As you can see from the photo above of the flowers at the front of our house, it is springtime in Hong Kong.  Springtime is traditionally the season of new beginnings, so it is appropriate that for the past three weeks I have been involved with the other members of the Selection Committee to interview the  Hong Kong students who have applied to enter United World Colleges in September this year and who had been short-listed for panel interviews.

I love doing these interviews each year even though it makes for an extremely tiring few weeks as all my other work gets squashed into evening and weekends.  Every one of the students we interview each year is a sensational individual who would be a stunning addition to any school in the world - they are often the very best students in their respective schools, so there is an abundant wealth of talent.  We have no trouble reminding ourselves that we are enjoying the privilege of selecting students from among the highest ability, most meritorious all-round students in the world.

Every year when I conduct the interviews, I focus on different areas in my questioning.  This year I was especially keen to find out how much research the students had done on the United World College movement to which they were applying and how fully they understood the nature and purposes of the UWCs.

For example, I asked most of the students to name the person who had started the United World Colleges movement.  Fortunately, most of the students were able to name Kurt Hahn, although several needed prompting with the pronunciation.  Some alternative suggestions offered to me included Nelson Mandela, Li Po Chun, Prince Charles and “some German dead guy”.  I was amused and even a little impressed when I asked the question to one student, who burst out laughing and said “what a question – it was YOU of course!”.

I asked many of the students how many United World Colleges there are in the world as a prelude to a follow-up question asking them to outline the mission, vision and purpose of the United World Colleges.  The answers varied from 2 to “just over 200” UWCs around the world, although fortunately the most common answer was a more accurate “12”.  Perhaps the best answer would have been “not enough”, but sadly no-one offered that as a response.

I also asked many of the students this year to describe a news event during the previous week that had particularly interested them, with the sole restriction that the news story should refer to an event outside Hong Kong and outside China.  This condition seemed to unnerve several students who had clearly studied and thought deeply about events in Tibet or Taiwan, or both.  A wide variety of stories was mentioned, including the introduction of democracy in Bhutan, the elections in Zimbabwe, updates to ongoing issues such as global warming or Darfur, the extramarital relations of the French President, and so on.

However, by far the most frequently mentioned news stories centred on the Democratic Primaries in the United States.  Many of the students offered perceptive and valuable insights into stories such as Barack Obama’s pastor’s comments, Hillary Clinton’s claims about visiting Bosnia under sniper fire in 1996 and Barack Obama’s speech on race.  Many of the students had perceptive analyses to offer based on having watched videos of the relevant events on YouTube and other similar sites, surely a sign of the times.

I asked many of the students who they would support in November’s Presidential elections if they were living in the US (giving reasons) – only 1 said she would support John McCain “because America needs a real hero for a President”, 4 said they would support Clinton (mainly on the basis of experience, with a few also mentioning the more discriminatory basis of gender), while all the rest (the overwhelming majority) said they would support Obama as the most inspirational candidate who would do the most to improve America’s image abroad as well as help less privileged groups in the US.

The meeting of the Selection Committee to decide Hong Kong’s offers to UWCs for 2008 will be held this Wednesday.  That meeting will provide opportunities for wonderful new life-changing beginnings for about 64 students who will be offered places in 9 of the UWCs this September, including of course Li Po Chun UWC here in Hong Kong.  The results will be announced in groups over the next few weeks leading through to early May.

On the subject of new beginnings, I mentioned in last week’s blog that Di and I had become proud grandparents of a beautiful baby granddaughter, Zoe.  This weekend I took the time to visit Zoe in Sydney, making full use of a 3-day weekend we had for the Qing Ming Festival.  Zoe is even more beautiful in person than in the photos, and the moment of seeing her for the first time brought tears to my eyes.

If you click on any of the images that appear below, you will see an enlarged photo of Zoe at just over a week old.  For those people with access to the password-protected family galleries section of my website, a larger collection of 52 images can be viewed by clicking  HERE.