By ROBBIE GRIES

Asia Pacific -- An AAPG Growth Area

Different hotel every night, almost. Remembering what room number I am in after a late talk, long dinner and much conversation is so far the worst problem I have encountered.

The culture of a country combined with the culture of the geologic/ petroleum community has been fascinating on this "Grand Presidential Tour." The opportunity to meet with and talk to members and potential members in 12 countries -- 17 cities -- has been completely worthwhile.

It is impressive to see how hard our members are working here.

I was able to applaud new affiliations like Japan and New Zealand -- but had to cancel on visiting Pakistan and meeting members of the recently affiliated Pakistan Association of Petroleum Geoscientists. We have 2,000 members in the Asia Pacific Region -- 1,000 active, and 1,000 associate and student members, with a vast potential to increase membership in the near future.

We developed new ideas for special publications in Thailand and Vietnam. We tried to find creative solutions for the delays in mail, in membership processing and in balloting in Kuala Lumpur and Seoul.

We planted the seeds of possibility for new student chapters in Beijing, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand and Brunei.

We discussed the venue for our 2006 international meeting in Perth, Australia.

Members were very excited about:

• The AAPG digital library and availability to members.
• The new Publications Pipeline for placement of donated libraries.
• The geologists membership sponsorship program headed up by Brenda Cunningham (see related item in Readers' Forum, page 44).
• The cooperative efforts being developed between SPE, SEG and GSA.
• Though it can be grueling to travel at this rate for six weeks, the hospitality mitigates that significantly -- and it appears this was time well spent for AAPG.

Robbie Gries at lunch hosted by Dr. Li, left, and Qichang Zhu, right, in Beijing.	In Vietnam with Ho Chi Minh City Technical University geology students.