TV TV

The team is visiting the biggest studio in TVB City.

Luis is curious on the props coffin.

Maria is good at Chinese sword.

The team took photo in the Chinese garden.

The inbound team has been arranged to visit the TVB City on 14 April. It was a cloudy and cool day. The chilly wind blowed when we arrived at the car park outside the biggest studio in the TVB City. The 42th anniversary decoration is still hanged on the main entrance of the door.

Two PR ladies greeted us at the main building and brought us to the Studio 1. The workmen were setting the scene for the singing show. Jose showed his instinct as a journalist and asked all-rounded questions about the TV station.

Follow by that, we walked a long way, passing the make-up room, to the big satellite lot and heading to the Ancient Town in the TVB City. It is a miniature walled town. It might be the first time for the Brazilian friends visiting a traditional Chinese old town. They were interested in all scenes on the street. On the old lane, there are goldsmith shop, tea house, weapon shops, medicine shop etc. The cameras became the most popular tools for them. We spent more time than expected, it should be much more than 10 minutes that set by the PR Stephaine.

We then walked to the Shanghai Street which featured the old buildings of 1920s. All the decorations are very details and assembled that of the real history. Although it is very small but we can imagine that it would be very impressive when showing in the dramas.

The team enjoyed very much in the scenes and the visit has not be completed. PR Cecilia led us to the staff canteen. She served us with typical Hong Kong style afternoon tea. The team have Yuen-yung (mixture of coffee and milk tea), egg tarts, fish balls, dumplings etc.

We also discussed the difference of television broadcast in Hong Kong and Brazil. We then know that Rede Globo is the biggest national media giant in Brazil. The corporation owns a television station, newspaper, magazine, radio and online network in Brazil. It is powerful and always on the "right" side. It is a monopoly and is very influential politically in the nation. This is very different from that of Hong Kong. I found the team is so knowledgible in the information. I think I should get more prepared for this.

This is a joyful visit.

~ Pauline

Boas-vindas! Welcome!

It is an important day for GSE Programme on 11 April. We first met the inbound team from District 4420. They have been arrived on 7 April, but the outbound team were packed with works and could only met them on this day at Chinese General Chamber of Commerce Club House at Central.

When we arrived, the inbound team has been arrived. We greeted each other like we were friends for years. We were all excited to know more about each other. Dacio is a friendly team leader and as PP Kenneth said, Dacio looks like a football star. Maria is a very passionated lady who owns a language school in Santos. We plan to learn some Portuguese from her. Melissa has a very familiar face because she is a Taiwanese descendant who borned at Sao Paulo. She can speaks very fluent Mandarin. Jose is a young journalist and this is his first trip travel aboard. Hong Kong brought him lots of new insights. The culture, food, living culture gave him great impact. Luis is friend and his appetite shows us he love Chinese food very much.


After some short speeches from DG Ada, Dacio, PP Kenneth Chow (Chairman of Rotary Foundation of District 3450), we started our great supper.


We chatted, ate and drank........ with lots of laughs and joys.

Joe shared the photos taken with DG Ada and Dacio.

The group photo of all guests - DG Ada, AG Joseph, Chairman Kenneth, PP Stella, Team Leaders, inbound team, outbound team, host and other Rotarians......We have a big GSE family gathered.

The inbound and outbound team.

Blog of Inbound Team: http://igehk.blogspot.com/

Translator: http://translate.google.com/

~ Pauline

Five Name Cards

We have taken some many beautiful photos on 6 March.  The first usage of the photo is making of our name card.  It was a very difficult task to select one photo for the design.  After a discussion and voting, we have designed to make five versions, that fits best for our needs and ideas.  Each of us can have one version and the guests can get a full set if they talk to each of us in person.  What a brillant idea to make this work. 

Do you like our card design?

Full Team and Full Day

We have very packed schedule on 31 March.  Yolanda and Joe had just returned back from their business trip, we had our final presentation rehearsal before the trip.  We were invited to give a presentation at Rotary Club of Golden Mile. 

This is a very energetic English speaking club.  We four were presenting our full version.  From the experience of last time, we have Joe to act as the time keeper for our presentation.  We carefully assigned the time slots for each parts.  This time, we have a more structured presentation and time control.  We were all very satified with the presenation.  Of course, there would always be rooms to improve.  We do have confidence that if we continue to modify our presentation, we could have a perfect one in Brazil.

The GSE activity continued in the evening on the same day.  We have a training by Philip Hung of Invest Hong Kong.  He provided a lot of updated information about Hong Kong's advantages.  With only one month to go, we are all ready to go to Sao Paulo soon.

We have not taken photo on this day.  This is contributed by

Dr. Jochen M. Schaefer from Germany.

~ Pauline

Medical Check Up

It is a requirement to submit the medical check up form and insurance form at least two months before the departure.  It is quite rush for the team to make all these arrangement, especially our group members are all packed with business trips and engagements. 

With the sponsor from PDG Dr. Jason Yeung, three of us enjoyed the services.  Dr. Yeung carried our body check with all procedure.  I guessed some are not required but with his professional cautions, he conducted all examinations. 

During the examination, Dr. Yeung suddenly talked to me with an unfamilar phrases that I did not know.  He gave me a facial expression of "unbelieviable".  I recogised that in the phrase there is one Portuguese word I heard of - "Obigado"......I knew.  Dr. Yeung was testing my language ability on Portuguese.  It is unlucky that I know nothing about Portuguese except a few words that I learned from the Internet.  It might be time for me to start my Portuguese learning.

A few weeks later, I found Joe had a book of learning Portugese.  He had the same experience when he met Dr. Yeung.  It seems to be a strong advice for the team to learn some basic Portugese for the trip.

Later in the presentation at Macau, Yolanda and me tried to catch up some phrases from PP Fatima.

~ Pauline

A Clear View on a Misty Day

I was invited to join the club meeting of my sponsor club - Rotary Club of Tsimshatsui.  It was a misty day.  When I first arrived the 39th Floor of Hotel Panaroma, the misty view of Victoria Harbour flashed into my eyes.  It gaves a miserable view of Hong Kong. 

I was paired to join the luncheon with PP Kenneth.  I was so lucky that I do not need to do any presentation on this day.  All I have to do was just having a lunch talk on face reading.  This might be some of the club culture that allow Rotary members to learn more through different talks. 

It was the first time I met the members of my sponsor club, they are all very friendly and supportive.  I am glad to be sponsored by them.

~ Pauline

A Tensed Show in the Relax Town

13 April is a nice weekend, but we were tensed.  After a 4-hour long discussion on the content of the presentation on 12 April, Yolanda and I was headed to Macau by ferry.  We spent all our time in discussing the script of our presentation in the one-hour journey.  We both agreed that practice make perfect, therefore, we practised on board.  The passengers sitting around us might be very curious on what are we doing.

After a short break to buy Yolanda's favourite local snack, we dashed to Hotel Casiono Lesbon and met PP Kenneth.  We have the last minute amendment on the script and powerpoint presentation.  This is the first time we try to make our presentation a Hong Kong-Macao-Mongolia focused one.  Different mentors gave us different opinions and our tasks was congregate all the best ideas and put them into our presentation.  We arrived at the Military Club of Macau at the last minute.  The Joint Presidents Meeting has been conducting. 

Our presentation was schedule at the end of the meeting when everyone are enjoying their dinner.  It is a challenging task, because if our presentation was attractive, we can get all attention, otherwises, no one will hear us.  We were "lucky" that many presidents were concentrated to listen to our "interactive" dialogued presentation.  It was not easy to get all attentions, but we got lots of constructive advices after the presentation.

After the presentation, we firstly experienced what Joe told us that the Rotarians in Macao are very friendly.  PP Stella was waiting for us at the entrance and drove us to the Pier to catch the ferry back to Hong Kong.

This was one of the most tensed presentation I had, but it was one of the most inspiring one.

~ Pauline

Free Gifts

We have sourced for different information to enrich the content of our presentation material.  PP Kenneth sent us a message that Hong Kong Tourism Board could provide some tourist information, video of Hong Kong and some souvenior for us.  I was taking up the responsibility to collect the items.

Hong Kong Tourism Board is so resourceful.  They offered us some tourist leaflets about Hong Kong, a 2-minute video of "Hong Kong Life", 6 free high resolution photos and 200 5-style pins for us.  All free of charge.  We plan to use the pin as souveniors for an interactive session in our presentation.

A Lesson to Learn

It is our first rehearsal of the GSE presentation. We were invited to join the Club meeting of Rotary Club of Taipo, the club of our team leader and stage our first presentation.

We have prepared two versions for the day. The first one was a long version with plenty of information about Hong Kong, Macao and Mongolia. However, after a long discussion, we changed our mind to make a short version on a brief introduction of our knowledge to our desination - Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Wearing in our tailor-made blazers, we all look professional. Pauline is the first one who start the presentation. Under the limelight, she still felt quite nervous. Pauline and Yolanda started with a brief introduction of the facts and figures of Brazil and Sao Paulo. We found that it did not work well in the dinner occassion. Joe's part on the comparison of Rotary in two districts drew more attention. Our self-introduction are more attractive than the hard facts.

The audience were generous and they gave us applause but we know that we need more efforts to make the presentation more attractive and presentable. Comments on the layout and content gave us direction to make improvement.

We can comment that our first presentation can bearly passed. We hope we can have more vivid ones in the near future. Our daily planners are filled up with dozens of GSE pre-trip activities.

Top row: Our presentations

Second row: The team (Glos was still working.)

Bottom row: (left) We got a souvenior from Rotary Club of Taipo; (right) We are the lucky stars of PP Kenneth, he got the prize from the raffle ticket sales. The second time he got.

Smarty Uniform

It is now in progress to prepare our trip.  The first thing we need to start with is uniform.  We plan to have one set of formal uniform (a dark blue blazer and grey pants), a series of casual wears for the team.  We are very lucky to have PP Raja to tailor-made our formal uniform and PP Peter Lam to design the casual windbreaker and T shirts.  

We spent a lot of time to decide the colours of the T shirts and windbreaker. As our Team Leader, PP Kenneth, who is a professional textile manufacturer, commented, colours give different impressions to different people, it is not easy to make the final decision. Our initial plan was going for some Chinese red tone. However, after a long discussion, we finally come up with an orange and grey windbreaker and a set of yellow and shocking pink T shirts. We believe these would be a perfect match to show us as an enthusiastic and energetic team.

Top:   Our selection of casual uniform, orange windbreaker, pink and yellow T shirts.

Centre:  (Left) PP Kenneth discussed with Joe on the details of our mission.  (Right) PP Kenneth and PP Peter discussed on the colour and fabric used for our uniform.

Bottom: (Left) Yolanda tried new blazer.  (Right)  Yolanda showed the stitched name on the inside pocket. 

~ Pauline