TEDx comes to CIS Hangzhou

In our inaugural year, a couple of our brightest and most enterprising students, Catherine Wang and Crystal Leung, mounted a TEDx-like event towards the end of the school year; but they were putting it together at too short notice to get an official TED endorsement for the event, so they cheekily dubbed it TAD instead.

Unfortunately, I was busy looking after a visiting artist-in-residence, and so was not able to attend or participate as I had wished. Even worse, amid the mad whirl of the end of the semester, the video that had been shot of the event got lost. I've spent months trying to track it down, but it appears that the last surviving files were left on the laptop of a student who was leaving the school (and his hard drive got wiped automatically by the IT staff as soon as he handed it in). I'm sure it was a great evening; but it lives on only in the memories of those who were part of it. (And maybe that's not such a bad thing. As my school's 'film guy' - and unofficial archivist - I have led the way in trying to document everything we've done in the past 18 months or so in photographs and video; but I do worry that sometimes this detracts from rather than enhances our own memory of events.)

This year, a vigorous team of students, Georgina and Jasmine Savage and Enrique Chuidian, put together a similar event - and this time, somehow, they managed to get the TEDx branding on it. (We possibly shouldn't enquire too closely into that; I'm not sure it was entirely kosher.)

Three of my students and I all filmed the event. This is a short selection of highlights I've quickly put together.

This is a cross-post from the CIS Hangzhou TV Channel. The main post there includes links to full versions of each of the individual speeches and music performances.

Thought for the week

"Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems ready to hand, they will create their own."

Metamorphosis

As last year, I experimented with shaving my head during our Chinese New Year break, and letting my beard grow - kind of a race, to see whether the hair on my head would grow back more vigorously than the hair on my chin (these days, alas, NO).

There is something about this 'look' that is strangely intimidating - and I don't feel it's 'me' at all (either the bald pate or the fuzzy chin; and certain not both together). But I fear I need to try to acclimatise myself to the imminent possibility of converting to radical baldness. Middle-aged hair loss has just begun to hit me quite heavily. And while I may not feel that baldness looks good on me, it looks a hell of a lot better than very thin hair.... or a desperate comb-over. One day, perhaps quite soon, this will probably be my regular look. Oh dear.

This year, I further entertained myself by trying to create a time-lapse record of my transformation (one photo every day for the first couple of weeks or so, and then two a week for the next five or six weeks).

The music here is Bad To The Bone, by George Thorogood & The Delaware Destroyers.

Thought for the week

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."

This is just one among many, many great lines from the works of the marvellous Terry Pratchett, who died last Thursday.

Thought for the week

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination can take you anywhere."

Thought for the week

"Humour is the condiment to life."