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…
I have been contemplating to talk to you on a number of things, perhaps too many, ranging from the very petty happenings around my life to the esoteric, from what I feel about our club, other clubs, our members and our district to how I see the war unfolding. I have been through this before…
That was the title of The Economist’s leader for last week. By now, numerous articles must have been written, magazines and books produced, tons of paper used for their printing, endless emails exchanged across countries and continents, even more endless discussions in all media, airports and stock markets closed and re-opened, and so on. World…
The five senses are of course the five natural powers which give a person or animal information about the world outside. They are sight, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling. The deprivation or impairment of any one of the senses would cause serious inconvenience to the subject in question on the one hand, and have generated…
Spy Kids, Planet of the Apes, Jurassic Park and Artificial Intelligence, what have they all got in common? Yes, they are all movie titles, but you cannot be serious if you expect a prize for that. Let me save you the guesswork, for this could be a frustrating experience, and besides, you couldn’t possibly know…
