Not an empty chair ...
'long time no see' ...
| HKUCS Alumni Association Spring Reunion Dinner 2002, the biggest reunion ever was held successfully on 2 Mar 2002 at Dragon Palace Restaurant in Olympic City. "We have a record breaking 180 graduates, students and guests joined the dinner¡K" as stated by Tommy Fung, the Chairman of Organization committee in his thank you letter to all alumni members. The theme of the night is a reunion through experience sharing by the graduates. With CS, IS, CE, CSIS graduates from 1985 to 2002 certainly could serve the purpose. | Not an empty chair ... 'long time no see' ... |
 Here comes the great designer Hysan Liu who received his prize from Dr.Francis Lau. |
After waves of excitement of meeting old friends and seeing familiar faces,
Freddie Hung, the chairman of HKU CS Alumni Association, started the night
by giving a welcoming speech. Freddie expressed sincere thanks to all attendants,
especially Prof. Francis Chin, the Chair of Computer Science and Dr Francis
Lau, the Head of Computer Science and Information Systems Department. Prof.
Chin even brought along his family that thickened our sense of belonging
in the big CS family. Also we could not have such high rate of attendance
without the effort and support from each class representative.
Then we had Dr Francis Lau to present the prizes for the HKUCS Logo Contest. The designer of the winning logo, Hysan C.W Liu of CE96, won a Color Palm OS Handheld sponsored by the Department of CSIS while Alan H.L. Au of CS97 who cast his wise vote to Hysan won $500 book coupon. This three-circle logo reminds us the important role of Alumni Association as a bridge between the students and IT industry. Every attendant was given a name card case with this meaningful logo printed on the cover as souvenir. Really nothing could compare for that! |
| Followed closely was the first part of the experience sharing
by Dr Hui Chi Kwong of CS86 and Mr. Terrance Tam of CS89. Dr Hui is the
founder and Honorary Director of the CISC, Center for Information Security
& Cryptography, and at the same time an associate professor in the Department
of CSIS. He gave us insight about the activities of CISC. Mr. Terrance Tam,
on the other hand, has rich experiences in IT development and shares markets
in Mainland and he has to fly to Shanghai frequently over the past five
years. He urged us that a stronger sense of business touch is all IT professionals
in HK need to survive in the current economic downturn. We believe that
served as a very good starter of the dinner, something enlightening for
us to think over.
After we were half-filled, the second part of experience sharing began. We had three guests who are working in non-IT fields, namely Ken Lo of CS97, Phoebe Wong and Kenny Chow of CS93. In order to light up the mood, the MC of the night, Vivien Chan, proposed a guess-the-job game. Anyone could ask the guests yes-no questions and the first one who guesses correctly would win a special-designed Network Solutions' watch. The game was so welcomed and many active participants voiced out their questions enthusiastically. Justin, Prof. Chin's young son, was the first who guessed correctly that Ken is a reporter. He has been working for the Sing Tao PC Market for two years and he was also our official photographer that night. Also CS96 won two prizes in revealing both Phoebe Wong's real identity as a Customs Inspector and Kenny Chow is a Specialist in computer animation. Kenny had even participated in film production. |
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| Just when we felt the game was not enough, we had an unexpected guest, Au Yeung Yip Chun of IS2000 whose job is totally IT unrelated as claimed by his classmates mysteriously. This drew more tables into the competition. Again CS96 made a wise guess. Apart from being a a teaching assistant in the department, Au Yeung Yip Chun is also a composer who has written a number of hit songs for singers like Cass Pang and Candy Lo. What a great discovery of the night! We started to realize that there are many crouching tigers and hidden dragons among the CS family! |  Can't find a pair more lovely than them. Justin and his lovely sister received the Network Solution's Watch from Freddie. |
 Let's cheers in motion¡K |
Near the end of the dinner, each class was invited to take 'class' photos on stage. Although the number of attendants varied for different classes, they all had things in common, a sense of unity and also priceless smiling face. After that we had a special performance by the representatives from 3C committee. They demonstrated CS cheers and CS song that had once raised our spirit high and they still do. Although not even the old boys know who wrote them, surely they recalled our long-lost feeling as under-graduates that seemed like only yesterday. |
| Finally it came to the lucky draw time. We had Prof Chin and his wife, Dr. Bethany Chan, to draw eight lucky ones. The prizes included memorable souvenirs of HKU 90th anniversary sponsored by the Development & Alumni Affairs Office and a coffee maker sponsored by Freddie Hung. The table of 2000 was the big winner when they sweeped half of the prizes including the grand prize of HKU Main Building Model. However the lucky one, Kevin Ma of IS2000, finally failed to take the additional cash prize of HKD500 sponsored by Dr. S.M. Yiu. Not even the two seniors could help him to answer Vivien's question, "In which place do people say 'I love you' to their loved ones most frequently?". The answer, Taiwan, was quite controversial as everyone focused on country and confused by the word "place". Let alone how much we did want to give out the prize but game was a game, the HKD500 donation from Dr. Yiu had to go to the HKUCS Alumni for our future activity. |
 Kevin said to Vivien: Why don't we just forget the question and share the money ... |
 Where am I? |
The dinner came to an end at last after over a hundred attendants got together to take a big CS family photo. Although we were really excited by the number of attendants and their support to the Spring dinner, we do learn a lot that we can improve for the future activities to come. Looking forward to seeing you all again in the near future. |