Last week's Proceedings -

President Laurence Chan started the meeting at 1.03 p.m. with a warm welcome back to PP Tim Lui from his overseas vacation.

President Laurence reminded us that it was the last meeting of our Club after many years of luncheon gathering in the Excelsior as we would move and start a new chapter of old fellowship from next Wednesday 1^st August, 2007 onwards in the hotel of Regal Hong Kong in Causeway Bay - still near the MTR station of Causeway Bay.

PE Andy was then asked to introduce the visiting Rotarians, PP Bob Wilson from the Rotary Club of Hong Kong South and Rtn. Nancy Yee from our sister club, the Rotary Club of Vancouver China Town. PE Andy then introduced PP Mimi Lau of our Rotaract Club of HK Island East and also asked PP George to introduce his guest, being his lovely daughter Iris. All the visiting Rotarians and guests received a collective round of applause from our members.

President Laurence then presented a nicely bound Bulletin Records of our meetings for the year 2006 to 2007 to PDG Uncle Peter for his custody in which you could image that Uncle Peter attended almost every meeting.

President Laurence reported to the audience about his visit together with Anne Jennie and PP Uncle John Kwok to our sister club in the Philippines, the Rotary Club of Makati North, on last Wednesday to attend their Induction Ceremony. His report was appended to the Rotary Information of this bulletin.

Acting Sergeant-at-Arms reported the harvest of the day which amounted to HK$700.

The guest speaker of the day was Mr. Allan Dyer and he was introduced by President Laurence as a veteran in Information Technology with over 20 years of experiences specialized in virus detection, prevention and protection and a frequent consultant to the government and large organizations in Hong Kong. Mr. Allan Dyer presented to us a topic of regarding "Keeping Cool with IceT" as follows:

Everyone in Hong Kong is familiar with the (seemingly endless) Government adverts recommending we set our air-conditioners to 25.5'C, but we don't. Most of our air-cons can't be set to a temperature, and even ones that can usually step in one degree intervals: make your choice, 25 or 26, but not 25.5. The government's intentions are good, but the advice is not realistic.

I would like to describe the temperature monitoring system I've built for my company, how we are using it and what we found out.

IceT is the Intelligent, Computerized Environmental Monitoring: Temperature system (every system needs a catchy name). There are three parts, the probes, the readers and the server. The probes are thin cylinders a few centimeters long. They are robust and waterproof digital devices, so they can be placed wherever needed and connected to the reader by the standard office (or home) network cables. Each reader can support four probes (I'm developing an eight probe version), with up to 200 feet of cable between the probe and the reader.

The readers collect the data from the probes and send it to the server, which can be located anywhere on the internet. The server stores the data in a database, and provides a convenient website for access. My demonstration site is at http://temperature.consultancy.com.hk/ .

Probe data can be shown color-coded by temperature (red = hot, blue = cold) with immediate readings, and the minimum, average and maximum for today and yesterday. It can also be shown as graphs, illustrating the fluctuations through the day and night, and, thirdly, a lot of probes can be shown color-coded according to whether they are within their correct limits: green for OK, red for not, white for no limits specified, and black for no contact with the probe. This makes it easy to see where attention is needed. The server can also send alerts by email or SMS.

The system was originally built to help us save electricity in our air-conditioned warehouse. The warehouse is 3280 sq. ft., and used for storing foodstuffs that must be kept at or below 27'C. We wanted to find out whether adding insulation would help. To test this, we insulated one section of the external wall, from floor to ceiling, covering some windows and placed probes outside the window, inside the warehouse, between the insulation and the wall, and by the door or the warehouse.

The graph (2005/09/09) shows the early results. The insulation allows the intermediate probe to stay at a higher temperature, so it is effective, and on that basis we decided to insulate the rest of the external walls in the same way.

We could also see that the two probes within the warehouse were often as different as 2 degrees - if you manage to achieve the recommended 25.5 at one place in a room, that doesn't mean the rest is the same. In addition, it is easy to identify when the air-con is turning on and off, from the rapid rises and falls in the temperature. The difference between the "on" and "off" temperatures was about 4 degrees, again, the recommended 25.5 is only a nominal figure.

In addition to extending the insulation, we could see the maximum temperature in the warehouse and adjust the thermostat accordingly. We also blocked the air-con external air intake with the realization that it was unnecessary for adequate ventilation of a normally unoccupied warehouse. After making these changes, we continued monitoring.

Additional interesting behavior we noticed was that, at night, the intermediate temperature could rise to above both the internal and external temperatures. We concluded that the concrete wall was acting as a storage heater: heating up during the day and slowly releasing the heat throughout the night. This reinforces the case for floor to ceiling insulation on external walls.

So, how successful were the changes? We evaluated this by plotting the monthly electricity bill against the mean temperature recorded by the Hong Kong Observatory. The HK Observatory website has easily accessible records: http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/pastwx/metob200707.htm

Comparing the data from before and after we insulated, we saved HK$55,639 over the period May 2005 to Dec 2006, about 43% of the total electricity bill.

Other potential applications of the system are for food and catering, and data centre monitoring. When we placed a probe in a fridge, the temperature changes when the door was opened could be clearly seen.

Hotels and restaurants are required to monitor the temperature of their fridges and freezers, IceT could allow them to keep continuous records, with alerts sooner rather than later.

Computers, and particularly hard discs, can be damaged by heat, again IceT could allow early problem alerting. An over-generalized approach to temperature control is not realistic, the questions for this talk made it clear that people have difference personal comfort temperature ranges. In any case, I think closer monitoring of temperature can help us improve our energy usage while also achieving a better personal environment.

The question and answer period raised the interest of the audience which was well discussed and explained by the speaker. Secretary Norman represented our members to formally thank the speaker. The meeting was adjourned at 2.02 p.m. by President Laurence with a toast to RI coupled with RC of Hong Kong South, Vancouver China Town and HK Island East.

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Membership Cost

Since the increasing coast of our lunch to $290 per member per meeting, we are reluctantly moving out from the present meeting venue – The Excelsior Hotel to the Regal Hotel, in the same vicinity which will charge us at $220.00 per head as from the 1^st August 2007. Meeting space is the same as those of the Excelsior Hotel. We have been meeting at the Regal Hotel before, when Excelsior Hotel was under renovation some years ago.

After exploration into various available venues for our lunch meeting during the last several months, we have considered the Regal Hotel being the most convenient place, hence our recommendation to all members. By the way, our daughter club – the Rotary Club of Hong Kong Harbour is having its meeting at the same hotel on every Thursday.

Just for information, we quoted a report from the RI General Secretary, Ed Futa at the 2007 RI Convention at Salt Lake City, Utah, USA which reads as follows:

(Percentage of clubs having meeting worldwide)

Lunch Meetings.......... 35%
Breakfast meetings..... 10%
Dinner meetings.......... 46%
Coffee meetings*......... 9%
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Total                        100%
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• Coffee meeting means meeting without meal in order to  save membership cost.

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Trip Report after attending the Induction Ceremony of RC Makati North 18/7/2007

PP Uncle John Kwok, Pres. Laurence and his ann. Jennie were arrived in Manila in the afternoon of 18^th July 2007 at the Hotel Manila Peninsula just in time at the start of the Induction Ceremony of our sister Club, the Rotary Club of Makati North in the Philippines.

They were well received by the Pres. Joe, their fellow members and also their sister club delegations from RC Raffles of Singapore and RC of Malaysia.  Meeting old friends and making new ones at the same time.

The induction ceremony of Makati North was duly witnessed by the District Governor Ato, who is the second elected DG from Makati North, and by over 60 classmates from their own district.  This was a clear signal of the strong tie and cohesive support to the RC Makati North from their fellow Presidents of the district.

All participants were able to share the joyful experience and also the heart-felt fellowship and friendship during and after the induction ceremony when a number of wonderful singing and dancing performances were entertained.

In the next morning, after breakfast on 19^th July 2007, all the sister club delegations were guided to visit a ceramic factory after a long journey for a relaxing lunch with all organic foods in a green house like environment.  In the evening there was a cheerful fellowship dinner hosted by PP Pabling of Makati North in a local restaurant in Makati.

Next morning the same teams of delegations were led by Pres. Joe of Makati North to have a cultural tour to visit a national museum where all members of a family were able to paint at their early ages and throughout their lives with great inspiration and globally recognized achievements in arts. 

In the same afternoon the delegations were led to see a humanitarian project site where an entire community for 150 families, in around 100 concrete housing units, would be built in 5 years time to improve their living.  All admitted beneficiaries have to agree to devote their efforts to build the community and to ensure it is drug-free.  The land was donated by a local landlord, the construction project would be led by a famous architect for free and the labor would come from the members of the screened inhabitants.  Four houses were already inhabited and another sixteen houses were just built and being refurbished.

The Rotary Clubs of Makati North together with their solicited non-government organization and sister Rotary Clubs locally and overseas would sponsor for the infrastructure and material provisioning costs.  Pres. Joe has been, and has promised to continue to be, overseeing the projects from its start since November 2006 and conducting site visits to see their progress every two months thereafter. 

This would be a meaningful project to participate and all the Presidents of the visiting overseas sister clubs of Makati North have expressed their keen interests to join.

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on

Hon. Sec. Norman Lee, PP George Leung & PP Bob Wilson from RC of Hong Kong South.	PDG Uncle Peter, Guest speaker Mr Allan Dyer & President Laurence.

Rtn Tony, Hon. Tres. Rudy, PP Stephen, PP Tim & PE Andy.	PP George's lovely daughter Iris, Rtn Nancy Yee from Vancouver China Town, AG Eddy Wong & PP Mimi from Rotaract Club of HKIE.

PDG Uncle Peter receive Bulletin Records of the Year 2006-2007 from Pres. Laurence.	Group Photo to memorize our last luncheon meeting at the Excelsior Hotel before moving to the Regal Hong Kong w.e.f. 1st August.

Pres. Laurence and his anne Jennie at the Induction Ceremony with Uncle John at the back and Pres. Joe Reano of RC Makati North at their middle.	DG Ato and Pres. Joe Reano and their lovely anne Choi and Vicky in front of their board members of the Rotary Club of Makati North.

Our delegation greeted by DG Ato and PP Pabling of RC Makati North at the Induction Ceremony.	Pres. Laurence explaining the souvenir to Pres. Joe Reano of the Rotary Club of Makati North.

Attending a lunch with all organic food in a green house like environment hosted by RC Makati North.	Group Photo of delegation from all sister clubs of RC Makati North to visit its project site.