Early this week, I listened in shock as our new chief secretary, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, called for '10 projects for the people' to sit at the heart of the new administration's agenda - a clear contrast to Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's 10 major infrastructure projects, that many Hongkongers believed had more to do with pleasing our business aristocracy than with equipping our community to rally out of the global economic crisis.
Why in shock? Because in March 2010, I contributed an article to Ming Pao calling for ... '10 projects for the people'. In that article, I complained about the Tsang administration being out of touch with the stress and tension among ordinary Hong Kong people - at that point focused on protests against funding for the rail project linking Hong Kong to the mainland's high-speed system.
Of course, Tsang and his team ignored my recommendation. It seems his administration never really got its head around why our community was so anxious and alienated. So it is more than gratifying to see Lam take up the idea with such alacrity.
There seems to me great sense in such an approach. My own 10 projects mainly fall into five policy areas - education, health care, the environment, property and old age. Hopefully, they might spur debate and give the new administration some food for thought. Here goes:
Massively strengthen language tuition in schools, and offer serious funding incentives for those in work to reach fluency in our three key languages. That would include funding a new institution to train local teachers to teach English as a foreign language.
Significant funds set aside for training, so local companies big and small can equip our workforce with the skills they need to drive our competitive future.
A massive 'gap year' programme for school- and university-leavers to spend a year working on carefully vetted projects outside Hong Kong. There can be no better way of ensuring our graduates enter our workforce with maturity and sophisticated international awareness.