The year began with midnight fireworks from Sydney to Hong Kong and Beijing to Singapore. Ukraine’s Chernobyl atomic power plant showed no signs that it would malfunction, while London’s Big Ben rang at midnight Greenwich Mean Time, as it would for every night. There was heightened security in the United States, but no major incidents…
That is what Pope John Paul II urged the faithful around the world to take up during the homily at the Christmas Eve Mass this year inside St. Peter’s Basilica, televised live to hundreds of millions of people in 47 countries. This year’s Christmas follows conflicts between nations, terrorism and tension in the Middle East,…
Elvis is of course Elvis Presley, Ken, Ken Kesey and John and George, John Lennon and George Harrison. They have all died, some longer than others; and I have named them in the order they were born. Everyone my age and many others older or younger know Elvis. In the early Sixties in Wah Yan…
As we move towards another Christmas, marking the end of another eventful year, Rosita and I would like to thank our families and friends for the wonderful things they have done for us and to us all the time, knowingly or unknowingly, and in the manner and fashion they have done them. Our families and…
Shortly after I published my book, Letters from a Rotarian, I sent a copy to RI Past President Frank Devlyn. He sent me an email back with some encouraging words and asked me to promote his book, Frank Talk, and the avoidable blindness projects for which he started a Task Force in his year as…
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Stephanie had a very good friend who would discuss various aspects of life by email and who had read my book, Letters from a Rotarian, and so on. A very good old friend wasted no time to send me an upbeat message, thinking that this could be a…
At first glance, Rotary and wheelers are poles apart, Rotary being about service and business and professional leaders with the highest ethical standards and dedicated to building goodwill and peace in the world, while wheelers as in wheelers and dealers are people intent on getting what they want by any method and means including unfair…
I was out of Hong Kong most of last week, first attending the 2001 Kuala Lumpur Rotary Institute with Rosita and Stephanie, returning Sunday night, and then attending the Fifth Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Co-operation Symposium in Beijing with a colleague. I spent the week therefore waiting at airports, hotels, conference rooms, taxi ranks, and various…
Last week I concluded that e-mails would stay with us, and possibly for a very long time. I had shared with you my experience and views on e-mails in these letters before and I had said every now and then that I would discuss aspects of this mode of communication. Club presidents and members had…
I use dictionaries fairly often and I keep a few in the office and more at home. My most used one is Paul Procter’s Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1979 edition, which has been with me since 1981. I intended to write about email and the Internet, and out of curiosity, I looked up my…
