Even though my role at Eureka has evolved into that of someone that manages teaching projects versus teaching exclusively I still find it useful to teach one or two classes a term to keep my skills sharp and also so I am never that far removed from the classroom.

I teach at a third tier secondary school in the Ma On Shan section of Hong Kong and enjoy it.  I may have shared but many educators in the United States hold a view that students in East Asia are all motivated and well behaved.  However, after spending time at this particular secondary school my views about the infallibility of Asian students have changed.  Students in Hong Kong are just as volatile and require the same motivation provided by a passionate teacher.

The  course I teach at this secondary school is a “Social Issues” course which is one of the modules that all Hong Kong secondary school students must be familiar with to perform well on assessments necessary for students intent on continuing to university.  Many of my students at this particular school find this course difficult.  Although I do not like using my Cantonese language skills when I teach I have found it necessary in some situations.

I continue to learn a great deal working with this group of students.  Last week we spoke about “Underage drinking” and the word of the day was “feasibility”.

Happy New Year readers!  It has been a while since my last post.  Besides coughing my lungs out (blast this HK pollution) I have been busy preparing various English teaching jobs for newly hired teachers at my firm Eureka.  There was quite a rush before Chinese New Year to get proposals into schools… it is less busy now, but the project management side of my job really takes a lot of time.  And, next week my own teaching job “Social Issues for Form 5″ resumes at a high school in Ma On Shan in the New Territories.

Life is busy, and I pledge to be more diligent in my reporting of my life here in Hong Kong.

A good friend familiar with the in’s and out’s of Hong Kong introduced me to Vitasoy, a sweet soy beverage served in a bottle and sold warm at 7-11s across Hong Kong.

I had one after working until 11:00pm last night.   It’s 8:30pm and I am still in the office so maybe it’ll be another Vitasoy night. Better for me than San Miguel’s.

For about a week now I’ve been coughing.  I never suffered from any kind of respiratory ailments in New York.  Perhaps my pristine US home grown lungs haven’t fully acclimated to the air here.  I have this dry cough that just won’t go away.  It’s really bothersome.  I am not sure if it’s the moisture in the air that I am not accustomed to or just the pollution.

Otherwise, it’s been a productive and good *cough* day(*cough cough*).

What a great evening. I love it here in Hong Kong but sometimes it’s just great to connect with someone from home. And she was really lovely too.

I saw the above editorial in the South China Morning post a few days ago. It really made me take pause.

I have only been in Hong Kong for 10 months but I am already feeling local with a vested interest in the future of this city.

It is an odd thing but back in New York I only gave tacit acknowledgement to recognising Hong Kong as a city with its own unique culture separate from China’s. I am truly by no means qualified to speak about this but it seems to me that Hong Kong is a Chinese city. It’s colonial history can be viewed as shameful but the British provided a stability Hong Kongers have enjoyed which has enabled the city to prosper. There is something palpably different in the way Hong Kong think, speak and relate to one another. You feel it the moment you come across the border at Lowu from Shenzhen Something about the body politic is different. It is this something I love and think worth preserving.

Are Hong Konger’s Chinese citizens? I say they are but with a strong unique identity as a Hong Konger just as I identify myself more a New Yorker versus anything else. Don’t change Hong Kong.

Social media.  What images do those two words paint in your mind?  Two lovers sitting across from each other gazing ardently at their iPhones oblivious to each other?  Political activists tweeting their desperate plight for all the world to see?  Inane blog posts by hack writers?

Whatever your feeling about social media it is here to stay, and it has transformed how we interact with each other.  I read that “digital disrupts”.  Look at how digital has devastated the music, video, and publishing industry.  Historians will look back and recognize that social media represented another shift in humanity much as the invention of the printing press transformed the world.

I was thinking about this recently…  Social media has transformed how I interact – by and large for the better.  Last week I got together with a friend.  This friend I had only met once in New York.  I know him through his blog and later his twitter feed.  Through the past two years he and I corresponded back and forth through Twitter.  We got together and we did not feel like strangers.  This is because all along we talked through twitter, facebook, and qik video conferences.  People no longer have to be in the same geographic space to be friends!

Social media to me isn’t about Facebook updates, and animal videos on YouTube.  It is about community building.  When I think about the important people in my life it is through the various communities I have belonged to throughout my life – school, college, work, teaching, church, etc.  Most of my closest friends were made through my involvement with others around a common interest.  Social media allows me to continue to create or curate a new group of friends around my many interests: education, technology, writing, Asia, etc.  As a teacher I recognize the value of community because isn’t “building community” what we do everyday in our classrooms?

It is the community enabling aspect of social media that intrigues  me and not silly videos about a baby name Charlie.  But still the YouTube video is worth checking out:  Charlie bit my finger.  It’s a riot.

I should explain what it is I do at Eureka.  I was hired originally as a teacher.  I see myself as a teacher because I taught in New York.  But the owner of Eureka saw on my CV that I have a MBA and asked if I wouldn’t like to join the team as a manager to help grow Eureka.  And this is where I find myself.  I think it is the best of both worlds – combining my passion for education with the highly practical skills of a MBA.

I am in this week’s issue of HK Magazine!  It is a reminder of how quickly things move in Hong Kong.  I was at a technology meetup call Web Wednesday in Central a month ago.  I met students from Syracuse University.  I became excited because Syracuse is near my alma mater (University at Buffalo).  It turns out they were studying at the University of Hong Kong for a semester.  One was interning at HK Magazine.  I gave her my card, and several weeks later she wrote to me asking if she could interview me for a column she was writing.  The column – “New Year’s Resolution Challenges” – the new years resolutions of 18 “colorful” personalities from “all sectors of HK society”.

That’s how things go in Hong Kong.  It took 10 months for me to get my picture and my words into a local magazine.  What will I be doing 10 months from now?

Wishing everyone a productive, and healthy 2012!

Causeway Bay will be a madhouse in several hours.

Happy New Year to all! Thank you for reading!