Contents

President's Message - By Raymond Sin
The Internet - By John Wan
Member's Profile - By Ho Chi Ming
Notice Board
Upcoming Events
The Board

President's Message

By President Raymond Sin (2001-2002)

I had a very good time during the last long weekend though I did not go on any overseas trip or any place special. Last Saturday night, I went to Ocean Park with my daughter Michelle together with another family. Ocean Park is now open at night on a trial basis till the end of this month. Ocean Park last Saturday was a tidy, clean, spacious and relaxed place for walking around. It was past show time and Michelle was too young to go on most of the rides. Despite that, she enjoyed herself very much simply running around with her lantern and friends. We had a really great time and did not go home until close to mid-night.

On National Day, I took Michelle to a motor show at the Exhibition Center after lunch. We then went to see the Flag in the square next to the Exhibition Center. While walking across the flyover to Wan Chai, we stopped by Michelle's favourite restaurant Macdonald for the 2-dollar ice-cream cones. Then we spent an hour in a big bookstore next to the flyover before going home. That night - the full moon night - Michelle and I went to my friend's penthouse to celebrate the festival. We ate moon cakes. There were 2 other kids playing with Michelle. Once again, she had a wonderful time and so did I. It was 2:00a.m. before we took the MTR home, but Michelle was still awake and in an exciting mood.

I had been taking Michelle out very often these days because Eliza and I wanted it this way. These outings would enable Eliza to get more rest on the one hand and provide Michelle a break from the boredom she would certainly face if she were kept at home on the other. Since I had sold my car recently, we had more opportunities to travel by public transport, which gave us more time to look around and talk about a lot of silly things. We were never so close before. I think I had enjoyed her companionship more than she did mine.

From Breaking News this morning, I learnt about the American Strike Back and that the war had started. I felt lucky and I would treasure more every minute with my family. As I have said before, do love and care about our beloved ones for life is too short and we could not afford to wait.

I was sad to hear that VP Peter Lo's father had passed away last week. I wish his family well and stay well. We look forward to seeing Peter back to our meetings soon.

Dominic, Alex, Anwer and I had attended our Interact Club AGM in Wah Yan College HK this afternoon. We met the new committee members and were glad to know that the club had over 210 members this year which is a record. As in previous years, the members are all kind of smart students that are willing to render service to the community. I invited them to come to our meeting so that we could meet with each other.

Return to Contents

I use dictionaries fairly often and I keep a few in the office and more at home. My most used one is Paul Procter's Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1979 edition, which has been with me since 1981. I intended to write about email and the Internet, and out of curiosity, I looked up my favourite Longman. There was no such word. I thought maybe this version was too old, and I began leafing others. To my surprise, there was no entry in the 1985 Webster's, the 1985 Concise English, the 1987 Longman Family, or even the 1993 New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary which bills itself as the New Authority on the English Language. Finally, I looked up Webster's Millennium Encyclopedia, the 2001 CD-ROM version. Lo and behold, I found not only a definition for Internet, but also extensive reference on services available on the Internet, including electronic mail, newsgroup, file transfer protocol, bulletin board systems, telnet, search engines, world wide web and other related information. Let me share some of what I found with you.

To begin with, the Internet is an international computer network linking computers or networks of computers from educational institutions, government agencies, industries and businesses with common standards which enable messages to be sent from any host on one network to any host on any other. That is a rather clumsy and wordy, but comprehensive definition. More importantly, the Internet began in the 1970s as an experimental network to support military research, which grew steadily to include federal, regional, campus and other users.

Electronic mail or e-mail is perhaps the most popular service available on the Internet. One source estimated that there were over 60 billion messages going round the world each year and growing. The e-mail has not only grown in popularity, but has also become a more acceptable and respectable form of communication, so much so that users have developed netiquette, digital decorum, rules and do's and don'ts. Rotary International used Rotary in Cyberspace for its June issue of The Rotarian and a special keyboard for its cover. Quite a few weeklies and monthlies had also done something similar. The general conclusion is that the e-mail is here to stay, whether you like it or not. On the one hand, the Internet is hailed as the greatest of inventions, the catalyst of changes in business practices, the most powerful knowledge tool and so on, but on the other hand, it is blamed for corrupting the minds of the youths through spreading pornography, for misinformation, for wasting people's time through chain letters and for changing relationship for the worse.

Interestingly enough, the Internet has become a topic of serious academic analysis in Oxford. This staunch bastion of tradition with its dreamy spires has decided to make sense of the social and economic upheaval brought about by the phenomenal development of the Internet in the last decade and has established earlier this year the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). The new OII received an initial funding of 15 million British Pounds and is now based in Balliol. It is the first multidisciplinary academic institute in the world set up specifically to study the impact of the Internet on society, law and the economy. An Oxford don has observed that Oxford has a reputation for independence and integrity as well as for involvement in public life, while another, noting that the Internet does not respect boundaries, argued that Oxford is well placed to embark on a cross-disciplinary study by virtue of the fact that the colleges are multi-disciplinary. Already, the study has found that contrary to myth, children are not intrinsically better than adults at using information technology. One view is that whereas we cannot undiscover the Internet, for it is not going to go away, there is hope that the Internet can be influenced by society.

It is the notion that we have to live with the Internet and the host of services it provides that has spurred me to learn as much as I can on how to use the Internet more effectively. I have quite a few friends of my age who insist that they would not take to love or like e-mail because they cannot stand the notion of sitting in front of a cathode ray tube and a keyboard engaging in some seemingly passive and impersonal form of communication. The strength of argument and the conviction behind, the emotion accompanying and the velocity with which the argument is delivered can be rather impressive, but I am afraid that even the die-hards among them are resigned to the fact that this form of communication will stay and nearly all of them acknowledge that they would have to live with it. Well, life is never perfect. Indeed it is the imperfections that would help punctuate life and make us realize what life offers. Besides, if one lives with a monster long enough and survive, one would learn to love the monster. Let it be with the Internet and its e-mails. Talk to you again next week.

Return to Contents

Member's Profile - By Ho Chi Ming

Notice Board

(1) The Editorial Board met on 5 October 2001. Members can contact Chief Editor Alexander Mak for details.

(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.

Return to Contents