20歲的前夕。。。再次感到空虛、無助、低落。
為咩？
為這個城市，兩年前只差一點點就離開了的安樂窩。
為未來，不是自己的未來，而是香港和香港人的未來。
為今早牧師的講道，為這地的平安。
大學前從來都不關心社會，從來都沒有感受過做香港公民的責任，不喜歡、害怕、躲避時事和政治議題。
但是，大學跟社堂改變了一切。
對，我很被動。
對，我沒有用實際行動去説明自己的立場。
對，我還是恐懼面對這些敏感話題。
但是，我知道自己在不斷地成長，思想在成熟，慢慢在摸索、尋找自我。
也許因爲不斷見到身邊的長輩、老師、師兄師姐、堂友、同學們都在facebook share post，以前會選擇skip和不想理會的事情，今天，會詳細閲讀每一粒字。中文多差也要讀到尾。
最深刻或許是因爲見到在教會裏的一位青少年，跟我同年的，Sunny Leung（現在讀City soc work）。。。在613東北事件，有份參與衝破立法會，爲了社會卻被警察狠狠的毆打。。。我第一次從心底感到，驚恐慌張，不知所措。香港到底變成了什麽的地方。
我不再是小孩。更加應該擁抱長大的過程。20歲，是一個新的開始。因爲太多太多事情而要restart。
再説，今早在教會裏聽到牧師的講道。
很多都忘記了。（慚愧。。。牧師請原諒我吧。。。）
但是。聽到最令我毛骨悚然的是，exactly 100年前，1914，第一次世界大戰爆發。
1945，第二次世界大戰結束，差不多70年前。
而第一次世界大戰跟第二次世界大戰之間，1914到1945，31年。。。
而第二次世界大戰到現在。。。1945到2014，快70年。。。
原來，我們已經享受了70年的平安。
平安是什麽？
當然，中間有無數的Civil Wars，Unrest，悲劇每年都發生。你可以說，現代的世界，陷入困境，歷史也不斷重復。。。一點都不平安。
但是，70年來都沒有世界大戰等級的大型暴亂，這，的確來得不易。
慶幸。
感恩。
但不敢忘記、不敢再無視、不敢再那麽自私只顧及自己，由自己出發。
20了。香港是我家，必須堅守到底。
年輕人，拿出勇氣吧。大學生，step out of your comfort zone，think outside the box，不要再盲目在別人的影子裏躲避。
今年生日，一點都不快樂。
惟有為長大、為成長、為成熟來迎接20吧。
苦笑。
繼續努力。
共勉之~
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Motivational Minute #41 - Dream Big
My hero Nick Vujicic again :')
"What's my biggest dream? To just do my best."
"Dreams start with sort of like this voice in your head saying "are you serious?", even family members saying "you're crazy!"."
"Aim your dreams and goals to the heavens, so if they miss, they're still up there with the stars."
--
:')
Dream-catcher, 2014.06.08 :')
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
2014.06.08 - one of those nights you hope to be etched in your memory, forever.
A concert I was super hyped up about, and what a concert indeed! It delivered on so many different levels, I don't even know which level to begin on. It has taken me two whole days to organise my thoughts and feelings into readable words and understandable expressions - basically :') has represented the lovely shell and happy little bubble I've been floating around in ever since Coach's magic dissipated around the concert hall and touched each and every person's heart. This magic, this power, this invisible force, was incredulous. He had everyone in the palm of his hands, every pair of eyes was glued, fixated onto his whole being, and I didn't dare to breathe for fear of breaking this magic.
I say again, I have never enjoyed a performance so much as that night's.
Let me rephrase.
I have never fallen in love with a performance quite like this one. Everything about it just pulled me towards its centre, a swirling vortex of the mysterious appeal that such beautiful music intrinsically contains deep within. I was mesmerised, transfixed, frozen in time and space, it felt as if the whole world had stopped and the only living thing was the music that flowed through timelessly. I can't even begin to describe it.
It may sound ridiculous, what I'm typing ... fantastical, otherworldly, fiction-like ... but it's true. This is how I feel.
And just as part of the audience, this experience was more than a magic carpet ride. For a long while I felt as if I could step into the shoes of the performers, the amazing CU Chorus, and share this priceless experience from their perspective.
I still remember back in high school, in Year 10, I had to produce a work of creative writing as part of my English Language coursework. And back then since music had taken up a dominating role in my school life, home life, and social life, I decided to embark on a creative musical literary journey (did that sequence of jargon even make any sense...)
In the end, the night before it was due, I named it "The Phenomenon".
In a nutshell, it was a short piece (less than two sides of A4, since there was a word limit) describing an orchestral concert, jumping back and forth between the perspectives of the performer and the listener - two roles which were essentially the same person (myself), and together the shared experience came together to create the entire picture outside the box, which was bigger than the sum of its parts.
Anyway. This experience of seemingly sharing the stage as part of CU Chorus was brought to life right before my eyes, it felt so ... possible ... and so personal, and I just let myself slip away from reality right then and right there, and let everything wash over me ...
Yeah. It hit me that hard. Hope no one ever reads this cos y'all will think I'm bonkers. I dont even know what I typed up there^. Just the bottom line:
I've never completely fallen in love with a performance ... until 2014.06.08.
Bravo, brava. Hats off to every single member of CU Chorus.
Thank you for sharing something so precious, something you hold so dearly to your hearts, something you absolutely poured your whole heart and soul and entire being into.
"That was it."
:')
A concert I was super hyped up about, and what a concert indeed! It delivered on so many different levels, I don't even know which level to begin on. It has taken me two whole days to organise my thoughts and feelings into readable words and understandable expressions - basically :') has represented the lovely shell and happy little bubble I've been floating around in ever since Coach's magic dissipated around the concert hall and touched each and every person's heart. This magic, this power, this invisible force, was incredulous. He had everyone in the palm of his hands, every pair of eyes was glued, fixated onto his whole being, and I didn't dare to breathe for fear of breaking this magic.
I say again, I have never enjoyed a performance so much as that night's.
Let me rephrase.
I have never fallen in love with a performance quite like this one. Everything about it just pulled me towards its centre, a swirling vortex of the mysterious appeal that such beautiful music intrinsically contains deep within. I was mesmerised, transfixed, frozen in time and space, it felt as if the whole world had stopped and the only living thing was the music that flowed through timelessly. I can't even begin to describe it.
It may sound ridiculous, what I'm typing ... fantastical, otherworldly, fiction-like ... but it's true. This is how I feel.
And just as part of the audience, this experience was more than a magic carpet ride. For a long while I felt as if I could step into the shoes of the performers, the amazing CU Chorus, and share this priceless experience from their perspective.
I still remember back in high school, in Year 10, I had to produce a work of creative writing as part of my English Language coursework. And back then since music had taken up a dominating role in my school life, home life, and social life, I decided to embark on a creative musical literary journey (did that sequence of jargon even make any sense...)
In the end, the night before it was due, I named it "The Phenomenon".
In a nutshell, it was a short piece (less than two sides of A4, since there was a word limit) describing an orchestral concert, jumping back and forth between the perspectives of the performer and the listener - two roles which were essentially the same person (myself), and together the shared experience came together to create the entire picture outside the box, which was bigger than the sum of its parts.
Anyway. This experience of seemingly sharing the stage as part of CU Chorus was brought to life right before my eyes, it felt so ... possible ... and so personal, and I just let myself slip away from reality right then and right there, and let everything wash over me ...
Yeah. It hit me that hard. Hope no one ever reads this cos y'all will think I'm bonkers. I dont even know what I typed up there^. Just the bottom line:
I've never completely fallen in love with a performance ... until 2014.06.08.
Bravo, brava. Hats off to every single member of CU Chorus.
Thank you for sharing something so precious, something you hold so dearly to your hearts, something you absolutely poured your whole heart and soul and entire being into.
"That was it."
:')
Saturday, May 31, 2014
TedxHongKongED 2014
20140531 2230
Wow! had a really rewarding day - up fresh at 0730 despite only having a terrible 4 hours of zzz time in desperate fear of a mosquito buzzing around my room leeching off my O+ blood CRYCRY!!! :'(
anyway... then had a nice breakfast with plastic B, then set off for TedxHongKongED - the first TED event I've been to. (thanks wlcp for the invite!!!)
http://tedxed.hk/
though sitting for 6-7 hours really made my butt and back all sore ... it was pretty worth it (Y)
ofc, you might say that these independent TED events are nothing like the real thing ... but hey, we're all just simple human beings, and we can all learn something cool from other human beings :)
obviously some speakers were better than others, some messages hit home much more powerfully than others did. But that aint matter, cos at the end of the day, I was pretty blown away by some of the stuff that went on in those other human beings' lives. Not that they had the greatest opportunities in life, but HOW they dealt with the adversities in their lives and transformed themselves and changed their perspectives, and smashed apart those obstacles using an alternative method.
It was incredible, one speaker talked of her daughter born without a heartbeat or breath, almost brain dead, and pronounced by doctors likely to be both physically and mentally incapacitated for the whole of her life ... only to survive with severe cerebral palsy but at the same time now is one of the most inspiring people I have ever heard of! And she's still a high schooler in KGV! that makes me feel like, she could've been in my class, and how would I have treasured such an opportunity to interact with her! She really reminds me of Nick Vujicic (my hero)
http://tedxed.hk/speaker/kim-anderson/
"It's not what life throws at you. It's how you react to what life throws at you."
"You can be who you want to be. The biggest opponent in life is always going to be yourself."
(a close friend has said this to me before and I truly embrace it, though incredibly difficult in practice)
"You must fail in life, in order to find ways to overcome the obstacle and achieve more. If you're afraid of failing you'll never succeed."
Again, Nick Vujicic. "You need courage to fail."
"Courage is the strength that overrides all the fear to give you strength to just try anyway."
I'm pretty damn sure it's not the first time I've heard such messages before, but in that particular time and place and context ... everything just naturally fell into place perfectly and punched a provocative message out to me. It's not something I will forget in a while.
And then, there was something entirely unbeknownst to me, in my little happy bubble of ignorance - robotics. Evidently I'd heard the term before, broken concepts here and there, and even studied AI (artificial intelligence) during IB philosophy - but it just seemed like an entirely different universe! I came to realise how revolutionary robotics research and design had become over the past decade, how wrong my initial perspective had been, and how immensely useful they could actually prove to be o_o
My second favourite one (my favourite was the beautiful KGV girl with cerebral palsy who can work wonders despite having mega mega mega motor deficits and 24/7 physical dependence.
oh oops anyway, my second favourite one was about robotics replicating neurobehaviour and human facial expressions, in relation to the human brain and neural connections and everything above and beyond it. It was a pretty good summary of the neuroanatomy I've been learning this year, and I just obsessed over it. And a more primitive robot was built a little while ago to aid medical technology for complex neural conditions such as autism (autism, being one of my life obsessions) ... and I suddenly felt totally absorbed. The speaker was using all sorts of fancy neurology terms and I understood every single word haha (i even turned to wlcp and asked her if it was quite sad, she looked at me dead in the eye and said definitively ... yeah @@)
and for their latest robot, they created one that imitated a baby - with its ability for classical conditioning, complete with the inherent mother-baby bond (e.g. baby cries when mother leaves his/her line of sight), and they showed the different layers they replicated to mimic the intricate components of the brain that control individual elements like facial expression (muscle control) and stuff. E.g. basal ganglia as a networking system linking cortices with the brainstem, superior colliculus that picks up loud sounds, etc.
The baby was so cute! :3
And it really made me think hard - how much this is going to influence my practice in the future, if I am privileged enough to be working with kids and using such mindblowing technology. That would just be way cool. Wicked.
All in all, very excited for what the future has in store for us all! Embrace challenges, embrace failures, embrace every single life lesson :') and treasure all the people around you, who will only make you stronger. not because they can educate you and teach you and impart knowledge to you - but because they will inspire you to seek knowledge on your own, at your own pace, driven and motivated by your own soul.
Time to set the world on fire~!
Wow! had a really rewarding day - up fresh at 0730 despite only having a terrible 4 hours of zzz time in desperate fear of a mosquito buzzing around my room leeching off my O+ blood CRYCRY!!! :'(
anyway... then had a nice breakfast with plastic B, then set off for TedxHongKongED - the first TED event I've been to. (thanks wlcp for the invite!!!)
http://tedxed.hk/
though sitting for 6-7 hours really made my butt and back all sore ... it was pretty worth it (Y)
ofc, you might say that these independent TED events are nothing like the real thing ... but hey, we're all just simple human beings, and we can all learn something cool from other human beings :)
obviously some speakers were better than others, some messages hit home much more powerfully than others did. But that aint matter, cos at the end of the day, I was pretty blown away by some of the stuff that went on in those other human beings' lives. Not that they had the greatest opportunities in life, but HOW they dealt with the adversities in their lives and transformed themselves and changed their perspectives, and smashed apart those obstacles using an alternative method.
It was incredible, one speaker talked of her daughter born without a heartbeat or breath, almost brain dead, and pronounced by doctors likely to be both physically and mentally incapacitated for the whole of her life ... only to survive with severe cerebral palsy but at the same time now is one of the most inspiring people I have ever heard of! And she's still a high schooler in KGV! that makes me feel like, she could've been in my class, and how would I have treasured such an opportunity to interact with her! She really reminds me of Nick Vujicic (my hero)
http://tedxed.hk/speaker/kim-anderson/
"It's not what life throws at you. It's how you react to what life throws at you."
"You can be who you want to be. The biggest opponent in life is always going to be yourself."
(a close friend has said this to me before and I truly embrace it, though incredibly difficult in practice)
"You must fail in life, in order to find ways to overcome the obstacle and achieve more. If you're afraid of failing you'll never succeed."
Again, Nick Vujicic. "You need courage to fail."
"Courage is the strength that overrides all the fear to give you strength to just try anyway."
I'm pretty damn sure it's not the first time I've heard such messages before, but in that particular time and place and context ... everything just naturally fell into place perfectly and punched a provocative message out to me. It's not something I will forget in a while.
And then, there was something entirely unbeknownst to me, in my little happy bubble of ignorance - robotics. Evidently I'd heard the term before, broken concepts here and there, and even studied AI (artificial intelligence) during IB philosophy - but it just seemed like an entirely different universe! I came to realise how revolutionary robotics research and design had become over the past decade, how wrong my initial perspective had been, and how immensely useful they could actually prove to be o_o
My second favourite one (my favourite was the beautiful KGV girl with cerebral palsy who can work wonders despite having mega mega mega motor deficits and 24/7 physical dependence.
oh oops anyway, my second favourite one was about robotics replicating neurobehaviour and human facial expressions, in relation to the human brain and neural connections and everything above and beyond it. It was a pretty good summary of the neuroanatomy I've been learning this year, and I just obsessed over it. And a more primitive robot was built a little while ago to aid medical technology for complex neural conditions such as autism (autism, being one of my life obsessions) ... and I suddenly felt totally absorbed. The speaker was using all sorts of fancy neurology terms and I understood every single word haha (i even turned to wlcp and asked her if it was quite sad, she looked at me dead in the eye and said definitively ... yeah @@)
and for their latest robot, they created one that imitated a baby - with its ability for classical conditioning, complete with the inherent mother-baby bond (e.g. baby cries when mother leaves his/her line of sight), and they showed the different layers they replicated to mimic the intricate components of the brain that control individual elements like facial expression (muscle control) and stuff. E.g. basal ganglia as a networking system linking cortices with the brainstem, superior colliculus that picks up loud sounds, etc.
The baby was so cute! :3
And it really made me think hard - how much this is going to influence my practice in the future, if I am privileged enough to be working with kids and using such mindblowing technology. That would just be way cool. Wicked.
All in all, very excited for what the future has in store for us all! Embrace challenges, embrace failures, embrace every single life lesson :') and treasure all the people around you, who will only make you stronger. not because they can educate you and teach you and impart knowledge to you - but because they will inspire you to seek knowledge on your own, at your own pace, driven and motivated by your own soul.
Time to set the world on fire~!
Monday, May 26, 2014
Motivational Minute #27 - How to Reach Unknown Potential
20140526 2710
My hero Nick again - saviour of the day as always.
--
"Sure, maybe I can't do what you can do, but I know I am reaching out for my full potential."
"If you think you've reached your full potential, you haven't. Because you still have tomorrow. There's always something new that you can learn today and tomorrow. Grow in different ways."
"What can you do now?"
"Until you learn to do your best with what you have, you will never reach your full potential."
--
Still reflecting about his Motivational Minute a couple days back, about having the courage to fail. And courage being the strength that overrides all the fear to give you strength to - JUST. TRY. ANYWAY.
Real deep stuff, but strangely I feel so empowered by his simple words. Simple words that I've heard in a different context, by a different speaker, spoken differently. But when it comes from Nick's mouth, it just has this. Magic. to it. This unknown quality, this. This. ... this. um. Down to earth. Heartiness. Empathy. Poignant. I can't find the right word. It's just like bam. And then suddenly I find myself tearing up and thinking how bitchy I've been acting lately. So what if I'm not as good as my classmates? So what if I have to retake? It's not the end of the road, the light at the end of the tunnel hasn't diminished. It's just a different route there perhaps.
Really makes you think on your toes and keeps you on edge hmm... what can I do now?
Make the best of what I've got.
Have the courage to try, even though I'm afraid.
Overcome my fears, and convince myself that I can become the person I wanna be.
I have this perhaps dumb habit of not openly sharing my thanks to the people I wanna thank ... but cheers to everyone who's uplifted me and rooted for me all the way through in these dark dark days. Really owe my life to you guys.
Really, thanks from the bottom of my heart.
Epiphany of the Day #2
"Don't only practice your art.
But force your way into its secrets.
For it and knowledge can
Raise men to the Divine."
But force your way into its secrets.
For it and knowledge can
Raise men to the Divine."
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