MONDAY 16TH - AIR CARGO AND ROTARY PARTY

Today was a muggy, misty day in Hong Kong. We all gathered to attend a Rotary meeting at the Rotary Club of Tsim Sha Tsui which is situated in the really busy tourist shopping area of Kowloon. As with all meetings it was grand, with excellent food. The team was very well received and we had a chance to chat with Rotarians and answer questions about South Africa.

The view from RC of Tsim Sha Tsui's meeting room

After the lunch, Past President Kenneth Chow took us to the Cargo section of Hong Kong International Airport. This was a long trip – all the way from Kowloon to the Airport. The Cargo terminal It is entirely operated by a company called HACTL (Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited). It has over 90 airlines as it’s customers including SAA, and handles all the air cargo in and out of Hong Kong. HACTL actually handles over 250 million tons of cargo per annum.

Jessica Lai of HACTL explains model of cargo terminal to team and PP Kenneth Chow

It occupies an absolutely huge building with 5 storeys of storage space that is all computerised and totally automatic. The best way to describe it is once an item is received, it is allocated a parking bay and giant mechanical arms load it onto a type of trolley and it is carried away and stored in a spot somewhere in the this huge warehouse of racks and shelves where the computer will fetch it when it’s required. We were shown around by the Corporate Communications Officer, Jessica Lai. Very high-tech and fascinating. Outside the building are about 90 parking bays for cargo aircraft – the kind we very rarely see because they always fly in and out of the cargo areas of airports. It’s amazing to see huge 747’s with no windows except at the front with “Cargo” stencilled on the sides.

Cargo Section parking area

After this interesting vocational visit we went back to town to get ready for a meeting of the Rotary Area 6 Spring Dinner at the Hong Kong World Trade Centre. Apparently all the clubs in Area 6 which is central Hong Kong, get together for a dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year. It is a very festive occasion with lots of noise and laughter, competitions and lucky draws.

DG Albert Wong introducing "Chinese Father Christmas" who handed out Chinese New Year Lucky Packets

We also met a very important Rotarian from Rotary International Headquarters who is in Hong Kong for the District Conference as the Rotary International President’s Personal Representative (RIPPR) (whew! another Rotary term). His name is John F. Germ –a past Vice-President of RI and one of the Trustees of the Rotary Foundation. Seeing that GSE is a Rotary Foundation programme it was great to be able to introduce the team to John and his wife Judy. Really nice people, they come from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA (Pardon me, boy………)

One of the competitions of the evening was that people had to guess the weight of 4 people as a group. Two thin and two under-tall Rotarians were selected – one of whom was me, Jonathan. I was definitely the biggest person in the group but to my surprise and delight, a short squat Rotarian named PP Frederick weighed a whole two pounds more than me. Anyway we weighed over 900 lbs collectively, and the prize was won by none other than RIPPR John F. Germ who had correctly guessed our weights. The prize was a very fancy wine which he promptly auctioned off for the Rotary Foundation and raised HK$ 10,000.00. There is lots of cash in HK.

RIPPR John F. Germ supervising the wine bottle auction

It was a great evening – lots of Chinese food – lots of laughter and fellowship. The Rotarians in Hong Kong are very warm and friendly.