Golden News

Volume 14 No 30

February 6th, 2001    

The Weekly Bulletin of the Rotary Club of Kowloon Golden Mile
www.rckgm.org

 FEBRUARY IS WORLD UNDERSTANDING MONTH

Last Meeting

Guess what? Back in the usual room again, for old time’s sake! Must be the festive season’s end. Oh well it was good to see the usual gathering in its rightful place and well attended. There were 38 Rotarians present and one guest, which is the beginning of an improvement. We may need to order more peanuts for Rotarian Elissa. We sat down on time and the formal part of the meeting started at about 12 minutes past one, with loud banging of gong and fortunately no choir practice i.e. no birthdays. But what do we have this week?

Birthday Boy

           Rotarian Dyal – 9^th February HBTY,HBTY,HBTDD,HBTY!

Rtn. Long John Silva then announced that there were no visiting Rotarians, they must have heard about our singing, followed by Rotarian Carola who invited Rtn. Patricia to introduce her guest, Ms Jenny Drew from U.K. 

President Cassidy next announced the Housework project for the elderly in Yau Ma Tei and called for volunteers to sweep and dust etc. 

The assembled members of our club then showed their joint world community spirit by quickly approving a donation of HK$50,000 (included later were the contents of the red or blue boxes on each table which amounted to about HK$3,000) towards funds for helping the many thousands of victims of the recent devastating earthquake in India. There was an urgent meeting of the directors afterwards to decide of the most appropriate and speedy method of getting the funds to where they were needed.

            Our Speaker – Interpersonal Trust In Business

Rtn. Elissa then introduced Ms Yuet-Ha Mo, M.A., M.B.A., and a Graduate Research Student from the University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology.

Ms Mo spoke to us on the subject of Interpersonal Trust in Business, the area she is currently researching for a doctoral thesis. Her most interesting talk covered research of the cultural differences between people in the South of England, Shanghai and Hong Kong in judging whether they can trust people in their business dealings with them.  

In our daily lives, it is hard to pin down the underlying factors that make us trust a person.  Perhaps it is about the chemistry with that person, or the person's charisma or professionalism; or perhaps it is based on pure intuition.  Other scholars, mainly at Management School, have studied business trust.  The presentation broke down the concept of trust into all possible elements and attitudes from the perspective of social psychology. In addition Ms Mo wished to share some of her learning about business trust with us, particularly some qualitative observations of trust attitudes in Shanghai and Southern England after a number of exploratory interviews with business owners. 

In the course of her talk Ms Mo spoke about some of the set of expectations that would be shared by those involved in the exchange where presumably trust existed. The set included: 

·         Honesty

·         Integrity

·         Openness

·         Fairness

·         Reliability (keeping commitments)

·         Competence

·         Professionalism (difficult to translate conceptually across cultures)

·         Reputation (in field of expertise)

·         The history of consistently reliable earlier transactions

·         Existence of reciprocal obligations

·         Agreement on the definitions of major terms

·         Perceived/experienced reliability and honesty

·         Mutual benefits (Win, Win situations) and

·         Reciprocation of favours (information, referrals new business etc) 

But your humble scribe has no doubt left a few out during his attempt not to miss out on lunch (honesty and openness!). 

Although Ms Mo was not able to offer conclusions at this stage, which she promised to do in a years time, she was however able to say that her impression is that the cultural difference in this area appears less profound than might hitherto have been thought. 

There was, as is traditional in KGM a lively session of question including one, which wondered whether the Scots had been omitted for any particular reason. Our speaker of course replied with integrity and honesty that funding and time constraints for the research were the limiting factors.

Rotn Carola Gave the vote of thanks.

Next Meeting

 Dr Sylvia Mills – Handling Stress (me after writing the above!)

On Vocation! With Rotarian Kenneth

Classification - Law Practicing - Conveyancing

I was born in Hong Kong and am holding an Australian citizenship.  I have been married for 25 years and have 3 wonderful adult kids, two of them now in the United States.

I am a Charter Member of the Club and a solicitor by profession.  Although my main legal practice has been in banking and commercial, I was designated a membership classification of “law practice-conveyancing” because another banking lawyer also joined the Club when it was inaugurated.  Now my practice also extends to liquidation and insurance, as my law firm was one of the two main law firms appointed to represent the liquidator in the past 10 years in the winding-up of Bank of Credit and 30Commerce in Hong Kong.

Throughout all these years I have thoroughly enjoyed being a member of the Club because of all the good friends I have made from there, as well as the excellent fellowship the Club provides.

I firmly believe in “working hard, playing hard and continuous education”.  Law practice in Hong Kong is very demanding and highly competitive.  Being the senior partner of my law firm, my daily routine includes a lot of administrative matters, besides the major legal works that require my personal attention.  Very hectic indeed!

Legal practice aside, I have in the past 3 years become a keen practitioner in Ballroom and Latin Dancing (aka Dance Sport in modern term), having an average of 2 practice sessions each week (to keep myself in good shape) and many invitations to balls and parties.  Fellow Rotarians, let me tell you something, a man who can dance is such a rare species that his popularity (among ladies) is beyond one’s expectation.  In addition, I try to take a holiday break once a month.  I left for Beijing in last November, India in December and New York in January 2001.  For the rest of the year, my plans so far are a gourmet trip to Shunde (PRC) and spa trip to Macau in February and March respectively, to Chengsha (Chairman Mao’s birth-place) for Easter in April, probably to Peking again in May, definitely to Texas for the RI Convention in June and to Inner Mongolia in July/August, to London/Edinburgh in September and Shanghai in early November (for the hairy crabs).  That explains why my Club attendance is on occasions less than satisfactory.

As for continuous education, after getting 2 Master of Laws degrees in 1997 and 1998, I am now working hard on the final thesis for my Doctorate from Peking University, hopefully to be on time for the award of degree in summer this year.

Indeed, life is very busy, wonderful and full of good fun.

The Rotary Foundation

The following is a synopsis of a report from PDG Dipo on the final results of our District’s contribution to the Rotary Foundation during the last Rotary Year (1999-000).

“District 3450 Goal and Contribution History 1999 - 2000

                                                                                 

Annual Giving Goal                      $140,000    

Attainment                                198%

Annual Giving Contributions             $277,031

Annual Giving Per Capita                $161.25

Total Contributions                      $519,612

District Designated Fund

(Share credit available

For 2002-3)                              $178,822      

 

Zones 4(B), 6(B) and 7(B) i.e. (26 Districts) Comparison

Top 5 Districts for Annual

Giving per Capita:

1^st:                                   3450              $161.25

2^nd:                                   3500              $128.12

3^rd:                                   3490              $126.36

4^th:                                   3520              $  96.73

5^th:                                   3460              $  83.97

 

Top 5 Districts for Total Contributions

1^st:                                    3450              $519,692

2^nd:                                    3510               $449,100

3^rd:                                    3460              $345,380

4^th:                                    3520              $337,125

5^th:                                    3490              $301,03

As you can see due to your excellent efforts, our District came first for both Annual Giving per capita and for Total Contributions. All this would not have been possible generosity of all Rotarians during the year.” PDG Dipo has asked that his heartfelt gratitude be conveyed to all members of Kowloon Golden Mile for their help in achieving our goals, in addition to his encouragement to continue to give during this present Rotary Year.

KGM Web Site

From the Webmaster 

Hi folks. It's been a while since I last annoyed you, so allow me to update you on a few matters: 

1) E-mail Distribution Lists - Members are reminded that the KGM E-mail Distribution Lists may only be used for official KGM business. They are NOT to be used for the promotion of personal and/or commercial interests, associations or organisations. 

2) Web Site Additions - Since your Webmaster doesn't have a life, particularly while his beloved wife is still gallivanting about in Manila, giving her VISA card an unneeded workout <sigh>, I have used the last 7 lonely nights to make a number of additions to our web site: 

a) If you click on the "?" at the very top right-hand corner of the main page, you will find that we now offer a translation of our web page into Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. Although I have added a disclaimer that the translations may not be perfect, certain cruel members of our club, who I recruited as "testers", are still laughing. Damned foreigners! OK, so the translations are bloody awful, but it was a choice of creating this new feature or watching re-runs of "Bay watch" 

I originally also offered a translation into Chinese, however it was apparently such a poor translation, PP Robin Ching threatened to beat me over the head with his abacus if I didn't remove it. These violent PP's are starting to worry me! 

b) If you click on "Humour" at the top of the page, then click on "KGM Dancers", you will see our dancers gyrating to a song from the Bee Gees. WARNING: The dancers are not wearing any clothing - parental guidance is advised! 

3) Virtual Postcards - As advised in an earlier message, KGM now has it's own "Virtual Post Office". Just click on "Post Office" at the top of web page. However the exciting news is that you can now also send a copy of the KGM Banner Postcard to friends, family, business associates or other Rotarians around the world. 

When you click on the "Virtual Post Office", you will see a button called "Specials".  If you click on this, the very first card on the left is the KGM Banner Postcard. Just click on it, select from the various options, add your personal message and bingo-bango ! 

By the way, our web site statistics reveal that 82% of our visitors are from overseas, 93% of them use Internet Explorer and we are getting between 10 to 25 "hits" every day. Not too shabby for a little ol' Rotary Club in Little China !!

Also, did you know that our web site is now comprised of 180 pages of information? 

That's all for now folks. As usual, if you have any suggestions on how we can improve our web site, you know where to find me. 

The Phantom

Dreadful Puns of the Weak 

A neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?" The bartender replies, "for you, no charge." 

A three-legged dog walked into a saloon in the Old West. He sidled up to the bar and announced: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw..." 

Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. He became known as the lesser of two weevils.  

Two fishermen sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. It sank; proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too. 

Brain Teaser 

Amoebae Troubles… 

Every minute the cellular creature splits in two halves, each one immediately growing to the same size as the parent, In 60 minutes the multitude of amoebae completely fill their container. To the nearest minute, how much time was needed to half-fill the container?

Presidential Quotation 

“Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing you concern for yourself.”

John Macnaughton

URCHIN