PTTM Chinese New Year Meeting

We enjoyed a festive CNY theme for this meeting. John Ng opened as Warm-up Master with a fun group calligraphy writing activity.

For the first prepared speech, Kevin Goh gave an interpretative reading of “The City in the Sea” by Edgar Allan Poe. Such a bold and challenging choice – the poem describes the personification of death! In case you missed it, the first verse reads:

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters he.

Manson Chow gave the second prepared speech – The Crisis Management Speech: “The First Hong Kong Real Estate Investment Trust”. Looking and sounding the part, Manson faced up to the audience in communicating the situation and then faced down unruly and upset tenants and stakeholders!

Susanna Wong conducted a workshop in Conflict Management. Surprisingly, conflict is good and natural – and we might find that in the middle of conflict lies opportunity! This is because everyone is different – so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we think differently. But learning to manage conflict begins with understanding how we view and how we actually manage conflict in life.