SPORTINGCHANCES

24 March 2012

As if there isn’t enough competition in their working lives, Institute members engage in a variety of competitive sports and pastimes in their leisure hours. Reno Ong catches upwith an active community

Recreation

SPORTINGCHANCES

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26 March 2012

Recreation

G regory Lo has a smile on his face that makes him look like a war veteran recount-ing battle stories. In his hands are two badges of

honour, medals from events in which the athletics interest group – of which Lo is con-venor – regularly participate.

“The thing about this event is that it re-quires the team to finish together, leave nobody behind,” he says of the Oxfam Trail-walker, a gruelling 100-kilometre trek along the MacLehose Trail in the New Territories. “It’s a bonding experience. When you’re dead tired, it’s not just you who are dead tired. Your partners are dead tired.”

The pride he takes in their achievement becomes more evident as he talks, a mount-ing sentiment shared by those who have weathered the elements together. “When you’re out in the countryside, you enjoy it, of course, but you also enjoy the company.

You talk about everything,” says Lo, an en-terprise risk services partner at Deloitte. “The experiences that we had during the five months leading up to the event, we really en-joyed them.”

Lo says that while it is called the athlet-ics interest group, it is essentially a running club that encompasses the conditioning and training of “all things that have to do with the legs.”

Established two years ago, the group has a regular attendance of about 200 partici-pants which, he says, makes it an excellent avenue to mingle with other members of the Hong Kong Institute of CPAs. “We like to see ourselves as CPAs working as a team for the business at large, for our families and also as a prestige brand,” he says.

The group is one of a dozen units under the Institute's sports and recreation club founded in 2009 to provide members with networking opportunities and to repre-

sent the professional association at various events.

For instance, the athletics interest group helps organize the official team at the annual Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon. The Institute was named the most supportive group at the 5 February event, with an un-precedented 1,126 members attending. Lo, showing his medal of participation from the event, says the turnout indicates the growing interest in running and the camaraderie fos-tered by the activity.

“When you go about running, you may think of yourself as a lone gunner, running on your own,” he says. “But when we see a CPA before us and behind us, that gives us a pat on the back. By and large, we run together dur-ing the marathon.”

Philip Tsai, a fellow partner at Deloitte and a former Institute president, says he appreci-ates the interaction with other members, but running solo has a special place in his heart.

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“It’s very precious time for thought... I run, I go with the flow, and I use that time to think and daydream.”

He says the only time running is a social event for him is when he’s at races. “I train alone, I run alone. I treasure the time on my own.”

A self-described running addict, Tsai was a distance runner and marathoner during his college days. He calls running a lifelong en-deavour. “It’s very precious time for thought, and unlike other joggers or runners, I don’t put on any music,” he says. “I run, I go with the flow, and I use that time to think and day-dream.”

Dance revolutionLikewise, Susanna Chiu, an Institute vice president, says dance has been a long-stand-ing personal pursuit. “When I was young, I had a natural talent for it. When the music is on, I can dance,” she says. “But at the time we were not as privileged as kids today.”

Chiu, a senior vice president at Li & Fung (Trading), recalls wanting to do ballet when she was young, but her parents would not let

her. “I insisted on doing it, then my mum said, ‘if you want to do it, nobody’s going to bring you.’ So, I said I’d go by myself,” she says. “I was very young, and I don’t know how I did it... but obviously it didn’t last very long with-out parental support.”

Roughly six years ago, Chiu first attempt-ed to bring her love for dance to the Institute. The trial dance class did not prove popular. “We organized it, and we ran it once, but we thought the members either were not inter-ested, or were just too busy to do it,” she says. “After that, about two years ago, we reiniti-ated the idea.”

There were two main reasons for this, Chiu says. One was the change in the Institute’s demographic. The membership was getting younger, thus possibly more receptive to an activity that contradicted the stereotype of the rigid, number-crunching accountant.

The other reason was the growing popu-larity of dance shows both in Hong Kong

and abroad. Series such as Strictly Come Dancing (Mou dong kei jik), Chiu says, have helped elevate public perception of dance from an activity that requires little skill to one that attains the level of sport and com-petition.

Chiu’s push to initiate the dance classes again paid off, culminating in what is known as the dance interest group. Classes and ses-sions are regularly oversubscribed, limited only by the size of the venue, usually the members’ lounge at the Institute. “I think the entire objective of having all of these interest groups is to attract members to the Institute’s office,” Chiu says. “If we go outside for a ven-ue, we actually lose the objective of fostering a sense of belonging.”

Cynthia Chan, a manager at medical sup-ply company Milverton and an Institute mem-ber, first became involved in dance through jazz. That form of dance, she says, was easier and more informal. “It’s very relaxing, you

1. Institute President Keith Pogson participates in the Chinese New Year Fat Choi Run.

2. Sailing group members operate a yacht.

3. Susanna Chiu, an Institute vice president, left, and Cynthia Chan regularly attend Institute dance events.

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Recreation

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can dance with the music, with the rhythm,” she says.

At the beginning, Chan says she joined the group for fun and that she didn’t care as much about dancing correctly. “But last year in June, the convenor asked me to perform at the sports and recreation club night,” she says. “Then I became more serious about it.”

Chan has since joined competitions with-in the group and performed for spectators. That, she says, has given her dancing more meaning, apart from the peace of mind that she sought at the start. “It’s quite connected to my work. Dancing can train people to have confidence in front of a crowd,” she says. “It’s the same as a presentation that you do in front of a client or your boss.”

Setting sailAsked if she can relate her group’s activity to accounting, Kea Tsang, a deputy convenor of the sailing interest group, was unequivocal,

although the takeaway depends on the type of sailing. Dinghy sailing, which involves small craft steered by one or two individu-als, requires a great degree of skill and a high level of sensitivity to the environment.

“Especially when there are emergencies, such as big gusts, you need to be calm and make a decision to remedy the situation,” says Tsang, finance manager at Sino French Water Development. “You need to have a clear mind when you face difficulties and sometimes you need to solve the problem by yourself.”

Lessons learned from operating bigger craft, which often involve teams of 10 or more people, focus on a different skill set. “For yachts, it’s teamwork. You need to com-municate to other team members. Otherwise, when someone does something wrong, it will affect everyone.” Tsang says.

William Kong, convenor of the sailing interest group, says accounting and sailing are built on the same fundamental principle.

“Accounting is a way of communication. It’s a way of communicating the financial situa-tion,” says Kong, a financial planner at Ven-house Financial Planning. “Sailing also de-pends a lot on communication, especially on bigger boats. Mastering sailing is like master-ing an assignment.”

Kong recalls the words of Keith Pogson, the Institute's president, which he says en-capsulates the parallel between accounting and sailing: “Professionals have to face things that are unanticipated and we have to deal with it.”

The uncertainty innate in each field, Kong says, shows the need for preparation and planning. “If you know what you’re going to do and what you’re doing logically, then you can reduce the risk much, much more, even in [inclement] weather.”

He says the group was initially envisioned as a way to interact with others in the profes-sion, not as the rigorous, character building

exercise it’s turned out to be. The founders, which included Kong, used to be on the drag-on boat team, part of what was then the larger watersports and hiking interest group.

Kong and other members started running sailing classes to get to know people better. It proved so popular that it was spun off into a separate group in 2006.

The founding tenet of the group is per-haps the reason why Kong prefers yachts over smaller boats.

“I like talking to people,” he says. “Some-times there’s no wind and you’re out at sea, but at least you have people to talk to.”

Aside from the philosophical links be-tween accounting and sailing, Kong says there’s yet another thing that connects the two. “Accountants live with procedures. In sailing, you need to follow procedures,” he says. “They internalize a lot of these plans logically, so that’s a good entry point for ac-countants to be sailors.”

The dragon boat interest group is one of a dozen units under the Institute's sports and recreation club.