President's Column
By President Joyce Mak
Life is Precious
A true story I would like to share with you all which made me sad for the past 2 weeks. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with Rotary and the incident has actually made me come to realize again that life is so precious. And it isn't fair. But through all its joys and tragedies we discover the importance of love, friendship, compassion, mercy, and grace.
There was a car accident in Tolo Highway happened about two weeks ago and took a 29-year-old man's life and 5 other people injured in this car crash. The car was on the second lane collided with another private car which was originally on the third lane. It was reported the latter hit the first car's railing on the left and the driver of the latter private car left the scene when Police arrived.
I got a phone call the other day and realized that one of the injured people was my ex-colleague back in a few years ago. I was totally shocked and could not believe the fact. More unfortunate was that the person who lost his life was my ex-colleague's fiance who had planned to get married next year. As her ex-colleague and a friend of hers, I feel the grief and pain and could not imagine such a tragedy could have happened to this wonderful couple. Yes, life is precious and we should not take it for granted. All of us who can breathe at this very moment are to be considered lucky.
This incident would be painful for both my injured friend who just came out from ICU, the family members and a group of dear friends who have been worrying for days and nights for the past weeks. There will be a great impact on my friend for the rest of her life, but as long as she has a life to live, she needs to stay very strong and to face the reality about the her current situation and her future which I am sure it will be full of challenges. One thing for sure is that she has a very loving family and being surrounded by many friends who will always be there for her to offer love, support, prayers and care. It might not be easy for me to understand what she has been and will be going through deep down and the pain she is suffering physically and mentally. In the meantime, all of us have to stay strong and hope she will be able to fully comprehend the odd twists and turns of fate.
The above incident reminds me of this year's theme where RI President DK Lee asked us to organize projects to reduce child mortality rate. Life is precious, no matter they are children or adults, and we should make the best use of our existing resources to help out anyone who are in need. Like this year, we had jointly organized the Laryngoscope and Blade for Children Life project where we donated these instruments for hospitals in Thailand especially in rural areas which lack of funding in buying even basic surgical instruments. There might not be a big impact for a large population in a short period of time, but we would continue to try our very best to help out and you never know how many lives in the future that we might have saved and made a difference.
Last week, we (PE Michael, PP Dominic, PP Raymond, I and a previous Rotary Scholar) had the opportunity to meet up with Anita Stangl from Alliance for Smiles, a person we have been working very closely for the past years. She paid a short visit to HK for about a week and she shared her experiences in Bengbu, China back in April this year. Due to the Swine Flu incident, their crew found it difficult and were even refused to perform the cleft lip operations. Their organization is also facing a funding problem which was originally agreed to be sponsored by many Rotary Clubs in the States mostly due to the financial crisis. We generally agreed to continue to provide assistance to Alliance for Smiles next Rotary year and hope to apply for the Matching Grant as one of our projects. Our new board will start to explore and decide on the budget, please stay tune for further information and your support is extremely important! Thanks to some of the generous members who personally sponsored to Alliance for Smiles and we hope to help out on a club basis next year.
To remind you all, our sister club, RC of Chung Yuan Taipei will be having their 9th Anniversary dinner on Saturday, 13 June. Though this is not the formal 3 club alliance gathering but it would also worthwhile to visit their club members to celebrate their success and enjoy the fellowship. If you are unable to participate on the above event due to your busy schedule, please make necessary arrangement to join the upcoming events, please find details as follows:
1) Club installation 2009 - 2010 Date: Wednesday, 17 June, 2009 - Time: 7:00pm (reception), 7:30pm (meeting starts) Venue: The Mira, Hong Kong
2) District Installation - Date: 11 July 2009 - Time: 2-5pm Venue: Grand Hyatt
3) Kingspark Camp - Date: 17-19 July 2009 - Venue: PRC (not confirmed), possibly Ching Yuan
Hope to see you all in the coming activities to enjoy Rotary and our fellowship!
|
|
