Merry Christmas and Happy
Holidays from the Neergaards
 Notes from
Dick and Lois The
year has – mercifully - been all about trips and kids and day-to-day
life (see below for 'kids'). |
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Other than our annual
snowbirding pilgrimages to Hilton Head, we enjoyed a jaunt to Virginia
in September to participate in the fifth of our deeply warming,
informal biennial reunions of fraternity
brethren (Theta Delta Chi at MIT) from the classes of the '50's.
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During
the rest of the year, in Cincinnati, the city's estimable opera and
theater
season provided a quite sparkling backdrop to the pleasant social
fabric, and
we managed to keep our blood moving in our veins by playing (at) tennis
as
often as we could.
NOW - for news of the more interesting and certainly more energetic members of our family, I've again succeeded in recruiting the youngsters themselves to compose their own sections to this letter (Yesssss!). Accordingly:
Notes From the van der Werffs –
our Daughter Sue, her Husband Jan Willem, and our
G'kids Willem
& Nick
For
Sue, Jan
Willem, Willem and Nick the year 2007 started out quite peacefully. We had just moved to a beautiful spot
in Cincinnati, and were making good progress on our new-home
improvement
projects. As soon as the snow and
ice receded, we opened our swimming pool in anticipation of a leisurely
summer. As you, longtime reader of
these chronicles, will by now suspect, tranquility was not to be. In August fate led us to pack up our
bags and go. Not peacefully, not
quietly: it was a sudden move, a double move, part across town, part
across the Atlantic.
Jan
Willem had
accepted a call from Suzlon, an India-based wind energy company,
recently gone
global, to assume worldwide responsibility for manufacturing their
rotor blades. Location:
The Netherlands.
So we sold our Cincinnati home, bought a condo in town
(Cincinnati),
bought a home near Amsterdam in Woerdense Verlaat (we'd never heard of
it
either), and moved our goods once more.
Now Whamp! here we are, catching our breath and telling
ourselves that
2008 really will be the year that Peace and Quiet come upon us.
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Jan Willem
has had a busy first 6 months at Suzlon, traveling about 90% of the
time, mainly in the US and India. But that
has now come down to a more digestible 50%. [editor's note: Suzlon is the
fifth largest wind-power company in the world; JW
is president of one of its three divisions]. Sue
has been very successful in rebuilding our social life, which she was
able to resume from where we'd left it when we departed The Netherlands
four years ago. Our sons Willem and Nick have joined the International School of Amsterdam, where they are doing well in 5th and 3rd grade respectively. They had both been wrestlers in their Cincinnati school, and after our move, joined a wrestling club in Utrecht, where they recently had their first tournaments - and wins! |
Business
Trip in India?
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Notes From Our Son Arthur
I've been a
competitive rifle target shooter for several years.
Two years ago, my vision went fuzzy (as it is apt to do at
for folks of my age), presenting me with an increased challenge. In the course of researching the gun
sight equivalent to reading glasses (such a thing does exist!), I
invented a
new rear sight for rifles which improves vision, by, well, sort of
squinting
for you. I hired a patent
attorney, filed for a patent, started a small company, designed parts
to fit
commercial rifles, set up a web site, and started selling my sights to
competitive shooters. At present,
I'm still in the early stages of getting the word out and
convincing shooters
who are at the top of their game that they should try something new,
but little
by little the buzz is starting.
More and more people are hearing about my sight, asking around
to find
out who else has tried it, building a consensus as to its efficacy.
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When the 2008
shooting season starts next spring, I expect that the word will have
spread. So far, I'm not planning to quit
my day job at P&G, but it is an exciting adventure I'm
learning
hands-on how to run a business, and my investment in the company is
less than a year's tuition at Harvard's B-School, so there's no
down-side in sight.... as it - ahem - were. On the personal front, my cat collection has
stabilized, no strays having found my front door in 2007 (though this
was written in early December – there's time yet).
I continue to sing in an Irish glee club from January to
March 17 each year, and am dutifully gargling in anticipation of the
coming year's session. |
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Notes
from
Our Son Richard, his wife Ishraq and Our G'kids Samer and Lila
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Time
for the ol' mid-life crisis; Harley
Davidson came to the rescue, providing as an added benefit a satisfying
way to help support the American economy. Business
continues to go well in Turkey, and the job is great because working
with (often reining in) the crazy Turks is very exciting.
Kids'
pressure for a puppy finally resulted in one. We
got lucky and found a very nice friendly and calm chocolate Labrador. Her name of course was Coco (inevitably
expanded by Ishraq to 'Coco Chanel'). |
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Family is OK
but misses Brussels, the expat life there and its great international
school. Therefore they spent the whole
summer there. Samer has become quite a computer expert with making professional level 3-D movies. Lila has become very enthusiastic about the piano and is getting quite good at it. And Ishraq is making a big contribution to the school as a board member and head of the marketing committee. |
Coco (Chanel) |
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Notes
from
Our Son Peter and G'kid Steven
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I'm
still with IBM, doing much the same work as I've done for the last few
years. I'm the technical lead of a team
which develops training courses for one of IBM's flagship software
offerings called WebSphere. Don't expect
you ought to have heard of the software, it's used to run
large-enterprise computing systems in places ranging from Wall Street
to eBay. The
year included such exciting work venues Rochester, Minnesota and
Bloomington, Illinois, but at the price of suffering through dreary
places such as Jamaica, Vienna and Caracas. On
a serious note, the work, wherever it is, is both challenging and
rewarding. Not only do I spend time teaching at work, but I've also taken on the task of teaching tennis. In addition to the occasional neighborhood tennis clinics, my private students include my son Steven (age 7), and my girlfriend, Cathy (age 29... again). At least one of these students can keep a rally going without hitting the ball over the fence. When I'm not on the tennis court, I enjoy inline skating on courses through city streets with fellow enthusiasts, mostly in Pittsburgh, but also in weekend group skates in e.g., Miami, New York, DC and Philadelphia. Although Cathy is more of a cyclist than a skater, she does, on occasion, join me for some of these events. |
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If your backhand doesn't do it... |
Even
Steven has now "gotten into" inline skating. Steven's big interest these days is Karate. He's advancing through the ranks quickly, and is already about 40% of the way toward achieving a black belt. Aside from his interests in tennis, skating and karate, Steven just loves to learn. Whether it's math, science or history, he just cannot seem to get enough. As we approach the Christmas holidays, he is really looking forward to spending time with all his (geographically) distant cousins from around the world. [editor's note – as are their grandparents!] |
... try a left foot |
Editor:
And they'll all be with us for
Christmas again this year – bless them!
Most cordially,