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Leglessbird Newsletter Dec 2022
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Dear Family and Friends,
Happy New Year! Once again, we trust that this message finds you well. Time seems to pass faster and faster by the years, 2022 is coming to an end. It is that time of the year again to count our blessings. Year 2022 started with the 5th wave of Covid19 in Hong Kong. We were finally infected with covid19 in April. Thankfully, we only had mild symptoms, and recovered within 2 days with no signs of long-covid. The much-delayed publication of my book 給晉晉的家書 "Home letters to Jin" is finally at the printer. Keeping my fingers crossed! We love to travel and experience different cultures. It had been 3 years since we last travelled. Finally, we are spending 2 weeks in Nepal from 24 Dec. This is Jin's first visit to this country to see mountains that are so tall, stay with a local family in the mountains and see some wild animals in the national park. The pandemic has no doubt been making everyone's life challenging, I think we are finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. With 2022 passing, I believe things will definitely improve in 2023. We wish you and your family a prosperous, healthy and happy 2023! Love, Jin, Irene and Dominic Dec 2022 --- Highlight of Chan family We love the village house and the neighbourhood that we have been living in since 2018. During the very hot month of July, the river near our house provided a great haven from the heat. From our roof-top garden, we have had pineapples that took 2 years to grow each, papayas that can grow in just a sizable pot, and numerous other vegetables/ herbs throughout the year. This place with its rural location is the perfect hide-away. So when our landlord offered to sell, we decided to buy. However, buying a village house is not as simple as buying a flat in the city, there was so much more due diligence. We have just cleaned and repainted the outer wall. In January, we are going to construct some solar panels (9.6kW) on the rooftop. Under the government scheme, we will sell back the electricity to the power company and enjoy a legal shelter on the rooftop. By our calculations, with the amount of sunshine in our area, we should be able to achieve carbon-negative energy with our solar panels. Jin and Dominic passed the Hapkido belt upgrade examination in Dec. Hapkido has been a great father and son bonding activity and certainly good exercise for Dominic, most people have noticed that Dominic had achieved his optimal BMI. Unfortunately, Twedo, one of the two turtles at home, had a fatal accident. There was a lot that we had to reflect on from this incident. (Twedo was a gift from Santa Claus in 2018). Highlight of Jin Second year at Island Waldorf School, Jin is very happy with his school and making lots of friends. We are getting used to the long commute from Tai Po to Sai Wan. From time to time, Jin does miss the natural environment of his old school in Tai Po and Yuen Long. In addition to the local BigBang Academy STEM activities, we started subscribing to a STEM learning kit delivery service from the UK and enjoying all the physics, chemistry and engineering experiments at home. Jin has a very curious mind and asks questions like "Why can't light escape from a blackhole?". So I told him what "escape velocity" means, and how it depends on gravity force which in turn depends on the mass of the body and the distance from the centre, and since the escape velocity of a blackhole is higher than the velocity of light, therefore even light cannot escape from a blackhole. He then asked, ""Light doesn't have mass, so how come there is still gravity force?", I further explained how light can be treated as a photon and so now he also knows about the famous equation connecting mass and energy. A few weeks later, he asked "What would an observer on the platform see, if I run towards the tail end of a moving train at equal speed, or faster or slower?". I often challenge him to answer his own question by asking "what do you think?". Jin helped to replace 7 of the 8 metal door knobs in the house, changing the entire structure including the locking mechanism and all moving parts. Dominic did the very first one as a demonstration, Jin got so good at replacing it that he can change one in under 5 minutes by the time he replaced the 5th one. During the summer, Jin together with 2 friends built a treehouse from scratch in Fan Ling, he also learned how to chop wood, start a fire with wood and cook a meal. He got so excited about cooking that he cooked an entire meal for us at home. Something neither Irene nor Dominic did when we were at Jin's age. Highlight of Irene Irene is very much into tea-drinking and she found a very good teacher. Picking the right tea and serving it properly has profound health effects. She also spends quality time at a beautiful place called Nam Chung. Irene and Jin are caring for some trees, and Dominic joins them to enjoy nature. Highlight of Dominic Despite the pandemic situation, 2022 had actually been the busiest year for work. We were conducting zoom-classes only during the first 8 months of the year. I was so glad that we resumed face to face classes from September and the campus was finally filled with students again. With no overseas field trips, I'm teaching even more courses at CUHK. Things had really picked up again this year, conducted more corporate training and executive coaching than any other year. There were some public events like MBA/EMBA sample classes, Make a DASH (Greater Bay Entrepreneurship programme), activities further opened up in Q4 2022, and more face to face activities became possible, e.g. various graduation dinners, residence weeks, faculty/ department annual dinners and wedding banquets. CUHK launched Hong Kong's first "Corporate Innovation Index" in November. Not reading as many books as I should, but instead did 12 online courses with certificate this year, ranging from Psychology, Philosophy, Forensic Science, Blockchain Applications to ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), Negotiations, to Parenting etc. Some for fun, some are very practical indeed (e.g. parenting). Quotes "Evil Does Seek To Maintain Power By Suppressing The Truth." - Spock, Startrek "Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." - Ronald D. Laing "The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught." - Prof. Richard Feynman Books The Shame Machine - Cathy O'Neil Digital for Good - Richard Culatta Wild Problems - Russ roberts Principles - Ray Dalio Movies/ Documentary Eat the rich - The gamestop saga Extraordinary Attorney Woo 給晉晉的家書 Home letters to Jin Jin |
