Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Annual Dinner 2008 - Patron's Message

Patron’s Address
Mr Vincent Lau Lee Ming
21st Annual Reunion Dinner
31st October 2008

Good Evening

Brother Albinus
Our Most Respected Ex-Principal

Mr Vincent Liong
The Respected Principal of the School

Respected Teachers and Retired Teachers

Dr Lim Choon Yang
President of the Sibu Sacred Heart School Alumni Association of Kuching

Alumni Committee Members

Fellow Alumni and Family members

Members of the Press

Students of Sacred Heart School

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

A Very Good Evening to all of you

First of all, I would like to thank Dr Lim Choon Yang, your President, and the Organising Committee for having me here to be the Patron for tonight’s dinner function.

When Choon Yang invited me to be the Patron, I gladly accepted because I am most honoured to be associated with your Alumni.

I am happy to see so many members of the Alumni coming together one more time for such a happy gathering. You have been doing this without fail for the past 20 years, and now we are all gathered here again for the 21st year. I must say that I am extremely proud of you and your success.

I see that the Reunion Dinner has become a tradition for you.

A fellowship gathering such as this one can meaningfully serve as the platform that helps to bind us together for mutual pleasure and interest. It is like an occasion when members, families and friends can meet for a good time together. This is a time for sharing experiences, giving thanks, as well as a time to ponder and reflect on some matters of the heart.

Looking back to our school days brings back fond memories of the carefree life and fun that we had enjoyed while we were in school. After we leave our school and enter society, we will be exposed to a wider world outside and we look forward to greater things in the future.

And looking into the future makes us all grateful that we can handle what is to come because of the solid education that we have received from the De LaSalle Brothers and our respected teachers in our school.

Fellow alumni, this is our proud common root in our beloved Sacred Heart School.

Our school education in Sacred Heart is one of the best.

We all should be grateful for having given this superior quality of education. It is now our turn to give back to our school and to society. One way of giving back is to work through an organisation such as your Alumni Association. We should all recognise the profound and significant contributions made by old students of Sacred Heart School to the State of Sarawak, and to the region, in many aspects of life, be it political, social, economic and cultural.

In this regard, I am happy that you have adopted a “reaching out” attitude towards your approach in celebrating your 21st Reunion Dinner. I have been told by the school principal that over the years, your Alumni has made a lot of contributions to the school, both in terms of financial and moral support.

This is highly commendable.

Your Alumni has been supporting the school by giving money to help the poor students financially. Each year, on the School Speech Day, you also sponsor some awards for the students for outstanding achievements in various subjects and activities. This is a major source of encouragement to the students. It is a driving force in helping the students to strive harder and aim higher.

I have also been told that at the present moment your Alumni has a collective effort to help to sponsor two old students who are now studying in the university. It seems a bit surprising to me that both the old students happen to be girls, and we have always thought of ourselves more as a boys’ school.

However, whether it is boy or girl does not really matter to us. Any old student is part of our family. The Sacred Heart family.

It must have been quite a task to see Marry Soon through to her final year now, and I am sure when she graduates next year, she will in her turn, help to contribute back to society in her own ways. You should be proud to know that you have had your share in that contribution.

I see also that you are now undertaking an added task to support Irene Tiong, who is now in her first year in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia or UKM. It gives me great comfort to have the confidence that you will continue to support Irene in the same way that you have supported Marry.

It also touches me to note that in your “reaching out” program, you are adopting Sekolah Rendah Sungei Stutong as a project for a private tuition centre set up by Brother Albinus’ Yayasan LaSallian Kuching for the poor primary students of the school.

Indeed, I see clearly that you are helping marginalized students by giving them a better chance in life. You have lived up to the loud and clear call that nobody should be deprived of a good education just because of their financial difficulties.

Truly, you are friends of education who have helped shape the future by giving back to society, particularly through your generous fund contributions towards helping those with financial difficulties.

Your Alumni Association is a good umbrella organisation for ex-Sacred Heart School students to net work with one another to promote honourable friendship and maintain warm relationship with one another. In this, I believe that your Alumni Association is and will remain as one of the top alumni associations in Sarawak.

Things are getting going and I am encouraged to see a cohesive and active team that has worked hard to make things happen. Therefore, I encourage more ex-students, especially the younger ones, to take the opportunity to join in the Alumni Association, and to take the lead in future events.

Once again, I am pleased to tell you that I am happy to be here with you, and I hope that everybody will have a good time and enjoy the reunion dinner function tonight.

Thank you very much.

Annual Dinner 2008

President’s Speech
Dr Lim Choon Yang
21st Annual Reunion Dinner
31st October 2008

Good evening fellow alumni

How are you doing?

This is the first opportunity for me to address you in person as the new President of the SHS Alumni Association of Kuching. It is my very great pleasure to say Welcome back to the great Sacred Heart Alumni Reunion Dinner!

I have long been impressed by the vital and challenging work that the Alumni is called upon to perform. Like they say, the real proof is in the pudding, and the pudding in this institution is the body of Sacred Heart old boys and old girls, if I may call you that, many of whom are distinguished individuals in society.

Indeed, I must say I am proud to be one of you.

I have a special guest to introduce to you tonight, and she is Irene Tiong who has just flown in this morning from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in KL. Irene, where are you? Can you please stand up and show yourself, please? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please give her a big round of applause to show that we welcome her to our Annual Reunion Dinner. Irene scored 4As last year after she lost her mother just before her STPM. Her mother was the family’s sole bread winner. We have helped Irene financially, and today she is doing her first year business program at UKM, partly sponsored by our Alumni under our Needy Student’s Fund.

If you would remember, the other old student sponsored by us under the Fund is Marry Soon who is now in final year in Segi College, KL doing a twinning business degree with a UK university. Marry is under a scholarship from Segi College, thanks to the generosity of Dato Clement Hii.

Now, I have a whole of people to say thank you to tonight.

First of all, I must thank Mr Vincent Lau, a senior old boy, for accepting our invitation to be our patron for tonight’s dinner function. He has kindly given us a generous contribution to our alumni fund.

As part of our reaching out program, we have invited 20 students from our school to be here with us. I understand that they have spent many hours practising for their performance for tonight’s function. I would like to thank the students for their efforts. Now students, where are you? Please show your hands and make some noise. Yes, there they are. Thank you.

Mr Vincent Lau, thank you again for your generosity in sponsoring the travelling and lodging expenses of the 20 students, on top of having made a handsome contribution to the alumni association.

Thank you to Dato Clement Hii for making a contribution to the Alumni to sponsor the special life-time service awards which we are going to present Brother Adrian and Brother Albinus tonight.

To my old classmate, Datuk Idris Abdullah, also known to us simply as Das Murthy, thank you for sponsoring the cost of travelling of our teachers.

To Mr Thomas Ngu Sing Hieng of Instacom Engineering Sdn Bhd for contributing towards the Needy Students’ Fund every year. Thomas is giving RM3,000 each to Marry Soon and Irene Tiong every year.

Thank you to Mr George Then of Maybank and Mr Dennis Lee of Boulevard Hypermarket, SSF Shipping Sdn Bhd, and Bukit Young Goldmine Sdn Bhd for sponsoring our lucky draw prizes.

To Mr Lepo Lee of Lee’s Music Centre, a big thank you for the nice guitar which will go to the lucky winner of the grand lucky draw afterwards.

We are most grateful to the big-hearted advertisers for their generous support in placing advertisements in our souvenir magazine. Their advertisement fees will be of very great help to our alumni, as every year, funds are required to support our various activities.

We have many people here tonight.
People of different ages.
People with different interests.
People of different aspirations.

And we are all here because we share a common interest, that is, our beloved Sacred Heart School.

We have benefited from our Sacred Heart Education, we should ensure that the current students also benefit from their time in the school. As we encourage our students to reach beyond and take responsibility for their learning, they will need counseling, mentoring and support from the teachers and also the alumni.

I was at the School Speech Day on Monday this week, and I had to give a speech to give some encouragement the students. Boy, that was a difficult job. But it was very enjoyable. The reception ceremony was grand, and the state of preparedness of the school for the function was perfect and impeccable. The warmth of the staff and teachers was very reassuring and the cheerful smiles on the students’ faces were most infectious and refreshing. Dato Clement Hii was the guest of honour, and he sponsored most of the prizes. Both Sacred Heart School Old Boys Association and our Alumni also sponsored some prizes.

After the function, I saw some of the students crowding around Councillor Robert Lau, the President of SHOSA, to ask for some advice and guidance on some project. Apparently, he is the student advisor for that project.

Unfortunately, since we are not in Sibu, we would not be able to do similar things for the school and the students. But there are a whole lot of other things that we can do. And so let us each do our part.

Now, it is my duty to thank the hardworking Committee members for the support and cooperation that they have given me. I have enjoyed their fellowship and teamwork very much. Our committee meetings were always cordial and enjoyable. And I sincerely invite more younger members to serve in the committee in the future. In fact, this year, we have many new young faces, Jenny Ting, Aloysius Lim, and Nicholas Hu.

And finally, most important of all, I say a big thank you to all of you present tonight for being here with us. Your presence and support is a great source of encouragement for us. If you are not here, there is no game tonight.

I hope you will all have an enjoyable evening.

Thank you.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Message from Brother Adrian

Brother Adian Congratulates SHS Kuching Alumni
Thanks for the invitation to contribute a message for the SHOSA (Kuching) annual gathering on 31st October 2008.

To begin with I congratulate the Association on reaching its 21st birthday; no small achievement for any Past Pupils Association.

There is an old Irish saying which describes a person’s life span as follows : twenty years a-growing ; twenty years flowering ; twenty years maturing and mellowing ; and twenty years fading away. Your Association has now reached the second stage, bubbling with the vigour of youth. That SHOSA (Kuching) is a thriving organisation is due in no small measure to the dedicated office-bearers who have charted its course down through the years. Their wise leadership was, no doubt, a big factor in establishing the Association on a solid foundation. Your current committee plans to build on this foundation by making the Association attractive and appealing to the younger generation of graduates from Sacred Heart School.

I feel confident that your choice of method for doing this, your “Reaching Out” programmes, is a wise one and will help the Association to flower and flourish.

Here, I would also like to refer to the second part of your theme for the night “Staying Together”. Any observer of the Association down through the years cannot help but ask himself, What is the secret of its success ? What gives its members that spirit of cooperation and togetherness which are its hallmark? What is the bonding agent, the unifying factor that gives the Association so much cohesion ?

No doubt there will be many answers to these questions. My personal conviction is that it arises from the fact that its members have been steeped in the philosophy of the school ; a philosophy which runs through the School Rally and which is so succinctly expressed in the words of the school motto, “Berdoa dan Berusaha” In short, the school gives a recipe which prepares its students for the game of life so that when the Great Referee calls their name he will say, You have played well.

I wish you all a very pleasant evening.

To SHOSA (Kuching) I say, Floreat et Crescat. May it continue to grow and prosper.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Activities in 2007

Date Events Place

25/05/ 2007 Brother Albinus Birthday Dinner Lok Thian Thai Restaurant

29/07/2007 AGM 2007 Hornbill Restaurant, Sarawak Club

Activities in 2006

23/05/ 2006 Brother Albinus Birthday Dinner Simon Seafood, Sekama

01/07/2006 AGM 2006 Sarawak Club Audio-Visual Lounge, Kuching

02/07/2006 Catholic Mission Anniversary Dinner Kingwood Hotel Sibu

07/09/2006 Lunch to meet Brother Albinus Mandarin Restaurant

02/11/2006 Reunion Dinner 2006 Crown Imperial Hall, Kuching

04/11/2006 SHS Award Day Sibu

President's Message 2007

Message From President Mr. Peter Seo Kok Ing ( 2007-2008 )

Thank you all of you for being with us to night. This annual gathering for the past 20 years has enabled us to maintain ties with each other. At least we are able to exchange greetings and update on how each and every one of us is getting on in life.

The Association is set up with three objectives in mind.

1) Appreciation to the Lasallian Brothers.

2) Aim for the Alumni to gather together.

3) Extending a helping hand to the School and the students

We are happy that we have managed to achieve three objectives with our limited resources. it is our pleasure to be of service to each and every one of you.

Thank you for your continuous support to this very meaningful Association.

PETER SEO KOK ING

President 2007-2008

President's Message 2006

Let's Pass It On...

The theme for this year's gathering is 'Let's Pass It On...'. It express the committee's strong desire to be of service to all members of the association and the less fortunate in our society especially students of Sacred Heart School.

In line with this vision, we have:

1) Established the higher education scholarship in conjunction with Segi College.

2) A fund to help meet the expenses of deserving students currently studying in SHS.

3) Provide career guidance to students of SHS.

All these activities aim to provide whatever support we can give to establish SHS s a premier school in line with the government's vision.

We are also aware of the needs of former students. The association serves as a venue for all to meet and socialize, renew ties, networking and exchange information at least once a year. These gatherings which are fairly frequent help to strengthen the community spirits which is sorely lacking in our society nowadays. As none of us can survive alone, we would like to see more members participating in our activities.

We thank you for your continuous support and we hope to see more of you in our future gatherings. We need all of you to grow.

God Bless.

Peter Seo Kok Ing

President 2006-2007