President's Column
By President Michael Eyles

First Meeting

Almost all club presidents must be nervous when they chair their first meeting as president and the current president of the Rotary Club of Kingspark Hong Kong was no exception; for example he was alarmed when he discovered that he had not organised someone to give Rotary Information, stood looking blank for a few seconds and declared that everyone should enjoy fellowship during lunch before the speakers started. I guess we have to get used to this president not talking to us when he has nothing to say.

One of the items not on the agenda of a meeting but that a president is always required to do, is to sign the bill for the hotel at the end of the meal. It is then that he notices whether or not he has gone over the minimum number of meals agreed to be paid for, and it must be tempting to make this minimum number his benchmark, below this benchmark attendance is BAD and above it GOOD. Perhaps the next step is the psychological perversity of being eternally grateful to those few members who did turn up when attendance was BAD and then feeling happy.

Your president watched in awe as the present Immediate Past President began not to eat, or eat very little at our luncheon meetings, from about February this year; or so it seemed that is what she was doing. Maybe there is a seed for a challenge here, but backed up by an appropriate donation to Rotary. I cannot imagine that Paul Harris was ever fat.

Now a final note in these rambling jottings. The three speakers on 2 July 2009 from Youth Outreach were impressive and seemed to be relaying some real communication, so much so that we raised an impromptu HK$ 2,000 from 8 members of the club for their organisation. PP Ted remembered when Father Newbery was our speaker about 10 years ago, and now the good Father is Executive Director of a much larger Youth Outreach than then. Visit their website: www.youthoutreach.org.hk!