Fruitful week..

Last week was another peaceful week. I participated in many activities, which enrich my life so much.

On Sunday, we class 2012 had a wonderful BBQ at Hac Sa Beach. I have to thank all the organizers for organizing such a great gathering party. Although I was late as I was one of the helpers for the graduation photo taking, all my classmates were willing to wait for my arrival and even left some food for me. I really felt warm but also sorry. I look forward to the next gathering, and I promise I will be punctual.

On Wednesday, I joined the News Discussion Forum Series III. In this forum we mainly discussed about the recent mine accidents in China. The style for this forum was quite interesting. We first had a role-play session. In this session, we had to act as different roles to solve the problems. It was a good chance for us to think at different sides and see things from different angles, and to improve our critical thinking.

Next, we were asked to hold a debate. I had never debated before, so it was a good experience for me. And I found from this experience that my ideas were still not strong enough to catch others' mind. Thus, I wish all of you, if you were willing to, can help me to improve in this field, so that I could be capable enough to face the TOEFL.

After finishing the discussion forum, we had the 10th HONR202 lecture. As it was already half of this semester, Dr. Udani showed us again our expectations, and let us review and make reflections. Frankly speaking, I have already forgotten what I expected, yet I have gained a lot from this course, which I thought were much more than what I would expect. Dr. Udani also taught us that there were three aspects we should make reflections - in the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspect. And since only human being have brain and heart to think and write, we should behave good and make our life better than other creatures.

Then Dr. Udani gave us some paper to write some encouragements to one of our classmates. It was another good chance for us to motivate others. I didn't expect I would receive one, because I had been encouraged by my HC classmates a lot and I thought I was already in a better side, so I thought my classmates would give encouragement to someone who really needed it. I was a little bit surprised when my classmate gave me one note and I realized that everyone needs encouragements. Therefore, here I sincerely thank who had given me encouragements before.

Near the end of the class, Dr. Udani showed us one short video. It was William Hung having the American Idol interview. And it called out my memory again of what he said, "I already gave my best, and thus I have no regrets at all." It was really an impressive sentence and thanks Udani for giving us this very meaningful encouragement. Sometime we do not succeed though we have done the best, however, we should keep in mind that no matter how difficult the challenge is, we should give all of our best to solve the problem so that we would have no regrets about that. In the coming months we are going to take the TOEFL, although it is very hard to get over 100, we should do our best. I believe, being HC students, we could breakthrough this challenge.

On Saturday, I visited an elderly home with my HC fellows. It was another volunteer activity by HCSA. I have visited many elderly home before, and I loved it because I could learn many things from the elders as they had many experiences in life.

In the beginning, I found that the elders there looked silent, so I felt a little bit shy and nervous. Later, when we were singing, I tried to motivate them by moving my hands and my body strongly, and I found that they were in fact feeling happy with us. I learnt that there always exists a wall between us and people, and so to interact with others, we should step out from the wall and open our mind to them, then we could find that they are actually willing to be friend with us.

HOME

I moved back to my home today. I do want to live in there longer but it's already the last day of the program. Life in the dormitory was really enjoyable, as I could wake up so late on school days and also interact with those boarders, who were willing to be friend with me.

I have improved myself much in these days, especially my English communication skill, since I always found myself a chance to chat with those foreign boarders. It's easy to be influenced by the surroundings, for instance, when I was to chat with a foreign speaker, I would need to push myself to speak more English, and when he knew what I was talking about, and started a conversation with me, I would then become more confident in speaking English.

I have also become more independent. I used to be a lazy student and depend on my mother so much on waking me up. When I moved to the dorm, I needed to set up an alarm clock, which I found not really useful for me after then. I learnt to wake up by myself, it's really hard though, but I am used to waking up by myself now. Moreover, I had to decide what to eat at night and that's not much choice in UMAC. And I missed my mother's cooking, fortunately I could enjoy it after I moved back.

UMAC is going to carry out the residential college trial program. I definitely would join it and it would surely be a good chance to prepare for the independent life of the exchange program. The most important thing at this moment is to get 100 in the TOEFL, or else the chance of exchange would be failed.

No rest until we are the best

I am going to tell you one good news ~~ I have overcome the busy week finally!! It feels like one of my burdens is removed!! However, it is not time to take a rest, but time to start preparing for the new challenges, because "No rest until we are the best.", which Dr. Udani reminded us on the last lesson. At this moment I am just staying in the "good" position, and I am going to work hard to be "better", and soon the "best".

Being late on last Wednesday, I have missed part of the class, included the short announcement from Dean Mok. My HC fellows told me that we need to get at least 100 in the TOEFL. I think it would be the biggest challenge I am going to face, even more difficult then entering HC. However, I heard many of my classmates keep on saying that nothing is impossible. Well, I trust all of you, and I am going to work hard together with you. Please don't feel disturbed to help me, as my english is equal to zero.

I was told by other HC fellows that there were many interesting things Udani shared with us in that lecture. In fact, I really felt a little bit upset. Fortunately, I could catch up the sharing session with Dr. Wong King Keung, and I learnt much from him. He said that we should never be over confident, but be optimistic and self-respect. He also shared us his experience about the set up of UMAC, it's really amazing and unbelievable. He mentioned that the motto of UMAC, are the inter qualities that we should build up and shared with us why we need these qualities. In addition, he shared us the culture differences between Macau and China. These suggestions and his sharing are very worth to learn.

There was one thing he mentioned impressed me a lot, that's, we should learn how to learn. Learning is one thing that we do every day. We cannot stop learning until we are dead. Even we are doing nothing in one day, we are still learning how to do nothing. Dr. Wong said that one must have a time that he will suddenly understand something which he didn't know in the previous time. That's also what we called insight learning. I strongly agree with this as when we were still babies, we knew nothing about the world; but when we grew up, we started to learn things and suddenly got known to many things. It is hard to know why these are happening, thus, I think we should find out the best way of learning, instead of finding out the reason of insight learning, and that's my thought about "learn to learn".

As I have mentioned that one of the biggest challenges is surely the TOEFL, on which I am going to put all my effort, I have another one to face. It is my new behavioral change project -- "no more dirty words in my daily life", which I really want to have this project succeeded. I have never seen a good leader use dirty words in their daily life, so to be polite, I must have this change and I hope all of you could help me and feel free to blame me when I habitually speak out a bad word.

BUSY, BUSY and BUSY!!

I can't tell how busy I am in these weeks. Although I have already finished some of my jobs, I still have 3 mid-term exams, 1 project, 2 assignments and 1 laboratory session on the next week. Thus, I have to use my time well. And after last week's impact, I realized that I need to take a rest in order to have a better condition to fight against the coming battle. That's why I choose to update my blog as to relax myself.

It's happy to see my HC fellows again after the Easter holiday. That day was also the birthday of Cathy and Shelly. Being a family, we celebrated their birthday by singing songs.  I think they must feel very warm to have such a class, aren't they?

The topic for this lecture was about team building. An old saying that "Two heads are better than one." The wisdom of the masses must exceed that of the wisest individual. Therefore, teamwork is essential for every success. Especially I am a student in the engineering field, many jobs I have to do mainly depend on teamwork. The basic things to make a team is to build trust between them and to inspire them.

In order to do that we have to be a kindness leader. Dr. Udani taught us about what kindness means. It's to SHARE and CARE. SHARE is to give out Smile, Help, Advice, Resources and Ears; and CARE is to show Concern, Acceptance, Respect and Empathy. This principle is really interested and I would apply this in my daily life. And I find out that I have learnt many things from the university, from my parents and from other people, but I just don't know how to apply them in my life. Maybe this is my weakness, so I should learn to apply this in my life, that's really much I need to learn.

Finally Dr. Udani asked us to give a 30-second presentation which needed to be an inspiring speech. I was really surprised as I was chosen to give the speech after I came back from the washroom. I hadn't thought of any idea so I just gave a poor speech. What's more was that he played a trick on us. Therefore, I felt very shy about that. However, I realized that at the beginning of this semester, Dr. Udani asked what our expectation of this class was. And most of us were saying that we wanted to have more chance to speak in front of people. That's why every lesson Dr. Udani would give us some more time to speak up. And thus, I would try my best to learn from others in this kind of presentation.

Besides, I received the message from Prof. Doris that she got a cancer. I felt very sad about this because Doris treat me very well in the last semester. She helped me to discover myself and she is the first one who impress me a lot about how to become a good leader. I really want to visit her but on the other hand it will disturb her. I suggest that our HC could provide a time to make a visit to her after she has recovered. And at this moment we should pray for her.

What is a leader?

Thanks to all who have given me comments about this blog. Originally, I want this blog to be more professional rather than an artistic one. Therefore I didn't add any background music or any fantastic pictures to my blog before. After receiving your comments, I would think about how to improve the layout of my blog in the coming days. And please don't hesitate to give me more comments for any of the changes.

It was Wednesday again, and we had the 7th HONR202 lecture. It was not only the last day of March 2010, but also the last day before our Easter holiday. Thus, every one of us were enjoying this last lecture.

Same as the previous lectures, we had some warm-up exercises at the beginning. I could see that Dr. Udani's lectures were always linked to the H.O.S.T. theories. This time when the music was playing, we were asked to say thanks to others. And I really thanked all of you for being my classmates. Meanwhile, I was asked to sing the song. I was very surprised because I actually didn't know how to sing the song, although it was a lovely song. Here is the music video of that song. I wish you would enjoy their hopeful faces.

Relative to one of the lectures before that we were asked to tell others what help we needed, Dr. Udani asked us to talk about what help we can give to the others in this lecture. This impressed a good idea that helping is not only one side: when others need help, we have to give out help as if when we need help, others would help us.

After we had shared what we could help, Dr. Udani started to talk about the topic of this class - influence. Every actions we did, every sentences we said, might already influence people surrounding us. From the A to Z tips, Dr. Udani showed us that attitude was the most important thing that we should always beware. As the theories stated: watch your attitudes, they will become your thoughts; watch your thoughts, they will become your words; watch your words, they will become your actions; watch your actions, they will become your habits; watch your habits, they will become your personality. I also found that many theories were in fact related to attitude, such as those I learned from the NLP workshop and the manners workshop. Thus, we should always keep in mind that our attitude would affect the others so much, and it is the key to succeed.

Here is one of the video that Dr. Udani shared with us. It's really inspiring.

In the last part of the lecture, after we had watched this video, we were asked to give an one-minute performance. The performance should be about 'What is a leader?' However, we were only given five minutes to prepare the performance. Some of the groups could give out a creative idea, for instance, James' group shared a Chinese Idiom - when you drink water, you should think of the origin; and Helen's group shared the LEAD theories. They were worth learning.

I remember at the end of the class, Dr. Udani asked us a question, "What did you learn from this lecture?" The most important thing that I have learnt was how others thought about LEADER and LEADERSHIP. Everyone had their own meanings and they had shown me their thoughts through the performance. For the idea I shared with my group for the performance, Tony said that it was like performing a hero but not a leader. Maybe it's because my idea of leader is not deep enough, but everyone is unique and special, we should not always follow others' ideas, whereas to learn from others' ideas. I wish at the time when we graduated, each of us could change from a metal into a gold but not remain as a metal.