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Christmas 2001

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…

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Frank Talk

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…

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The Rotary Wheelers

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…

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Is this the little girl I carried?

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…

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The Internet

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…

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The day the world changed

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…

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Five senses and five wits

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…