Student Opening Ceremony Remarks
July 10, 2002
Speakers:
Lana Asfour, Tufts University, and Patrick Lai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Good evening, Professors, mentors, ladies and gentlemen. It is our great honor that we mark the opening of the 2002 TILIP program with all of you today. TILIP is an intensive program that provides us students with a very important opportunity. Students from HK, US and China are given the chance to interact on many different levels through our Outward Bound experience, internships, discussions, case studies and even as roommates. Furthermore, we will organize a Symposium which is to be held at the Tufts University next February on issues of Urbanization, Migration and Development.
As a matter of fact, it has been less than a week since we students first met each other in person; but our interaction commenced well more than a month before. The internet provides a virtual arena for the eminent souls from the two extremes of the Pacific Rim, from universities in the United States, in Hong Kong and in the Mainland, each from a different cultural background and educational context, each with different values, principles, perspectives and visions, to harmonize, and to contrast, to review perceived notions and gain novel perspectives, to ultimately better understand ourselves and the world, and hopefully seek elevation and improvement. Our discussion covers a wide scope of areas ranging from leadership, culture, politics and economics, and from China, Hong Kong to US. To have our minds always agile, always critical and always unyielding in challenging our own complacency and limits are the great lessons we have learnt from the online discussion.
We students had only known each other for a couple of days when we set out to Tai Mong Chai for three days of intense mental and physical challenge. On the first night of our Outward Bound experience we were left on a deserted island and were told to build a raft and find our own way back. Using primitive materials, our only real tools were our bare hands and our spirit. Yet we managed to get back after three hours of rowing. The Outward Bound put us in an unfamiliar environment and drew us closer together as we supported and encouraged each other through our challenges.
Starting from tomorrow, the internship programs will be launched. Esteemed mentors, honorable guests, I assign here no limits to the pleasure and honor that your presence today and the continuous support for the program grants us. Your knowledge and experience of breadth and depth and your illuminating guidance and nurturance will no doubt contribute crucial effort to the success of this program, and, above all, a wholesome and full development of we students, as persons.
To repay our debt of gratitude, esteemed mentors, honorable guests, may I here promise you all on behalf of the students that we shall utilize our every inch of effort and every ounce of our own brilliance to serve and learn under your guidance. To always remember the lessons we have learnt from the online discussions and the Outward Bound course. To realize one's own limits and to overcome them, to appreciate the shortcomings as well as the strengths in ourselves and other, and the majesty of interpersonal collaboration, be modest in our qualities, and yet be proud and daring in projecting and attaining our own success. That we students will not fail your expectation, but to achieve more than you have expected. Thank you.
