A little story about me

Originally published in 6 Jan 2016 on my another blog

This song touches my soul, every single time. (If you haven’t listened, that’s the only song you’ve to listen today) With its acoustically relaxing melody, Adam Levine sings out the internal struggle of a lost dreamer in searching the ultimate meaning of his existence. ‘Who am I?’ Perhaps, a question everyone of us is finding out the answer.

‘Who are we? Just a speck of dust within the galaxy?’

-Adam Levine

I’ve spent my past four years in uni to answer this question. Freshly out of high school, I was unarguably a meaning-lost, kinda socially awkward and uninspired typical nerd. No confidence. No aspiration. My only goal then was as simple as to find a ‘me’ I wanted.

My First Attempt — Public Speaking Gave Me Confidence

Socialising’d never been my strength. I’d never been to a boat trip. I’d never drunk in a bar. I’d never picked up a stranger. I was a completely introvert in my twelve-years schooling. So, it made perfect sense for my social curiosity looked forward to a new page in uni.

The first ingredient I needed was confidence. I had none. Probably got pushed by the then-buzzword ‘stepping out of your comfort zone’, I chose something quite objectively challenging, ‘public speaking’. I joined a college-level Toastmasters club, selected as the Vice President of Public Relations. Bingo. Two birds killed with one stone. A step closer to my social confidence.

Toastmasters Club, however, wasn’t the first place I publicly spoke in; instead, my alma mater invited me to share my transition from it to uni with the last-year students. Excitedly nervous, that was my feeling upon its invitation. Fast forward. You probably guess what happened for my speech: in front of 200 fellows, including my teachers, I sweated, tongue-tied, shook and completely forgot what I’d said. That level of embarrassment, wow… my goose bumps still comes out when recalling this now.

Already having read a couple of self-help books (I thought no one’s going to help me, but myself), like ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People‘ (my all-time favourite) and ‘Winning‘, I knew the famous Batman-wisdom was true: ‘Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.’ (I even wrote an academic paper on this)

I picked myself up from Toastmasters, again. This time, in front of 20 members, I shared my embarrassed first-time public-speaking experience. It felt great, even my sweat came to celebrate while I was speaking. Next week, I continued trying. (The club’s on a voluntary basis: each week’s meeting welcomed three to four prepared speeches) Almost every day, I watched at least three to four presentations on YouTube, aspiring to be the best presenter in the world. (My favourite, though very cliche, is still Steve Jobs’ introducing the first iPhone) Next year, my alma mater, to my surprise, invited me again. This time, everything went much better. My teacher, who invited me, praised me after my speech, ‘You’re like Dayo Wong (a renowned comedian, with a philosophy degree).’

And, this was a recognition, but also a clue to the question ‘Who am I’. I enjoyed sharing my stories or some self-help messages (like Dream Big, Be Yourself, Be a Leader…) with people. That did give my great sense of satisfaction. At that time, I aspired to becoming someone like Tony Robbins, one of the greatest motivating speakers in our universe.

My Second Attempt — Maybe, I Was Wrong

After my continued progress in presentation, I decided to take my skill to another area. I applied as a chair in Model United Nations. To be honest, though claiming ‘I’m a globally aware person’, I was not ‘very’; I just tried to challenge myself. Nevertheless, I got selected. I’d never heard (not to mention joined) about this thing before. A complete unfamiliarity. Unfamiliar rules of game; unfamiliar atmosphere of ‘faked elitism’; unfamiliar mode of politics.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Despite my freshness, I was asked to represent the club to attend the World Model United Nations by Harvard in Belgium. To someone who’d never stepped beyond the land of Asia, it was an exciting news. Mom, I was going to Europe! The first in my family. I didn’t give a shit to why I was going; I was going to Belgium! The topic assigned was ‘Rwanda Genocide‘. Both words unknown to me. I did the least preparation on the topic, and nothing on Belgium. (Given my academic business then) Finally, the day came. I flew to Belgium, only to feel good by telling the world I could finally do something cool on Facebook.

The experience was enlightening, disastrously. It was my first time in a game, called Model United Nation, while my counterparts had already done at least 5–7 times before coming to this one. I was completely lost. (It’s not a lesson on ‘Remember to prepare well before you go to such occasion!’) I didn’t know why I were there. Each delegate had to speak in front of the rest to speak for your pretentious country’s stance on the assigned topic. When I walked on the stage, my mind was even emptier than my back-to-old-school speech. In front of all the ‘world elites’, from Oxford, from Harvard, I was officially fucked up.

I’d always thought ‘with my confident presentation skills, I’d go anywhere, without knowing why I presented’. Here, for the first time, since my uni, I doubted myself. Maybe, I wasn’t good enough in faking my confidence when presenting a completely unfamiliar topic in front of the crowd. Maybe, I wasn’t born to be a speaker at all. Or…maybe, I was just something else.

The best welfare for a uni student is that I can always try to discover myself, with the minimum constraints of reality doctrines. So, back from Belgium, I still wasn’t able to find out who I actually was. (But one thing I was clearly sure about: I hate politics, I hate the so-called ‘international diplomacy’. They are faked. They hide themselves. They are the word-players, nothing else. The case’s even worse in MUN, where the self-interested young ‘elites’ really feel they’re taking control of the world. Disgusting.) Luckily, I had another chance to find it out, soon.

That summer, I went to Cambridge for a summer program. A dream came true. C-A-M-B-R-I-D-G-E. I had no idea what I could get there (and, I didn’t care), but wasn’t it already great enough I could tell my friend I went there? (A stupid, but a honest confession: words from the old me)

But, this trip’s changed my life. (or, in other words, it helped me answer the question ‘Who Am I’)

Thanks to my last two positions as a VP of PR and a chair in MUN, I was required to wear the mask of ‘a faked extrovert’. (I networked a lot, but a very few was truly pleasant to me.) But, the idea ‘extroverts are better than introverts’ still dominated in todays’ world, though I’d briefly doubted this.

When you went on an exchange program, the most heard suggestion’s always ‘Chill Out! Meet More People!’ I took it. In the first welcoming dinner in Cambridge, among 400 other international university students, I played my best part of an extrovert, in front of my Hong Kong fellows. ‘Wow, it’s interesting.’ ‘What’d you been before?’ Speaking, without caring. That night, a girl told me, ‘Ritchie, you’re so outgoing.’ Miss, but you didn’t know how exhausting it was to fake this trait. Every time after finishing a conversation, I was choked.

Then, one day, on Facebook, I found this article, ‘The Extroverted Introvert‘ (and later, this speech). When looking at the ‘symptoms’ of this type, I was…OMFG.

‘You feel the need to live up to an identity you have created every time you go out.’
‘You are afraid that if anyone truly saw the “real you” they wouldn’t accept or like you.’
‘You feel exhausted and completely drained at the end of the day.’

Okay, you win. You described me, perfectly. ‘I am an introvert.’ And, nothing should be ashamed of. Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Kobe Bryant. All of my heroes are. I could not lie to myself. I knew this was the true me, an introvert. Someone who prefers devoting time, energy and life to ideas, to people. (That doesn’t mean I dislike sharing my ideas, my aspirations, my stories or listening to people’s.) So, this’s the first added answer to my question.

The second change came from a course, a teacher. ‘Good Life and Moral Life’. My first encounter with philosophy. The first lesson was already about something crazily big, what life is. (Indeed, wanting to know who I am was because of this course) Later, we talked about what good, bad, ethics, knowledge and a person were. I still remember the first tutorial, I didn’t say a single word, trying not to embarrass myself. But, in the first three lectures, my activated mind moved the fastest ever in my life. Thinking and reflecting all the time.

I doubted, challenged and questioned a lot of things, I used to find right. ‘Why are we going to school?’ ‘What is a good life?’ ‘What is a good teacher?’ ‘Has education in HK never fostered me to discover myself?’ The journey of asking these questions and finding out the answers was amazing. The world was no longer the same to me, for I thought. I saw differently, I felt differently, I experienced differently. (I’d write another 5000 words on how philosophy’s changed my life, so I’ll stop here) (Indeed, talking about making me think, I have to thank my best friend of all time. He’s changed my life, too. Thank you, my man.)

During my reading and researching, I came across with another life-changing book, ‘The Strangest Secret‘. The book started with asking a Nobel-prize winner what the biggest problem of the world was. His answer: ‘Man don’t think’. (That’s especially true to someone who’s just found the beauty and power of thinking.) So, what’s the secret? In the middle of the book, it said, ‘You become what you think of.’ (A Buddhist wisdom) Our life’s like a farm field: what seed you put on there, what yield you get. Holy Hell. I felt like I was actually travelling to another universe of spirit, not in Cambridge. But, that’s transformative.

I was more critical, more self-aware, more clearly minded. Just another me. Oh…I forgot to say: for I was too into wandering around the spiritual and intellectual search, and for most of my time in Cambridge, I chose to stay in the libraries of Pembroke and King’s College. Despite returning back to my ‘social alienation’ (not going to any bar or club at all), I felt being myself, on a different level.

(Apart from philosophical thing, I started digging deeper into business thing. Started knowing the story of Google, Apple and Facebook. Reading more about Harvard Business Reviews, Forbes and Business Insider. Trying to understand what design thinking, lean-start-up and personalisation mean.)

My Third Attempt — Still Searching, and Searching

A common symptom of a philosophically experienced person is being cynical. Everyone around you is stupid. They don’t understand the world. They don’t even understand themselves. They don’t think. They choose to live the world as it is. They are defined by doctrines, not by themselves.

When I was back from Cambridge, that’s how I saw the world. With a bit of self-illusionary intellectual and spiritual superiority over others. I felt teachers in my school were all shit, just wasting my time; I even felt I deserved much more than just staying in the intellectually unexciting field of education. That’s why when asked what I wanted to do in life (after reading ‘The Google Story‘ and ‘Search Inside Yourself‘, Google seemed the best place for me), I always told people I wanted to end up in this Bay Area heaven. So, here’s my next search: ‘Is business my thing?’

It wasn’t easy for an education student to try business, in particularly ‘mentally’. Either you felt you were so unqualified or people in business felt so. But, thanks to my illusionary arrogance, I didn’t care the naysayers, or ‘saying-no’ beliefs. Just try, I didn’t give a shit anyway. Coincidently, one day, checking my school email, I saw something called ‘Shadow a CEO Program‘. C-E-O?! Steve Jobs? Elon Musk? Richard Branson? The promotion email wrote ‘A once-a-life-time opportunity’. I MUST GET IN. (Of course, I overly expected.)

After two rounds of interviews (sorry for skipping all the dramatic tensions), I got in. (But one point to make, during in the first round, I got asked what role I could play in business. My then answer was ‘Sales and Marketing’, for the only thing I had my mom said was my non-stopping mouth. And, watching Jordan Belfort’s ten lessons on selling, the real wolf of Wall Street, double confirmed such answer.) I went to HKBN, a local broadband company. Together with me was a BBA/Law student from HKU. (An unreachably prestigious program to me) Pleasured.

Finally, I met the CEO. Wasn’t a big-deal moment, frankly. Just a man sitting in a bigger room only (he’s a nice guy). In the following three days, I attached with him, and a couple of CXOs, to internal meetings and client meetings. It was eye-opening; in the end, my first time to wear the suit of business. Still hungry to get immersed deeper, on my last day of the shadowing, I asked the CEO whether I could do a short-term internship under the Enterprise Solution Sales Team in summer. He agreed. (So, that’s not the end of the story)

Not having any official duties in my third year, I simply continued my self-learning in business, some essential skills and philosophies. But, my life’s changed again, by a phone call during my Psycholinguistics lesson. ‘Ritchie, are you interested in being a student volunteer in Boao Forum? I’ve to find four students.’ Having heard of it before, I asked for some time to do some research. A Chinese website, with Simplified Chinese characters. Frankly, the first sight wasn’t appealing. Clicking to ‘Guest Lists’. Scrolling down…WHAT THE FUCK. Bill Gates!? Wait…team member of Google X. (I missed the name ‘Elon Musk’ then) No hesitation: a yes to that wonderful lady. Thank you.

Still cynical and very introverted, I didn’t have any expectations on making friends, or socialising there, unlike the old me. On the first two days (five days in total), I paid no effort in building a friendship with anyone. Just did my job. But, it all changed after this…

On the third day, I was in charge of managing a closed-door event (something called like ‘the future entrepreneurs’). The person I most wanted to see, the Google X team member, was there. (Perhaps with the same reason, five more student volunteers joined the event too…not very closed-door) It started. (No one cared what they talked. We all waited for talking with the delegates.) Finally, it came the chance, but a girl ran faster than me. She was talking to the Googler, who’s already quitted and started his own company about drive-less cars. After waiting for a while, it’s my turn. (Recalling back what we talked, I felt I could have talked something more intellectual) We discussed about the ecosystem of start-up culture in China. Later, seeing our engaged discussion, more joined. Eventually, six of us stood in front of that inspiring man sharing his ‘think different’ ‘do something great for the world’ messages. We left enlightened.

So, here came the magical moment. Hungry, six of us went to the staff canteen. Not knowing one another well at all, we started off something like ‘It’s inspiring’. Suddenly, I felt the explosion inside my soul. That urge of sharing. I talked about my aspirations of being a Googler, to influence education through technology. They further asked me why. I continued sharing my change from a lost kid to a self-aware being today; I wanted to let my kids experience such spiritual transformation. I also talked about hating life being defined as a single formula, from studying hard to getting to college, from getting a good job to borrowing mortgage. Life should be more than that. My excitement went on for about half an hour, with the genuine audience listening to my aspirations, my philosophies and my life stories. ‘Did I just say all of these to you?’ Even myself didn’t believe I’d shared these with people. I forgot my naive insistence of being a cynic. I love that moment. Later, they shared the same thing to the group. Every word was real. No hiding. We spoke for our lives. We encouraged one another to be ourselves. We talked about anything. Something usually hidden from others. At that moment, I felt the true beauty of people. The deep connection. Amazing. Again, I was transformed, after knowing in the world, there must be someone who have the capacity to contain our stories, our aspirations, our feelings and our struggles. I thought it’s time for me to drop off the mask of arrogant cynicism. I still remember I always to these wonderful people, ‘You’ve made me feel humanity restored.’

My next big transformation from Boao was ‘start your own thing’. Back to the question ‘What I’d do in business?’ I was never sure (and of course, I still hadn’t experienced the internship) But, among the student volunteers, a guy gave me an important clue. He had his own startup, doing something he believed in. When he shared his thing, he never stopped showing the true passion. Other than him, no doubt, the ex-Googler. He’s even more into taking control of your life by starting your own thing. (He also told me, ‘I’d rather create my Google.’) This’s the first time I felt so close to entrepreneurship. Not for making money, but for creating your own life, your own stories, your own passions. Isn’t that what everyone wants (esp. when people say, I hate a routine life)? To me, someone who hate rules, controls or commands, startup, in the moment, seemed to be the best option in life.

(Indeed, there’s one more turning point. There, I met Mr. Adam Falk, the principal of William’s College. After sharing my education philosophies with him, he told me, ‘I’m sure you’ll make a difference to your education.’ Thanks Mr. Falk.)

My Forth Attempt — An Education Entrepreneur?

Now, it seemed I had the answer for the question. I was that philosophical, introverted and big-dreaming guy. And, I was then fine with the word ‘dreamer’ (at least, I’m not that only one, thanks John Lennon) To prepare myself to be an entrepreneur, after my return from Boao, I spent every of my effort and attention to studying possibly everything about it. From online articles about what makes good entrepreneurs to the biographies. Though not knowing what I actually had to start, after reading ‘From Zero to One‘, ‘Creativity, Inc.‘ and ‘Insanely Simple‘, I thought I had some ideas on what type of entrepreneur I aspired to becoming. Someone to disrupt an industry.

Like everyone who learns about entrepreneurship, I couldn’t miss Apple’s garage story. I first began my knowledge of the great man behind this company with the movie, ‘Jobs‘ (the old one in 2013). Impatient, kinda misfit, emotionally weird, arrogantly seeing things differently, demanding to people around me and dreaming/visioning all the time, I couldn’t help myself connect with Steve Jobs. I just got obsessed with him. (The first English book I bought in life was also about him, ‘The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs‘) While reading ‘Insanely Simple‘, I knew one of the best advertisements by Apple was the ‘Think Different’ in 1997. (My life’s shaped by this 1 minute)

‘Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to
think they can change the world are the ones who do.’

Every line. Every word. It touched my soul. I never thought of myself the same with the rest. I always thought I was the misfit, the rebel, the troublemaker, the one who saw things differently. While listening to Mr. Jobs saying ‘While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius’, that was the GREATEST encouraging reinforcement to my belief, as doing something great and different. It’s like he’s talking to me directly. From that moment of epiphany, I felt like I was the man on a mission, every since. And, later, I found out Steve explaining this ad. Another equally soul-enlightening video:

‘When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is — everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.’

– Steve Jobs

(Please read through every single word) My life’s pushed to another level with what I’ve been through Steve Jobs’ wisdom. I was totally inspired, and transformed, by this man of greatness. His unmoved, confident and fuck-the-naysayers belief of individuality. Wordless. I WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

I did, to a certain extent, capture the philosophical side of Steve Jobs, but definitely not the practical side. This was evident in my internship. Asked for in the CEO-shadowing program, the internship finally came. Without a true passion on broadband industry, the left purpose I went there was to gain a hands-on experience in business. Thanks to my company, I was allowed to try different things, from dining out with the Uber Asia executive to initiating a partnership with a startup. Aside with the job-related stuff, I started searching for where my first startup could begin from. (Back then, I thought ‘individual difference’ was one of the worst education nightmares. Without knowing it’s actually ‘adaptive learning’, I believed a centralised system, using big data, could solve the issue) Balancing the intern-duties (and observing what my colleagues did on a daily basis) and my research effort, I spotted which side I was truly enjoying. (The latter, surely) But, not having a paradigm ‘great execution of an above-average idea is 100000 times better than just finding the greatest ideas’, I naively believed, as long as I had the crazy visions like Steve Jobs, I could change the world, without actually getting my hands dirty like how Apple was founded in the literally dirty garage.

In that company, I met a great mentor, the founder of a pioneered WiFi service in HK. He taught me two great lessons: 1) Don’t forget who you were after succeeding 2) Start doing something, whatever it is. Later, he introduced me to his friend, the ex-director of Cyber-port. Similarly, he urged me to 1) Share your stories and ideas, and start doing something 2) Stop keep thinking!

I was always a dreamer, without thinking what actions to take. That was fatal. I finally realised that, but it’s never too late. At least, I had another summer, again spent in UK, for an immersion program. Something stupidly required by our education training program.

So, here I was again. Beautiful England. (I had no words about the program itself. The only thing worth-mentioning, other than my self-introspection, was the great memories with my friends) With the clear mission of figuring out what and how to start (I was still thinking whether I had any chance to build another Knewton, without any tech skills), I repeated the same routine every day. During weekdays, going back to the dorm, searching for more on the Internet; during the weekends, going to the (my favourite) Starbucks, staying there all day to do the same thing.

(If I really talked about the biggest takeaway from the program itself) It was asking me to do a mini-education project on any topic I wanted. Originally, I chose, of course, adaptive learning; but, it was banned by my group mates. Then, struggling a bit, I asked myself, what the ultimate essence of this technology was. Students. They were what I, and this system, cared about the most. So, here, I found out the most influential education concept in my life: student-centred education (though having a super shallow understanding of what it truly was). (I’ll talk about the evolution of my education philosophies sometimes in the future, but not here.) (I was also greatly inspired by the self-educating journey of Leonardo Da Vinci, from this video, which also profoundly shaped my education philosophy.)

On the other side, meanwhile, I was still figuring out ‘if I want to disrupt education, where to start and what to do?’ One day, I was, very randomly, typing the two most important words in my then life: education and entrepreneurs. Then, I found this website ‘Education Entrepreneurs‘. That’s the moment. The moment when you felt like you’re not alone in the world. Someone out there felt the same with you. And, they’ve already been doing something for it. While still on the level of thinking and talking about education, the featured video on the site gave me the truest reminder.

‘We can talk all day about fixing education.
We can talk all day about the problems we face.
But if we don’t take any actions,
nothing will ever happen.’

– Kelvin Tame, a Maths teacher

I always felt I thought differently, I talked differently and I saw education differently, and that already made me a great educator. No. I was never one. Actions. Actions. Actions. Or else, education’d remain shit. From this moment, I knew what’s next.

Now — Just Do It

The world won’t be changed just with my aspiring ideas; it will only be changed with executed ones. And, that’s what I, with my wonderful like-minded education comrades, am doing now. I don’t what’d happen next. Succeed or fail? Who knows. When you try something new, you never know the answer. You just keep searching. I believe, as long as we keep moving forward, answers will unveil themselves. There might be lots of unanswered and mystified questions in life, what we have to do is to search for the answers and keep demystifying them.

(P.S. The whole story wouldn’t have been completed, without my girlfriend, my family, my best friends and mentors along the way. Thank you. At least, you’re the reasons for keeping me forward.)

I still believe in what we’re doing.
I still believe in our education.
I still believe in our children.
I still believe in our future.

For, I’m still crazy enough to think we can change the world.

Let the story go on.