Discovery 1 - Jordan
Meeting Vladmi. Anybody who has met Vladmi cannot not be touched by his energy. He is visually impaired but has a marathon record of 2 hours 50 mins and has completed several 250 km desert races. Beyond his achievements in running, he is simply a positive, loving, charismatic and inspirational person. I hope to see you at 2015 Gobi again!
Meeting Chris and Headmaster Chan from Zheng Sheng Christian College at the Sahara Jordan race was a humbling experience. Through them, I have learnt more about this school, which is the only rehabilitation school in Hong Kong. Since then, it has been the most inspirational and rewarding experience visiting their school, getting to know each of the students, mentoring and running with them, listening to the stories of their lives, understanding their personal challenges, understanding the challenges that the school faces.
Discovery 2 - A New Career Direction
I work in a good company with lots of dedicated and kind people. But not only that, our top management often has innovative and surprising plans for people development, including myself. I got another surprise gift towards the end of 2014. From a business role to a full-time charity role, this is something which I never thought would happen, but turns out to be the most exciting career opportunity I have had in years.
.jpg)
Discovery 3 - Inspirations through Illness
Mom had an epileptic seizure in June. At 70 years old with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, she had completely lost her mobility and ability to communicate. This had a big impact on the routine of everyone in the family. We have also spent a good few months learning about the Hong Kong elderly and disabled health care and social welfare system, physiotherapy, linguistics therapy and patient care. It was a lot of hard work but I am glad to have matured through all these, and become more supporting and caring for my parents.
Mom's changing health condition somehow led me to think a lot deeper about the gap for elderly care in Hong Kong. The local population is aging rapidly but the current system is no where near meeting even a minute fraction of the needs. I would like to do something to help enhance the quality of elderly care in Hong Kong in some way. I don't exactly have the whole plan yet, but hopefully the plan will materialize in 2015.
Discovery 4 - Inspirations through a rocky relationship
I always believe in putting in the effort to make a relationship work. However, I must admit that I still haven't got a clue and still haven't established any successful track record of making a long term relationship work. That said, my will is not dampened. I have learnt something new about myself, how I was or was not able to cope in a relationship with a complicated setting. I have a deeper understanding of the reality of modern relationships and the need for respecting boundaries. Apparently God had a plan for me and the learning and insight was quickly channeled into another relationship just around the corner...
2015
In the past few weeks I have found my passion back with things that I have put down for a while, including cooking, yoga and photography. I am glad that I have starting getting back to some of the routine even before the start of next year, so I don't have to deal with the pressure of not keeping to new year's resolutions. Next year, I want to try more new and fun things. A lot of ideas have come to mind, such as running the CCC, STY second attempt, doing Gobi March again for charity etc.. I am also interested in training for things I am not good at i.e. swimming.
