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Unusually Social Week
I’m not entirely sure why, but many of my social meetups ended up cramping into this one week and fitted perfectly into the weekly scheduling without overlapping. Other than Monday which I usually set aside for my weekly indulgence in ink art, I met up with friends every single day, probably a personal social record in recent years!!
Being a little introverted, continuous social meetups can easily drain my energy. I’m indeed rather tired while writing this post at the end of the week, but at the same time, I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to meet and catchup with friends amidst this never-ending pandemic.
Studio Cleanup
Have been busy cleaning up the studio in the last few weeks, it seemed like a never ending task, there’s always more things I could have organized and cleaned up further. Decided to finally call it quit for the big cleanup project last week after repotting the many plants in the studio!
The city and the world seemed to be falling apart while I was caught up with the studio cleanup:
- The Professional Teachers Union disbanded, it’s one of the largest union in HK with over 90k members and a history of near 50 years
- Civil Human Rights Front, organizer of the largest peaceful protests (over 2 million people), also disbanded citing “unprecedented challenges”
- 612 Humanitarian Fund, a crowdfunding effort to provide financial assistance to the pro-democracy individuals who are being persecuted, halted operation
- July 2021 was the hottest month ever on record
- Taliban seized Afghanistan
- Covid-19 Delta variant continued to ravage the world, even those countries with high vaccination rates
The Sunday sermon today hinted on the possibility that these were signs of the second coming of Christ, it certainly matched some scriptures in the Revelations. Many of us (including myself) are not prepared for the Apocalypse yet, may God be merciful to us all. ??
A Time For Sorrow
There’s a time for joy and a time for sorrow. Following a happy reunion with my UW gang and coffee with the girl-I-like after more than a year of pandemic craziness, news of sickness and death started coming in from people around me.
First, my colleague told me her husband’s intestinal cancer had metastasized into the lymph nodes (stage 3) and will need to schedule for chemo and electro therapy. Then, one of my high school friends’ mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she was deemed too old and weak for an operation to remove the tumor. And lastly, news of the death of my high school’s Chinese teacher reached my high school’s friends’ group and a few of us decided to attend her funeral on Sunday evening.
The grand funeral hall was packed with my late Chinese teachers’ family, friends, colleagues, and students. Each of the guests were handed a book that my late teacher had written and edited herself. It contained photos and letters and detailed chronological posts of her thoughts and feelings in the year long battle against tongue and throat cancer. I started sobbing as soon as I began reading the book. Even though I dreaded to read long passages of Chinese, I managed to read through the entire book from cover to cover after I got home, my eyes were watery most of the time. I think it was about 0330 when I finished reading and took a shower before going to bed.
My late Chinese teacher was one of the nicest teacher I had despite Chinese Language being my most dreaded subject back in the days. I studied it the hardest and yet get the lowest mark of all subjects. I can still recall one occasion when my late teacher asked me while smiling kindly in front of the class whether I was Chinese – “你係咪中國人嚟㗎？”. Don’t remember exactly what made her ask that question back then, and I was not at all offended, but her kind smile and voice stayed in my head after 20+ years, quite incredible if you think about it. I doubt that she would remember the incident or even me being once her student out of the thousands of students she had taught in the past 20+ years, but I think she’ll be happy to know from heaven that one of her students who hated Chinese is now learning Chinese calligraphy and am still a follower of Christ.
I must confess however, I still hate to read long passages of Chinese, it takes too much effort.
Sabbatical Ended
The opening of the embattled and postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics also marked the end of my self-conducted (half) Sabbatical. Thought about continuing the rather fruitful Sabbatical till the end of year, but it felt like the right time now to finally get myself out of this marathon pandemic rut and get serious with my life. I shall reserve the right to continue the second half of the Sabbatical for when I visit Canada later (hopefully before year end).
Ordered another budget 3D printer and four spools of filaments to accelerate the papertube furniture project I started experimenting with during the Sabbatical. I still see great potentials with the idea, but not quite sure how to turn it into a sustainable venture yet. Will see how opportunities unfold in the future, meanwhile more R&D work still needs to done before I’m comfortable offering the prototypes as real commercial products.
I’m probably thinking too far ahead at his point, my plan for next week is to cleanup the studio and prepare it for more serious design work in the near future!
