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Houston Section visits Region 10 GOLD groups
by Kheng Swee Goh
(Chair of Houston Section GOLD, Region 5)

During the 2008 Sections Congress in Quebec City, Canada, we had our first GOLD Summit. Summit Leaders from each region were teamed up with each other to come up with some ideas on how regions could increase interactions between regions/sections. I was representing Region 5, and I was paired up with Tim Wong from Region 10. One of the ideas that we came up with was to try to meet up with local GOLD groups while we travel, and as it turned out, between October to November of 2008, I was about to make a trip to Malaysia, Singapore and Perth Australia. This was really a personal trip, guess there’s nothing like practicing what we preached!!

So I loaded my bag with some nice souvenirs from Houston GOLD, and set off to “search for GOLD”!

 I first met up with Singapore GOLD. I contacted Dr. So Ping Lam, who could not make the meeting but arranged Darrel Chong and Zhou Yi to meet me. We met at the New Asia Bar, the tallest bar in Singapore... up 71 floors at the Raffles City tower. The VIP lounge (which our friendly waitress, Wendy; allowed us to use) is located a floor higher, surrounded by nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows; allowing us to enjoy the breath-taking views of the Singapore skyline. My little camera could not do justice to the actual sight you can see up there. Zhou Yi was originally from China, studied in National University of Singapore and now living and working there too. He is also the current GOLD chair. While not in the GOLD committee now, Darrel Chong had great experience in the past committee, and gave me a quick historical overview while Zhou Yi gave me the current status of Singapore GOLD. There marked differences between Singapore GOLD and us in Region 5. We talked about our experiences in our GOLD AGs and exchanged some ideas on how we could “borrow” some of our ideas from each other to use in our GOLD AGs. In our discussion, we also noted that Singapore is home to many hi-tech companies; which Singapore GOLD might try to take advantage of in future events and sponsorship.

Next, I met up with the members of Malaysia GOLD.  They were also very friendly and gave me a very warm welcome. Fairuz Bin Abdullah is the Chair, and Iqbal Saripan (the Treasurer) along one of their active members; Mohd Zainal Abidin Abdul Kadir, took me to a nice meal at a nice Nasi Briyani restaurant. We shared our stories and I was glad to hear they were quite an active group in Malaysia. Fairuz is a professor at UNITEN, a University owned by Tenaga Nasional, the national utility company in Malaysia. The obvious advantage that came to me right away was that Malaysia GOLD has easy access to visiting various power stations – which they have already done numerous times! They were also intrigued to learn that many of our GOLD groups are already on Facebook and agreed that they will look into getting Malaysia GOLD into Facebook too. All in all, it was great to hear what my fellow countrymen were doing with their GOLD AG. I was also pleased to find out I share a common sport as Iqbal. We are both keen badminton players. We have already agreed that we should get a game together on my next trip back home!  

Finally I went to Perth, Australia. I spent the most time with this group and I was given the royal welcome and great Australian hospitality by Tim (Western Australia GOLD chair), Helene (R10 GOLD Coordinator and past WA GOLD chair), David Hng (WA gold treasurer), and the local wildlife - some encounters, like those with the local sand flies, were a bit too close for comfort!  Our planned meeting was supposed to be a breakfast meeting, but prior to that, I was even lucky enough to have bumped into past WA GOLD chair, David Lim, the night before since he could not make it to the breakfast meeting. I had the chance to chat with everyone and share with them my own experience with GOLD as well as the way the GOLD affinity group operates in WA. WA Section is quite unique because their next nearest section is some 4 hours away by PLANE; in Houston, all we needed to do was to hop in the car and drive for 30 minutes!

I was pretty impressed by the great balance of a high level of professionalism and commitment to WA GOLD as well as a great sense of teamwork by the committee members. Managing a GOLD group and ensuring a close working relationship with student branches in WA section is certainly not an easy job; but Tim and his group seem to have no problems.

In our breakfast meeting at a café on beautiful Cottesloe Beach overlooking the Indian Ocean, we chatted as I tried my first ever Tasmanian salmon. As a natural progression following the GOLD Summit discussions, we exchanged ideas about the direction GOLD activities around the world is heading, as well as how our respective groups operate and upcoming events planned. Another thing about WA that impressed me was that unlike my group, they received no funding from the section! Instead these entrepreneurs got the section’s blessing to seek industry sponsorship several years ago, and have been running on sponsorship funding.

Due to the different nature of our GOLD groups, there will definitely be ideas which, while working for one group, cannot be meaningfully replicated in the other. But by establishing contact during my travels, I feel that I have now built bridges with these GOLD groups, and I certainly look forward to working with Singapore, Malaysia and Western Australia GOLD again in the near future.