Meeting for September 1, 2009

First of All...
I'd like to thank the Rotary Club of Bathurst for its donation on behalf of the weightlifting program at the Western Region Academy of Sport. On Saturday, August 29 we hosted our first competition in the region at the CSU gym. Six lifters, three coaches and three officials came up from Sydney to participate in the competition. Additionally, there were three lifters, two volunteers, and myself as a coach and event organiser from our own club. The feedback I got from the visitors about the competition and the standard of our lifters was very positive... considering that some coaches and officials were of international standard, I took this as a very positive sign!

Our female lifter totalled 92kg over the two lifts while both our male lifters totalled 140kg. If there is a call for a three-minuter at this week's meeting I'll be sure to give some details of just how competitive we were.

September dates to note…
David N’s birthday is on the 10th
Karl’s wife Eva has a birthday on the 12th
Anthony’s wife Bronwyn has a birthday on the 25th
The 42nd wedding anniversary of Bob and Jenny is on the 30th

Meeting Last Week (August 25)…
I arrived at last week’s meeting at the Tutorial Centre to the smell of sizzling snags. After a solid 45 minutes of fellowship and five sausage sandwiches later (I felt compelled to make up for what Jack would have eaten too) Anthony took us into the school’s computer room. As we filed past the classrooms many of us reminisced as we saw the small-sized chairs and had a special feeling of deja vous at the naughty corner...

Anthony took us through the links to click on to get us through the process doing an e-makeup. For those of you who want the step-by-step process for future reference:

1. Go to http://www.rotary.org.au/
2. Click on “Rotary Districts”
3. Click on “9700”
4. Click on “Links”
5. Click on “Meeting Make-up at Rotary eClub”
6. Click on “Make-up programs”
7. You will arrive at a page of links to videos, podcasts and written articles about Rotary and its programs, leadership, social issues, and a whole lot of other interesting things. For an e-makeup, you should spend at least 30 minutes working your way through the programs. Take note of which ones you work through because you’ll need their titles later. Thirty minutes is not as tedious as it may sound at first… just writing this blog entry I got sidetracked reading articles and spent 40 minutes there without even realising it!
8. Once you’ve worked your way through the programs, click on “Request makeup”. You’ll be prompted to make a donation which you can think of as your weekly $15. However there is no requirement to donate and you can just look for the “Click here” link.
9. From there, find the button to “Request Makeup Form”
10. There are four pages you’ll need to fill out. There are red asterisks next to required fields… be sure to fill these in because when you try to submit the form, you’ll get sent back to the beginning if any required fields are missing.
11. On page two is where you need to enter how long you’ve spent on the different programs (minimum of 30 minutes) and the name(s) of the program(s) you reviewed.
12. On the fourth page is where you put where you want the record of your e-makeup to be emailed. You can either email it to yourself, print it, and bring it to Alan Brown to be recorded, or just enter Alan’s email address and it will be sent directly to him. Alan’s email is alanb(insert the symbol for ‘at’)cnf.com.au.

I unfortunately had to duck away early so I missed if anything exciting happened after about 7:30. I wish I could say that I had to leave early because I had a hot date to get to, but it was actually because I had to get back to work to meet with a research participant at the gym…

Next Meeting (September 1)…
This week, Ash Bland will be filling in for Frank S as guest speaker. Many of you may recall that we’ve had Ash as a club guest before when he spoke to us on his book about the environment. I presume Ash will be presenting in his capacity as an environmental consultant, but I’ll try to have more details next week. Rob B, can you please confirm this with Ash?

In the coming weeks…

The September 7th meeting will be the second of three challenges in the Bathurst Inter-Club Cup. This will be an evening of 10-pin bowling and, in the spirit of The Cup, is a night that families are welcome. We’ll meet at the bowling alley at 6:15 and have a BBQ dinner there. This sort of endeavour needs the support of all of us, so we’re really hoping for a big turn out from our club.

On Sunday, September 13th will be the Edgell Jog. We’ve committed to the organizers that we’ll supply people to record finish times. The runners will get a time as they cross the finish line from event organizers, but nobody actually writes the times down… so that’ll be our job. With a lot of Rotarians there, it’s a pretty simple job and is done in about an hour-and-a-half.

On September 15th, Tim S will be organising the guest speaker. I’ll be sure to get the details on what ideas he has him next time I see him.

Then, on September 22nd, Bob P will be presenting on nuclear power. So many people think it’s dangerous, but I’m sure Bob will show us that the issue is not quite so cut-and-dry.

And on September 29th, we have in the schedule that Peter F will be following up on the food services training. Can anybody who sees Pete get some details on this for me?