Society

The much-anticipated match commenced with "Brooms Up!" Players darted towards the balls in the centre of the field, makeshift broomsticks held between their legs.  On both sides of the pitch stood three ring-shaped, silver goalposts of different heights. Quidditch is a familiar sport for Harry Potter fans, but now, the fictional game has been brought to life. Full-contact and physically intense, the magical sport leaped off the pages in 2005 when freshmen Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe of Middlebury College in Vermont, US, co-created the rules of land-based Quidditch and dubbed it "Muggle Quidditch". A myriad of university teams are playing the sport from UC Berkeley in the US and McGill University and Carleton University in Canada  to recently in Asia, the University of Hong Kong. J.K. Rowling's wizarding world of Harry Potter continues to strike a chord with aficionados across the world, though the last installment of the fantasy series was in 2011. Fusing together a variety of elements from rugby, dodgeball, volleyball and tag, a Quidditch team has seven players per team on the field, who must keep a makeshift broomstick - usually a plastic bar or light metal stick - between their legs at all times during the game. In order to score, chasers of each team throw the quaffle (a volleyball) through the hoops as the keepers race to ward off their attacks. Beaters can attack players' of the opposing team using bludgers (two dodgeballs). The job of the seeker, the position that Harry Potter himself held, is to catch the "golden snitch" - a neutral player who has a yellow tennis ball attached to the back of his or her pants. The International Quidditch Association says the sport is gender inclusive with no more than than four players of the same sex allowed on the …

"You wake up to see yourself lying in a hospital bed. You are being told by a doctor that you were rushed to the hospital by the taxi driver. The next thing you know you are dying. Your heart pounds though as your body stays frozen. Millions of questions pop and memories of your life replay. Do I need a funeral? Do I donate my organs? What about my money? What about everyone? Will anyone remember me? Will they come and visit my grave? If anyone is ready, please open your eyes and write down your death note."   Art therapist, Michelle Chan Wan-chee, in her mid-30s, paused the meditation session of the death-education workshop, organised by an independent bookstore, Stay within Bookspace, in Chai Wan on a Sunday in January. She asked the 15 participants to write down their feelings and share it in small groups. Louis Chuk Ka-lok, 21, who runs the bookstore, said his traumatic experience with the deaths of his mother and grandmother made him want to help others rehearse and prepare before death happens in real life. Like this workshop, a handful of private organisations in Hong Kong are starting to offer interactive and reflective death-education experiences, as more people call for better public awareness of the value of life and death. Hong Kong needs death education because society is ageing faster, said Lam Ching-choi, CEO of the Haven of Hope Christian Service and chairman of the Elderly Commission, at a health conference at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.   Government data has shown an inversely proportional phenomenon on the demographics in Hong Kong. From 2014 to 2018, the number of birth in Hong Kong showed an average annual reduce of 2,150; while the number of death from 2014 to 2018 showed an average annual increase …

On September 9, the usual tranquillity of Sunday evenings in Discovery Bay was disrupted by thousands of residents participating in a demonstration, against the impending eviction of Discovery Bay Marina Club houseboat residents.The move is due to new plans initiated at Tai Pak Bay by the Hong Kong Resort (HKR), a company which owns most of the development projects in the area. All dressed in white shirts, the demonstrators marched from Marina Club on to Discovery Drive and up Sienna Road. They gathered at the centre of the North Plaza at around 6pm, right before the commencement of their community hall meeting. "We want the Hong Kong Resorts to understand that their actions don't just affect the Marina residents, but also this entire community," said Henry Moreno, one of the organisers of the demonstration, who is also the chairman of 208 affected boathouse members. Mr. Moreno moved to Marina Club with his wife and three children just two years ago because they could not afford an apartment in Hong Kong. His boat costed him around $4.4 million, of which he still has a $3 million mortgage yet to be paid. However, once evicted with nowhere to berth, his vessel will worth nothing. "I am close to facing personal bankruptcy," said Mr. Moreno, "I still have three kids that go to school here, two in Discovery Bay International School which is owned by Hong Kong Resort and one in Discovery College, who would be out of school if we can't make things work. I have a family to take care of, so leaving the marina with nowhere to go is definitely not an option. But right now I really don’t know where we can go." Discovery College and Discovery Bay International School are the two main schools in the area. In …