Summer 2001

What can I say! Keeping a web site up to date is the pits - just never seems to be enough time to do it. Some eighteen months since I updated the photos and over a year since I wrote some news - slack hey! Anyway if you are expecting this to be a bumper edition - don't! I need to redo this whole site and I have decide not to invest too much time on this version. So no prizes for discovering bugs as this is a quick and dirty to get some news and photos out to friends and family.

Wow a years worth of news - thinking about it most of it is ancient history so what the heck I will just talk about more recent happenings (or at least mainly 2001 happenings). The last year has been pretty tough from a work perspective - the merger with CG came at a time when the markets all were collapsing. When you are a partnership you can ride out these tough times without having to advertise your difficulties - as a quoted company we are constantly under the microscope and when the news is bad (as it was when we recently announced a profit warning) the share price tumbles - it was 150 euros on May 23rd 2001 and today it is around 69 euros - and all hell breaks lose as the management try to take remedial action. Hard to believe that when I wrote the last newsletter our share price was around 260 euros (it peaked in 2000 at around 368 euros). Of course I in my infinite wisdom using the lesser known Brizzi philosophy of trading (buy high and sell low) have a portfolio (which not only contains CGEY stock but some other gems like ARTG and Tiscali who have all managed to lose close to 95% of their value) which looks rather sick. Ah well looks like I will have to put off retirement from when I had planned (i.e. at 40) to when I am 128 or so.

My tough times have meant that Cindy has suffered as well - obviously when the shares went down I had to hit somebody and not having a dog it was mainly her. So there she was looking after a crying kid as well as Nicola, Calvin and Catrina. Cindy is a star though and always tells me I should get out the rat race and we can go do something else ( I have noticed though she is stocking up on shoes just in case...just kidding). On the subject of Cindy she is he President of the Benvenuto club this year - so at least one of us in the family has a prestigious role. She has also been doing some part time work for a pharmaceutical company doing internet research as well as some research on the Italian 3g (3rd generation cellular telephony) market for an Irish company. In addition she has fixed up our terrace with a host of plants and a beautiful awning (Mediterranean style).

The kids are great - we have been in Italy 5 years now so Catrina has spent more time here than in SA. Catrina and Calvin are both fully bilingual and Nicola has picked up a lot as well. Catrina and Nicola are both doing great at school - Calvin is....well.... attending - physically at least - his mind is off catching Pokemon or working out his next move on the latest play station game. He his lucky as he is very bright so with less than zero effort he scrapes through. We have threatened to send him to a new school but we are not sure we will. We cannot find one that we are sure is better or would necessarily help him - the teachers here are very hands off - if the kid does not want to work then it is his problem. Luckily for him he has a mom in Cindy that cares deeply about him and stays behind him in this constant battle to get him to do at least some work. I admire Cindy for that, I would have given up long ago and sent Calvin off to work as short order cook at McDonalds.

Winter this year was great - tons of snow and we had fresh powder almost weekly (sometimes too much and we had to be careful of avalanches off piste). Over Easter I went back to SA for Leigh and Laura's wedding in Cape Town and then went up to see my sister and folks in Baberton - what a beautiful area that is (former eastern transvaal now mpumalanga) - I would highly recommend it for a visit. In fact we are thinking of taking a whole lot of Italians there next august for a safari.

With the arrival of summer Cindy and I have started biking again and I am now playing quite a bit of tennis as well. We did a fantastic ride in Switzerland with Karen mostly and then some with Raymond and his brother. It was in the Engadina region (around St. Moritz). Cindy Karen and I rode from Sils Maria to Pontresina where we met Raymond and his brother - we then all cycled up the Val Roseg to the foot of the lowest glacier in Europe. It was stunningly beautiful. The Kids and Raymond's folks went up the Val Roseg in a horse drawn carriage (no cars or other vehicles are allowed in the valley) - the kids loved it. We had a great lunch at the restaurant up there and then cycled (some of us anyway) at break neck speeds back to Pontresina. I have been riding both my MTB and my road bike and have managed a couple of spectacular crashes - fortunately with nothing more than bumps, scratches and bruises. (almost 40 and still falling off my bike....) My right knee took over a year to recover from the torn ligaments and now I am having big problems with the left one - mainly as a result of favouring it while the other was recovering - when I spoke to my doctor about whether I should be doing less sport to preserve my knees his response was a cynical - "there is no point in dying with healthy knees" - so I will continue to do a Danny and abuse my body till it no longer works. (I have lost 8kg's since April so I must be doing something right).

For our summer hols (where most of the new pics come from) - we went with our friends Alessandro and Kim and their son Daniel to Sardinia. Again what a beautiful place. The sea was crystal clear - I did a number of dives (not the red sea but very nice never the less - even saw dolphins one day). We also did a sailing course which was great fun and had us all in stitches at the antics of Alessandro and myself - both of us at different stages falling off the boat for no apparent reason. During a regatta I even fell off, managed to hold on to the boat and pull myself back in. We only tipped over once and on that occasion I managed to scramble onto the side of the boat and not get wet. The kids had a great time, They had a mini club at the resort for the younger ones - I think we caught a brief daily glimpse of our kids between activities - and a junior club for the teenagers - so Nicola was able to meet and have fun with youngsters her own age. Calvin won a boatload of gold medals for a host of different competitive activities, Nicola's girls soccer team also won a gold and they gave Catrina a special Gold medal because she was small but still participated in everything. Even at night they got the kids to do fashion shows and sing - it was great.

Cindy and the kids are in SA right now visiting family and friends - I had to stay behind to redo the web site. Miss them lots but they will be back soon. Well as it is very late and I want to publish the site before I go to bed I will sign off. I will redo the site soon promise...