Contents

President's Message - By Raymond Sin
Five Senses and Five Wits - By John Wan
Return to Rotary - By Terence Leung
Notice Board
Photo Album
Upcoming Events
The Board

President's Message

By President Raymond Sin (2001-2002)

This week again will be a busy one for me. The District's 3rd JPM will be held on Tuesday, 11th September at Kowloon Cricket Club. Since most of the presidents this year are quite active and friendly, I expect that these JPMs will be held somewhat differently from the previous years. For example, the 2nd JPM was in Lamma Island and it was followed by a delicious seafood dinner. We are going to have poolside BBQ fellowship dinner this time. Our club's 3rd Board meeting is scheduled to be held on the following day, 12th September, at the Chariot Club in Central. All members are welcome to attend and share your views with us. Then our regular luncheon is on Thursday. On the coming Saturday, a very best friend of mine is getting married in church. He was the charter president of my former Rotaract Club. I do not know why it took him so long before he decided to end his bachelor life. Anyway, congratulation to him.

One thing that these tight schedules bother me is that I will have to miss out on one or two of them, and I still do not know which. The reason is that Eliza, my wife, is expecting the baby very soon, most probably this week. Hopefully everything goes fine. Sometimes, expecting could be a pleasant experience. It also gives you time for last minute preparations.

September is the month of New Generations in Rotary. It shows Rotary's concerns about the youth. In the club level, it reminds us to work closely with our two partners in service: the Rotaract club of Kingspark HK and the Interact club of Wah Yan College. During the last meeting, I talked about the Rotaractors' expectation on the involvement of our members in their activities. As a result, they also invited us to attend their community service as well as their September general meeting on 29th September, and their basketball tournament in November. Regarding our Interact club, you would know more if you read the interview article about Rtn Dominic in the last issue of the bulletin.

I think most of you know about the District swimming gala on 23rd September, either during the meetings or from Rtn David Cheung's e-mail. It was a day of fun, according to members who went there last year. Since the programme is suitable for Rotarians and their family, let us go and have fun. See you in the luncheon meeting.

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The five senses are of course the five natural powers which give a person or animal information about the world outside. They are sight, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling. The deprivation or impairment of any one of the senses would cause serious inconvenience to the subject in question on the one hand, and have generated so much research and literature in the human world on the consequences including its restoration, in part or in whole, on the other. Collectively, they reflect but one of the characteristics of living things, namely irritability. Plants are of course living things too. However, we often classified plants separately from animals as if they are not living things. They certainly are; and many plants, certainly trees, have more feeling than some humans.

Plants do not react though in the way animals would, but many representatives of their species have lasted longer than their counterparts in the animal world. We often speak of dinosaurs being old and ancient. They lasted a very long time very long ago, but plants preceded them. The earliest living things were probably plants, and phytons probably preceded planktons, even though the two are often mentioned in the same breath as the smallest early organisms providing food in the air, land and sea for higher forms of life. It is facts such as this that support theories that plants would still be around on Earth long after animals, certainly humans, have gone. And I cannot remember the author or composer of Tree or Trees, but I would always remember the signature line, "Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree." Drop me a line if you do.

The five senses touched me because they are often amiss in some form when one is ill. Patients under medication often complain of losses or impairment of one or all of the five senses. When Rosita was under chemotherapy, there were days when her taste and smell faculties were suspended. Looking on the bright side, her conditions have been much better than most other cancer patients. She completed the second course of chemotherapy towards the end of July and went for tests in August. To prepare for the scanning, mainly of the liver, she had to take in radioactive tracers overnight and so on. Very unluckily, the machine was out of order on the first appointment, so that she had to go through the process the following week and the accompanying inconvenience, waiting and anxiety.

Meanwhile, she went through some minor surgeries, including one on the kidney, which was not related to breast cancer and a tumour on the left shoulder, which was. The tumour turned out to be bigger than we thought and tests confirmed that it was malignant, which is bad news, meaning that the earlier treatment failed to arrest the spread of the cancer cells. The good news is that it was somehow contained. The scanning showed that the numerous nodules in the liver were still there. Once again, the good news is that they have not enlarged. The consultant doctor then concluded that the efficacy of the second course of chemo was inconclusive, but that it would be reasonable to assume that the cancer cells had mutated. More tests were carried out on the tumour excised from the shoulder. The object was to ascertain whether a new treatment would be appropriate. The result proved negative. The doctors then recommended irradiation of the ovaries as a means to minimize or remove potential risks. We had some reservations on this initially, but in the end agreed to go ahead with the treatment. The actual operation was over in seconds, but in the next few days, Rosita suffered from some disorders in bowel movements.

Now, we had planned to go on some overseas trips after the second course of chemo. The doctors had advised against traveling because she was required to report twice each week to the hospital to have her tubing examined and cleansed. Although no chemo is being contemplated, the doctors said that her condition was not sufficiently stable to rule out more chemo. This means the tubes attached to the heart could not be removed for the time being. In the meanwhile, she would take drugs to suppress her hormone levels.

Apart from all these, Rosita has been fine. Indeed she is quite mobile and rather active on many days. Friends often say that she looks better and healthier than her husband. They could be correct.

Back to the five senses, some lexicographers believe they were known as five wits in the last century. The five wits were common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation and memory. We are all familiar with common wit or common sense, which we all know is so commonly wrong. When we choose not to believe in the stories of others, we say these people have imagination. We describe individuals with uncommon logic and behaviour as people living in fantasy. We often dismiss estimation as a pastime of those working on the budgets of others. Memory? What memory? RAM or ROM? But let me leave you with Tennyson's Owl, "Alone and warming his five wits, the white owl in the belfry sits." Talk to you again next week.

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When I was first invited as a guest of the Rotary Club of Kingspark, I recall that I knew nothing about Rotary. Even worse, I did not know which charity or non-profit making organization I was going to visit when I was first invited by my introducing Rotarian - Viola Yau. I forget in what year I joined Kingspark (it might be 1996 or 1997). What I could remember was that I was inducted during a regular luncheon meeting together with Dominic Ko. Edward Lau was the President of Rotary Club of Kingspark in that year. Since Edward was out of town at the time of our induction, C.P. John Wan pinned us instead.

Since becoming a Rotarian, I have been involved in several community service programmes and I took over the duty of bulletin editor from Tom Hui. I joined most of the fellowship activities as well. As the Board of Directors invited me to be an observer during the Director's meeting, I started to know more about Rotary.

Due to changes in my work and also its location, I left Kingspark in 1999. It was in that year that Ted Ho tried hard to cope with his transition from a long lasting acting President to the President. It was so kind of Michael Eyles to take over the bulletin editor job from me due to my departure then.By coincidence, I met Ted Ho again in Central near his new office in May this year. As a result, I was invited to be a guest of Rotary Club of Kingspark again and was also inducted again in July this year.I am glad to meet all old and new friends here, to serve in Rotary and have fun in all fellowship functions.

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Notice Board

(1) The Board has approved the admission of Johnny Chan as a member of the Club. His classification will be Marketing - Motor Vehicle. The Board will be seeking members' approval for the same in due course.

(2) The Board meeting scheduled for 13th February, 2002 will be held on 20th February, 2002.

(3) The lunch meeting on 14th March, 2002 will be rescheduled to coincide with the District Conference on 16th March, 2002.

(4) The lunch meetings on 27th December, 2001 has been cancelled.

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