HKPS Editor’s Last Words……Dr. Andrew Cheung

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HKPS Editor’s Last Words……

Dr. Andrew Cheung

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As the editor being a member of the Hong Kong Philatelic Society management committee, this is going to be the last newsletter by me for the Philatelic Society since I shall not stand for re-election as a committee member at the forthcoming Philatelic Society’s AGM on 19 May 2016.

I began my career as editor of the Hong Kong Philatelic Society officially in November 1996 after sudden departure of my predecessor Axel Olsson in January 1996. Between February to October, thanks to the help of the Hon. Secretary Malcolm Hammersley and Mark Issac-Williams, the monthly newsletter rolled out on time. I helped Mark with the September 1996 issue (Fig.1) after the Philatelic Society purchased its first ‘486’ computer/word processor machine and printer. The newsletter was done rather primitively by stencil method in those days so that each page had to be printed out separately and delivered by hand to the printer; very different from simply pressing the email “send” button nowadays. To complicate matters, for many years, until the acquisition of a photo-scanner, pictures, tables etc. had to be inserted into the body of the typed script by “cut and paste” method.

Printing usually took about one day, thanks to the efficiency of the Chan brothers at Ngai Mei Fast Printing Centre in Sai Ying Pun. With the help of my office staff, the newsletters were sent out on the same or next day after they had been printed. We never needed to pay for the outer envelope except on a few occasions when surplus HKPS covers had run out. I understand that some of these covers have now become collectable.

The editor endured additional work when the Philatelic Society decided to launch its first annual journal in 1997 in anticipation of Hong Kong’s first Asian International Stamp Exhibition, “Hong Kong 97”. I wrote in the editorial column of our inaugural journal:-

“someone in the committee suggested to me the idea of producing a Journal in time for the February exhibition one month I took over the editorship, I thought you must be kidding! With only nine weeks to go before the show and I have to do something that the HKPS has never done before!”

Journal 1 looks amateurish compared to recent editions but the job was done on time and J1 remained till this day, the largest print-run of all journals. With the help of article contributors, advertisers and most importantly journal designer Kent Mak we managed to publish one every year with fail. In Journal 20 editorial column I wrote:-

“I trust that Journal 20 is not going to be the end of the line and I look forward to a bright future for our Philatelic Society’s publication even if the current editor should decide to call it a day.”

Now the time has come for me to bid farewell. Regrets I have had a few, but then again, too few to mention. During my tenure, there are still these unfulfilled plans: (i) to produce a cumulative index of the newsletter; (ii) to scan all past newsletters and publish them in one or more volumes; (iii) to do more work on the Philatelic Society website. I trust that with new talents in the next management committee, it would not be too difficult to accomplish these tasks.

Long Live The Hong Kong Philatelic Society