HA’s Got Talent Series

A love affair with the sky

Touch the sky

Psychiatric nurse Chiu Ho-nam, who works at Kwai Chung Hospital, helps his patients reach for the sky. A member of the Hong Kong paragliding team, Ho-nam and his friends arrange voluntary tandem paragliding activities to give a boost to recovering patients, allowing them to loop, spin, and spiral through the air as they enjoy the exhilarating sport.

Ho-nam first took up paragliding seven years ago when it was recommended to him by his kiteboarding friends. He says people who take up the sport must understand weather, wind current, and flight control, and be physically fit. He also suggests circling black falcons are the best navigators. “They are our guides in picking the path to soar through rising warm air current. The presence of falcons indicates abundant thermals. Glide towards them and you can fly farther at great heights.” The most important element of the sport, however, is attitude and respect for nature. “We must ensure that the wind direction, speed, and air current are suitable before a flight,” says Ho-nam. “Safety always comes first. Impulsive decisions can place your life in danger.”

Soaring above the ordinary

Ho-nam and his friends began offering tandem paragliding for patients a few years ago, not only to share their passion for paragliding but also to encourage patients to explore their potential and realise that the sky is the limit. Participants include a muscular dystrophy sufferer and a bone cancer patient who had undergone limb amputation. The experience opens exciting new horizons for recovering patients and teaches them to strive for greater results. “If you really want to fly, you can,” Ho-nam says. “Hope underpins the recovery process with mental illness.”

The tandem paragliding experience is an extension of the work Ho-nam does in the hospital’s acute care unit where he works with patients suffering from severe mental illnesses, giving them therapeutic walks around hospital grounds. It was here Ho-nam came to realise how exercise and fresh air can have soothing influence on patients. In one case, an emotionally unstable patient who repeatedly refused treatment and was violent to medical staff became cooperative after Ho-nam took him for a coffee break, a stroll around the hospital garden and a ball game in the playground before his treatment.

    

Life lesson from the Swiss team

Outside his working hours, Ho-nam is an enthusiastic sportsman and made his debut for the Hong Kong paragliding team in a Taiwan cross-country competition in 2015 in both individual and team events. “Cross-country paragliding racing is like an aerial version of windsurfing competition,” Ho-nam explains. “The competition lasts from three days to a week and the course of race is generally between 30km and 150km and requires three to five hours of flight. The shorter the time, the higher the score.” After winning the gold medal in team competition and second runner-up place in individual competition in an international contest held in Kazakhstan in 2017, Ho-nam planned to compete more abroad but learned a hard lesson when he came up against the Swiss team in a 2018 contest.

“The two strongest paragliders in the Swiss team were way ahead of everyone else,” he recalls. “We followed them and conserved energy for attacks. But we eventually noticed that we had rushed and taken a longer route while three other members of the Swiss team had taken a faster and tactical route to the finishing line and won the competition.” The experience taught Ho-nam an important lesson that he carries into his working life: a strong team creates synergy by making the most of members’ different strengths. For the best chance of winning, the strongest team member may not be the first to cross the finishing line.