Congratulations to the Sagliano's!

Karen and Joe Sagliano became proud grandparents this month with a healthy baby boy! We are so happy for you.

October 10 Pot Luck at the Smiths

We had a lot of fun catching up with each other after the summer and tasting the wonderful food that everyone brought with. We have a few travellers but other than that, the Davis, Evans, McKinneys, Jaegers, and the Smiths had a great evening.

We celebrated two birthday girls birthday with a huge chocolate cake from Elaine who is one of B-girls. Played table games with a taste of "retro" after having a few turns of either asking a questions by humming a song and asking people to guess which movie or actors/actresses etc. for it. Well, we are from the baby-boomers so can't help getting the groove of the 70's and 80's into the picture!

Cheers everybody and until our next gathering.

Anne Smith

Creative Careers

The year 2009 brought us back to point B, C, or even D of our circle of low job opportunities, possible breakdown of corporations, economic downturn and the list goes on. I see this time as a good opportunity to regroup ourselves. As there is Thomas Kuhn's "Extraordinary Science", for those who are facing the situation of a possible "change of plans", the paradigm shift begins now.

This is a time to witness "CHANGE", well that is a big word. How about governing our own disciplines first before setting our sights to the world? In this half year's time, I had witnessed quite a few good examples of good changes. From product manager career to pastry chef; PHD Business expert turned stay-home-mom after having twins but started an innovative home shopping US brand to Asia network, jeweler to nurse, and funny enough, nurse to jeweler, many many more encouraging real life examples.

Quite recently, one of our members started an online travel agency. This is not just an online agency, one of the services I liked very much is to provide affordable travel packages for students to visit other parts of the world that are usually too expensive to incur. (http://www.ordermytravel.com/)

Creative careers to me is anything that could be a niche during "change of times" and a lot of new found businesses became successful during these difficult times. The time of technology has strengthen our ability to be entrepreneurs, creating a vast array of opportunities with our own creativity. I hope this topic could be expanded with our members' contribution to ideas, experiences and feel free to post your business so we can all enjoy it.

Cheers,

Anne

Welcome 2009

2009 chased 2008 away in a bliss! We had a wonderful time together with a hint of German tradition entwined into our festivities. Thank you to our graceful host, the Jaegers! We felt so pampered with the delicious German food and beer, lots of wine, and yummy desserts.

We had five families gathering together and enjoying a fun Texas Hold 'em and of course the mind intriguing and most complicated Mahjong games that only the Mrs. can tackle.

I am looking forward to more fun events for 2009 and Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Anne