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I was invited by Xian Jiao Tong University to attend the kick off meeting of China's first International English Contest (IEC). The meeting was held in Beijing and organizers from different cities and provinces were present, there were also representatives from the British Embassy and American Embassy. The purpose of IEC is to select the best candidates from primary school, secondary school and universities to enter the contest and train them to become student ambassadors of China, and they will be showing people from other countries about China, its people, its culture and also some local speciality of regions where the student comes from. The contest is supported by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The final contest will be held in Beijing at the end of 2009 and the winners will be going to UK visiting London and Cambridge to promote Chinese culture. I think this is a very meaningful event and is highly supported by the government. Official link

Today we went to a seminar at the Science Museum on the topic of the third Chinese research station in Antarctica - Kunlun. The talk was organized by Dr. Rebecca Lee, and the guest speak was Dr. Yuansheng Li, the leader who led the team to build the station.

China has already built two research stations in Antarctica. The Changcheng (Great-Wall) Station, founded in February 1985, is located south of King George Island. The Zhongshan Station, built in February 1989, is located south of Prydz Bay on the Mirror Peninsula, eastern of Larsemann Hills.

Six countries, including the United States, Russia, Japan, France, Italy and Germany, have already built inland research stations in the Antarctica.

Sadly the answer is NO, as I was told by a senior official of our government during a lunch event together with industry representatives.

I was describing a business model of an UK company which sponsors promising technology ideas generated from universities, by providing a proof-of-concept seed money to the researchers and if the idea reaching prototype stage and continue to be proven promising, the company has a first right of refusal in invest and form a a venture together with the university and the researchers. This company takes a long term view that the investment doesn't get an exit event for at least 6-7 years, and this is exactly the difficulty for Hong Kong, because it is hard to get Hong Kong investors to take such long term view with no near term return. Therefore, I suggested that our government can take such long term view, but the answer I got was a big "NO" because, the legco that approves the funding for research and ventures support will demand to see near term success/return and they will never agree on "long term investment" type of funding (just like most Hong Kong investors...)

I wonder if I should take a long term view on Hong Kong if our government is seemingly short-sighted...

If all these "financial actors" are so good at predicting the trend of the stock market or explaining the ups and downs of the stock, after the facts of course. I propose the following challenge:

Confine yourself in a room with no means of contact to the outside world whatsoever, and I'll feed you all the financial news like the indexes from the previous day, bank rate setting meeting result, oil production, acquisition news, etc and you tell me at the end of the day what the new indexes are. If you are really good at "predicting" things then such information should be sufficient. Let's face it, we all know, "financial actors" merely pick the seemingly appropriate facts to explain something that already happened.

Of course, I'm not naive and I already know no-one can take on such challenge.

Which reminds me of another quote, Economists are people who will tell you tomorrow why the things that they predicted yesterday did not happen today.

Well analysts are people who will tell you tomorrow exactly how the things happened yesterday have affected the outcome today.

This must be the 3rd typhoon hitting Hong Kong this year and each time it strikes during weekend! While the last 2 typhoon posted no threat, I think this time, there is no escape and we are going to embrace the full force of the mighty storm. Sit tight! We are going to watch "Harry Potter 6", safely inside the cinema...

I often visit Cyberport to work out, have meals and sometimes sit around one of the cafes to do some work. Using my netbook to connect to the supposedly fully covered Cyperport Wi-Fi facilities, however, it is not so straight forward, it is usually with limited bandwidth, the connection often drops, the authentication page sometimes say "405 method not allowed" when accepting the general terms on the connection! Hardly satisfactory! I get better connection in many other cafe in Central, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, sigh....

Just came back from a talk organized by iProA titled "Managing through uncertainties", the guest speaker is Mr. KO Chia who I have met earlier this morning. Thoroughly enjoyed his speech sharing his experience through the ups and downs of the various market cycle and how to equip oneself to be prepare for all situation.

Had a breakfast meeting with Mr. KO Chia, an experienced senior executive, venture builder, investor and advisor. We happen to be helping the same company called ChineseAN, an online affiliated marketing company that is very promising though not without significant challenge. It was good hearing KO's stories on various ventures that he had been involved in, he is also going to speak at another iProA event on "managing through uncertainties" which I am attending.

We had our 1st session of the mentorship program on Sat 11 July, the topic was CV and interview workshop. I spoke along side with Stan, Herbert, Karen and Becky. Herbert had kindly prepared a structured discussion framework to share with the attendants (students and young alumni alike), we all chip in on our stories and advice. The response was great and we over-ran for by 1.5 hrs. So glad that we have found the right format since last year to host such event, both the attendants and speakers told me that they enjoyed and learned a lot :-)

1 down 3 to go.

EdExchange is a very meaningful charity organization in Hong Kong encouraging secondary school students to create their own charity program ideas while helping them to finance these projects. We discussed a potential partnership between Metropolitan Lions Club and EdExchange to administrate the scheme and grow it to the next level. Mr. Poon and Ms Mak from EdExchange are very passionate about developing students, their ideas fit very well with our Club's and my own thinking, hopefully, something fruitful will come out from this!