Rob Lilwall (December 16th 2013)

On December 16^th 2013, Rob Lilwall arrived at Island School to speak to the Year 9s and 10s about his adventures around the world. He was charismatic and delivered great enthusiasm in his presentation. Recently, Rob had walked from Mongolia across China, all the way to Hong Kong.

Rob is a British born adventurer and author. From 2004 – 2008 he travelled over 50,000 kilometers across 28 countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and Tibet, eventually cycling from Siberia all the way back to the UK. After this exciting adventure, he published his first book “Cycling Home from Siberia”. In 2009 he moved to Hong Kong and in 2011 he set off on a new adventure in Mongolia. Rob walked over the Gobi Desert and also through central China with his friend and cameraman Leon.  After six months, they had arrived back in Hong Kong, completing another amazing adventure.

The presentation began with Rob telling us a bit about his first adventure, which was a cycling trip around the world. He explained that he had definitely undergone transformations through this trip, because it had opened his eyes to different cultures, tested his endurance and provided him with a challenge. However, this trip was life changing for him because he met his wife during the trip, which eventually led to Rob moving to Hong Kong. Rob has been living in Hong Kong for about 3 years now.

Rob then moves on to describe his second adventure, which was an expedition through Mongolia. The trip started early November in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where he met his cameraman Leon. With heavy backpacks and a large trolley packed with supplies, the two explorers began their adventure. They spent their first month trekking through the Gobi Desert, and during the day they would see camels and exotic plants, while at night they would camp out in the cold, windy desert. However, after a few days, they met a group of nomads in Mongolia, and were invited into their yurt to rest. Rob exclaims that he was incredibly amazed and touched by the generosity of the people along the way, and he was incredibly happy as he met many new friends along the way. As they were walking along the street on Chinese New Years Eve, a man invited them in to celebrate the New Year with his family. This trip was truly memorable for Rob, as he got experiencing the hospitality of the Chinese people, who were happy to share their culture with two brave foreigners who were walking across China.  They enjoyed a lot of the breathtaking scenery and the towering architecture that China had to offer, and even strolled along the Great Wall. As he walked, Rob even got a chance to listen to Mandarin podcasts, and could conduct simple conversations in Chinese by the end of the trip!

However, Rob also faced many different challenges when walking home from Mongolia. One of these challenges was the extreme weather. At one point, as he was walking in the Gobi Desert, he and Leon had to eat, sleep and walk through a blizzard. Rob goes on to describe a humorous story, where he teaches the students how to “cook in a blizzard”. All of the food that he and Leon brought was frozen solid because of the extreme weather. Rob told us that he had to cut open his plastic bottle of water (which had froze into ice) and put it into the pot. After this a frozen packet of instant noodles was thrown into the pot and stewed down slowly along with a frozen tin of Mongolian beef. This incredibly nutritious meal cooked out in the Gobi Desert was described as Rob as “dog food that kept us alive”. Another challenge that the crew had to undergo was the injuries that were sustained from filming the project and walking for about 25 kilometers every day. After a month of walking, Rob already had a foot injury, and his cameraman Leon’s fingers were scarred and bruised. They had also begun to get annoyed at one another. All of these problems were solved through teamwork, as they worked together and encouraged each other to press on. Rob explains that he solved problems through setting goals for himself, starting with a short term goal – in his case, was walking 25 kilometers every day. His mid term goal was to reach a the next city in about a week/ month. Rob’s ultimate goal, of course, was to reach Hong Kong.

At last, after six months of walking, Rob and Leon had arrived back in Hong Kong and were reunited with their families. Rob wrote a book titled “Walking Home from Mongolia” sharing his adventures with people around the world.

After Rob’s presentation, lots of students had expressed their interests in going on an expedition similar to Rob’s. His inspirational story enables us as students to dream big, and has definitely showed many students that if you step out of your comfort zone, you can do anything!

Janice YK Lee!

Writer Janice YK Lee visited Island School in 2013 to give a talk about her experiences as a novelist and how her upbringing shaped her into who she is today.

Janice talked about how she grew up as a Korean child born and raised in Hong Kong, educated in an international school before moving to New Hampshire, and later attended Harvard.

After graduating from college, she worked at Elle magazine as the assistant tot he beauty editor. As much as she enjoyed the job and learning about the cosmetics industry, she switched departments to the features section where she was (happily) surrounded by books. She then moved to Mirabella magazine, where she did more or less the same thing. It was then she realized that she would never have time to write her own book, a dream of hers since she was a child, if she stayed on that career path.

With that realization, she quit her job and turned freelance, and eventually ended up at the Hunter College’s MFA program. She spent most of her time in graduate school writing short stories, some of which were published.

The Piano Teacher, her bestselling novel, was published a whole five years after it was started. The novel is a love story set in Hong Kong during the 1940s and 50s.

She talked about how her novel had developed over the years, what had helped her through difficult parts of the story, and how she had gone about constructing the plot. She talked about how the story sometimes wrote itself without her control, and how writers should let that happen instead of planning absolutely everything before writing the first draft.

She also talked about how research was very important to writing novels, especially historical novels. Although interviews with people are very important, she also stressed that it was crucial to not use someone else’s life story as the plot for your own. That way, it limits what you can do to the story, and it essentially will not be “your story” any more.

For the aspiring authors in the audience, her experiences provided a great deal of insight into the process of producing a novel. It showed us how a novel is formed from start to finish, from just a collection of ideas to an intricate plot with vivid characters.

Welcome to Blue Tree, Green Sky!

We are the Blue Tree, Green Sky. And why are we called that? Well. Sorry to go
TOK here, but you know that the sky is normally portrayed as blue, and the leaves
of the tree as green right? Well what if they’re not seen this way and instead swap
the colors around. Basically we are the committee that thinks outside the box. We
believe that examinations score and higher education, but to achieve beyond, more
ideal than this. Therefore, we aim to promote innovative, creative and interesting
methods to learn and study at Island School.

And what we do is invite external speakers. You know politicians, journalists and
authors. These are the people who are brave and willing enough to bring their
personal stories about failures and trials; then transform into a speech and it equals
a story-style like speech that is enough to inspire hearts of many. How will it inspire
you ask? It’s their passions you could say. Think about it, people who have lost
and feel down in all of a sudden are reinvigorated later in life. One man could be
crippled for instance yet he would continue to press on with life even in an awkward
condition. Global issues can also be addressed such as the environment, educational
standings, and economics. These speakers aren’t here just to ramble, they are
there to teach us and turn our lives around. Nuri Vittachi, Asia’s best journalist and
author for example. He was one of our previous speakers and he personally came
to Island School to spread his message about creativity. He was heavily influenced
by creativity in the past, and now he will pass on their teachings to the younger
generation.

Currently we are continuing our roles in the Blue Tree, Green Sky: inviting speakers
to change our lives with their stories and speech. Right now we are getting contact
with Regina Ip and Michael Lok. We are working hard to live up to the previous
years’ work with Nury Vittachi, Brett Free, Xu Xi and Pindar Wong.