Christmas
Greetings from the Neergaards - 2001
Sent with
special warmth this year, in recognition of the value
of friendships in these troubled times
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After
having been on the move for the better part of six months around this
time last year, Lois and I thought it would be pleasant to take some
time off from travel. And by and large,
that's pretty much what we did ...... stayed home, did projects,
pursued hobbies, socialized with friends, puttered around the garden,
swatted balls on neighborhood tennis courts, and getting uplifted at
local halls of culture and entertainment.
There
were several exceptions to this pastoral quietus though, most notably
when the family gathered - all fourteen of us - for two really quite
satisfying weeks in March at the Club Med at Porte St Lucie, Florida -
this was our "Family Christmas" for 2000. Another
flurry of activity still to come within 2001 will be this year's Family
Christmas, this one
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actually
occurring at Christmas... and at home. Our
Euro contingent - two sets of
parents, each with a three- and a five-year old - will be coming to
stay with
us for a week or two, bless their hearts (and pray for their safety),
and our
Pennsylvania contingent of three will join us all as well for several
days. In anticipation of this delightful
onslaught, Lois and I retreated to Hilton Head for Thanksgiving week
and the
two weeks following, to build our strength. We're
now ready.
I think.
THE
KIDS
Our
offspring's exodus from the Low Countries in 2000 has, in
2001, reversed. Early this year
Sue and Jan Willem returned from Chantilly (near Paris) to their island
home in
the Netherlands off the coast of Bergen-op-Zoom where GE's European
plastics
business is centered, and Richard and Ishraq, after having a year
earlier moved
from Amsterdam to London, in mid 2001 relocated to Brussels.
SUE
AND JAN WILLEM
Sue has, with hertypically enormous
enthusiasm, taken up a cheerfully carefree version of coin-collecting -
any
coins, from anywhere. The folks at
the local bank smile bemusedly as she comes in every few days to get a
new bag
of coins, returning the culled bag from last time.
Friends and neighbors have been recruited to dig out their
forgotten jars of foreign change, and eBay has proven to be... ummmm... a gold
mine!
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Jan Willem, in July 2000, was
made site manager of GE's ABS Plastics plants in France, which is what
brought him and Sue to Chantilly. Then in
January 2001, he became Manufacturing Manager for all three of the ABS
plants GE has in Europe, bringing the family back to Bergen-op-Zoom Now yet another new job is in the
offing, as GE shifts its organizational structure from horizontal to
vertical. No official word yet about what
or where.
Their two children, Willem, five, and Nicky, three, are of course
terrific.
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Willem
Nickie
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Snicker-snack went P&G's vorpal
restructuring
blade, and Arthur was in danger of
being a downsizee in the company's latest cost-reduction campaign - his
entire
department, Upstream Engineering, had been one of those eliminated, and
Arthur
found himself among the battalions set loose to find themselves new
jobs within
the company - if they could; a
daunting task in that environment.
Then serendipitously, in a conversation at a social gathering,
Arthur
learned of a tough technical nut one of the P&G divisions had been
trying
for years to crack. He suggested
several bright new approaches, generated some excitement, was invited
to
burnish his ideas, and lo and behold, the division created a new
position for
him. The technology involved is
all very hush-hush; he could tell
us of course, but then he'd have to kill us.
Arthur's still devoted to his
run-and-shoot sport, Biathlon.
There are several classes of competition. Arthur
insists on entering the toughest - making him a
forty-year old soapmaker amidst twenty-year-old semi-pro athletes. There are lesser classes, but Arthur
says he would prefer being last but proud, to leading amidst a bunch of
mamby-pambies. At least I think
that's what I thnk he said.
Arthur's annual Riverfest party, at which friends of our
generation as well as his get to watch in awe from his balconies as the
Ohio
River is being splendidly blown up, was its usual raucous success.
Richard has been appointed
General
Manager of the Belgian subsidiary of Reckitt-Benckiser, a European
consumer-products company similar to P&G. In
July he and Ishraq moved from London to Brussels, or I
might say back to Brussels, since Richard had been born there. Richard's enthusiasm for fast cars has
not diminished; his leisure-time
relaxation (?) is whizzing on weekends around various European race
tracks.
Ishraq maintains her consulting
business
- marketing to the Arab population on the West Bank - but her travel to
the
region has perforce been constrained, and she now does most of her work
by
teleconferencing.
She continues with pleasure to
pursue
her hobby: shopping for antiques, enjoying them for a while, then
reselling
them (for a profit!)
Their
two children, Samer, five, and Lila, three, are of course
terrific
Samer
Lila
PETER AND LISA
Peter hugely
enjoys his work: he's now creating
as well as running seminars to
train the Information Technology officers of IBM's clients, in their
use of
"Websphere", a high-level networking system and one of Big Blue's key
products. He's had to pull
lots of all-nighters, but much of the design and administration can be
done out
of his local Pittsburgh office, so his travel schedule has been
lightened. When a client is important
enough,
though, Peter is called upon to charge into the fray, so he's now
occasionally
flying back and forth to the French "Silicon Valley" on the Riviera
(poor lamb), and with IBM's recent landing of the eBay contract, out to
San
Francisco.
Lisa and Peter wrestled over the
winter
with that so-vexing dilemma of modern times: whether Lisa would stay at
home
with the new baby, or continue with her career. What
she really wanted was to be mostly a mom while still
keeping her mind honed by
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working part time. She
knew that was unlikely: her position as
compliance officer of PNC bank would almost certainly require her to be
present full time. At the end of her
maternity leave, she tried to work out a part-time arrangement within
her department, but sure enough, no way - so she sadly tendered her
resignation.
That
afternoon Lisa got phone calls from two different divisions of the
bank, each offering her a part-time position with them - hours of her
choice - and... a vice-presidency. She
accepted the deal that brought with it the larger raise.
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Steven
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Their
son, being a First Baby, is of course even more terrific than usual.
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Dick Lois Arthur Steven Peter
Samer
\ Ishraq Lila \ Richard Jan
Willem / Willem Sue Nick