Sunday, September 27, 2009

Meeting for September 29, 2009

First of all…
We’d all like to pass on our best wishes to Peter C. Last week was Pete’s last meeting for the next while until he’s recovered from the surgery for his prostate cancer. Here’s to a speedy recovery, mate.

September dates to note...
The 42nd wedding anniversary of Bob and Jenny is on the 30th.
Jack and Ruth Aubin have their 58th wedding anniversary on November 3.

Last week’s meeting (September 22)…
Rob B reports that he’s being in touch with Peter F regarding the food services training course that supposed to be happening for the August 29th meeting. Reports are, first of all, that it will probably be the road control training course instead. Secondly, this plan was supposed to be confirmed but as of yet I still haven’t heard. So the best I can suggest is that we’ll all show up at the RSL as usual, we’ll all have dinner there and see what Peter has planned. I’ll also suggest that those of us who have laptop computers to bring them.

We also got an update from Anthony J about the district conference. Unfortunately, Anthony was mostly asleep at the meeting with Daybreak and missed most of the details. Furthermore, he seemed to have forgotten he had fallen asleep until he stood up to give us his report. However, if you’re looking for details on some of the activities happening at the conference then give Anthony a call.

After Andrew C won the H&T and I won the draw (thanks to Neville for bringing a whisky cake so I didn’t have to take the white wine), Peter C proposed a fund raising idea for 2010. There was a general consensus that Pete’s idea to raffle a Holden / Ford ute, a $25,000 holiday voucher, and $10,000 cash as prizes was a good one. We’d print 30,000 tickets to be sold for $10 a pop. We’d recruit the other two clubs to help us sell them for an equal share in the takings. We’d need to sell 10,000 to break even with a potential profit of $200,000 (i.e. $66,000 per club). We’d obviously target as a major selling time during the 2010 races. There was a lot of discussion about details that were, in fact, never going to get ironed out that night so I called a halt to the discussion, but there was widespread support in principle for the idea.

We then heard from Bob P for his presentation on nuclear power. Bob certainly did not disappoint, marvelling us all not just with his scientific knowledge but also with his ability to explain the extremely complex world of particle physics.


Bob started off just explaining the idea of a nuclear power station. To me, it doesn’t seem much more than a giant tea kettle: it uses the heat generated by nuclear fission to boil water. The steam from the water then spins an alternator which then generates electricity. Most power plants use something to spin a turbine: wind, hydro, coal, or nuclear… the only one that doesn’t is solar. The big advantage of nuclear power over coal-fired is how clean the emissions are; nuclear power emits only steam as opposed to the ash that comes from coal. Bob tells us that 25% of the total coal burned results in ash, so Mount Piper that burns 2 million tonnes of coal dumps 500,000 tonnes of ash into the atmosphere per year!

Bob then gave us some background into what makes up an atom: protons and neutrons that reside in the nucleus of the atom, and electrons that spin around the nucleus. As small as a neutron is, by applying Einstein’s E=MC2 (where e=energy, m=mass, and c=the speed of light), a neutron flying off at the speed of light still generates a huge amount of energy.

Nuclear power will use a fissile atom called uranium 235. The reactor fires a single neutron at a single atom of U235 to get a chain reaction started. The collision of this neutron and U235 splits the U235 into Barium141, Krypton92, 3 neutrons, and a bunch of energy that was used to hold the U235 atom together (called “binding energy”). The binding energy gets transferred into thermal (heat) energy to boil the tea kettle, while the three neutrons go on to split apart more U235; the more U235 split, the more neutrons that get generated to split apart more U235. So one neutron fired at one atom of U235 at the start results in a chain reaction that, if uncontrolled can flatten a city! Fortunately, the whole thing can be controlled by using carbon rods to absorb excessive neutrons. For comparison, per volume you get (literally) a million times more energy out of a kilogram of U235 than coal.

The big disadvantage of nuclear power is the initial set up cost of about $5bil. One it’s going, it’s as cheap as chips being 33% of the price of wind and 20% the price of solar. Many think that the safety is a disadvantage too, but there have only been two incidents worldwide since people started using nuclear power in the 1970’s. Of the two incidents (Three Mile Island in the U.S. and Chernobyl in Russia) only Chernobyl resulted in any emissions being released. 14% of the world’s total electrical power comes from nuclear power stations without incident. So it’s safe, it’s cleaner than coal (even the pipe-dream of so called “clean coal”), and it’s economical so why not use it?

This week’s meeting (September 29)…
Again, all I can suggest is that we show up at the RSL for dinner and we’ll take direction from Peter F from there. Also, if you can, please bring your laptop computer if you have one just in case we’re all trying to do the on-line training program.

Also, can somebody please remember to ask Adam at the meeting if he's heard anything more about us doing the fencing for the Riding For The Disabled group this Saturday?

In the coming weeks…
The October 6th meeting was in the hands of David N, but that has become the second event in the interclub challenge. Remember that the family bowling will kick off at 6 p.m. while Rotarians will have a usual start time of 6:15 for 6:30 p.m. at the bowling lanes. Presumably we'll need some sort of RSVP from the other clubs to know how much food we need to prepare?

The October 13th meeting is in the hands of David W. How go the arrangements David?

On October 20th we have our Club AGM. This is where we discuss club business in an open forum as well as elect the club's BOD for next year gets elected too so, to have your say, it's important to attend.

For October 27th, Arthur C is in charge of the program. Arthur, can you let me know your plans?

And on Nov 3rd, new comer Andrew C has a night to plan.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Meeting of September 22nd, 2009


First of all…
For those of you who missed this week’s meeting, you missed another cracker! I don't have the official attendance stats, but with how full the room was it was clear that there weren’t many of us who missed it. Attendance has been a real strength this year and the fellowship hasn’t been better since I joined Rotary.

We had apologies from Jack this week who is back in hospital again. So we should all have a good thought for Jack.


September dates to note...
Anthony’s wife Bronwyn has a birthday on the 25th.
The 42nd wedding anniversary of Bob and Jenny is on the 30th

Last week’s meeting (September 15)…
Guests this week included Peter Carter (our guest speaker) and Gabii Starr (our youth award winner for September) both represented by Tim S. Steve E introduced Steve from RC Tamworth West as a visiting Rotarian who we were happy to have back with us, and David Stein as a club guest.

President Adam has spoken more to Bill F, a former member of our club. Bill is looking for a hand to do some fencing for the “Riding for the Disabled” group up on Mt Panorama. We’re looking at Saturday, October 3 to take down the old fencing and pour the concrete. Then we’ll need another Saturday to put the new fencing up. We’ll be looking at an 8 a.m. start. Obviously the following Saturday (October 10) won’t work for our second session because of the races. I doubt we'll get more detail at this week's meeting because Pres Adam won't be able to make the meeting, but more information will come soon. Adam... maybe you can let me know of Oct 3 at 8 a.m. is a confirmed date by phone or email, and let me know the location too?

Andrew C gave us a great sergeant session. It was so good that he had to put the collection plate down because it was getting too heavy! You’d never guess it was the first time he’s done the job. Well done mate. I’d certainly like to see Andrew as sergeant more often because I finally won a H&T session!

Andrew C also awarded Gabii Starr the Youth Award for September. Gabii is from Bathurst High and was certainly a musical virtuoso. She plays the violin, tuba and piano. She also brought her mum and brothers.

Peter C awarded the footy comp prizes. This year’s winner was Nev D and second place was Pete C. While Nev took $150 for 1st place, with so many attendees at the meeting, shouting the club for drinks must have led to his prize shrinking quite a bit. Anyway, in the end, it raised $250 for the club and gave a lot of fellowship over the season, so a big thanks to Pete for running it again. The more people involved the more the club raises so let's build the numbers for next year.

President Adam also got to induct another member into the club… his second in three months! David Stein is a very worthy person to be inducted into our club and gave an outstanding acceptance speech about the honour of being inducted as a Rotarian. David will be entrusted with the classification of ‘legal services’ and will be on the club services committee. Welcome to the club David.

We then had a great presentation from Peter Carter, a local herpetologist. He started his presentation by telling us that he’s been collecting snakes and lizards since he was 9 years old, when he started with a baby brown. He later qualified for his ‘catch and release’ license, which is what you need to be a “snake catcher”, and it’s a detailed process to get… it’s not just a matter of applying and paying a fee.

Peter now has 120 reptiles in his collection which he has shown everywhere from the Bathurst Show to the Australian Science Festival in Canberra (10,000 visitors per day). Also as part of his practice he takes calls to catch snakes from private individuals (ring him on 04 1225 3751) as well as the national parks and police. He does all of these call outs as a volunteer! He says the worst kind of snake to handle is the Eastern Brown, which is unfortunate because they are the second most deadly snake in the world!

As one would expect as a person who deals a lot with snakes, he’s also been bitten a few times and gave us a commentary on the worst snakes to be bitten by. He's been biten enough times, in fact, that he’s on a first name basis with most of the staff at Bathurst Base Hospital! If you have a snake at your place, his advice is not to try to kill it because most (80%) of snake bites happen when the person is trying to kill the snake; obviously if you’re attacking the snake, it’s going to defend itself.

Peter was an outstanding guest speaker who is clearly very knowledgeable and really entertaining. To have Andrew C with his great sergeant session and David S’s induction and inspirational speech led to a great meeting.


This week's meeting (September 22, 2009)...
As we often find, some of our best guest speakers are not "guests" at all but come from within the club. This week, we'll be hearing from Bob P about nuclear power. There's not many people in the state who know as much about power as Bob so be sure to come along and I'm sure you'll learn something. I'll be chairing the meeting because, as I mentioned before, our President won't be able to make it to the meeting this week.

In the coming weeks...
As far as I know, on September 29th we still have Peter F planning the food service certificate. I know there were some logistical issues with the number of computers available. Pete, if some of us have our own laptops that we could bring, would that help? Also Pete, can you please let me know where and when we all will be meeting?

I see on the schedule that the meeting on October 6th is David N. David, this is out bowling night for the Inter-Club Challenge so there is no need for you to book a guest speaker.

October 13th is David W. who is still looking for a guest speaker But he does have a guest speaker for Peter C's night on November 17. On November 17 we'll hear from Peter Sackett, a principal with Central Design & Engineering, a consulting engineering company based in Bathurst and Orange. Pete is going to come along and tell us a bit about himself, his company and what is happening in his industry - Pete always has something really interesting going on in his work.

Then, on October 20th, President Adam has planned our AGM. Obviously, attending the club’s AGM is an important date on the calendar where we can discuss all matters of club business. This is a night that all Rotarians should make a special effort to attend.

On October 27, we have Arthur C on deck. Arthur, can you please let me know of your guest's details as soon as you have them please?

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Meeting of September 15th, 2009

First of All…
I’d like to thank Jack A from bringing along the Youth Award winner for August, Emily Brady.

Also, I’d like to say welcome back to Graeme as a visiting Rotarian. I’m sure Graeme will be back this week since he took home the H&T honours along with the bottle of wine that went with it. Graeme also took on a three-minuter spot to tell us about his club

Also a visiting Rotarian, we met Steve from Tamworth (NOT Wagga, Adam!). Steve also took a few minutes to tell us about RC of West Tamworth.

September dates to note...
David N’s birthday is on the 10th (hope it was a good one David)
Anthony’s wife Bronwyn has a birthday on the 25th
The 42nd wedding anniversary of Bob and Jenny is on the 30th

Last week’s meeting (September 8, 2009)…
Anthony J has indicated that he’ll be looking for help to liaise with RC Bathurst Daybreak about the assistance they will need in organising the 2010 District Conference. To whoever meets with RC Daybreak about the roles our club will take on, be sure to confer with the senior members of our club before agreeing to anything. We have already agreed to “do the golf”.

Bob P reports that he is planning to begin planning for our annual golf tournament, a different event than the golf for the District Conference. Bob will be calling for committee members very soon. The golf tournament is a major fund raiser for our club so this is an all-hands-on-deck event.

President Adam let us know that we are locked into the bowling lanes on October 6. We have a total of six lanes booked, four for the tournament and two family lanes. The family bowling will kick off at 6 p.m. while Rotarians will have a usual start time of 6:15 for 6:30 p.m. at the bowling lanes. We’ll bowl first and then eat after. I’ll happily put my hand up to be on the food service squad. Bowling teams will be made up of four Rotarians per team with two teams facing off per lane.

Considering that the bowling night that was supposed to happen this evening was postponed and we had no alternate plan for this evening, the meeting was a short one and we adjourned at 7:30 p.m. To close the meeting we had what was perhaps the more horrible "singing" of the national anthem in our club’s history :-)! Without a proper musical note being hit we eventually limped across the finish line, but we all hope that Pres Adam has made a note to never (EVER) ask Peter F to lead us off again!

This week (September 15, 2009)…
This week, Tim S has arranged for Peter Carter to come speak to us. Peter is a herpetologist, which is to say that he specialises in snakes and lizards. Tim, thanks for sending me the email over the week to inform me of our guest speaker plan… or was it your wife Sue who actually sent the email? I suspect that it was in fact Sue, which naturally will cost you a fine at this week’s meeting.

In the coming weeks…
Just to keep everybody up to date, I’ll send out the following reminder to please think well ahead and let me know what’s happening well in advance with whom their guest speaker will be. The idea behind this blog is raise awareness among members about what’s planned for each meeting. I think that in the last few months attendance has been really good in no small part to well planned and well run meetings (well done Pres Adam!), so let’s all stay on top our meeting schedule.

On September 22nd, we have Bob P addressing the club about nuclear power. We all know that Bob certainly knows about supplying power so, as the power demands of the world increase, we should all take a big interest in what Bob has to say.

As far as I know, on September 29th we still have Peter F planning the food service certificate. I know there were some logistical issues with the number of computers available. Pete, if some of us have our own laptops that we could bring, would that help? Also Pete, can you please let me know where and when we all will be meeting?

I see on the schedule that the meeting on October 6th is David N and October 13th is David W. Can you both please let me know by phone or email ASAP what your plans are please?

Then, on October 20th, President Adam has planned our AGM. Obviously, attending the club’s AGM is an important date on the calendar where we can discuss all matters of club business. This is a night that all Rotarians should make a special effort to attend.

Since I'm the writer of this blog I can say whatever I want. Since the Eels will play the Dragons in about 15 minutes...
Go the Eels!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Meeting for September 8th, 2009

First of all…
It’s very important to note that bowling is cancelled for tonight. Apparently school groups have all lanes booked out on Tuesdays until early October. More information will be coming for the new date of the second inter-club challenge. It’ll still be a ten-pin bowling night hosted by our club, it just won’t be this week…

We should say a big thanks to those Rotarians who brought guests to last week’s meeting. Greg S brought Dominic and Judy who were visiting from Melbourne, Steve E who brought his guest David, and Rob B who brought Ash back to be our guest speaker. We also had a visiting Rotarian, Graham.

We also welcomed back Jack A. Good to have you back in the ranks mate.

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

Last week’s meeting (Sept 1, 2009)
Apparently, Tim S is having trouble booking a guest speaker on September 15th so he is looking for suggestions or for somebody to help him out. Anybody with any ideas should contact Adam or Tim ASAP.

Peter C represented our club at the Bathurst Base Hospital’s ‘Health and Art’ tour. Turns out it was mostly a dog & pony show to hit us up for donations. Any individual members who want to make a donation should contact Pete but we won’t be making a donation as a club.

President Adam reminded us of the Edgell Jog happening this Sunday (September 13th). Any Rotarians wanting to sit and record finish times of runners should show up at the Bathurst Court House this Sunday. This is one of those things where many hands make light work, so the more the merrier.

Adam also reported about hearing from a former member of our club, Bill F. Bill is apparently involved with a group looking for help to build some fencing around a riding arena. Since we’ve never been a group to shy away from getting our hands dirty there were nods from around the table that we should chip in to get involved. Considering my ability in wielding tools is worse only than a Spanish princess, I’ll volunteer to run the BBQ to feed the troops. More detail on date and time to follow.

We also had a sobering moment from Peter C who announced that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. True to Pete’s form, he announced it with his head held high. Then, with a smile on his face he announced his plan to beat it and that his odds are strong.

Our guest speaker for the night was Ash B who had a photo presentation of his trip to East Timor. He and his wife are looking to launch an aid program because, as Ash called it, it's “the poorest place on Earth” where the average family income is less than a dollar a day. While the country generates some income from oil and coffee, it certainly can’t be a promising sign when most of your country’s income ($13.5 B) is foreign aid. Combine that with the destruction caused by the militia and the Indonesians in 1999 and there was very little in the way of intact buildings.

Still, Ash didn’t focus much on the poverty. Ash was much more impressed by the resilience of their spirit. He took a lot of photos of happy children who didn’t seem to want for anything. He was particularly impressed with their capacity for sustainable living, such as their use of bamboo. They used bamboo to make everything from irrigation pipes to their houses to rope. With kids this happy, Ash wondered what the social cost of our modern conveniences is.

Of course there were many problems too. In particular was paying for children to go to school and the sanitation of conditions… particularly when, several years ago, the militia blew up the toilet block of a school of 467 children. The school still teaches students, but does not have a toilet block to speak of. There’s also still a lot of civil unrest and guns are commonplace.

So thanks Ash for an enlightening photo presentation. While East Timor still has its share of problems, the resiliency of their spirit clearly still continues on it their day to day lives.

Next meeting (September 8)…
With the bowling cancelled I’m not sure what’s on the cards for this week. I guess you’ll just have to show up tonight for a batch of “President’s Surprise”.

In the coming weeks…
On September 15th, Tim S would like some help coving a guest speaker this week.

On September 22nd, Bob P will be presenting on nuclear power. With world power consumption to increase by 40% by 2050, I hope to hear some of Bob’s ideas to where it’s all going to come from.

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?