It had all begun when our fearless board leader Paul Chou 周正仁 called for and hosted a 10-hour meeting with the classmates in Greater New York area on January 19, 2008 at his New York City mansion in Bayside. The daylong event came with appetizers, fruits, snacks, deserts, wine, tea, and a 12-course banquet dinner at 同樂軒 in Little Neck, New York. The meeting started with a private preview of the newly released hour long documentary film entitled “Lost in Mediterranean”, poised to contend for 2008臺北金馬影展, and filmed, edited, and produced by 李垣, 陳航真夫婦 and acted by previously screened and selected classmates and their spouses. The documentary climaxed at 游開踢館 when 游開勤 performed his 成名曲 O Solo Mio in Sicily, Italy.
Many important issues were debated and decisions were made during this historical meeting and over the dinner banquet (only after bottles of wine, also provided by Chairman Chou, were consumed). Some highlights: Chairman Chou 周董 continues to be bullish on China’s market. His in-depth analysis and market timing of the proven successful strategy of 錢進大陸 received unanimous endorsement and reaffirmation. Chairman Chou’s health was a serious concern for a while early last year. The good news is after the successful surgery with a replacement artificial heart valve last May, he has completely recovered and is even more energetic and articulative than before. Master Lee 李大師 continues his effort in saving the Earth (which began well before Al Gore's ride on Global Warming) through his venture in solar power technology and system design/production. Meanwhile he has also developed and proposed a bold unification plan in which 1 NT$ will be exchanged for 1 RMB; with it one no longer needs to spend energy on the March presidential election. [A side note: this blog includes both pan-blue and pan-green as background colors]. The proposal was passed overwhelmingly when Chairman Chou had to use the restroom. However some of us got a little concerned about possible appearance of conflict of interest when we discovered later that 李大師 is acquiring a property in 淡水, facing China.
欒大端 is ready to retire from AT&T Labs mid Feb, after nearly 30 years of illustrious services. We all need to thank him for high performance broadband communications that allow us to share easily documents, pictures, and videos. One of the things he plans to do is to devote more time and contribute more with his church. 呉慶漳 looks even younger compared to the day when he joined Bell Labs more than 1 decade ago to work on Wireless system design and development. He had the foresight and moved to BAE Systems, a major global defense and aerospace company, before telecom equipment vendors like Lucent sank to the bottom. 張大同,李莎莉夫婦 have not changed much either. They are still the same inseparable love birds that we all envy. They still live in the same place in Darien, Connecticut. I think it is because he included the house number 35 in his email address. And me? 大炮, I have been sharpening my pen and tongue since my retirement day and am ready for a comeback. So, watch out!
What do all these have anything to do with the inauguration of this blog for our 1972 classmates and families? Through an intensive detective work, I found out that I was volunteered by CK Chou 周從光 to create this blog since I seem to have a lot of free time. CK on the other hand, came up with the idea of creating more communication platforms like blog after being asked to update our Yahoo!group data by President Dave Peng 彭總, aka 阿彭,following the convention阿扁, [note: I feel much closer with him this way; this is the same name as my late father's helper from Thailand] who was in turn requested by Chairman Chou, among other things, to post our meeting photos which has been re-assigned to 陳忠實 in Taiwan. Sounds complicated? Your first assignment now is to figure out who is who and who is who’s spouse from the pair of pictures below which was taken in our dinner banquet. Please feel free to use this blog space to share whatever and whenever you'd like.
Wish you all a Happy Chinese New Year!
