March pics: (1) Snow "art" in Midland; (2) us on a bike ride; (3) Deb and her team in Texas; (4) Deb on the corporate jet.

Episode 23: March 2007

Highlights of the month include:
• Yee-haw: Deb visits the Houston Rodeo;
• Ice Hockey: Our first experience at a Saginaw Spirit game;
• Theatre: “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”;
• Daytrip: Ann Arbor.

The month started with me in Houston, Texas at a week-long leadership team meeting. The highlight of the week – second only to the Hawaiian-themed karaoke night – was a team outing at the famous Houston Rodeo. My team consists of my colleagues located in the other regions and our director, altogether seven of us. We headed to the large fairgrounds where the rodeo is based and toured the site to see the prized animals and all the paraphernalia for sale associated with the rodeo. I even witnessed my first live bull ride. It was quite the introduction to cowboy country!

As soon as I arrived back in Midland on Saturday, Neal and I headed from the airport to Saginaw, a town that is about 20 miles (30 kms) south of where we live. You may remember reading about Saginaw before in an earlier Shorg Blog. The town is located in the center of mid-Michigan on the Saginaw River. Saginaw was once a bustling lumber town, but today it is a shell of what it used to be, having suffered quite a bit from the Michigan automotive industry’s downturn. Still, being a larger city, Saginaw does have quite a few restaurants, retail stores, and a number of theatres that attract several events.

Upon reaching Saginaw, we met up with my work colleague, Darrell, and his wife, Kathy, for an early dinner of sushi before going to an ice hockey game. Being a Canadian, Darrell is a huge ice hockey fan, no matter what form it takes. (To say that ice hockey is the national game of Canada is an understatement.) Darrell was kind enough to offer us tickets to a game of the Saginaw Spirit, a local semi-professional team that showcases young hockey talent, mainly sourced from Canada. The level of play is very good, as many of the players move on to the professional circuit. Being new to hockey, I needed some help in understanding the game, and luckily, Darrell was there to give me a running commentary of the game. Here are some things I learned:

• A typical ice hockey game is played in three periods of 20 minutes each.
• The game is played on a hockey rink. During normal play, each team is allowed six players per side (five players and one goaltender) on the ice at any time, each of whom moves around on ice skates.
• The objective of the game is to score goals by shooting a hard vulcanized rubber puck into the opponent's goal, which is placed at the opposite end of the rink.
• The players may control the puck using a hockey stick, and can also redirect the puck with any part of their bodies, subject to certain restrictions.
• The game is extremely fast-paced, with the players getting quite the workout moving themselves and the puck to either end of the rink.

The game turned out to be a good one. The first two periods were quite tight, but the Spirit broke the game open in the third period, coasting to an impressive victory. The last period also brought on a huge fight (another “tradition” in ice hockey) that ended with 3-4 players from each squad being ejected from the game.
My next week was filled with evening work activities, as many of my international colleagues were in Midland for the week, having just been in Houston for our leadership team meeting. On one of the evenings, we hosted a few people from the team at our house for a sushi dinner. We also made time during the week for dinner with some Australian friends of ours, Tony and Melissa, and their two children, Alexander and Sarah, and learned that Tony had accepted a new assignment with Dow that will take him and the family to Hong Kong in the middle of the year.

That weekend, we supported the local theatre again, this time to see a musical called “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.” It was a very funny Seinfeld-ish rendition of the ups and downs of relationships, and as always, we were impressed with the quality of the actors, all of whom are volunteers.

At work, I accepted the volunteer role of Chair of our North American women’s network. As part of this role, I spent a day in New York City the next week, attending a conference sponsored by a company called Catalyst. Catalyst’s mission is to find ways to get women into more prominent positions in Corporate America. Following the conference, there was a grand dinner at the famous Waldorf Astoria hotel. (The hotel was not as grand as I had imagined it would be, but there were clear signs of extreme affluence in the room’s fixtures and fittings.) I was joined at the dinner by seven female colleagues from Dow who are in various stages of their careers. Following the dinner, Dow sent its corporate jet to bring us back to Midland. That was quite the experience! My team had just recently hired one of the pilots of the jet and when he recognized me, he invited me to sit in the jump seat behind the pilots for the one and a half hour flight and get a first-hand view of what the pilots see. Very cool!

Following my trip to New York, I spent the next week in Texas visiting my team there. I find myself spending a lot of time with my team in Texas, mainly because the team is experiencing significant difficulties in filling Dow’s open positions along the Gulf Coast. The local shortage of engineers, coupled with the highly competitive labor market, has highlighted the war for talent that Dow is engaged in with other companies in the region. (Incidentally, for any engineers reading this that are interested in working for a chemical company in the Gulf Coast – or know anyone that does – please feel free to drop me an email!)

That weekend we stayed in Midland. In fact, in an unusual turn for us, we spent every weekend of the month in Midland. Thankfully, the weather gave us some incentives to stay in town. Warmer temperatures in the beginning of the month melted the snow, brought in some rain, and even gave us a few bright, sunny days. There were even a couple of days when the temperature reached the low 70’s (25 degrees Celsius). We used our weekends in Midland to catch up on some much-needed work at home, including finishing our dreaded tax returns, which seem to be getting more complicated with each passing year, and biking and jogging outdoors.
This month, we also met a lot of new people. I liken it to dating for the first time. It is amazing how nervous I get before going out with people for the first time, and I find myself asking Neal questions like: “Do you think they will like us?” and “Do you think I will be overdressed if I wear this?” It is amazing how the process of making new friends later in life can be so nerve-racking. One of our “dates” was a lunch with a couple who work at Dow, Andrew and Caroline. Andrew is originally from Australia, and his wife, Caroline, is from Singapore. They moved to Midland from Singapore about four years ago. We met for brunch at a great restaurant called The Cracked Egg in the nearby town of Bay City and then took a stroll around the city. Like Saginaw, Bay City was once the home of heavy industry, including sawmills and shipbuilders. Today, it is going thru some rather tough economic times. Still, some of the town’s historic buildings serve as a reminder of how beautiful it once was.

In the third weekend of the month, we took another day trip to the town of Ann Arbor, which is a two-hour drive south of Midland and the spot where Neal spent two years getting his MBA. Ann Arbor has everything we wish Midland could have: great restaurants, lots of boutique shops, and a lively downtown. Plus, the town is home to the University of Michigan, a massive university that offers all kinds of activities in addition to the town itself. While in Ann Arbor, we had a nice lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and then walked around and did some shopping.

In the final weekend of the month, we kept things fairly relaxing and stayed at home. We did manage to get away on another “date”, this time with some friends, at a restaurant in Saginaw that we had never heard about. The food was great, and they even had a live jazz band there providing the background entertainment. It was definitely a soothing way to end another busy month!