On December 19, our Club hosted a trifecta of meetings: Board Meeting, Club Assembly, and Annual General Meeting. At Club Assembly, President Mark shared with attendees the progress of various projects, including our Global Grant projects with Rotary Clubs of Pudu and Taoyuan Southeast. President Mark also detailed our Club’s plans to go ahead with putting together a project with Hummingfish Foundation. At Annual General Meeting, members approved, among other things, the financial accounts of RY2018-2019, expertly prepared by last year’s Treasurer Barry. After President Mark declared the closure of Annual General Meeting, our Christmas-themed party began. The dinner menu was specially designed by Regal’s catering for the occasion, with a colorful and delicious dessert spread to complement the festivity of the evening. President Mark and Rotarian Sam brought wines and whiskeys, respectively. Before tasting, our resident sommelier Past President Kay shared a bit of information and history about the wines on offer: one Chateau Montelena and one Negru de Purcari, a prized Moldovan wine brought home by President Mark when he visited Château Purcari near the Ukrainian border in Moldova half a decade ago. Members lucky enough to be sitting at Rotarian Sam’s table also got his expert take…
On December 14, President Mark and Catherine, Past President Samuel and Amy, Immediate Past President Lily, Rotarian Jason and Sara attended Home Care for Girls’ annual Christmas Party x Homecoming (關愛日). Our Club is the sponsor of the event, which was well attended by donors, families and friends of the Centre. Many girls who stayed at Home Care in the past returned, some of them even bringing their families and children! The girls gifted attendees with two performances – a hip-hop dance, and a chorus accompanied by a guitar.
On December 12, Mr. Dixon Ip, a coffee connoisseur and a certified judge in coffee events around the world, came to our Club to talk about his most passionate topic: coffee. Mr. Ip is a friend of our Club’s honorary member Prof. Tim Tong. While most of us mortals drink coffee for its caffeine, Mr. Ip approaches coffee with the scientific rigor of a world-class lab researcher and the intense passion of a restless teenager. In Mr. Ip’s eyes, coffee is not just a drink; it is an ode to all the hard work that goes into it, from the farmers cultivating the coffee plants to the roasters experimenting with varied roasting temperatures. Mr. Ip is especially passionate about the cultivation process – something that has led him to travel all around the world in search of different agricultural techniques and pre-processing styles. As a coffee judge, he has also traveled around the world for coffee and barista competitions and, in the process, has probably seen more latte art than all of us – combined. Mr. Ip believes that coffee consumption has also changed over the years. Consumers are now paying more attention to package labeling. Whereas just a decade…