I have attended a workshop which was held by the Starr Career Department. It was about writing a cover letter.Before I attend the workshop, I thought I only needed to send out resumes to companies. I didn’t know I need to write a cover letter to show off my working experience. I have learned that a good cover letter is a half of success. I thought a cover letter should be a few pages long so that one can demonstrate his/her working experience to their employers. However, a good cover letter should be the other way around. It shouldn’t be too long because there are hundreds of people applying for the same job. The managers don’t have much time to read all of the cover letters carefully. Therefore, a good cover letter should be able to catch managers’ attention within a few paragraphs. I remembered My friend had actually given me her cover letter; she wanted me to take a look. She wrote everything in the letter, like very detailed things. After the workshop, I realized that we should focus on why the company should hire you and  What special skills do you have to master this job.

The workshop actually helps us to prepare our future when applying for a job. I have learned a lot overall.

Today, I am going to briefly introduce Hong Kong, China, the place that I came from. Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. If you take a look at the map of China, you can’t find Hong Kong easily, because Hong Kong is so small. It’s about 1104 km^2. You can imagine the area of Hong Kong is just one over ten thousand of the area of China, but there are over 7 millions of people with various nationalities living there. Due to its high density of people, it features the most skyscrapers in the world. the highest building is the International Commerce Centre, which has 112 floors.

Although Hong Kong is small, it has a colorful history, and the history contributes a lot to our development now. Hong Kong was a country of China but after the First Opium War in 1842, China was forced to sign some unequal treaties. Under those treaties, Hong Kong was formally ceded to the Great Britain for over a century and returned to China in 1997.

The experience of being a colony actually gives Hong Kong multiple ideas to develop the country.

In terms of education, Hong Kong’s education system roughly follows the system in England, for example, building government primary schools and secondary schools, and using English as the teaching language. Also, Hong Kong was using the A-level test from England, which is the high school graduation test. After returned to China, the trilingualism proficiency is being emphasized, which means the proficiency of using Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. Therefore, the education system needed to be changed slightly. Although Hong Kong now has established the new education system, the England system had provided the based of the change.

The experience of being a colony not only gives Hong Kong multiple ideas to develop the education system but also changes the culture of it. Hong Kong is frequently described as a place where “East meets West”, reflecting the culture’s mix of the territory’s Chinese roots with the culture brought to it during its time as a British colony. The fusion of east and west characterizes Hong Kong’s cuisine, where dim sum, hot pot, and fast food restaurants coexist with haute cuisine. Because of various kinds of food, ”Food paradise” is an adjective of Hong Kong. Besides food, we also value different kinds of festivals. For example, we celebrate Luna Chinese New Year as well as Christmas and Easter.

In terms of economy, Hong Kong is acting as one of the world’s leading international financial centers, it has a major capitalist service economy characterized by low taxation and free trade. This feature attracted different kinds of retailers to import different kinds of goods to Hong Kong. With the low tax, travelers can find the same kind of product with a lower price in Hong Kong. Therefore, many travelers go there to shop. They can also help drive the growth of the economic development.

In terms of the government, Hong Kong’s current structure of governance inherits from the British model of the colonial administration set up in the 1850s, which is the separation of power. The government is divided into three branches, like the United States. It can ensure one branch of government cannot get too much power and can work in a smooth way.

Even though Hong Kong has returned to China, based on the principle of “one country two systems”, Hong Kong remains a separate political and economic system from China. For example, Hong Kong has their own currency, Hong Kong dollars. The Chinese currency, RMB is not legal in Hong Kong. Identically, HKD is not legal in mainland China. Moreover, we have our own law, the basic law. Just like the United States Constitution, the basic law is the supreme law in Hong Kong.

Although I am not living in Hong Kong right now, I hope Hong Kong can have a wonderful future.

Over the weekend, I visited Queens Museum. Although I live in Queens, I didn’t know there is an art museum in Queens. It is not a big museum, so, not so many people were there. Although it is not a very big museum, I can find many things there, for example, paintings, exhibits. Also, it has a really good view. When I was standing in front of the windows on the second floor of the museum, I enjoyed the beautiful view of the park located in front of the museum.
Inside the museum, I saw some huge paintings on the wall near the entrance. There was a photo that really drew my attention; it was a girl dancing in front of a drawing. The most interesting part of the painting was the girl and the other girl n the drawing were dancing in the same way; the girl was imitating the girl in the drawing. Another thing that made me feel amazing was The Relief Map of New York city’s watershed. It was so big and detailed. It illustrated how the water is being transferred every day. Every day, over a billion gallons of water is delivered to eight million residents through the system. I didn’t know the water is being transferred in this way. Also, there were some documentaries about the city. It was a good experience to understand how the city is working every day.

I attended Chinese Christian Fellowship (CCF)’s club meeting. I had never heard of it before. After they introduced, I realized it is a christian club. I am not a christian but I had been in a christian school for a several years. Therefore, I knew a little bit about God.
During the presentation of introducing the club, they said the responsibility of this club is to spread out god's love to everyone. I could see that they are not forcing us to believe there is god in the world. They were just sharing some experience with us. During the presentation, they shared many experience about being a student in Baruch college. we also talked about where is the best place to have lunch, what benefits we can get by using our student ID card. Those are all personal experience. As a freshman, we are not familiar with the school and the surroundings. The only way to get these information is from seniors. I feel like it is not only a club, but a family. They are trying to develop relationships with others. The reason that I chose this photo to upload is the photo shows 'we are family'. overall, I have learned a lot and got some excellent experience on that meeting.