Chapter 92

During the first days of working at the HK clinic, I spent the nights after we were done pretty much just shopping around the local area for more furnishings for my dorm as well as tracking down food to eat. Well, all of that plus just sleeping as much as I can to overcome the jet lag. Honestly, I was exhausted since we weren’t really given a chance to slow down and adjust to everything at a reasonable pace. But that made sense, I mean, 2 months may seem long but in comparison to the regular 4 month rotation, it wasn’t. 

Speaking of which, the first week in HK had a few more surprises than just 5 days of clinic. Right from the start, our first week had a midweek Symposium to attend and then a Saturday makeup day. I welcomed the variety. We got to experience HK internship in its entirety outside of just schooling just from the get go. 

Now, just what was the Optometric Symposium? Well, it was a large showcase of optometry tools and machines on the trade show side of things with a lot of planned lectured events as the main event. All the clinical interns attended and were promptly invited to attend the lectures. In all honesty, the only two lectures that stood out were an American OD who talked about Sports Vision and a Chinese eye doctor who told us about the future of medicine with AI. Sports vision was interesting specifically because it was a topic that we occasionally touched upon in school but the Chinese eye doctor kind of stole the show. Well…Sort of at least? I liked his slides but actually listening to him? It was very hard to understand because he made the decision to do his lecture in English and to be honest, he wasn’t really fluent. By his slides though, you could tell that he was trying to paint a picture of a new age of medicine. 

From my notes (for which I did take during the lecture). There was talk of a booth in China where you can go in and be tested for health concerns without a doctor present. The machine will mechanically take a blood sample (among other things), and then do the diagnostic testing directly from the results. Along this line of thinking, there are intentions by the Chinese healthcare system to implement similar strategies for eye exams. It wasn’t a large jump from what we are already doing with autorefractors and this point was really emphasized. “Just look at the symposium outside and all the new age autorefractors” I recall him saying. 

The room got silent after his talk. Half did not understand the broken English he was speaking in and the other half were in awe as to what this may mean for the optometry profession in HK. As I mentioned, HK optometry was mostly just refraction. Though they did teach about ocular health, it wasn’t on an implemented level for the most part. Our Canadian group didn’t think too much of it since, 1 we knew of the autorefractors and the cost barrier that would likely follow any distribution into the Americas and 2, we did a lot of health stuff on top of just refraction nowadays in Canada. We felt safe. Well…Sorta safe. 

But that was kind of it. All the other lectures kind of flew by me. Some were lectured in Cantonese and honestly, I didn’t really understand what they were talking about. Some others were simply just about ocular health topics that were impressive to HK but commonplace in the Americas. Overall, was the symposium a huge waste of time? Meh? I mean, there were definitely at least eye opening showcases of the new technologies at the kiosks outside and furthermore, we all got to spend a day in the Sydney Opera House of Hong Kong (you know what I mean). But was the day probably better used if we just got to spend it at the clinic? Probably. If nothing else, the event only took up around 4-5 hours and since it was relatively close to a Michelin star BBQ pork place, my fellow Canadians and I decided to venture there afterwards. 

The more interesting event of the week was definitely our Saturday. On Saturday, we were given the responsibility to participate in a community screening program for a local region of HK. The entirety of the PolyU Student Clinicians team, along with our Canadian students team went to a kindergarten located at a residence that took a bit of a bus ride to get to. The kindergarten was in a complex that was on the side of the mountain and though it wasn’t in as bad shape as Moldova or Mexico, we still had a role and responsibility in making sure the kids in the classes could see. 

As for the screening we did, it was mostly visual acuities (to see how small someone can see at a distance away) and then did a quick direct ophthalmoscopy (a very basic form of health assessment with a portable device). This was like a lite version of our assessments in Moldova/Mexico and the familiarity was compounded by the fact that I was once again doing the same thing with the same friends I had in Moldova. It was a fun time. I reminisced on how little I knew back in that term and how far I’ve come. It was a good feeling.

Well…I can’t truly take all the credit for how much more proficient I was now at my clinical abilities. Our patients, who were just local Hong Kong kids, were really cooperative. I suppose this could be a cultural phenomenon of sorts but unlike in Canada, the kids in Hong Kong were super cooperative and much more respectful. When I got curious and asked my domestic counterparts about compliances rates for treatments, they were surprised that I would even question such a thing. They all mentioned compliance rates for glasses use and eye drop use as close to 100%. This was much better than our North American 50%.

The weekend volunteer event had ended really early at around noon or so. After it was done, I made my way to the train station. I had one more thing I needed to do this weekend and that was to go to China. Why? Well, it was really just to tie up some loose ends. 

• November 2nd, 2019: Our group of four from Canada arrives in Hong Kong
• November 7th, 2019: Our group attends the Optometry Symposium in HK
• November 9th, 2019 (morning): Our group “volunteers” on a Saturday to do screening for a small suburban community on HK island
• November 9th, 2019 (afternoon): I head out for GuangZhou, China

Before I get to that weekend trip though, let me just clear up the timeline a bit. This is because the timing of everything is about to get very critical. The reason for that is simple.

There was an international incident playing out in Hong Kong. It wasn’t news either. This has been playing out on a large scale since before I even arrived in HK. As a matter of fact, right when the term began, our group of 4 were worried about the entire trip being canceled. What was playing out? 

The 2019 Hong Kong Protests.