Future

Yesterday I opened the MCP Application of AIESEC in HONG KONG Session 0809. When I passed the button "send", I felt so much. I took a deep breath and at the same time, had a tear running out from my eyes.

I eventually will have a successor after 1.5 month. I was about going to say "hopefully" but I didn't, I do believe in AIESEC in HONG KONG and I know there are always someone who CARES. They care and they wanna make changes, they wanna make changes so they stay and take actions. There's how I and what made me became.

"The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past."

Someone said that to me and it made me think for quite a while.... what we think about future, is it really the things that we couldn't finish in the past or at least, not ideally or perfectly done in the past so we pick it up again and say that we're gonna do it better in the future? It might confuse people what is "legacy". Is it about what's left behind and must be continually to do or just undone the mistakes in the past and put it on the right track?

Loans of questions...When I was an elect, lots of questions about the organization, people and stuff passed in my head. I wanted to do so much and eventually, I learn to stay focus and prioritize. It's the rule of the game in AIESEC, you're not like CEOs in Corporate that like you're having 10 years to implement your long term strategies but much shorter, say 1 year. It's good to train up the leaders to stay focus and make constantly progress, and its bad that it's hard to identify what should be kept and what to start. Here in AIESEC, I learnt one thing:

What happens when the future has come and gone?

Thinking too much doesn't help, taking actions is the most important thing. Thinking for too long and too hard, the future already might come and gone. So TAKING ACTIONS.

Second, if the future has come and gone, what would I do differently? Did I do the right thing? Did I grap the opportunity and the moment?

At the end... The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. We don't received Wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves after ajourney that no one can take for us or spare us. It's about just ME, MYSELF.

1. Application of MCP of AIESEC in HONG KONG Session 0809: NOW is opened!

2. Application of MC Directors of AIESEC in HONG KONG Session 0809 (both international and local): 2^nd Week in Jan after WNCF 2008

Click HERE to download the Application Package of MCP of AIESEC in HONG KONG Session 08/09. The deadline of application is 26th Dec 2007 23:59. Please send your application t0 MCP, Beatrice Wong at beatrice.wong@aiesec.hk.

Will I get your application? =)

I'm proud of you =) My AIESEC, My Team and you.

Wow...finally it happened.



The starting point

On 12th Aug, right a few days before I left to IC 2007, we confirmed to drive this amazing event with support from SG and Think Tank..YES! We decided to go fot it. Before leaving to Turkey, I put this reposonsibility to Sandy, the acting MCP during that period to represent me to have meeting with Think Tank.. Thank you Sandy. Without you I do not think it would happen.

Storming the idea on a foreign land

In Turkey, Yuellis and I had quite a lot of meeting and discussion on how to make the dinner happen, reading through the input and questions raised by Think Tank, I was nervous and a bit lost as I found myself couldn't do much because I was not physically in HONG KONG and I made Sandy help me to sending the messages from me.

I felt heartache when I saw Sandy and Yuellis was up on Gmail to work on those things and waited for me to get online to ask me for clarification on some points, so she can have meeting with Think Tank..

Return to the Garden

On the flight retuning back to HONG KONG, I kept think about what should I do to the dinner and the theme of the dinner. I was so sick during the flight from Dubai to HONG KONG, I felt very sick and I kept fell asleep. It felt like I was between staying sober and dreaming, I thougth about the LC recruitment situtation, the 40th Anniversary Dinner, How to do IC Bring Back, NLDS 2007..... It wasn't a decent flight trip, however, somewhere somehow I got a picture in my mind, it's a Garden. The Garden with lots of tree and flower. It's so green and I could even smell the grass.


Not long after I back to HONG KONG, I had a meeting with my team and decide the theme for the dinner. I proposed to theme the dinner as "Welcome Back Garderners". After lots of discussion and selection, we finally chose it. Lots of effort put on researching the venue, price etc, we finally decided to hold it on 3rd Nov 2007.


Laughters and Challenges

It's the first time for me to engage alumni that is not from my home LC. I was nervous but somewhere very excited. I started to meet up with alumni from different LC, especially those MC/NC alumni, those ex-NCPs via e-mails, lunch and meeting. They are so nice and great! It's so enjoyable to talk to them and listen to their stories in their time in AIESEC. They don't know me, they questioned me but for the good sake. They encouraged me and showed me how much they care about AIESEC in HONG KONG. It kept me going and going...It made me laughed and felt energize.

At the same time, Yuellis was recruiting the OC team for the dinner, preparing the 1st draft and update of the celebration series.. thank you Yuellis =) It made us move forward and moved with a large step.

My first tear for the dinner

The first tear I cried for the dinner was the moment I realized I was totally out of capacity to manage Solar 2007 and also the 40th Dinner. The limited time made the LC find difficulties to invite alumni and MC Team didn't have much capacity to prepare the dinner. I was so frustrated. However, with the support from LCPs and MC, we decided to postpone the dinner to a more feasible timeline, we postponed to hold it in Dec.

Another round of crazy research and meeting

As the dinner was postponed, we had to search for another venue and think about how to manage the financial stuff. It was a painful but very interesting and meaningful time during the process. Meeting alumni, inviting external guests and confirming the venue and price and discussion with LCs and opinion leaders among alumni, I felt like I was a bit dizzy but knowing and understand a lot more about AIESEC and how people think about this organization. Its so motivated and at the same time, pressuring myself to drive better.

Final stage and getting ready

In the last month of preparation, quite a few of us was getting sick, Sandy, Yuellis..etc. I was a bit worring and I felt stressed. Solar 2007 just passed and the whole team was a bit exhausted becase of that. Cyrus was ouccpied for a whole month because of the LN day and AI ER Director visit. Bonida was busy with the exchange growth strategies and start preparing the SRB, finance Area stuff. Managers started to having mid-terms...

At the night of 17th Nov, I was looking at the bottle that I showed in Solar 2007, I read through the messages in the bottle again, it was thr 5th time I did that. The energy came back and I told myself I cannot give up and I want another drive and high time for AIESEC in HONG KONG.

LCs was doing their best to calling up alumni to invite them to the dinner. MC team did the same to callup alumni and invite MC/NC alumni. Think Tank members were helping out to link up people to join. Gary dedicated to be the moderator for the Alumni Chat. Everyone was on fire to drive and wanted to have many participants to join the dinner as we could.

It happened

on 1st Dec 2007. The Dinner finally happened, the work in the past 3 months paid off when I saw the alumni, new faces and old faces in the dinner. My MC babies, without you, I wouldn't be there.Without you, all of these things wouldn't happen. Without the supportive LCPs, we woulnd't have more than 150 people joined the dinner. Your work for the AIESEC in HONG KONG update was impressive and I appreciate what you have done to support the whole AIESEC in HONG KONG.

I am the one who always seek for the meaning of my existance, I don't know how much I mean to others and how much I mean to the organization. However, every single one of you, do mean a lot to me. It's your AIESEC, our AIESEC and our Future...

Every time we remember to say "thank you,"
we experience nothing less than heaven on earth.

Thank you, everyone of you. You made me experience the heaven on earth =)

We don't remember days; we remember moments

Looking back on the 23 years in my life, it's pretty long time and short compare to those who's more experienced and witnessed how the world changes longer than me.

Calulating how many days I've been living surprised me, it's around 8538 days til now. Even though it's just a number but somehow it made me start thinking. How many days of those 8538 days that made me really happy or unforgottable? This question could take me a month to think about, I am pretty sure there's no exactly a day that made me happy but the moments of day did. Our lives are full of moments, "days" are the frames of those moments. I tried to spend some time to write down those frames of my live-time...

Days in the field of Innocence

When we were little, like when we were babies or kids, we do not remember much on those "days", some random moments might flashed in head sometimes, I calle'em "Days in the field of Innocence". It's the very beginning time-frame of my life.

School Days

What comes next? Oh yea.. the "School Days", it's a frame about school, studies, learning how to be good and at the same time, I was learning how to be bad. In school, no matter it's primiary shool, secondary school or even university. The teachers taught me how should I behave and what I shall not to behave. As the results, I tried to behave on both, be a good person and a bad person. During those days, I do not remember much but some interesting moments.

The moment that I cried because I lost friends
The moment that I worked so hard on singing and studying to myself a good student
The moment that I did exactly the opposite from what my mom told me to
The moment that I screwed up in my study
The moment that I inspired by my teachers and thought that I found my way out but failed to reach it.
The moment that I thought about purpose of life and death

There are a lot more... but all I remember is moment, lots of moments and every moment could make a story. Maybe that's why it's amazing to think back about life, lots of pages about your life you're been written, but you don't remember everything, but in every chapter there's always some highlights, which are quite in details that you remember. These are the moments, both good and bad and all these become the most representing highlights in the chapters in your life.

AIESEC Days

Now, I am living my days randomly and unstably because I have different mood and experience every day. Those uncertainty and expected experiences create lots of moments in my life that generates different level of impact on me. My life in AIESEC... complicated and very very intensive experience. Lots of increditable and unforgottable moments happened during these 3 years. All I did was taking pictures but some important moments just couldn't described.. I am afraid that these moments will be faded away in my heard after years. And I know these moments should be remembered.. So starting from yesterday, I started filling in my emotion journey again, which is something I missed and hadn't been doing in the past 3 years. I started to make every moment to be worth it to be remembered.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

More days pass the more I understand about life, the more memories I have in head and the more stories I have.. and everytime.. I try to fly.

Recognize More Talents

"One of the greatest talents of all is the talent to recognize and to develop talent in others"

- Frank Tyger

This is not something new to me and I learnt from books and different leaders a while ago. It's easy to understand but hard to DO IT. I recognize talents and find it difficult to develop them. I am experiecing an interesting, at the same time, challenging time to develop a talent. I conciously tell myself not to put assumption in people and stop a while to use my intituation to judge. It's something hard for me as it's a habbit of mine for the past 20 years.

After working in this organization for years, I found that assumptions could be pretty easy to become stereotypes or bias. Developing talents is difficult, because if the person is willing to be developed and whether he's willing and open enough to change himself/herself is out of my control. I see goodness and badness in the person but what's the best way to develop the person is still blur.

In organizations today, leaders sometimes treat their team by jumping to conclusion by one of two issues. One little mistake in the early going and your potential is forever limited. If we too quickly draw assumptions and form biases from early performance that aren't fair to the person or the organization.

Great leaders are patient when evaluating talent and the potential contribution of team members. They understand that human resources are the organization's most valuable asset. They want every person on the team to be their best and give them every chance to do so. I am still learning to be a great leader.

I have been too quick to write off team members before they have a reasonable chance to show you their talent and I do not feel like make it happen again, especially in a team like this I am in, I cannot afford to mis-look anyone of as they are so important to me and I feel that I have a responsibility for them.

I want them to have a good team experience
I want them to be developed properly follow by their wills
I want them to be proud of their achievement of the AIESEC in Hong Kong 0708.

I am telling myself, this week, I have to be slower to judge those around me and quicker to provide them the instruction and support they need to succeed. Find ways to vent my frustration with mistakes that won't bias my perception of the person's overall worth and value to the team.

The test provided by Ronnie said that I am a projector, I wanna energize my team just like how they support me and make me feel great every day. It's 10 of us.. People say "The speed of the boss is the speed of the team."

It's time to speed up!! GROWTH!

After IC 2007

It's an intensive experience, it's an unforgettable experience and it's my life-long impacted experience.

The IC 2007 ended with laughters and claps, some of the scenes were so familiar, cos some of the guests showed up in last IC, some of the scenes were so new and fresh though it's not something new, but new people and new point of view. It's still alive and fresh.

The role shifted from delegate to delegate + MCP is totally different experience, just like Martin said, Legislation should be an enjoyable moment to feel and taste what's the real diversity and how to be yourself, it's not like watching how other acts and then follow without your own stand point. It's the first time I sat for the legislation by myself and it made me a bit nervous so I stayed up and had been sober during the whole legislation. It's a great experience.

IC 2007 is about Achiever, during the DLD, I got to know more about myself and how I should act in a team, it made me think a lot and confessed a lot. It's time to give it a change..

Hey friends, how are you doing? You guys left for a while even though I still can smile you guys humor and laughters, and even feel you're being with me.

I miss the old days but at the same time, I am enjoying my time with my team. Looking for more and seeking for more.

I need to make up my mind :)