PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Leaving the comfort of your home to move to another country, live with a new family, and communicate every day in a foreign language. Each year, more than 8,000 Rotary Youth Exchange students do exactly that.

Long term exchange students, who range in age from 15 to 19, attend a local school for as long as a year, taking exams and receiving grades just like their peers. They live with several host families, attend Rotary club meetings, and take part in Youth Exchange activities.

This ideal is the same as our students who have left for Ichihara, Japan for 10 days to live with their host families. The five Interactors left for Japan last week and they are staying with the families of the RC of Ichihara. To reciprocate this visit, we expect some of their students to visit Kuala Lumpur next year. This arrangement has been a tradition for a number of years. Our Rotaractors of Petaling Jaya will be visiting the Rotaract Club of Hong Kong Island West soon. This is also based on the same principle of world understanding. It is about time that we appreciate and share our differences instead of condemning the practices that are different from ours. Rotary has made an impact in this direction by grooming young people to know each other better.

The Interactors from the six Interact Clubs of Petaling Jaya attended the District Interact Conference at Inti University College, Nilai from the 10th December to the 13th December. As usual, our number of participants hit 56, a number that is high in comparison with the other Interact Clubs. The Conference was organized by the RC of Klang. 

From the feedback, the fellowship was great. The Interactors got the opportunity to interact with the other Interactors from all over the country. According to our Interactors, the other Interact Clubs were impressed by our ICC and the Interact Leadership Seminar. Our Clubs are very organized. Some Interactors commented that the talks were too long and boring. But it was an excellent learning experience for them.

The 49th Anniversary of our Club will be celebrated on Wednesday, 6th January 2010 at the Royal Lake Club, Banquet Hall at 7.30 p.m. The Organizing Committee has met a number of times to fine tune all preparations. Our Guest-of-honour is our DG Leslie Salehuddin who will be accompanied by the First Lady Ziela. Twenty tables have been sold. We expect a number of friends and well-wishers who have been supportive of our projects and activities. It will also be evening to appreciate these people and the Rotarians who have passed on. President Edward Chow and others from the Hong Kong Island West have kindly accepted our invitation. It will be an evening of great fun and so please come to support our Club. Thank you Rotarians and Anns. 

We are just two weeks to the end of 2009 and the half way mark of our Rotary year under the leadership of President Dr Eric Wong. I think it is a good time to take stock of what we have achieved so far and what needs to be done after the New Year. Over the next three Editorials I intend to review the various activities of our club.

For a start it is only natural that we have a look at the Service Project we set out to complete this year to benefit our community. We started the year with 7 projects excluding the two supermum projects carried over from the last Rotary year. They are:

1. Project Golden Child: This is scheduled for April 2010
2. Special Child Project
3. Redeeming Human Dignity
4. Merdeka/Muhibah/1 Malaysia Cheer
5. Water and Sanitation Project in Kampung Chawang
6. Rea-da-book
7. Formation of All Disabled Person Band

Where are we now? The Disabled Person Band has been implemented. The musical equipment has all been purchased and installed at the Beautiful Gate Home in Kepong. The band members are receiving training from former Rtn Johnny Thean and his friends. As soon as they can give a performance we will have the project officially launched. This project is fully funded by the Crocodile Foundation. Status: Progressing well and on target for completion and submission of District Award due at the end of February.

Redeeming Human Dignity. Here a group of National Kidney Foundation patients have been given cooking skills at Melaka Street Restaurant to prepare them to open their own hawker stalls in Klang and Shah Alam and thus be financially independent. Status: Training completed and preparation to launch their stalls in progress. Project should be completed on time.

Rea-da-book: We ran into major technical difficulties with the construction of the booth for the project. Now scaled down to be carried out in the schools with our Interactors.

Special Child Project: Its original concept now changed to taking a group of ill children to the Sunway Lagoon Theme Park. Implementation still being discussed at the Committee meeting. Status: Needs decisive decision to have it implemented and not worry too much about sponsorship. The club has the funds to run the project.

1 Merdeka Cheer: Now under the able hands of PP Teo Woon Hud and hopefully will take off in the new year. The kids are still waiting for the party.

Water & Sanitation Project: This is the President’s pet project and a very good project. We started very early and was helped by the construction of the bore well by the Orang Asli Department. We have met repeatedly with all the parties involved and the BOD has approved all the funding. But we are going back on decisions made earlier causing virtually zero progress. I hope PP Michael Toh who is in charge will just accept the decisions already taken and proceed with its implementation. This is a project that will make RCPJ and its members very, very proud when completed. Status: Do not know!  

Many people think I-Ching comes from China. It is very likely it came from Mesopotamia-the cradle of civilisation. The word I-Ching means book without words. “I” means change and “Ching” = a classic = a canonical book or a sacred book. And it records the observations of heaven, earth and human (by Fu Hsi)

I-Ching says man emulate the earth, earth emulates heaven, heaven emulates Tao, Tao emulates nature. We cannot change the things we see, but we can change the way we see things.

Rotary quote of the day presented by Rtn Kamarulzaman Omar: 

The pleasure of being a Rotarian is directly proportional to the effort. The more you give, the more you get.
Past RI Director Peter Bundgaard, 1995-97

ATTENDANCE: 23/40 = 57.50%

The Public Relations team of RCPJ is taking an effort to reach out to more potential candidates for them to know more about Rotary Club PJ.

We have beautiful brochures printed and are ready to be delivered by mail to all potential candidates proposed by you.

As part of the support of this mission, we encourage you to propose a minimum 10 candidates to us for the mailing list. The proposed candidates are in your opinion suitable and competently able to serve the club as member too.

Kindly take 20 minutes of your time to have a thinker of this and find the business cards of your potential candidates.

Attached is the mailing table for you to fill-up either in handwritting or using Word. Kindly submit to me at the next meeting.

The deadline is 22nd December 2009. Nevertheless, we encourage fellow rotarians to submit by 15th December 2009 (Tuesday). I cannot promise, but I’m sure the Finemaster will have mercy on you if you submit early.

Thank you very much.

Cheers
Olivia Lim

Rtn N Krishna Moorthy is now Rtn Dr N Krishna Moorthy

Rtn Dr N Krisha Moorthy has obtained a Doctorate in Business Law being awarded a Fellow of Oxcel, Oxford (United Kingdom) with a dissertation titled “Bank Mergers and Its Effectiveness at an Awards Ceremony held at Pullman Maritimes Center in Putrajaya on 12 December 2009.

Congratulations Rtn Dr N Krishna Moorthy.

Mr Jason Soh awarded Taiwan Cultural Ambassadorial Exchange Scholarship

Our candidate Mr Jason Soh was selected by the district to be awarded the Taiwan Cultural Ambassadorial Exchange Scholarship. The scholarship is for three month to study Mandarin at a Taiwan University.

Rtn Kia Heong is fourth PHF from our club

Rtn Koh Kia Heong, the current Service Project Director and Vice President Nominee has agreed to top up his EREY contributions to become the fourth Paul Harris contribution from our club for this Rotary year. Thank you Kia Heong.