Rotary clubs in
Malaysia
With regards to Rotary
everything in K.L. is splendid. The hospitality of the
Rotary clubs with which I have made contact has been excellent.
I
selected, with the help of the internet, the Rotary Club of Kuala
Lumpur Di Raja and rang the outgoing president - Mr Chan
at approx. 5pm on Sat. 4th July. At 7:30 pm that night the Rotary
club had a casual Rotary International Fellowship barbeque at the
Royal Selangor Club - Bukit Kiara Sporting Complex and he invited
me to attend.
I arrived early so did the reciprocal exchange (R.A.C.V.) and
received my card that gives me the rights to the use of club and
facilities whilst in K.L.
Then the Sister club Rotarians arrived from Thailand, Korea,
Phillipines and Singapore and I met many of them in a relaxed and
informal atmosphere and have some of their contact details.
They were visiting for the 82nd Installation Banquet at the Eastin
Hotel to be held the following evening - Sunday 5th July. I
too was invited to attend the Banquet as a guest of the club and
they wouldn't accept payment for either function.
A
wonderful fully formal night for well over 400 people. The
Di Raja club has royal patronage - the Sultan Of Selangor who of
course attended the night [with respectful pomp and ceremony] and
donated a substantial cheque to Rotary. Their
challenging inspiration for the year is "Service Above Self ."
Their entertainment "Comedy Court", even if it was in front of
Royalty, couldn't hold a candle to our superb opera singers for
Philip's special night.
The incoming President of Raffles City Rotary club of Singapore,
Mr. Steven Teng, was at my table and so I will attend one of their
club meetings in the next 6 weeks. His change over night is
on the 1st August so I am trying to arrange if possible to
attend a meeting and the change over night as well.
The K.L. Di Raja Rotary Club, unbeknownst to me at the time, is an
all men's club but I can attend a meeting as a guest which I have
arranged to do next Wednesday, 7th July, at their lunch meeting at
the Shangri-la Hotel when I will exchange Rotary banners.
I,
having met the president at the Banquet, have also arranged to
attend the Bangsar Rotary Club [mixed club] meeting on Tuesday 6th
July at 6pm which meets at the Royal Selangor Club and again I
will exchange banners.
I am so privileged and proud to have joined Rotary and to have the
opportunity to be able to experience its international focus in a
practical way.
Warm Regards,
Judy 6 July 2009
Rotary clubs in
Thailand
I
have just forwarded on photos just sent to me of my amazing
"makeup" in Phuket at their installation night - Saturday July
11th when 6 Phuket Rotary clubs combined for their installation -
ie changeover night. They call them Installation Banquets here.
What a grand occasion. The kindness and hospitality extended
to me was so sincere and was in fact overwhelming.
I attended as a guest of the Di Raja Rotary club of K.L. who were
a guest of a sister Rotary club in Phuket. I will forward on
the actual
formal name of the sister club as I am in the office and the paper
work is back at the condo - their were 6 clubs that night and by
association I too was a guest. It was agreed between us that
as guests -ie no payment for the banquet, we would donate an
amount of money to their charity project. I personally
donated US$100 which I was delighted to do and which they said was
more than acceptable so we were all happy.
The
next day the Di Raja K.L. club - President, 2 committee members,
their wives and myself (7 in all) and 2 Phuket Rotarians, one of
whom owned the resort hotel we were staying in, (at reduced rates)
were taken by mini bus sight-seeing plus the real purpose being to
inspect their project-A school hit by the tsunami. The Di
Raja club had raised money for 500 students school uniforms etc.
I will find out more details about the project because I think a
Canadian Rotary club is also involved with the funding of the
project in conjunction with sister Phuket Rotary club. The
project
is the building of a brand new library for the school (took
pictures). The building has only just been finished and now
funding for the furniture, books etc. needs to be arranged.
After the inspection we ([7 people) along with 2 Phuket Rotary
clubs (one the sister club) were treated in an out door village
restaurant by the sea, to an delicious informal seafood banquet
-Thai Village Style. It was in this beautiful atmosphere
that
the president handed over our donations to their club which were
accepted warmly and graciously. They then presented gifts of
local foods i.e. cashew nuts and other products of the region etc.
to each of us. How humble and privileged I felt.
Rotary is truly an International Organization and I am so proud to
be part of it. Friendships have been formed and contacts
made for my Southbank Rotary Club. So many Rotarians in K.L.
and Phuket have relations studying in Australia and many in
Melbourne.
As I will be back again in Asia at the end of the year, one witty
Rotarian at the Bangsar
mixed Rotary club where I am doing most of my make-ups have a
condo there, suggested I could be the glue for our clubs and
projects we can get involved in. I attended a makeup meeting
last Tuesday July 14th with the Bangsar Rotarians.
The speaker was most inspirational - cleaning up the local rivers
- a must here in K.L. He had written a book and formed an
environmental action group. Bangsar Rotary club are
supporting him and on Sunday 9th August. We have a hands-on
day when
we
all donned surgical gloves and with garbage bags we clean up a
river. What shocked me is that he told us the most common
garbage on river banks are soiled nappies. This opens up
areas of need - environmental education in schools.
I am arranging to go down to Singapore for the Raffles City Rotary
Club (another sister club of Di Raja Rotary Club - men
only club) Changeover/Installation Banquet on the Ist Aug.
(I was invited by the President of the Di Raja Rotary Club when I
was in
Phuket) I will attend one of their meetings i.e. Tues 28th July
- lunch meeting at Singapore cricket club and exchanged banners.
I presume it will be a similar exchange i.e. we all
personally donated to their charity project. I am honoured
to do so.
Have been looking into community projects - Cambodia orphanage -
Sister of partner of President of Di Raja Rotary Club. A lady
there who helps run it lives in Melbourne. I have many
thoughts on this. I am happy to be the Glue in Asian
projects as I will be often in the area and love travelling
particularly with a charity purpose. Making sure donations reach
their objectives etc is always a problem in these areas. I
know Philip and others went to Bali for the projects.
Must go to my favourite place "Little India" and find some
suitable formal heavily beaded traditional clothes-Indian and
Malay/Singapore etc to leave behind here and wear to Rotary
functions in the future. Great excuse for me to shop and
wear traditional costumes. Of course everything is so much
cheaper here than Aust.
Warm Regards,
Judy 16 July 2009
Rotary clubs in
Singapore
Having
wonderful Rotary experiences. Attended Raffles City Rotary Club
meeting on Tues at the Singapore Cricket Club. I am really
looking forward to attending their Installation [Change-over]
night on Sat. night.
I attended the Kuala Lumpur North Rotary Change-over night last
Sat. night at the Royal Selangor Club. I feel so privileged
to be invited to these functions. It is so inspiring to hear on
such nights, a precise of the club's years projects.
Last Sat. night 2 dedicated nuns who run an orphanage in K.L. had
been invited as guests. As the last project of the out-going
committee they invited the nuns onto the stage and presented them
with a substantial cheque which enabled them to give 15 of their
orphans a good education. They had no idea and it was all so
moving. It was one of those huge blown up cheques
I
have just forwarded on photos just sent to me of my amazing
"makeup" in Phuket at their installation night - Saturday July
11th when 6 Phuket Rotary clubs combined for their installation -
ie changeover night. They call them Installation Banquets here.
What a grand occasion. The kindness and hospitality extended
to me was so sincere and was in fact overwhelming.
PP Gabe's Rotary club visits in August 2009
If anyone is wondering where I have been
for the past 2 weeks, this is a snapshot.
11 August 2009 - Last week I visited
the Rotary Club of Docklands, the newest club in our Batman
Cluster. They were moved downstairs due to a function booked
at their normal location. This meant the meeting was held
"in public" in that there were patrons nearby and the place was
noisy. President Mark Nutter was very apologetic about both
the noise and the location but I don't believe it is necessary.
I think 'meeting in public' is a great way to let people know
about Rotary and the noise just makes the meeting more lively!
The meeting happened to be the official
visit from AG Bob and PDG Ann White was also there. What
made it a great meeting was that they inducted 3 new members at
the meeting, which is wonderful for such a new club. A great
effort indeed. The presentation on the night is introduction
of the RC Docklands new website. As a result of that
meeting, I am pretty confident in saying that if we were not the
first, we were at least one of the first Rotary clubs to have a
link to their website which was included in last week's issue of
the Southbank - see the bottom of the page.
The meeting had a friendly atmosphere, the
food was great and the company was fantastic. If any of us
haven't been to one of their meetings, I strongly recommend you
visit RC Docklands. Unfortunately, I did not take any
photos.
17 August 2009 - I was in Tokyo,
Japan for a quick 1 week holiday and whilst there, I planned to
visit 2 Rotary clubs. The first one was RC Tokyo Ueno, D
2580. There are dozens of clubs within Tokyo and choosing
which one to attend was no easy task. I chose RC Tokyo Ueno
for a number of reasons:
- I have been to Ueno before;
- I know there is great shopping around
the area so Aurora can shop whilst I am at the meeting;
- RC Tokyo Ueno's meeting venue is in the
middle of a park, a tranquil place where concerts are often
held; and most importantly
- their website had a map.
It was a lunchtime meeting so all their
members were in suits. They had a very good attendance with
at least 50 people present. Their membership stands at 59.
I was very well looked after by the club, especially by Yoshikawa
san. Yoshikawa san emailed a reply to provide me with
information about their meeting before hand and was there to look
after me throughout the meeting. It made a huge difference
with Yoshikawa san explaining what was happening throughout the
meeting, including organising a banner exchange. I was
introduced to President Abe san.
Yoshikawa san introduced another member of
their club, Kanehara san who is a publisher of medical books and
the 2 of them together kept me well informed of what was happening
during the meeting. Yoshikawa san also presented me with a
Australian-Japanese badge which I will bring to the next meeting.
The meeting began with the singing of two
club songs, accompanied by a lady pianist (by the way there are no
female members in that club). This is one of the few moments
whilst in Tokyo when I was actually glad I did not speak Japanese!
You can hear the songs
here.
The song on the left si divided into 4 sections for each season,
only the second section was sung as it is "Summer".
The venue overlooks the park and it was a
welcoming sight compared to the buzz of Tokyo. President Abe
san exchanged banners with me and asked me to say a few words.
I spoke in Japanese so it was indeed a very few words!
I was again fortunate as this was the DG's
official visit to their club, so I got to meet the DG as well!
DG Hiromu Tada san had a simple message to all Rotarians in his
district: "Enter to learn, go forth to serve". DG Tada san
had 4 key objectives, including that all members pay their dues,
and attend as many meetings as they can. Most interestingly,
DG Tada san provided details of the membership of the top 10
Rotary nations - and there might be some surprises for you!
I include that chart below.
|
No. |
Country |
Membership |
No. of clubs |
Avg members |
|
1 |
America |
369,032 |
7,831 |
47.1 |
|
2 |
India |
105,240 |
2,923 |
36.0 |
|
3 |
Japan |
95,010 |
2,304 |
41.2 |
|
4 |
Korea |
60,840 |
1,465 |
41.5 |
|
5 |
Brazil |
52,879 |
2,328 |
22.7 |
|
6 |
Germany |
48,269 |
959 |
50.3 |
|
7 |
UK |
44,155 |
1,452 |
30.4 |
|
8 |
Italy |
42,497 |
771 |
55.1 |
|
9 |
France |
33,706 |
1,036 |
32.5 |
|
10 |
Australia |
33,653 |
1,154 |
29.2 |
|
|
Top 10 Contries Total |
885,281 |
22,223 |
39.8 |
|
|
Worldwide |
1,234,066 |
33,658 |
36.7 |
|
|
Top 10 as percent of World |
72% |
66% |
|
Entrance to the meeting
venue "Ueno Seiyoken"
Rotary banner outside the
building.
Exchanging banners with
President Abe san
The head table with
President Abe san and DG Tada san
DG Hiromu Tada san
addressing the RC Tokyo Ueno club
PP Gabe and DG Hiromu Tada
san
Yoshikawa san and Gabe.
Yoshikawa san was an excellent host and made the visit most
enjoyable.
19 August 2009 - It was planned that
I visit RC Tokyo Ginza, D 2750. They meet at the Marriot
Courtyard Hotel at lunch. Their website do not have a map
but has a link to the Marriot Courtyard hotel which does.
Unfortunately, when I arrived, I discovered that they did not meet
there that day, so I signed in (yes, they provided for signing in)
and left our banner. It was disappointing that I did not get
to visit them but I guess it is an excuse to do it again next
time!
This is a notice above the
sign in book. I followed other Japanese Rotarians in to sign
in. I think it says it will contact me (I left my email
address).
This is a clock at Chuo-dori
(a main street in Ginza), celebrating RC Tokyo Ginza's 50th
Anniversary. And yes, that is our new club polo shirt!
