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Dr. Brian Wong has returned to Hong Kong and has embarked upon an academic career as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. He has also been appointed to serve as a Chief Strategy Officer at the HK-ASEAN Foundation, a Fellow at the Oxford Global Society, and has published a book The Era of Geopolitics. Brian is incredibly and immensely grateful to the Kwok Family and Scholars community for its continued and incredible support throughout his education career.
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Dennis Ngan has recently been appointed as the Director of CEO Office at West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. Dennis plays a crucial role in overseeing the overall strategic direction and operation of the West Kowloon Cultural District, one of the most ambitious arts and cultural district in the world. He reports directly to the CEO and collaborates closely with various stakeholders, including the board and senior management, government officials, business and cultural partners, with the ultimate goal of developing Hong Kong as an “East meets West” international cultural centre.
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James Chan has recently joined the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust as a Senior Manager. He is responsible for grant-making of health and elderly care projects in Hong Kong and is currently focusing on initiatives related to epidemic preparedness.
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Michael Ng co-founded a non-profit sports club, Harbour Sports Club, in the UK to promote immigrant integration through sports. Its program was reported by SCMP and received the England Athletics Regional Volunteer Award. Well Done!
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Dr. Sarah He has recently earned a PhD in International Political Economy from the Boston College. Congratulations!
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Ankie Ng moderated the "The Future of Impact Investing: Emerging Trends and Opportunities" panel at the 16th Annual Social Enterprise Summit 2023 on 3 November 2023.
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BIOHK 2023 was held on 13-16 September 2023 at Hong Kong Exhibition Center. Ayo Chan was leading the organising team while Clement Wong was helping out. The convention provides a platform for in-depth discussions on research results and future development trends to allow pioneers of the biotech industry to gather.
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At his new role with the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, James Chan organised an international technical convening together with the Rockefeller Foundation in Hong Kong on 25-26 October 2023, gathered over 90 public health experts, government officials and academics from 21 countries and territories to examine how wastewater-based epidemiology could be leveraged to prevent the next pandemic outbreak.
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Kwok Scholars' dinner
10 Kwok Scholars and 6 directors/ friends of the Association had a dinner on 1 August 2023 at The Royal Garden Hong Kong.
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Reflections On ‘Being Lucky’
I wonder have you ever had such superstitions: if, consecutively, one experiences good outcomes in many of life’s critical junctures, one might expect encountering bad luck in the near future. Such a concern had bothered me for a long time. Each time I accomplish something that I truly desire, the joy is soon to be washed away by concerns about the future. Will I ever be this lucky? I ask myself. Parents always say that life without difficulties is not considered a worth-living life, and people who have not been struck by adversaries are vulnerable to life’s uncertainties and challenges. I do not wish myself to fall into that category.
I have always considered myself to be a lucky person. I was lucky to be born into a lovely family. My parents have always loved me and supported me in every adventure that I undertook. I was lucky to have grown up in a peaceful country, in a beautiful culture that I so dearly love. I was lucky to have received good education, when many kids in other places and other times did not. I was lucky to be granted a scholarship to study in a high school in Singapore, where I had the chance to receive an international education and gain a more wholistic view of the world. And I was even more lucky to be granted another scholarship to study in the best university in the world (if you so believe) for a degree I am zealous in. All these fortunate coincidences happened to me and shaped who I am today. I have always believed that I am privileged to have enjoyed all these good things in life, and I have to give back to the society which granted me such privileges in one way or another.
Yet I have concerns about all these privileges. Am I deserving of them? Am I getting these rewards in life for whatever talents and virtues I have been endowed with out of natural contingencies, or are they partially attributed to my hard work and determination? Even if the latter is somehow true, surely, I attained them through growing up in a healthy and conducive environment, which again is a privilege that I enjoyed. For these reasons, I felt a sense of relief when occasionally misfortune did befall me, such as breaking my front tooth in a bicycle accident or undergoing surgery in my final year of high school. Life had been fair to me, I thought. It had given me things with such generosity that I sometimes doubt if I deserve them, but in the meantime, it had also deprived me some of the other things I could have enjoyed.
My concerns about luck started to fade away after I came to Oxford. Out of all matters, the first thing our master told us is to never doubt whether we deserve to be here. It is meaningless to doubt it when we are already in the place we are. What is more important is to work towards our goals and make ourselves factually deserving. Some even say that having such doubts is indeed a symptom of the imposter syndrome.
Indeed, mathematically speaking my scruples do not stand. Surely from the start point it seems that the probability of having a chain of independent lucky events happening consecutively is small, but at each point of life the outcomes of past events are already determined, and the probability of achieving my goal in the next critical juncture of life is but the same as it is ought to be. There is no solid grounding to the belief that bad things will happen after good things happened, or vice versa.
Most importantly, it is silly of me to view everything in light of fortune and probability. It is of course plausible to doubt whether I have any agency in everything that happens to me, if I were to be a hard determinist. However, that is no excuse for me to completely give up my agency in achieving my goals. After all, I am the one who is living my life and deciding what I want to do. Even though that decision may well be caused by factors out of my control, I gain no benefits from so believing.
I am willing to believe that my efforts can really make me more ‘fortunate’, that I get to decide what influences I am to receive and what motivations I am to have. When I work hard and mould myself in the way I desire, the probability of me achieving my objectives is indeed getting greater. But I thank myself for having these bothersome scruples all the time. It is never wise to attribute everything to oneself, be it good things or bad things, a fallacy I, as a single child, sometimes stereotypically fall into. While believing that I have agency over my own future, it is also important to realise that I am who I am today because of my parents’s upbringing, my family, the environment I have been in, and every now and then when some special moments sculpted my view of the world little by little. Always be grateful and always have faith — that I hope I will keep in mind.
Pan Leyi
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