Meeting of September 21, 2010

September dates of note...
David N had a birthday on Sept 10
Anthony J’s wife had a birthday on Sept 25
Karl’s wife Eva had a birthday on Sept 12
Bob and Jenny celebrate a wedding anniversary on Sept 30



Visiting Rotarians, Guests and Apologies
It turns out that in last week’s blog I was wrong! Arthur C did indeed bring a guest. Our club welcomed Duncan McDonald, a life member of our club.

We accepted apologies from Danielle and Karl.

Meeting Minutes
Tim S won H&T while Adam won the door prize draw (which he donated to Duncan).

The club treasurer will become less gentle in his reminders for subs. I believe Bob will be employing the assistance of Nev to start breaking knee caps.

Arthur handed around flyers for a BBQ to raise awareness of prostate cancer. It was held on Sept 25 at Machattie Park. Hopefully we’ll get a report from Arthur about how it went.

Speaking of prostate cancer, Pres Pete reported that his PSA’s are below 0.01.

Rob B reported that the ongoing saga of the shade houses should be coming to an end. While they are more complicated to put up than they appear, he’s hoping for a mid-October completion date.

While Rob had the floor, there was discussion around meeting activity dates. I think we decided on an October 26 AGM. Can somebody correct me if that’s wrong?

Chris B informed us that we are “past the point of no return” on our gala dinner as our first bills have been paid.

Tim S gave us a 3-minute update on his travels to Singapore specifically visiting WWII sites.

Arthur then introduced Duncan. Duncan read to us from his memoirs, starting with his being born in India in 1915. There were some amazing stories that Duncan had, but being such a humble man, he glossed over some remarkable events as though he believed they couldn’t possibly be of interest to anybody. I looked at Rob B sitting next to me wondering if I’d heard right that Duncan was on guard for King George’s Jubilee! Note that Duncan simply made such passing reference to this that Rob looked over at me in equal puzzlement to confirm whether he’d heard it right too.

This all happened when he was attending University of Windsor in London while working as a postal clerk and was a military reservist at the age of 18.

Duncan also spoke of his days as an able-seaman during WWII on ships specialising in anti-submarine and anti-aircraft. Unfortunately his stories were so interesting that I forgot to keep notes. If you attended the meeting, you’ll know what I mean. If you missed the meeting, you missed an absolute CRACKER of a guest! There was one story about capturing information about how to disguise your ship to look like the enemy, so when enemy recon aircraft flew over they wouldn’t call in an attack… information that surely saved many ships and many lives.

Duncan also highlighted his love of cinema. He told of seeing his first movie at 7 years old, and then in 1988 he finally made his own documentary. He re-married in (I think) 1990 and has made another travel of the world.

I’m sure I missed a lot of detail but Duncan was such a great guest that he really had to be heard to be believed.

Program for September 28
Nev D is bringing his granddaughter Alicia, a psychologist at the Bathurst Hospital will be talking about anxiety, depression and the importance of self-efficacy in children.

Also note that there will be a Board meeting after this evening’s meeting.

Program for October 5
I’ll be in charge of a tour of the new CWCC facilities. Note that this will probably include more than the last time we all appeared there!

In the coming weeks
October 12 - Steve E
October 19 - Peter F
October 26 - Anthony J

November (Stand in Sergeant, David N)
November 2 - Alan B
November 6 - Chris B - Carrington House Dinner
November 9 - Danielle B
November 16 - Frank S
November 23 – Greg S - Reliance merger – John May
November 30 - ???

December (Stand in Sergeant, Bob P)
December 7 - David N – Dec 7
December 14 - Sally B – Dec 14
December 21 - Danielle B - Christmas get together

Meeting of September 14

September dates of note...
David N has a birthday on Sept 10
Anthony J’s wife has a birthday on Sept 25
Karl’s wife Eva has a birthday on Sept 12
Bob and Jenny celebrate a wedding anniversary on Sept 30

Visiting Rotarians, Guests and Apologies
This week Jack brought a guest, Ben Price. Ben is a science teacher who has been in Bathurst 6 months.

We also had apologies from Tim S and Karl M.

Meeting Minutes

H&T was won by Rob B while Jack won the door prize.

This week’s meeting may seem to have been uneventful when you look at how short the blog is but there was some very important discussion around the dinner Chris B is organising for November 6.For those of you that missed the meeting, you’re now waaaay behind in the stuff that needs to happen for the night to be a success. Simply showing up on the night is not enough of a part for each of us to play since this leave the majority of work to just a few people.





Most importantly, we discussed soliciting prizes for the silent auction as well as ticket sales. If anybody has an "in" with a local business, please let Chris know ASAP.

From the meeting of September 7, Pres Pete sent through some notes that I’ve included below.

Program for September 21
This week’s program is in the hands of Author C. since we haven’t seen author for a while, I’m doubtful if we’re going to have a program.

In the coming weeks…
September 28 - Nev D – Alicia Dawson, a psychologist at the Bathurst Hospital will be talking about anxiety, depression and the importance of self-efficacy in children.

October (Stand in Sergeant, Anthony J)
October 5 - Eric D (CWCC inspection)
October 12 - Steve E
October 19 - Peter F
October 26 - Anthony J

November (Stand in Sergeant, David N)
November 2 - Alan B
November 6 - Chris B - Carrington House Dinner
November 9 - Danielle B
November 16 - Frank S
November 23 – Greg S - Reliance merger – John May
November 30 - ???

December (Stand in Sergeant, Bob P)
December 7 - David N – Dec 7
December 14 - Sally B – Dec 14
December 21 - Danielle B - Christmas get together

Finally, I’ve been asked to post again the instructions for doing an e-makeup meeting.
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 David W to be recorded, or just enter David’s email address and it will be sent directly to him. David’s email is davidw(insert the symbol for ‘at’)wcbx.com.au.


Meeting of September 7
Apologies:
Anthony J
Steve E
Frank S
Sally B

Heads & Tails won by Dave N
Lucky Door Prize won by Adam S

Adam S: reported that both he and Chris B had done an enormous amount of work in costing the ‘build a house’ idea. They based the cost on a 4 bed; 2 car garage. With the kind generosity of Alan B they came to the conclusion that the profitability in the current climate would not be worthwhile based on the present sales in the area.

Chris B: indicated that he is after donated prizes for a silent raffle to be held on the gala night November 6. Prizes of around $25 – $125 accepted.

Bob P: is still after subs fellows; there is plenty of blanks...


Thank you to those fellows that helped out at the Edgell Jog. The new method of collecting shoe tags was certainly different and there were no spelling mistakes (editor’s note: Pres Pete was also present but was holding the camera).

Meeting of August 31

September dates of note...
David N has a birthday on Sept 10
Anthony J’s wife has a birthday on Sept 25
Karl’s wife Eva has a birthday on Sept 12
Bob and Jenny celebrate a wedding anniversary on Sept 30


Meeting of August 31....
Please don’t forget about the Edgell jog taking place on Sunday, Sept 12. We need at least 10 Rotarians there if this year’s tag collection system is going to work. If runners wander off with their timing tags, they'll receive a bill for $50 in the mail which will put them off the whole event, which event organisers don't want. Organisers are really relying on us so please come if you can. I’ll collect names at this week’s meeting or you can ring me to volunteer if you won’t be at this week’s meeting.

This week we welcomed our District Governor Neil, his wife Barbara, and the ADG Greg. Also joining us again was the NSW Fire Brigade Station Office, Mark.

We also took apologies from Danielle B and Adam S.

I finally won a H&T session but, since there was now Christmas cake on offer, I donated my choice of the red or white to Barbara.

From the secretary, we’ve heard back from RC Oberon about the BBQ we’d agreed to help them with but they later cancelled. They’re interested in trying to hold it again in the last two weeks of October or on the first week in November. Since we’re all tied up with our Gala dinner on November 6th we’ll agree to the last two weeks in October. Anthony will let us know more details soon.

Rob B has let us know that the shade-house that they’ve been waiting for the site to be ready to assemble the house on (for six months) is finally ready. Now all they need now is a date.

Rob also gave us all a reminder to stay on top of who are our guest speakers. Rick Foster this coming week. Hopefully that’s right, Rob? Please check below for the week you're on for...

David N gave us a 3-minuter on his world travels. Dave didn’t give away much, which means that he must have had a great time, but he did say that he ran into his god mate Richard Branson in Heathrow airport.

ADG Greg Madden pointed out that in our meeting room we now have hooks on walls for us to hang regalia on. Greg also let us know that he’s in contact with the Bathurst city council about gateway entrances into Bathurst. If nothing else, people entering Bathurst should know the service clubs operating in the city so the entrance from Orange Road will have the Rotary logo, plus Apex and presumably other clubs.

Anthony was back on deck as our stand-in sergeant and he has clearly been missing his duties… it was a brutal session that certainly must have raised a small fortune… even Neil and Barbara were not safe!

Anthony won the door prize… sort of. I think Anthony is the first to win by losing his ticket.

We then heard from DG Neil. Neil told us about his early days in sheep breeding, specifically as it relates to genetic improvements in the last 15 years.

Neil has been a Rotarian for 26 years. He’s been a member of the FAME Team that went to Malaysia (with our own Jack A). He’d also been on a GSE Team to Canada and travelled to San Diego for the Rotary International Assembly. Neil also told us about his experiences in Montreal at the Rotary World Conference with 20,000 other Rotarians.


Neil spoke particularly about the power of the clubs (The international president’s slogan: “Building Countries; Bridging Continents”). And one can’t hear from a DG without hearing about Polio; now Polio is only left in four countries! His final comments were about reading the District Newsletter and the District Conference in Orange.

Bob P moved the vote of thanks, particularly thanking Neil for giving a presentation with a personal touch rather than the run-of-the-mill speech about how wonderful Rotary is... something we all know already! Neil gave us a presentation about his personal experiences with Rotary which was thankfully refreshing.

In the coming weeks...
September (Stand in Sergeant, Peter F)
September 7 – Rob B - Rick Foster - BRC
September 12 – Edgell Jog
September 14 – Adam / Karl - Wine tasting night
September 21 - Arthur C
September 28 - Nev D

October (Stand in Sergeant, Anthony J)
October 5 - Eric D (CWCC inspection)
October 12 - Steve E
October 19 - Peter F
October 26 - Anthony J

November (Stand in Sergeant, David N)
November 2 - Alan B
November 6 - Chris B - Carrington House Dinner
November 9 - Danielle B
November 16 - Frank S
November 23 – Greg S - Reliance merger – John May
November 30 - ???

December (Stand in Sergeant, Bob P)
December 7 - David N – Dec 7
December 14 - Sally B – Dec 14
December 21 - Danielle B - Christmas get together