Presidents Desk

From the President’s desk

Previous weeks from President Charles (click)

19 June 2019

Hi all

This Rotary Year is closing.
Our Rotary year of 2018/2019 is closing, to make way for a new President and his team. The new team, selection of older Rotarians, Arie is leading as President, Rod, Usha, Peter Smith, with the new and talented Paul Anton and Dimitry Palmer. A great team! and a great Club. The welcome to the new team, is the Club Changeover, our Club does not let this event meld into a regular Wednesday night meeting, it is an event! requiring planning.

A Treasurer’s adventure.
When it comes to event planning the Club’s chief project officer is without doubt, Secretary & Treasurer, Rod MacDougall. Our heart must go out to Rod, in the last week he has had modern banking experience, that has him wishing, that the Banking Royal Commission could be restarted, to receive our submissions. The story is, District Bankers are St George, (not likely will be the Clubs’), with the yearend approaching, and deadlines, on Friday, is advised to go St George, yes they are opened on Saturday, and complete the funds transfer. Phone call, oh yes the Strathfield Branch is open. Rod, on Saturday comes through the doors, sweetly greeted, requests directions to a teller. O’ sir, we are open, but our tellers do not work Saturday! Discussions pursued, but there was a St George Branch at Marrickville, operating that morning with a teller, Rod in the car, across town, inner city Saturday traffic, and the transaction was completed. Great work Rod!. For a bank without tellers, it must be artificial intelligence.

Guest Speaker
Our guest speaker on Wednesday 12 June was Alexey Prokopenko, assisted by colleague Joanne Baldwin. Alexey is the Managing Director of Kite Union Pty Ltd. He told us that he is a successful IT expert with over 20 years experience in technologising businesses. He believes that mobile technology is the new way to improve marketing campaigns and business development processes. His talk was a slide show presentation with examples. A fuller report by Rotarian Gulian Vaccari is recorded in our Bulletin (click). The photograph shows L to R: Joanne Baldwin, Rotarian Farrukh Mirza, President elect Arie Pappas, Alexey Prokopenko and myself

Poem
My final poem for the year is 'Home Suite' by Les Murray (click). The poem on the link has greater number stanzas than the publish version, Collected Poems, of Les Murray. Sadly, Les died on 29 April, 2019, and State Memorial Service was held for him on 12 June, 2019. This last week.

The inclusion of a poem in the Bulletin was to initially to link a poem to a speaker or a Rotary event. This was not always possible, and an Australian poem was added. To the Bulletin readers , I hope you have enjoyed the poems selected, that they have been reflective and reminiscent of poems read in earlier live, because that has how they been to me, thank you.

Charles

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