The Correspondent, June 1986

@llt @otttĂ&#x;ponĂšwt June 1986

Health Corner Renovations ComPlete 'When

was the last time you could

look down from your beer mug and see your knees? Is your safari suitjust a relic from the Vietnam War because you're too embarrassed to ask someone to move the buttons? The Club's renovated Health Corner has opened just in time for members to prepare themselves for

the summer bathing season.

In previous issues of this publication we have announced that the board, after taking a hard look at the Club's sagging physique, decided to drop the Health Corner entrance fee, improve the faci-

lities and open Hy d ra-.fi tn e s s mac hin e

it up for simultaneous

use by both sexes.

All those changes are now complete with the facility open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The club has added three new machines, installed on a three-month trial basis to see if their addition improves use of the Health Corner. The two weight machines make the Corner

rival some expensive health clubs in sophistication of equipment.

The variable weight machines have several workout stations to help members tone and strengthen abdomen and extremities by gradually increasing the

Life gtm machine weights used. For an aerobic work out to strengthen the heart, the computer bicycle allows the user to set a level of difficulty and time goal.

Besides this additional equipment, existing facilities are now in working order. The club's lavish jacuzzi has been repaired and is available for co-ed use.

The sauna is working. The club provides towels free of charge.

The board undertook this renovation at considerable expense to see if new equipment would improve usage, from the current 20-25 people a day, of the club's only facility not related to alcohol consumption. Previously male and fe-

You can go in looking like this ...

and emerge satified by the quick results

male members complained that the time slots alloted to them were inconvenient.

Now with the Health Corner repaired and modernized there is no further season to delay the self-improvement programme you have been postponing.

-l

,

o

Willie Vicoy \ryidely Mounned Great sorrow spread through the correspondent community at the news of the death of Willie Vicoy on April25. He was one of Asia's most renowned news photographers, whose career spanned the Vietnam War and the upheaval in the Philippines.

Vicoy, 45, a 28-year veteran with United Press International who joined Reuters when it bought UpI's foreign photo service last yeaq died of wounds sustained in a communist guerrila ambush in the Philippines.

He died about 15 hours after the guerillas ambused a small party of journalists and soldiers in a northern Philippines province. Manila Bulletin correspondent Pete Mabasa and eight soldiers were also killed in the attack.

Vicoy and Mabasa were the first journalists killed while covering the lg-year-

old insurgency.

Vico¡ survived by his wife and

six children, was awarded .,Most Outstand-

ing Achievements In Combat photography" by the Philippine press photographers Association earlier this year.

In 1972 he became the only Filipino fo be nominated for a Pulitzer, which was awarded to his colleague David Hume Kennerly. He is believed to be the only photographer to havè a picture on the cover of Newsweekand Timeinthe same

week

-

March

31, 197 5

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a Vietnamese

woman holding the blood-splattered body of a baby in her arms.

Among the scores of reporters who worked with and admired Vicoy is Leon

Daniel, former UPI News Editor for Asia-Pacific and FCC member. Daniel's appreciation of Vicoy was carried by

UPI: The American GIs in Vietnam liked V/illie. He did not talk a lot, perhaps because his English in those days was less than fluent, or maybe because of his evident shyness.

Willie not only packed his cameras, canteen and C-rations, he sometimes carried stretchers with wounded GIs on them.

When there were the dead and wounded to photograph, Willie shot his

pictures quickly, with sensitivity and compasslon.

He worked hard to be at the scene of firefights, disdaining to come in after the battle to shoot the carnage. He spent most of his time in the field, humping with the grunts. They respected him

for it.

In the waning days of the wa¡ Willie photographed many of the babies killed in the crash of a plane that was airlifting orphaned children out of Saigon, killing

140.

It is likely that no story Willie covered saddened him more, but he worked quickly and professionally to record the

horror we reporters were unable to communicate adequately

with

mere

words.

Willie won his share of awards and what passes for fame.

Willie never made much mongy. IIis legacy is his work, which touched the lives of those not privileged to known him.

It is one of the ironies of war that V/illie Vico¡ a truly gentle man, spent much of his life and then lost it in pur_ suit of photographs of men killing each other.

He was not your

movie-version

combat photographer, the self-styled "shooter" who bounces around the world's hot spots, driven by a lust for

fame and money.

Such men are not called V/illie.

And the wiry Filipino was not one of those in the craft who are seduced by danger, cursed with an inexplicable and continuing need to test themselves under fire.

Willie, who grinned a lot, loved living too much for that. He took risks along with his pictures, bcrt they *er" orr.i he deemed reasonable for a family man.

Basic Law Sparks Fly The club attempted to help members make some sense ofthe progress made in drafting the Basic Law that will govern

Chinese version of the Basic Law draft used the character for responsibilitÂĄ Liu

Hong Kong after 1997 with a forum on that subject on May 6.

countability as well. Cheng noted that

The 60-odd members and friends who crowded the upstairs dining room witnessed a sparky exchange of views primarily between drafting committee members Liu Yiu Chu and Martin Lee. Substantial points were also made by Joseph Cheng, Hong Kong University professoq and Dr. Mark Faber of Drexel, Burnham Lambert, who supplied a fair amount of comic relief.

Two issues which received attention were secrecy in drafting the section of the law that deals with the territory's

political system and the difficulty of translating and explaining the Western idea of a legislature in Chinese characters.

One of the issues of primary concern

to Hong Kong residents is the future form the Special Administrative Region's government will take and if they will have a voice in how the territory is governed. The sub-group ofthe drafting committee discussing this issue is the only one of five that will not announce the time or place of its meetings.

Liu said that despite the fact that she objects to this decision, the rest of the group must now abide by it because disregarding an established rule creates a climate of bad faith that will "encourage people on the Mainland not to play the game by the rules."

Lee said he would "twist some arms" by trying to unite the 23 Hong Kong representatives to object to secrecy. He suggested that this group hold press briefings after each ofits sessions, even ifit had nothing new to report, because

that kind of candor would encourage Hong Kong people to feel they were being consulted in the process.

After questions from the floor about the line of authority from the Hong Kong SAR to Beijing, panel members disagreed strongly on whether a Chinese word existed that communicated the

Western concept of accountability in a democratic structure, or if the character only described the Chinese notion of responsibility.

While Cheng and Lee said that the

said that the character is used for acthe psychological difference between the

two concepts is a significant one for maintaining the "high degree of autonomy" spelled out for Hong Kong in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

All panelists agreed that it was im-

portant for the ethnic minority and foreign business communities in Hong

for the most capitalistic society on earth is like having a blind man guide you through the Louvre museum," he said.

His description of China as "that retraded country where nothing works" drew hoots of laughter from the audience.

Liu noted that it was important for the drafting committee to set a style of consensus, not confrontation, in its proceedings. But Lee objected saying that he would try consensus first, but he was

Kong that the Basic Law Drafting Com-

not afraid to adopt a confrontational

translations its documents instead of relying on

attitude if it was necessary.

There are 23 Hong Kong representatives on the committee, who are outnumbered the PRC which has 35. Lee, in one of his rare points of agreement with Liu during the proceedings, noted that when it came to people asking for

mittee issue authorised of

quick translations by the local Englishlanguage press which may not pick up some of the nuances of meaning. Lee said that he would take this point up

with the drafting commmittee.

Faber noted further basic problems in communicÂżtion.

"Having communists draft the law

additional concessions from Beijing, "I'd be happy to see 10."

The FCC Computerisation The.Club's tentative step into computerisation having proved a success, we are now ready for expansion. The existing system, based on a single IBM PC XT computer with hard-disc storage and peripherals, was installed in June 1985.

It

started generating month-end

ac-

counts from August and the newlook members' accounts, with which we are all now familiar, from Octobei.

It was decided at the outset that the

move towards automation should

be

gradual. Some clubs and other institutions in Hong Kong went for all the bells and whistles in one fell swoop, which

improved their efficiency almost overnight but, in many cases, tied them to a single supplier and in most cases required a very large, one-off capital outlay. Our first stage cost only HK$80,000.

While the PC introduced valuable cornercutting for the FCC, particularly

in general accounting, it became

clear

early on that we could do very much better with at least one extra pair of hands in the office on an additional keyboard, if nothing else.

Stage 2

in the computerisation pro-

gramme will achieve this and a great deal more. The Board has approved the

purchase, from NCR, of three additional IBM-compatible machines, one of them with a 2O-megabyte hard disc, as well as an extra printer.

The new software, to be set up in phases between June and August this

year, will handle full inventory control (with, among other things, daily transaction reports) and menu costing. This means we shall be able to store and update, in a minimum of man-hours, information on existing and new suppliers, prices of all new and existing items purchased and both the content- including recipe breakdowns - and cost of menu items.

The entire package will cost the Club HK$150,000, to be met from the Deve-

lopment Fund, with payment

spread

between now and the end of August.

For the longer term, a logical further move would be into a full point-of-sale system, monitoring supplies and purchases in every area of the Club and instantly updating the information to a central storage system. For the time being, however, the FCC continues its programme of steady modernisation of management systems at very reasonable cost.

- Paul Sillitoe

The Greek Wøy

Kong Philharmonic - had not a bouzouki among them. In fact, for a while most

It was a night of moussaka and baklava, of retsina and cemestica. The Greek

of the music would have been more

Evening was packed, and so it should have been: the food and drink were superb. It was especially good for those

suited to An Evening in Old Vienna.

But the difficulty was solved by People Power. The floor was occupied in a determined rush and the musicians capitulated with great grace. Whether the dancing that followed was as graceful is

sitting with people who didn't like

- a surprising number ed their glasses tidying uP.

ouzo

-

and need-

another question. The Melody Quantette admitted their Greek repertoire was a bit limited. "But we'll brush it up for next time," they said.

And there must be a next time.

There was just one Problem. The would-be Zorbaswho had brought along a couple of spare white handkerchiefs for the dancing found that the group the Melody Quantette from the Hong

New Members

We would like to extend a warm welcome to the following new members.

Correspondents

Corresponilents

Laura Allan N.B.C. News

Alberto C. Marquez "Defensa" Magazine

Correspondents Kim Jung Suh Reut

The Dong-A Ilbo

CB

June K. Dockerill HK Polytechnic

Correspondents

Anthony Purdy

Al Hilal Publishing Co.

Associate

Associate

Associate Peter Allison E.P.I.C. Management Services Ltd.

Associate

Keith S. Brothers

Edward G. Gray

Datacraft HK Ltd.

Associate

Associate

Mark Q. Prichard B¡itish Trade Commission

Ma Siu Lam K.M. t¿i & Li

Ç

Further Congratul

at io ns !

The next generation ofForeign Cor-

respondent Club members increased by one more on April 25th when a 7 lb. 5 oz. (or 3.3 kilo) boy was born to Club president PhiliP Bowring and AFP correspondent Claudia Mo. Simon Bowring was the f¡rst ofî' spring of ltvo correspondenl members in some time. Bowring, that wellknown Australian, expressed sat¡sfaction that his second son was born on

ANZAC

day.

Associate

The

E

For your diary Club Luncheon May 3o Sir John Bremridge The day before he officiallY retires after five years in office, 'Hongkong's Financial SecretarY will speak to the Club.

19 and will be restricted initially to members only.

Bookings open on MaY

David Handley td

Mana Investment

Putting it together Editor

-

Danell Morton

Tel: 5-234438 Newsletter Liaison Michael Malik (FEER) Tel:5-8936688

Printer

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Worldwide Commercial Bldg, 34 Wyndham Street, Central

Tel

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