Greetings, dear friends – You haven’t heard from me here in a while, in a month exactly. June happened.
In the movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (playing in HK theatres still), a person can jump universes – slight spoiler alert – each time ‘gaining’ new abilities from a life they could have lived, real or imaginary.
Each time you do that, a crack forms in the mind. It takes an electrifying amount of energy to jump universes. You must heal the cracks, or like a porcelain vase, the mind can sustain only so many cracks at once before it breaks down. Goodbye structure. Goodbye function.
To heal, you have to stop jumping universes, and you have to eat.
June and the few weeks before it felt like jumping universes. A parent took 5 days to get here from North America. Housemates left for their home country. I packed up my house for minor renovations. A close friend left for their home country. A death in my family revealed a lot about my living family. I made new friends.
In my young business of bespoke services, there is already no such thing as business as usual, as each day presents new opportunities, challenges, and decisions, all demanding energy.
All of this is neither positive nor negative. Just a lot of jumping.
I felt the cracks, and in a candid conversation with my coach, I triaged a major commitment.
I stepped aside from my role as the Ambassador/Host of GBO Hong Kong, effective June 30.
GBO has a vision and a mission I resonate with – to make business networking about getting to know people, making it supportive and relaxed, and to provide services that help businesses grow and become more visible.
Building a chapter is like building a business. Members supported me, the organization’s leadership supported me, but more resources would be needed to go further and the resources I do have needed to go to Clear Water SC.
I made another series of jumps for June - hosted events we already planned, informed members of my decision, and right away new prospects came into my life…
Two people reached out interested in new projects with me, a potential collaborator sent me their writing samples, and a potential intern contacted me. It was still June.
On the last day of June, a potential client organization I was really hoping to work with declined my proposal. I learned from it. The good news is – by not being occupied with that proposed project, we had headspace to theorize about a better collaboration.
Right after my proposal was declined, I ended June attending a special Hong Kong Dialogue Hour session themed “The Quality of Death”.
Then I took a 4-day weekend – slept, ate, healed, silent retreated, and I’m back to work at tortoise pace, still eating, healing, sleeping, and retreating for a lot of time.
Life is not a race, so I won’t say that I’ll finish the race first like the tortoise did.
I will contend that the tortoise had clarity of purpose and sufficient focus and faith to stay the course despite seeing the hare’s early leaps and bounds.
I look forward to sharing more with you from a tortoise’s journey.
Thank you for your support – especially those of you who have reached out already. By triaging commitments, I have made space for new opportunities, the projects already on my plate, better systems for accounting and marketing, to get on top of taxes and finances, to arrange my apartment, to write this newsletter, and to recommit to self-care.
What’s Else Is Happening
I work best when I am myself - singing, dancing, and empathizing. Click on any of those links to find out more and possibly join me :-)
GBO is still cool and as a member, I still get to host this cool ask-me-anything style online event coming up…
“The Metaverse – Where Are We Actually Going?” featuring GBO Hong Kong’s youngest member, entrepreneur Nathan Cheng.
🗓️Friday, July 15
🕔 17:00 – 19:00 HKT (GMT+8) (11:00 am CEST)
Learn more about the event and Nathan, and register at the event page. If you are not a member and would like to join, please do so as our guest!
Finally, please welcome our new intern – Angelina Wang! Angelina is an enthusiast of writing, singing, chemistry, magazine and website design, and rising junior at Hong Kong International School. We are blessed to have Angelina’s help and guidance with our marketing design and content. Learn more about her at www.chemystery.info That URL was too cool to hide in a hyperlink.
What Happened Here and Elsewhere
Something happened in Hong Kong
On July 1st, Hong Kong commemorated the 25th anniversary of the handover from British rule to Chinese control AND hand a handover in executive leadership from Carrie Lam to John Lee. The Guardian published a timeline of key events and meetings, with headlines and newspaper clippings, from the first opium war to the handover itself. The Guardian also published a piece on Hong Kong's 'unofficials' – Chinese Hong Kongers often consulted by Hong Kong’s British governors about complex local issues. According to the archives, the ‘unofficials’ raised questions about the terms of the handover that remained unaddressed.
Something happened in the US
The editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals (note, the field of modern medicine was defined mostly by White men), collectively published an editorial in which they "strongly condemn the US Supreme Court's decision”. They were referring to the June 24th decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (links to the Supreme Court’s blog), which leaves rights and restrictions on abortions to be decided by state governments. The decision reversed the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision and the 1992 Casey vs. Planned Parenthood. “Experience around the world has demonstrated that restricting access to legal abortion care does not substantially reduce the number of procedures, but it dramatically reduces the number of safe procedures, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality,” the editors wrote.
Positive change is a long road. Hang in there! Thank you for your consistent support!
This Week’s Science Post – Online July 13, 2022
"A foundational assumption of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) inequality research is that members of the most well represented demographic group — white able-bodied heterosexual men (WAHM) — are uniquely privileged in STEM. But is this really the case?"
Research Erin A. Cech analyzed survey data from 25,324 professionals working in STEM to find out whether WAHM experienced better treatment and rewards compared with 31 other demographic groups.
The survey asked about the following aspects of individuals' work experiences in STEM:
1-Experiences of social inclusion
2-Experiences of harassment
3-Professional respect
4-Salary
5-Advancement opportunities
6-Intentions to stay in their STEM career long-term
The analysis found that WAHM, as an overall population, experienced the most advantages in each of these 6 categories out of all 32 intersectional demographic groups considered in the study.
What do we mean by intersectional? WAHM describes the intersection of 4 types of identity - racial/ethnic, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender. Intersectionality in social studies considers how privileges and inequalities associated with single types of identities exist simultaneously and their effects as a combination. In other words, identifying with two marginalized groups can confer a different degree and type of disadvantage than identifying with only one marginalized group. Likewise, identifying with two advantaged groups can amplify the overall degree of advantage.
The researcher then examined whether these differences could have resulted from differences in 5 categories:
1-Human capital (skills, knowledge, & experiences valued by workplaces)
2-Background (born in US, parents' education)
3-Job characteristics
4-Attitudes & effort toward work
5-Family responsibilities
Differences in these categories could explain only a percentage of the differences in experiences described in the first list. In other words, the benefits experienced by WAHM cannot be attributed to differences in the categories in this second list.
This type of study calls us to recognize that systems - sexism, racism, heteronormativity, and ableism - not individuals' identities, lead to patterns of advantage and disadvantage in STEM.
The study by Erin A. Cech in Science Advances, Jun 15, 2022
The intersectional privilege of white able-bodied heterosexual men in STEM
Data were from the STEM Inclusion Study
Human Resources – the most important resource in any enterprise
Tracy Wong – Hong Kong-based lover of Hawaii, beaches, professional photographic storyteller who studied molecular biology and medical research years ago. A creative multi-preneur, she founded her own freelance photography business – Tracy Wong Photography, Workshop Ten – a creative workshop and digital marketing consultancy, and cofounded TRACE - a jewelry design house modernizing jade jewelry. Her photography can make plates and glasses look like relatives having a conversation, and her eyes can hear the story in graphs of nanoparticles. Ask her about project management apps for creative professionals, good value coworking spaces, and why it was easy to fall in love in Hawaii.
Tony Perfecto – Hong Kong-based paddler and nutrition science expert willing to go the distance, or shorten the distance, for a better work environment. Tony grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the USA and researched in Hawaii before going to less sunny Norwich, a city in the Eastern-most part of England, where he studied a PhD at the University of East Anglia. The majority of his research career focused on how the body accesses the zinc and iron available in complex molecules of plants we eat. The most common nutritional deficiencies in the world involve iron and zinc. He is looking forward to his upcoming new role with a Hong Kong-based startup and intends to find meaningful work addressing other systemic society health issues. Ask him about the best way to get from the very south to the very north of Hong Kong.
Interesting Reads
The Dark Forest - by Liu Cixin, published 2008 in Chinese, English version translated by Joel Martinsen published in 2015
International governing bodies believe that beings from the life-bearing planet closest to earth, which is very difficult to inhabit, are on their way to take over earth and wipe away humanity. When humans realize this, they have 400 years before the interplanetary beings reach Earth to come up with a response - defend earth and/or survive by leaving earth. Led by the Planetary Defense Council appoints four individuals to come up with strategies to save humanity without telling, speaking, or writing their true strategies to anyone, as the rival planet has already sent subatomic particles to earth that can see and hear everything that is said and written.
The second of the Three Body Problem trilogy - For a few more spoilers - check out the publisher's website.
The Martian, by Andy Weir
What’s it like to be the best engineer, singer, farmer, writer, and medic on the planet? Ask Mark Watney, who got stranded on Mars after his crewmates evacuated during a windstorm where they witnessed an injury that they thought killed him. He logs his life of survival and attempts to communicate with earth, and I will not spoil it more, albeit you might have seen the movie.
Career trivia:
1) What was Mark Watney’s profession before and during becoming an astronaut?
2) What was Andy Weir’s profession before he wrote The Martian?
Scroll to the end for the answers!
Interesting Watch
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (Still in theaters in Hong Kong)
Michelle Yeoh plays a mother, daughter, business owner, person caught between at least three cultures and two continents and many competing priorities and dreams. Combines the physical comedy of early Jackie Chan kung-fu movies, universe travel to alternate life paths, and slices to the core of relationship joy and pain. Worth seeing twice.
Career Trivia Answers:
1) Mark Watney was a botanist!
2) Andy Weir was a software developer!
About
The Weekly RoundUp is Clear Water Science Consulting’s weekly newsletter – a collection of news from select locales, sharable business updates and insights, and features of interesting people and media.
Clear Water Science Consulting empowers science and scientists through effective communication. Our main activities are science communication (content creation, editing, technical review) and full-suite coaching for people interested in science and research (communication and soft skills coaching, research coaching, career coaching) – one-on-one and workshops.
Lately, we’ve expanded into personal coaching, where the same curiosity, inquiry, patience, and persistence is helping people help themselves become more empowered actors of their own lives.
Visit our website to learn more about our vision, services, portfolio, and reviews.
For examples of our content, out our company LinkedIn page.
Also available on Kolabtree, Upwork, and Fiverr.
We are also a member of GBO Hong Kong, a global network of entrepreneurial-minded people. We enjoy relaxed and interesting networking events online and in-person to build friendships, share knowledge, and identify opportunities.