President's Column
By President Joyce Mak

A Month of Celebration

Saturday, 2 May was our 15th Anniversary Celebration Dinner and I hope you & your family enjoyed our programs and fellowship. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gracious thanks to our Ball Chairman, PE Michael Eyles and his Organizing Committee (PP Edward, PP Peter, PP Thomas, VP Stephen and Rotaractors) again for their hard work. Special thanks to PP Edward who had been very patience with me and the printer and at the end produced both a memorable and a nicely done celebration program book. The Celebration Dinner was indeed the result of numerous meetings, tasks scheduling, detail planning and numerous email exchanging. They have done a fabulous job and deserve our greatest recognition.

It was a blast that night with a total of attendance of 150 people. Members, spouses, children, old friends of Kingspark, district officers, Presidents of this year, visiting Rotarians and many more; without their gracious presence, the celebration would not have been so meaningful. My special gratitude to all the Past Presidents who have been so dedicated and committed for the past years in building the success of today's Kingspark and still maintaining a strong passion in serving the worldwide communities. I'm really grateful to have a group of 15 members from our Sister Club, Sathorn, Thailand; 1 member and 3 guests from Taipei Chung Yuan; 3 members and 2 guests from our Twin Club, Taipei Huayu. It definitely means a lot to me and the board for this great support and this has further strengthened our friendship on the international regime. I might have not done my best and not being able to serve every individual guest well enough that night, but I hope all of you would appreciate what the committee has done behind the scene.

It is my great honour to induct our new member, Carina Leung at the celebration dinner. On behalf of the club, I would like to express our heartfelt congratulations and welcome her to join our Kingspark family. We hope that she will give our club the benefits of her professional expertise to further strengthen the fellowship of this club and to help us serve even more effectively and the wider world of Rotary service. We surely will give her our full support and provide guidance of being one of the future leaders.

Last but not the least, I would also like to thank all the people who gave their generous support in sponsoring the celebration program booklet, your kind acts means so much to us! A big thank you to all of you!! The party ended with great music and we danced till 11:30pm. It was a special night for all of us as Kingspark approached the 15th year - a new era in celebrating our milestone. We all look forward to our next celebration for 20th anniversary!

Time flies and we are approaching the end of this Rotary year. This means that I shall write to you in the capacity of Club President for only 4 more issues in our Kingsparks News (including this one). I think most of you would agree that writing an article bi-weekly is a big challenge. But nonetheless, I have almost completed the task but I have to sincerely apologize to CP John for my late submission. Although the quality of my article is not comparable with our CP John Wan, I hope you enjoy reading what happened to the club and things that I would like to share with you all. Let me once again appeal to you to write articles in Kingsparks News because we want to share your feelings and experience.

My year as President is coming to an end, but a new one await each and everyone of you. I shall be part of our Club's history and you are the one to create our future. As "The Future of Rotary is in Your Hands" - next Rotary year's theme, I encourage all the members to involve more on club activities and be a volunteer in offering your expertise to help out a team of committed Board members. Since there is no "perfect time" that you will be ready for leading our Club, I suggest your participation in the District Leadership Programs to equip yourself to be a future leader, not only at club level but also at the District level. All of you are great assets to the District and you are always welcome to lend a hand to serve the community before it's too late.

We need your continuous support because we still have several important events coming up such as the following -

Thursday, 14 May - Area 8 Joint meeting, 7:00pm at The Mira Hotel

Thursday, 21 May - Club Assembly, 1:00pm at The Mira Hotel

Club installation - Tentatively 17 June (TBC. Please mark your diary and we shall provide you further information soon.