this weakest one is ignored, then the chain of our group will be broken and we cannot finish our work properly. In fact, no one should be ignored in a group; everyone has his position in a group. That's what we should always imprint on our mind.

Moreover, Udani has promised that the one who is shy at the beginning will be less shy at the end of the course. Yes, I am one of the shy boy and I know I will be less shy after this course.^^