President's Column
By President Joyce Mak

A Lifetime Career as a Past President

A night full of mixed feelings myself at Kingspark's club installation and it was successfully held on 17 June. Apart from having DGE Ada and CP John to witness this memorable event, we had a special guest who is a classmate of DGE Ada, DGE Sid from Makati, Philippines. He was visiting HK and was being invited to take part at our installation by Ada. It was indeed a great privilege to have 2DGEs & one PDG to attend this important hand over ceremony. I did not cry as I believe as the President this year is just the beginning of the journey and titled as Past President is actually a lifetime career, Calvin reminded me. It is very true, a President is like a young child. A good start to learn and explore new things; to see and experience different challenges; to fall and stumble on road blocks; to meet good and bad teachers; to know a lot of new friends. Apart from God, we must always be thankful and be proud that we were being born from a well-recognized mother, namely Kingspark HK.

That evening had a good turn up of almost 30 people with the support of members, spouses, Rotaractors and guests. I could not explain my utmost gratitude to all of you by simple words and I sincerely mean it.

I was very touched the moment AG Peter presented a gift on behalf of the club. He had bought it one year ago when we were at the Kingspark Camp in Pun Yu. It was a beautifully written piece in Chinese calligraphy using our club's Chinese name as a leading theme written vertically. Each individual word laying across leads to another sentence written horizontally, sounds like Scrabble! These sentences are full of grace and encouragement. AG Peter is a forward looking person in the sense that he had faith that I could survive the year of presidency. It was really a great gift full of good memories.

A club without members' support is meaningless, the spirit of family and fellowship and passion towards community service become the catalyst in maintaining a strong bonding among us. It is easy to form a new club, but difficult to sustain one. We received great news from the district regarding the chartering of a number of new clubs this year eg. RC of Lion's Rock, RC of Kowloon Tong and RC of Central. We all delighted to see the growth of membership in the district and wish them the very best in their strife to build a true Rotary spirit among the district.

I finally conducted my last luncheon meeting on 25 June. I had a guest speaker, Carter Chim, who is one of the Ambassadorial Scholarship applicants for this coming Rotary year. He was graduated from Wah Yan College Kowloon and now studying his 5th year at Hong Kong University, Law degree. He shared with us his academics and his experience in serving at various government departments. Members were interested to learn that he actually helped some very senior legislative members to write their speeches, he commented that it was definitely a very difficult task to accomplish. Because only God knows what do these people really want to present to the public.

This last meeting as being the President will always be an unforgettable one, especially members such as our Editor, Francis and International Director, Michael Au were there to support too! I still have about 4 days of Presidency at Kingspark and my last word to you all is 'Gratefulness'. It has been my great honour to have the chance to serve all of you and I'll always be proud to tell everyone that I am the Past President of RC of Kingspark HK. I look forward to seeing you in the new Rotary year.

A journey to my new career as being a Past President has just begun!