December pics: (1) dogsledding near Banff; (2) us standing on a frozen lake in Banff National Park; (3) a Shorg Christmas; (4) Neal and Momma Borg in Niagara on the Lake; (5) Niagara Falls; (6) Momma Borg driving the new car in Midland.

Episode 20: December 2006

The highlights of the month include:
• Dogsledding near Banff in Canada
• Christmas “Iron Chef”
• Mama Borg arrives in North America
• Sightseeing in Toronto

When we ended November, Neal was still in Canada on a business trip to Edmonton and Calgary. Before Neal traveled to Canada, we decided it would be a great opportunity to spend some time in the Calgary area. So, we booked a flight for me to come to Calgary and spend the weekend with Neal there. After some initial traveling problems – delays due to the first signs of winter (snow and ice) in Midland, I arrived in Calgary on Friday, the first day of December. That night, we walked around the city, had some dinner, and saw a local production of the musical, Aladdin. This version of Aladdin was a little different from the usual ones. It was still a musical, but the plot, characters, and dialogue were spiced up to make it a more family-friendly show. The real hoot was that the genie character was played by Bret “The Hitman” Hart. For anyone who does not recognize that name, Neal provided the following explanation: “Bret Hart used to be a star in the fake wrestling series when I was growing up. I hardly remembered the guy and was really shocked to see him on a stage acting (and occasionally singing) for a crowd. It was surreal.”

The next day, after a quick trip up the Calgary Tower to get an aerial view of the city and surrounding mountains, we headed off to see a different part of the state of Alberta. Calgary is located very close to the Canadian Rocky Mountains and some popular ski destinations, including Banff. We drove toward the Banff area and booked a hotel in the nearby town of Canmore. After arriving in Canmore, we drove to a winter adventure that we had booked while still in Calgary: a two-hour dogsledding tour. Prior to starting the trip to Canada, we had anticipated spending some time in the mountains and packed our cold weather gear accordingly. Smart thing, given the low temperatures!

Our tour started with a short drive into the mountains where our dogs were waiting. When we arrived, the dogs were quietly resting, but as soon as they saw us, they started to bark, yelp, and jump around – they knew that it was time to run! The dogsleds had a very nice setup. Two people – one of us and a tour guide – would stand at the back of the sled and handle steering and braking while the third person would be tucked into a blanket just in front of the drivers. The dogs did the rest of the work, and they were incredible at it. The dogs were fast, and it was amazing to see them hitting speeds of around 10 miles per hour (about 15-20 kilometers per hour)! We were fortunate to have great weather that day – low temperatures but clear, blue skies – which made for some breathtaking scenery. An overall great experience!

After the dogsled tour, we drove to Banff and visited one of the town’s hot springs. Actually, the site we visited is no longer a hot spring. It is now just an outdoor pool that is kept nice and warm. We stripped down to our swimsuits and took a dip in the pool, which was a strange experience given that it was so cold outside. Needless to say, it was not long after Neal dipped his head under the water that his hair froze solid! It was amazing to be submerged in water of 35 degrees Celsius while looking at a horizon lined with mountains and a full moon lighting up the sky. After taking it all in, we took advantage of the facilities and had a massage as well. We finished the night by walking through downtown Banff and having some dinner there. The next morning, we had a hearty breakfast in Canmore and then drove back to Calgary for our flight to Michigan.

The next few weekends were consumed with holiday festivities in Midland. We attended a few more house parties, including one in honor of both Neal’s and my departments. We put up our Christmas tree and hung our stockings over the fire place and enjoyed many nights in front of the fire soaking in the Christmas atmosphere. All the houses on our street, and throughout Midland, were adorned with all kinds of Christmas lights. The outside of our house was not so festive – maybe next year!

After work one evening, we took a slight detour to drive by a house that was extremely well decorated, complete with lights, blow-up reindeer, and a life size Santa sled. Upon approaching the house, we were astonished to notice the rather elderly man of the house and his wife dressed up as Santa and Mrs. Claus. Santa was sitting in the sled waving to passers-by and the Mrs. was walking up and down the sidewalk passing out candy canes to those that stopped to take a look at the house. Very festive, indeed!

During the month we saw another theater production this month – a musical tribute to Ray Charles, called “I Can’t Stop Loving You” – which we really enjoyed. We also enjoyed inviting some different groups of friends over for dinners at our place, and joined our friends Ken, Lynn, Mick and Catrina for an evening of Indian food and good company at Lynn and Ken’s house.

Our friends in Switzerland will appreciate the many fashion faux pas that we witnessed this month. From snowmen jumpers (think Bridget Jones’ Diary), to holly earrings, to Christmas socks with high heels, and vests with bells hanging off them so one makes a lot of noise as they approach you in the hallway – we saw it all. I am convinced that Midland is fashion hell.

The weather in Midland during the month was very mild – as it was across the U.S. – and we only experienced a few days of bad weather at the very beginning of the month. We took advantage of the unusually warm weather on a couple of days, including a Sunday afternoon bike ride down one of the local paths (the Rail Trail) that has an entry very close to our house, as well as an afternoon outdoors throwing around the frisbee.

For Christmas, we spent the day together in Midland. After a lazy morning of opening and playing with our gifts, we headed to the cinema in the early afternoon to see Will Smith’s movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness.” We were joined by our friend Patty and her daughter, Jenna. From there, the four of us came back to our house where we started our Christmas “Iron Chef” experience, which we had planned with Patty and Jenna a couple of days earlier. For those unfamiliar with the show, “Iron Chef” is a cooking program that originated in Japan. The premise of the show is that two chefs and their respective teams challenge one another to a cook off. They each have an hour to cook dishes that feature a secret ingredient, unveiled at the beginning of the program. We ran a modified version of “Iron Chef” for Christmas – we created a dinner menu that featured dishes that none of us had made before made each person responsible for preparing and cooking one course of the meal. Our menu (and assignments) was as follows:
• Scallops with a tabbouleh salsa (me)
• Potato and leek soup (Patty)
• Standing rib roast (all) with stuffed portobello mushrooms (Jenna) and warm rocket (arugula) salad (all)
• Grand Marnier crepes with fresh berries (Neal)

Patty’s son, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Michelle, joined us for dinner as well. It was a great way to spend Christmas!

During the month, we also found and ordered our second car and the day after Christmas we picked it up. We really wanted a convertible – I know, it sounds silly given that we live in a state that has six months of winter, but the summers here make it worthwhile. At the same time, I was adamant about having a front-wheel drive car which could reasonably handle winter weather driving. Surprisingly, there are not many front-wheel drive convertibles on the market. Still, we managed to find one: the Volkswagen Eos. It is a hard-top convertible coupe, and we ordered one in blue. The car drives really well, and we cannot wait to put the top down in the summer!

Two days after Christmas, we packed up the car and started the 5-hour drive to Toronto, where Mama Borg was schedule to arrive from her adventures in Europe. The only rest stop we took along the away was a slight detour into the town of London, Ontario, to take a look around the Covent Garden markets and grab a coffee.

After locating our hotel in downtown Toronto, we drove to the airport and waited for the long-anticipated arrival of Mama Borg. Before arriving in Toronto, Anna had been in Malta visiting her family for 10 days and this was her second leg of her Christmas vacation. After a happy reunion, we enjoyed a late dinner before all getting some needed rest. The following day we drove to the quaint town of Niagara on the Lake to do a little exploring and then drove to Niagara Falls. The falls, although smaller than one would imagine, are impressive in sheer volume and presence. As the tour books will verify, the Canadian side of the falls (known as the Horseshoe Falls) are far more impressive than the American side (Bridal Veil Falls). We stayed until dusk to witness the colored light show that is displayed over the falls and then headed back to Toronto and a great Portugese seafood restaurant for dinner.

The following day we explored the very pretty and lively Toronto downtown and then had a fabulous time at a murder mystery theater dinner. On December 30, we headed back to Midland where we spent the remainder of the year relaxing, playing cards, and showing Mama Borg our new hometown. To see the New Year in, we enjoyed a great home-cooked dinner followed by a few games of cards and joined in the Times Square countdown in New York that was telecast on TV. We did manage to each write a decent set of New Year’s resolutions – we will see how many of them get accomplished before this time next year.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and wish you all a happy new year!

November pics: (1) our friends in Switzerland; (2) baby Joost with his parents Eveline and Peter Paul; (3) Tony and Julie; (4) us with Neal's grandparents; (5) the Christmas tree we put up at Neal's parents' home; (5) us with Neal's parents.

Episode 19: November 2006

This was our first full month as residents of the U.S.A. (well, for Deb it was)! The highlights of the month include:
- Deb’s trip to Zurich
- Thanksgiving in Stillwater, Oklahoma
- Neal’s trips to Houston, Edmonton, and Calgary

November was a crazy month, as far as work was concerned. For Deb, the month marked a heavy time for campus recruiting. In the U.S., campus recruiting for college graduates happens over a condensed period of time, namely October-November. Dow, like most big companies, sends teams of volunteers to each selected university (a total of about 40 universities) across the country. The recruiters’ primary job is to shortlist the candidates that Dow will fly to one of its locations for a face-to-face interview. That’s where Deb’s team steps in. The team coordinates (and pays for) all the logistics of the students coming to one of the Dow sites for interviews. The student visits normally involve a tour of the town/community, a series of 4-6 interviews per student, and a hospitality suite. Once the students are interviewed, Deb’s team is responsible for coordinating the offer letters, scheduling background checks and medical screens, finalizing start dates, and dealing with any negotiations initiated by the students. From the last week of October to the second week of November, Deb’s team of 17 people in North America met with 370 students and prepared all the logistics associated with 280 job offers. To say the least, it was a crazy time! The students who accept Dow’s job offer will begin with the company after they graduate in mid-2007. The good news for Deb is that the season is over for the year – back to hiring as normal and a more “regular” kind of crazy.

We were invited for our first Midland house party by Deb’s friends, Ken and Lynn. (This would prove to be the first of many house parties we attended for the festive season.) Ken is from New Zealand and a real hoot. Lynn is from Missouri, which is a state located in the middle of the U.S. Deb was slightly apprehensive about going, only because it was bound to be attended by people from work, and neither of us wanted to talk about work at a social event. We were both pleasantly surprised to find that, while there were people there that we knew from work, we had a great time, met lots of new people, and did not find ourselves discussing work at all. I must admit, though, that there was one weird moment when Deb’s boss turned up at the party. (Who would have known that he was also a friend of Lynn and Ken’s?!)

During the month, Deb took a trip back to Switzerland for a week of work meetings. As part of the handover of her old job, Deb went back to Zurich to host a people-review for one of the businesses she used to look after. Of course, she was happy to have the opportunity to see Dad and Julie and our friends again so soon after we moved. She spent a long week working, with every evening booked for catching up with friends. She was also able to attach a weekend onto the stay so as to make the most of my time there. When she was not at work, she was hitting some of our favorite eating and drinking spots each evening, and she found it easy to slip back into life there. Among the many people she saw, she had the opportunity to meet the newest, and most adorable, member of our gang: Joost Van de Wijs, who was born to our friends, Eveline and Peter Paul, three weeks prior. During her weekend in Zurich, Deb also drove out to Bern to meet up with Dad and Julie for a long lunch. She arrived back around 10 pm on Sunday night, just in time for another week of work.

While Deb was away, I spent the week in Houston, Texas, where my business has a large presence and where my boss is located. While I was there, I took the opportunity to satisfy the engineering geek inside of me and toured one of Dow’s largest and most impressive plants, which happens to be the darling plant of my business, at our located in Freeport, Texas. I also met several of my teammates in business finance and had several discussions with my boss. I even managed to catch up for dinner with some friends of ours, Gina and Walter, who live close to Houston.

Among the many “firsts” that the month offered, Deb experienced her first Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, for all the non-U.S. readers, is a public holiday that has its roots in the original relationship between the American Indians and the first European settlers of the U.S. The point of Thanksgiving is to, literally, give thanks for what and who we have. It’s also a great reason for a four-day weekend! Thanksgiving is a popular time for families to get together and spend time, usually over one or more big meals. That being the case, the people who might be the most thankful for this holiday are the airlines, as this is a peak traveling weekend!

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Stillwater is a small town in central Oklahoma (Oklahoma being located in the middle of the U.S., just above Texas), centred around Oklahoma State University, a mid-sized state university with about 20,000 students. Apart from spending some time in Oklahoma City, where we chose our outfits for our coming Indian wedding reception in January, the rest of the time was spent eating, relaxing, and catching up with my parents and grandparents, who recently moved from New Delhi, India to Stillwater. It was great to spend some time with my grandparents – for Deb, it was her first time meeting them. Deb’s first Thanksgiving dinner was not a traditional turkey roast dinner but rather a feast of Indian food, which she said was far better than any turkey would have been!

The following week, I took a work trip to Edmonton and Calgary, both located in the western part of Canada. One of my new job responsibilities is to be the finance analyst for all of my business’ activities in Canada. You can imagine how delighted I was when I got off the plane in Edmonton to temperatures of -37 degrees Celsius! The terrible weather – something that the Canadians are used to it, but I am not – made driving a challenge, but I managed to soldier thru all of it. Unfortunately, after all my sacrifices, the main attraction of my trip – seeing our plant site – did not go as planned because the plant had an unexpected maintenance issue to tend to and could not host me for a tour! Later in the week, I continued on to Calgary, where the temperature was a balmy -27 degrees Celsius. I spent a couple of days in Calgary, attending some business meetings and introducing myself to the team there. I also managed to catch up with a cousin of mine, Maya, who recently moved to Calgary from Toronto. This was my first time meeting Maya, and I will be sure to look her up the next time I am there.

The few evenings we had at home this month were spent over dinners with work colleagues and friends who were visiting town. We managed to catch a play at the Midland Centre of the Arts – Steel Magnolias (not one for the boys, but Neal braved it and came with me) – which was great. We made a number of visits to the gym and got the most from our library memberships.

The streets are starting to light up, literally. The Americans love to decorate their houses and their bodies to reflect the winter holiday season. As soon as the Halloween pumpkins have been thrown away, the Christmas lights are up and lawns seem to be growing blow-up snowmen and Christmas trees. It is enough to make the Griswalds look like amateurs.

I will leave you this month with some interesting -- and accurate, I believe -- observations from Deb: “Although the U.S. is similar to Australia (much more similar than Switzerland was), I am constantly in awe as I look around. I must sound like a curious little kid to Neal, who has to explain to me all the nuances of his home country. It is lovely to be back in an English-speaking country where the shopping is open seven days a week and the term “convenience” has shaped the nation. It still surprises me that a country as progressive as the U.S. still has some antiquated methods, particularly when it comes to finances. There are still many bills that cannot be paid without writing a cheque and transferring money overseas is quite the production – which I must admit seems odd. That aside, I am enjoying living in a country where the supermarkets are as big as three Swiss cantons, where the produce looks like it could feed a family of giants, where you can shop at midnight if your mood so takes you, and where there are at least four channels simultaneously playing different episodes of Law and Order or CSI at any given time. God Bless America!”