Christmas Letter 1999

Alan Hodgkinson Waldstätterstrasse 10 CH-6003 Luzern, Switzerland alan.hodgkinson@alum.mit.edu http://www.softxs.ch/alan

Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and enjoying life. It's the end of the millenium and I turned forty! It's definitely an occasion to celebrate. After the New Year when things calm down, I'll throw a 40th birthday party with a friend who also turned forty. I know it's a little late, since my birthday was actually last May.

Last March I took part in the Engadiner Ski marathon, a 42 km cross- country ski race. A friend talked me into it. My goal for the race was simply to finish (alive). In the event it went well and I completed the course in just over three hours (don't be too impressed, the winner finished in less than half the time!). Good weather, good snow conditions and beginner's luck helped. I was pleased with my result and enjoyed it enough to enter the race again next year. For next year's race we'll be booking a hotel in St. Moritz with a 'wellness' center. I plan to spend the evening after the race in the Jacuzzi! I'll be basing my race strategy around that.

In June I attended a gathering of many of my relatives in London. There were over twenty of us who came, some of whom I hadn't seen in over twenty years. It was a great afternoon and it was great to see them all again and catch up on family gossip from around the world. A partial spin off this and a previous meeting with an Australian cousin is 'Y2K-Ski', a gathering of relatives for skiing in the French Alps next March.

The highlight of the year was meeting up with Sandra, who loves travel and more importantly loves to travel with me. She's Italian, though she was born and grew up in Switzerland. I'll be struggling to learn some Italian in the coming year, starting no doubt with all the food words. In the meantime we speak Swiss-German.

Trips this year included: a long weekend in Istanbul, not long after the earthquake; motorcycle trips to see the solar eclipse (which I saw through overcast skies) and the motorcycle grand prix at Monza near Milan; a number of visits to Stockholm, one of which was a business trip to do a study for a computer system for a ski resort (really!); a trip back home to California; and a trip to southeast Asia.

The best trip of the year was definitely our attempted vacation in Vietnam, which at the last minute turned into a vacation in Thailand. Two days before our departure Sandra and I learned of severe flooding in Vietnam's central region and we were forced to re-plan. We opted for two and a half weeks in Thailand, spending a week in the north, a few days in Bangkok and almost a week in the south. We bought Thai Airways tickets and made up our program as we went along. In the north we visited Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle. This included a high-speed 'long tail' boat trip on the Mekong River and a visit to a Laotian 'Duty Free' island, where one could buy trinkets and quite strange local booze.

In the south we visited the island of Phuket. This is one of Thailand's main tourist destinations, complete with all the typical distractions. Basically it's a beach resort, so we sat on the beach, swam in the sea, shopped in the markets and hung out in the go-go bars. We also took a boat/kayak trip to Phang Nga bay, an area full of unusual mushroom shaped islands. The islands are surrounded by cliffs, which at the waterline have been eaten away by the sea. On the trip we rode in kayaks around some of the islands, including going into caves and through tunnels, some of which led into hidden lagoons in the islands' interiors. The area was made famous in the James Bond movie Man with the Golden Gun.

All in all, the trip was a big success. Thailand is a fantastic country. It's exotic, the people are nice, travel is easy, it's warm and the food is fresh and really spicy. What more could you ask for? This was my second trip to Thailand and I'll definitely go again one day.

Digital photography continues to be a favorite hobby. I bought a digital camera last year and this year I bought more digital film. I now have enough to take over 700 pictures before having to upload. I know because I took more than that many on the Thailand trip. Check out my web-site in the coming months. In my copious free time (ha, ha!), I'll be putting some of my better photographs there.

Since it's the end of the 90's and everybody's connected via the Internet, I'll ask you all to waste a few minutes tomorrow at work in order to send me e-mail with some news about yourselves. Use the address shown above.

Best wishes for the holiday season and the new millennium!

Alan.