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Golden News
Volume 15, Number 20 - Monday 12 November 2001
The bulletin of the Rotary Club of Kowloon Golden Mile - published every Monday.
The Sampan Kids:
Sadly your intrepid reporter missed the joint meeting with RC Kowloon North last week, because I was in Singapore & Kuala Lumpur and,
as usual, nobody bothered sending me any details of what transpired.
Did RCKN President Ramesh Chugani and our Fearless Leader President Ebe Tung "Chee Watusi" get down and dirty and do the "Kowloon Shuffle" (That's the way, a-ha, a-ha, I like it)? Did RCKN Vice-President Nic Robinson and our own VP Patricia "Iron Lady" Blair discuss their, er, vices? Now that would be a long conversation! Did RCKN PP Mike Harilela (pictured left) attend? If so, did he come with or without his moustache? Did RCKN Webmaster PP Bill Benter miss our Web Monster? So many questions, but so few answers. Nobody ever tells me anything. Just call me "mushroom". You know, kept in the dark and fed on, er, bovine by-products.
Oh well, I guess you had to be there. By the way, if you're wondering why this section has been entitled "The Sampan Kids", the
name of the RCKN weekly bulletin is "The Sampan". Click here
to view copies on-line.
This Week's Meeting:
This week's guest is Mr. Jake Van Der Kamp and the topic of his talk is "Your best investment manager is you".
Milestones:
Birthday greetings for 17 November to Chris "Floppy" Carroll, who shares his birthday with diminutive
American actor/director Danny De Vito.
Member Updates:
Once again, nothing to report this week chaps. Carry on.
Special Event - Ocean Park:
As a result of our joint meeting last week, RC Kowloon North Vice President Nic Robinson has very kindly
invited KGM members to join them at their forthcoming visit to Ocean Park to see the newly born dolphins.
The Phantom recently saw the baby dolphins at Ocean Park and they are incredibly cute swimming alongside their mother. Apparently Ocean Park also has a dolphin-sized "ultrasound" scanner, so you may even get to see a foetus inside a pregnant mummy dolphin. Cool stuff! The visit will take place at 10:00 a.m. Saturday 17 November (this week) and the cost is only HK$150 per head. Cheap! NOTE: The deadline for bookings is 5:00 p.m. today (Monday 12 November). KGM members wishing to participate should immediately contact Brian Hodgson on telephone 9191 7508 or by email.
Fellowship News:
Our next fellowship is very special because, once again, the wonderful
Harilela Family are welcoming us into their magnificent home at Kowloon Tong.
This event will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Friday 23 November 2001, when our dear friends Avisha & David Harilela will host "An Evening with the Harilela's" at 1 Durham Road, Kowloon Tong. As a courtesy to our hosts, please telephone David on 9168 8333 or email "Amazing" Grace (David's efficient Secretary), if you plan to attend. As a courtesy to the Web Monster, don't even think about touching the chicken tikka, OK? Community Service News: Our hard-working Community Service Director Silva "Dollar" Yeung announces that our next "hands-on" project will be conducted in Macau, jointly with the RC of Macau Central. This project, which is identical to our Hong Kong based "Free Medical Check", is being co-sponsored by Cruz Vermelha (Red Cross, Macau), St. Paul's Hospital Hong Kong and the Macau SAR Health Department.
We anticipate that some 600 Macau residents, many of whom are elderly, will benefit
from the project. We expect the project will incur HK$40,000 in expenses, and this amount will be shared equally between KGM and RC Macau Central.
The event will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday 2 December 2001, at the headquarters of Cruz Vermelha in Macau. Of course this is also an excellent opportunity to have an informal fellowship dinner afterwards. KGM members willing and able to participate in this worthwhile project are asked to telephone President Ebe on 9186 6792 or send her an email.
District 3450 News:
Rotary International President Rick King, (pictured left), will be guest of honour at a District 3450 Inter-City meeting to be held at
the Intercontinental Hotel, Tsimshatsui on Monday 3 December 2001. The venue is the former Regent Hotel.
The cost of the event is HK$500 per head, and bookings close on 23 November 2001. The program includes on site registration commencing at 6:00 p.m., which will be followed by a generous 30 minute "photo-op" for clubs to be photographed with President Rick. Wow. A whole 30 minutes for 49 clubs, or 36 seconds per club. Plenty of time, but bring your Nikes. The other proceedings commence at 7:30 p.m., which includes the usual series of speeches, people jostling for attention, then dinner (wanna bet it's chicken again?) and dancing. Mark your diaries (or tap your Palm Pilots) now, as this will be a unique opportunity to hear the incumbent RI President speak (provided he is not commandeered by District officials). Members interested in attending the meeting should contact our Fearless Leader President Ebe Tung "Chee Wow" by email.
Rotary International News:
A) November is Rotary Foundation month, so you can expect KGM Rotary Foundation Director Miranda "King" Kong, will be actively seeking new
contributors, especially from those KGM members who are not yet Paul Harris Fellows, despite being members for many years.
For more information about the fantastic work undertaken by the Rotary Foundation, visit their web page. B) The latest issues of "The Rotarian", "Rotary World" & "Rotary News Basket" are now available on-line. C) As part of the preparations for Rotary International's Centennial in 2005, three distinctive new logos have been created, and you are invited to vote for your favorite. The winning logo will be announced at the International Assembly in Anaheim, California, which commences on 28 January 2002. D) An RI Presidential PolioPlus Summit will be held from 22-24 February 2002 in Mumbai, India. E) An RI Presidential Conference will be held from 22-24 March 2002 in Taipei, Taiwan. F) The RI Annual Convention will be held in Barcelona, Spain from 23 to 26 June 2002, and you can register on-line here. For more information about the convention, visit their web site. Web Side Story:
Well our visitor count has now surpassed the 12,000 mark, which means we have annoyed some 2,000 additional
visitors since June 2001. Hence we are currently averaging 500 visitors a month, which is not too shabby for a little Rotary Club like
ours.
By the way, with Christmas rapidly looming, don't forget to consider using the KGM E-Store, where you can shop online at a variety of prominent and reliable electronic
stores.
KGM will earn a small commission for every purchase you make through the E-Store, but you don't pay a penny more. Even if you already have an account with a vendor, if you click on the links at the E-Store, you will still maintain your usual benefits but KGM also earns a small referral fee. Moreover, details of your purchases are never revealed to us, so if you want to buy some intimate lingerie for the lady (or man!) in your life, nobody will ever know.
Of course if you want to send the Web Monster intimate photos, he will gladly accept them because, well, he's a dirty old man.
Dear Geek:
Dear Geek, I'm thinking about changing my cellular telephone, but I'm confused about the "dual-band" issue. Can you please give me some advice. Yours Ma Bell.
Dear Ma, The term "dual-band" is rarely explained clearly by vendors in Hong Kong.
Most "dual-band" handsets available in Hong Kong operate on the 900Mhz &1800Mhz frequencies,
which means you can use the same handset irrespective of whether you sign up with a service provider offering GSM (900Mhz) or a PCS (1800Mhz) network. Note that GSM is
generally regarded as the superior service.
However if you sign-up with, say, "Smartone" for their GSM service, you do not get access to their PCS service. It's a case of one or the other but, should you change your mind later, you can use the same handset with a different SIM card (the little piece of cardboard you slip inside the handset). On the other hand, some handsets such as the Nokia 8890 operate on the 900Mhz & 1900Mhz frequencies. These are both GSM, however the former (900Mhz) is the GSM standard in most countries in the world except North America, which uses GSM 1900Mhz. So, if your travels include North America (as well as Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia), the best handset to get is a dual 900/1900Mhz handset. Alternatively, you can get a "tri-band" handset, such as the one made by Motorola, which operates on 900, 1800 and 1900Mhz frequencies, which will allow you to roam all over the world except Japan and Korea, who operate on entirely different frequencies. As a personal recommendation, The Geek favours Nokia handsets, because the menus are more intuitive. The Motorola handsets are, in my view, too complicated. Yours, The Geek. Who Am I?
What is the more common name of former Soviet leader Iosif Vissarionovich
Dzhugashvilli?
The answer appears at the bottom of this issue.
Cunning Linguist:
Have you ever wondered about the origins of the expression "kangaroo court"? Sadly the origins of the expression are not 100% certain.
Of course everybody presumes the expression originated in Australia, but the phrase is first recorded in the USA in
1853, and there seems to be no earlier evidence from Australia. Hence dictionaries assume it to be an Americanism.
However there is evidence linking it with the 1849 California gold rush, which many Australian prospectors joined. The most plausible explanation I've seen suggests that informal courts were held in the gold diggings to control illegal prospectors, who were called "claim-jumpers", and that the association of ideas between jumping and kangaroos was too strong to resist. There is no suggestion, however, that "claim-jumpers" were predominantly Australian! In any case, the explanation could just be a popular etymology, but it is nonetheless plausible.
Golden Smile:
A language instructor was explaining to her class that nouns in French, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically
designated as masculine or feminine. For example, "house" in French, is feminine ("la maison") whereas
"pencil" in French, is masculine ("le crayon").
One puzzled student asked, "What gender is computer?" The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French dictionary. So, for fun, she split the class into two groups according to gender and asked them to decide whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was required to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that computers should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la
computer"), because:
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your pay check on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le
computer"), because:
Apparently the women were correct. Quotable Quotes:
"When you are courting a beautiful girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder for a second, it seems like an hour. That's
relativity".
-- Albert Einstein -- The Phantom |
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"Who am I?" answer: Joseph Stalin.
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