Golden News

Volume 13 - Number 08

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The weekly newsletter of the Rotary Club of Kowloon Golden Mile, Hong Kong.

Visit our web site at: www.freez.com/kgm

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INSURRECTION AT KGM !

OK. Maybe I shouldn't continually poke fun at our beloved President Ram "Bo", but happily he is a good sport and he doesn't mind if your nasty bulletin editor makes him the bane of his bad jokes every week. My only regret is that I was not bulletin editor last year under President Raju "Records ? What records ?" Daswani, because I would have had enough material to create a Hong Kong version of "Saturday Night Live" !

Anyway, at last Wednesday's meeting, President Ram "Bo" was in great form. Firstly he finally managed to break his gavel, and he did so without using anybody's head. Talk about a missed opportunity !

However the funniest part of the meeting came at the end, when he asked us to "Rise Up" for Rotary. Now you know why I refer to him as President Ram "Bo". He may look like a conservative, mild-mannered Clark Kent type banker but, look just below the surface and you will find an absolute wild man, who is willing to risk his life to lead a Rotary insurrection against the forces of evil.

Let's face it. He does walk the Maclehose Trail every year, which is something I would not even attempt with trail bike. Then again, he has yet to finish faster than PP Louis "Trailwalker" Thomas, who is about 97 years old.

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PROSPECTIVE NEW MEMBER. 

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ROTARY INFORMATION - Leave of Absence

There is no aspect of Rotary more misunderstood than the concept of Leave of Absence (LOA), so I thought I should explain exactly what this means, especially for new members (and for those who also attend the "Young Executives Group" meetings !!).

For starters, note that LOA is an Attendance issue, and there are three (3) "60% rules" for Attendance.

The first 60% rule is that when you join a Rotary club, your primary commitment is to attend not less than 60% of regular club meetings. Since Rotary clubs meet on a weekly basis, you are therefore required to attend at least three (3) Rotary meetings each month in order to satisfy your primary commitment. Are you with me so far ?

The second 60% rule is that you must spend not less than 60% of the time allocated to the meeting at the meeting in order to qualify for an attendance credit. Since KGM meetings start at 1:00 p.m., you will not be given attendance credit if you simply sign-in and sneak out the back door before 1:40 p.m. Are YEG members blushing at the moment ? I certainly hope so !

The third 60% rule is that of the (minimum) 3 meetings you attend each month, 60% of those must be at your own club.

So, let's do the math. You must attend a minimum of 3 meetings every month but a minimum of 2 of those must be at your own club. Got it ? Simple really. So what is a LOA ??

Quite simply, a LOA forgives you from observing the third 60% rule. In other words, you will not be required to attend the 2 out of 3 meetings at your own club for the duration of your LOA, but you are still required to attend a minimum of three (3) Rotary club meetings each month.

For the avoidance of doubt, LOA does NOT give you a holiday from your overall Attendance obligations.

Hence, you are still required to attend not less than three (3) meetings every month however, with a LOA, these can all be achieved by "make-ups" !!

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LAST WEEK'S SPEAKER: Mrs. Cheung-Ang Siew Mei
opic: "Domestic Helpers & Migrant's Appeal"

Quite an interesting talk and slide presentation about the work undertaken by the Christian Action group, particularly in respect of the 160,000 foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong.

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THIS WEEK'S SPEAKER: Bruce Gilley (FEER).

Topic: China's President Jiang Zemin.

Our guest speaker is a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and he will give his views on how President Jiang has influenced China during his 10 years as President.

I also believe our speaker has recently published a book about President Jiang.

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NEXT FELLOWSHIP EVENT:

YES ! We finally have a fellowship on 27 August at the Gold Coast Yacht .......... er, what's that ? It's been cancelled ?? Huh ??? It was only announced 12 hours previously !!!  Waddya mean they didn't know about the District Membership Development Seminar on the same date !!! This event has been on the KGM web site for over a month now, and it was mentioned in the last two bulletins !

Oh, never mind. As somebody once said: "Lead or follow, just get the hell outta my way.".

So guys, here's the thing. The "Shadow" Fellowship Committee has decided to pick up the ball and run with it, and we have organised a fellowship at FAT ANGELO'S, the hot new critically-acclaimed Italian restaurant in Causeway Bay, as follows:

LOCATION: G/F, 414 Jaffe Road (corner Canal Road) - ample parking available at Elizabeth House.

TIME & DATE: 8:30 p.m., Saturday, 11 September 1999.

COST: $350 per head (if paid by Wednesday, 8 September, otherwise it is $400 per head - NO exceptions !)

WEB SITE: http://www.fatangelos.com/ (Check it out - nice web site which includes a location map).

WHAT YOU GET: Enormous servings of great Italian food including 3 appetisers, minestrone soup, 7 main courses, 4 desserts, unlimited beer, wine, soft drinks and brewed coffee during dinner (if you arrive early or want spirits, a cash bar is available).

What a fantastic deal !!! (or, as they say in Italy: "Eh Luigi, watta fantastico deal-o, pisano ?).

Bookings and payment to Hans "The Hun" Peter, Norman "El Capo" Liu or Vinny "Da Knife" Pinto.

Now, that wasn't too difficult, now was it ?

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CHANGE OF BOARD MEETING DATE:

Club Directors are reminded that future Board Meetings will be convened at 6:30 p.m. at the 2/F of the Holiday Inn Golden Mile on the 1st Tuesday of the month, commencing with the meeting on 7th September, 1999. The dates for all other remaining meetings for the year have already been posted to the KGM web site under "Board Meetings".

This change of date (from the 3rd Tuesday of the month) was approved at the last Board meeting and it was ratified unanimously by members present at the regular lunch meeting held on 18th August, 1999.

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KGM WEB SITE:

Nothing new to report this week except to say that the KGM Webmaster expects to transfer to a local ISP under our own domain name www.rckgm.org within the next 2 weeks, because those VISA card ads on the top of each page are *really* starting to annoy him.

Watch this space ----->       <----- for more news.

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NETIQUETTE:

Some members have asked me "How can I get my own domain name", whereas others have asked me much deeper, soul-searching and more meaningful questions, such as: "What the hell IS a domain name ?".

Well, second question first !! A domain name is basically an Internet address. Originally all domain names were a series of numbers but, as these were invariably difficult to remember, domain names are now represented by text and are therefore more logical. This is similar to the practice popular in North America with toll-free telephone numbers, where 1-800-555 1234 can be displayed more mnemonically as 1-800-WHIP ME !!!  (Yes, I know, but I couldn't think of anything mildly amusing with 7 digits, OK !).

Anyway, as far as the first question is concerned, there are basically two ways to obtain your own domain name.

The first (and probably the easiest way for the internet-impaired), is to contact your local ISP (Internet Service Provider). This is the company in Hong Kong with whom you have an email account such as Netvigator, Pacific Supernet etc.

The second way is to do it yourself by logging onto the Internet and applying directly to InterNIC (basically a central registry of domain names). The easiest way to do this is through a registration service such as the company I use who are called Alldomains.com who can be found at http://www.alldomains.com/indexaddon.html

These days when you apply for a "Top Level" domain name such as www.yourname.com (where "yourname" is the actual domain name you want to register), you will find that most of the good names have already been taken. For example, when I tried to register www.selpro.com for my company, I discovered this was already taken, so I had to be content with a "country specific" domain name, in my case one registered in Hong Kong, which is why my company address has "HK" added to the end, as in www.selpro.com.hk

On the other hand, some names which are very specific such as www.vincepinto.com was available, so I registered it (along with about 20 others !!!). The cost for registration ranges from US$40 upwards per year.

Apart from the ".com" extension, you can also apply for ".org" or ".net" in addition to numerous other "country specific" extensions such as ".hk" for Hong Kong, ".au" for Australia, ".to" for Tonga and so on.