President’s Report for the Year
2009 - 2010, for the AGM on 24th April, 2010
The year has both
been challenging yet very rewarding as I served as the President of this
society. I am delighted to deliver the President’s Report for the year 2009 -
2010.
Events
As one of the most
active alumni societies in Hong Kong, it is the
responsibility of the Committee to be able to deliver a broad and diverse range
of activities to offer to our members. I
am pleased to report that we held some 23 events during the year for our
members to attend.
We organised a
larger than usual number of speaker dinners and drinks events to do our part to
help dampen the effects of the global financial crisis! The series of events started on a high note
when our Boat Race Dinner last year had a record attendance of 112 guests,
listening to Dr. Deng Yaping, Mr. David Webb and Mr. Jim Rogers, all of whom
spoke with eloquence and wit.A long
time supporter of our Society and a familiar face, Mrs. Anson Chan, former
Chief Secretary of the HKSAR Government kicked off the dinner series with a
talk about Hong Kong in the 21st century.
Other prominent speakers who supported
us included Mr. Anthony Wu and Mr. Norman Chan, at our first collaboration with
The Bauhinia Foundation; Mr. Stephen Venables, the celebrated mountaineer,
shared his experience of conquering Mount Everest in a joint event with The
Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong; Mr. Steven Green, Group Chairman of
HSBC Holdings plc spoke to us on his first visit after the announcement that the
bank planned to move its executive office back to Hong Kong; lastly, Mr. C.Y.
Leung, Convenor of the non-official members of the Executive Council shared his
thoughts with us at a dinner held in February 2010. Of course, there were also the favorite social
events. The quarterly mixers attracted
many new and potential members to gather after work over cocktails. The Chinese
New Year Dinner at the Luk Yu Teahouse Restaurant always started promptly, as
David Fu insists on opening the finest bottle of red wine at the beginning of
dinner rather than at the end. A wine
tasting event was also organised and I believe I was the only one who had both
a glass of red wine and champagne at the same time, as Anthony Petit spoke to
us in the crowded room in Pala Restaurant. A total of 105 members and guests celebrated
Christmas with us in the Garden Lounge filled with Christmas Carols in The Hong
Kong Club at the Christmas Cocktails, the introduction of Swiss Raclette cheese
and honey glazed York ham was
definitely a hit!
We had also
organised many sporting events for our members to burn off the extra calories
after numerous dinners and drinks; of course, we held cultural events to feed
the soul. The annual regatta was postponed due to bad weather but nonetheless
held successfully in May. For the first time, the Regatta was combined with
RHKYC’s Club Championships. Many members, including myself, learnt to play
croquet under Rupert McCowen’s expert guidance during our Garden Party but
perhaps the Pimm’s were ever so slightly more popular. The hike in November
proved to be very popular with 40 people attending. I would especially like to
thank Bob and Sally Bunker for offering to host tea at their residence after
the hike. For the second year round, our Society also participated in the MIT
Sports Days held in January. On the cultural side, we collaborated with
Christie’s for the first time to organise two private art viewings and talks on
both Asian contemporary art and Chinese works of art.The Society also managed to secure special
prices for ‘The Magic Flute’ opera
and the French Opera ‘Manon’.We revived the long tradition of debating in
our Society this year after a pause since 2004. ‘This house believes that China’s benign
dictatorship is better for business than Britain’s elected dictatorship’ was
the motion of the debate and after a fiercely contested evening, with excellent
speakers and a wide range of contributions from the floor of around 70, eventually
we saw the motion defeated by 10 votes.
The highlight of
the calendar year was of course the Biennial Ball themed ‘The Venetian
Masquerade’ which was held at the Hong Kong Country Club. We achieved many ‘firsts’ during this ball. It
was the first time we secured a sponsorship from Versace, the first time we
engaged Roger Sansom as our production and event manager and the first time we
had very positive press coverage by both Tatler and Prestige Magazines. Due to
overwhelming demand and limited seating capacity, the Committee also decided to
sale ‘after dark’ tickets to allow access to the after party which continued to
almost 4 a.m.I would like to thank Ronald Kwok and the Ball Committee,
as well as Versace and Roger Sansom, for working so hard in the many months
leading up to the ball in October. The
ball was, of course, nominated as one of the top events of 2009 by the Tatler
Magazine.
All in all, this
was a very fulfilling year in terms of activities and I hope that our members
enjoyed participating in these events.
Membership
We have been very
conscious on our membership drive for this year. The membership currently
stands at 519 members. Of these, 427 are full members and 92 are student
members while the Oxford/Cambridge mix is approximately 56%/44% in favour of Oxford. In order to attract more potential members,
especially recent graduates of the universities, we have improved our website
interface, utilised internet social networks and produced roll-up banners for
use at our events. However, we would still like to solicit our members to
encourage other Oxbridge alumni and their peers to join our Society.
Scholarships
The Committee
allocated HK$80,000 for scholarship grant awards for this year to 4 students
studying in Oxford and Cambridge. The awards are summarised
below:
BAO, Kelvin King
Hei (Cambridge):To undertake medical elective / project work
in Tanzania in summer 2010.
CHI, Marcus (Cambridge):Volunteering with "Lawyers for Human
Rights" in Pretoria, South Africa.
CHU, Timothy Tin
Chung (Oxford):To undertake a summer internship at Grameen
Bank, Dhaka, Bangladesh to study the
workings of microfinance in helping the poor.
LAU, Ada (Oxford):Spatiotemporal Modeling of Wind Power
Generation
Unlike previous
years, the Committee awarded up to HK$20,000 per candidate which restricted the
total number of successful applicants to four students given the HK$80,000
budget constraint. However, the awards committee feels that the money will be
spent on good cause after evaluating their individual merits and projects.
Charitable Donations
Traditionally, the
proceeds of the Christmas Cocktails are donated a charity chosen by the
President. The charity of choice this
year was The Ocean Park Conservation Foundation (“OPCF”), supporting their work
in nature conservation in Asia. I would like to
especially thank Judy Chen and her team from OPCF for joining us at the
cocktail and giving us a brief introduction of their work, and of course, thank
Peter Cheung and Polly Cheung from Versace for donating a ladies handbag as a
raffle ticket prize. A sum of HK$9,400
was donated and a letter of thanks was received from the OPCF.
Although not
strictly a financial donation, the Society encouraged members to join a beach
cleaning initiative organised by Fergus Fung last July. The Committee believes that it is important to
give back to society in any way we can and we would encourage more events in
community services in the future.
Administration
I would like to
express my sincere thanks to our administrator Irene Lee, who has been very
helpful to the committee as always. Of
course, I would like to thank David Fu, our Honorary Secretary, who has been
invaluable to the efficient running of the Society for so many years and has
kept the President in check on many occasions. I would also like to thank Caberine Wong, who has helped
us on many events when help was needed.
Note of Thanks
It has been a
great honour for me to serve the Society for this year. As we have mentioned on many occasions, the
nicest aspect of this Committee is the mutually supportive atmosphere between
our members, where all of us work to strive for a common goal. I would like to
thank every Committee member, both new and old, for devoting so much of their
personal time and effort in organising such wonderful events. Without such a wonderful team, it would have
been impossible for me to offer such a substantial event programme.
Lastly, I would
like to thank our members, firstly, for sitting through such a long report, and
for their support they have shown towards our events, especially in the midst
of the financial crisis. I am happy to announce that because of you, our
enthusiast members, almost all of our events this year were sold out and the Committee
and organisers could not be more excited about this.
In my new role as
Immediate Past President, I shall no doubt continue my support towards Ronald Kwok and the new Committee
and I looking forward to serving the Society in my new capacity. Thank you.
