Walking from Hong Kong

This morning I had the pleasure of meeting a young man with a great vision  ...  I felt truly inspired!  His name is Hong Tsz Ling, but asked to be called Bosco. On October 5th 2013 Bosco left Hong Kong to walk to London, via a slightly circuitous route. 

WHY??                  

Because in 1972 during the violence and killings of the Cultural Revolution in China, Bosco's father and grandfather fled mainland China to Hong Kong. Being allowed into the British colony of Hong Kong as refugees saved their lives.  

Bosco is walking to London to meet with David Cameron to say 'thank you'.  In the process he also hopes to raise awareness regarding the plight of refugees and to raise money for UNHCR.

In recent months it has been announced that the world now has more refugees – people forced to leave their homes – than at any time since the Second World War.

Bloodhound SSC

On January 17th, 1899 a French man broke the land-speed record at the overwhelming speed of almost 66 mph (106 kph).  On October 15th, 1997 at Black Rock Desert, USA the British broke the world land-speed record at a total of 763 mph (1227 kph).

A mock-up of the Bloodhound SSC was recently at the University of Greenwich for several days.  The car has been designed to set a world land-speed record of 1,000 mph potentially in 2016.

For more information check the website: www.bloodhoundssc.com

Happy Birthday, Joyce

Joyce celebrates a special day :-)                     "I wish to thank all my friends for the wonderful presents, cards and wishes on my special birthday” With love Joyce x

TABLEtalk re-starts

Our new season of TABLEtalk got off to a brilliant start On September 23rd ... we had 34 students, with a good mix of longer term folk and newcomers.  If my memory serves me correctly, there were 18 different nationalities represented: India, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Spain, Switzerland, France, Turkey, Hungary, China, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Taiwan, Lithuania, Philippines & Indonesia (have I missed anyone??).

We had a great evening, with lots of willingness to join in some crazy games. We started with our 'clothes peg relay'. The aim of the game is to hold a clothes peg between your knees, get across the room and drop it into container the other end.  Well done to Jeri's team who were the winners of both rounds!!!

My favourite game of the evening, however, was

'Horses, Knights & Cavaliers'.

Here's how to play ...

1.  Participants must be in pairs, male/female if people are comfortable.

2.  Make two circles: an outer circle of the guys and an inner circle of girls.

3.  Simultaneously, the girls walk clockwise and the guys walk anti-clockwise.

4.  If the leader (that's me) calls "horses" pairs must find each other, the guys get down on all fours and the girls sit on them 'side-saddle' as they might a horse.

5.  If the leader calls "knights", again pairs find each other, the guys go down on one knee and the girl sits on his knee.

6.  If the leader calls "cavaliers", once again they find each other and the guy must 'scoop' his lady off the ground! Creative ways of lifting your lady off the ground are allowed, possibly even encouraged :-)

7.  Once everyone gets the hang of how the game is played then it becomes an elimination game, where the last pair to achieve the goal in each round are out of the game.

Take a look at the photos below and, if you have a spare 5 minutes, take a look at the video ...

Video (cut and paste the link below)  .....  https://www.dropbox.com/s/b8p8qjjfxptblop/MVI_0086.MOV?dl=0

It was great to see students mixing, with longer term students welcoming those who were with us for the first time.

This evening's TABLEtalk was a first for this academic year but, sadly, it the last for Sweetie (the Queen of selfies) as she moves out of Medway.

Bric-a-Brac Sales

Students often ask me what 'bric-a-brac' means and my usual response is 'stuff'  ...  however the official dictionary definition is: miscellaneous objects and ornaments of little value.

In the Tamil language, bric-a-brac is translated as:

தொன்மை அரும்பொருள்களின் தொகுதி

Pronounced: 

thonmai arumporulkalin thoguthi

Our bric-a-brac sales this week have gone well.  Even though items are sold extreeeeeeeeemely cheaply, we raised a total of £264.05 towards the running of our World Cafe and this year's Welcome Meal.  

People have been so generous and we still have an incredible amount of 'stuff' remaining. No doubt there will be a greater demand for warm clothing as soon as the weather begins to get colder :-)

There are many people who have helped this week and my thanks go to ... Frank & Lynda, Denise, Joyce, Joy, Chiao, Mohamed, Eniko and Vino.

World Cafe re-starts

Our World Cafe got off to a great start today with a mix of new and longer term students - thanks to all who came along, don't forget to tell a friend about us :-)

Welcome Cafe

The weekend of September 13th-14th was spent working alongside our accommodations department as some 250+ students arrived to book into the university halls of residence.

With his suave, intelligent looks, Toby stricks a pose!

Question is ... which one's Toby? 

'An entry in Lynne's blog'  -  that's something you can cross off your bucket list!"

Bric-a-Brac Galore!

Our 2014-2015 academic year is gearing up and new students are arriving.  There's much to do and the next few weeks will be extremely busy.

Two years ago our Greenwich Chaplaincy team at Medway started selling bric-a-brac ... good quality, second-hand items that have been donated, primarily, but not exclusively by local church members.  Many of our students, especially internationals, arrive at university with very little in the way of bedding or kitchen items or warm clothing.

Over the past two years this service has totally snow-balled and we're quickly running out of storage space.  My right-hand-man, Frank, and I are constantly overwhelmed by people's generosity!!  
This year we are doing several hours of sales every day of the registration/orientation week and, yesterday, a number of students helped me move and arrange the whole room in preparation.  Here are a few pics ...

For those of you checking this blog for the first time and maybe wanting to know when the sales are taking place, here are the details:
      Where:  Blake building (Medway campus), Room 052
      When:   Monday, Sept 15th   12 noon - 4pm
                       Tuesday, Sept 16th   1 - 4pm
                       Wednesday, Sept 17th   12 noon - 3pm
                       Thursday, Sept 18th 2 - 4pm
                       Friday, Sept 19th    1 - 3pm

My faithful helpers - Mohamed, Joy, Chiao & Ilya - taking a well earned break; at the same time doing a test run of a new game I'd bought for the World Cafe.

Christmas came early too, I received my chaplaincy hoodie ... an initiative of our new Catholic Chaplain (Catherine).  I think I was trying to look cool :-(