People
The host of happiness
"When my friends came to visit him in the hospital, they asked him whether he could still recognise them. However, my father immediately asked them in return whether they still recognised him," Mr Chan recalled.
His father died on Mr Chan's birthday in 2005. Mr Chan said he was touched to see his father finally accepted to be baptised before his passing away. "I felt that God had listened to my prayer," he said.
Yet, the meaning of life and happiness did not dawn on Mr Chan overnight. He said he was once big-headed and proud.
Mr Chan graduated with a first-class honours degree in English Literature from the University of Hong Kong in 1981 and got his first job as administrative officer at the government, an elite position.
But he was crushed when he found an English document that he wrote was corrected by his senior in the government and was circulated among the colleagues.
"I was very unhappy. I felt so ashamed because the document was circulated among all the officers. I nearly wanted to quit my job," he said. But he soon realised that being corrected was not necessarily bad because it was a chance for him to learn from his inadequacies, he said. He also came to know that staying unhappy would only harm himself.
Mr Chan ended up working at the government for 10 years before joining the Commercial Radio. In fact, he had been a part-time radio disc jockey under the pseudo name of Wai Ka-ching with the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong in the 1980s.
He entered TVB, or Television Broadcasts Limited, as controller of programme in 1994 and became concurrently controller of external affairs in 1996. He was promoted to assistant general manager in April 2002. He has been the general manager since 2004.
Although Mr Chan has already become a prominent figure in the city's major TV station, he still applies the lesson he learned when he was young and immature. He constantly reminds himself not to see himself as too important.
His recent experience of being snubbed by the DJ duo Soft Hard Kids, Eric Kot Man-fai and Jan Lamb Hoi-fung, to appear in Be My Guest has strengthened his belief in the need to be humble. The rejection was initially unthinkable to Mr Chan, as his programme had been so successful that even low-profile celebrities were willing to open their hearts before the camera.
Stephan Chan Chi-wan says happiness exists
subtly, and it all depends on how one
chooses to look at things.
