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News Winter 2008
What to say, just over 2 years since we updated the website, road to
hell and all that, is all I can say. The fact that we are doing it today
is a bit of an accident - a mixture of the flu and a cloudy day on the
mountain. Yes, not to mess with the Brizzi family tradition we are up in
the mountains for Christmas and New year. This is our 12th winter since
moving to Europe and we have managed to pass every Christmas holiday in
the mountains, 2 years in the Valtellina and the last 9 in La Thuile.
This year has been fantastic in that we have, after a few lean snow
years, great snow cover. The only sad piece of news is that Karin and
Raymond, who traditionally also share our holidays with us, were not
both with us. Raymond had a a shoulder op and had to work so could not
make it this year and Karin only made it up (with Zigzag) for a few
days.
Not to bore you with 2 years of trivialities we will try and précis all
our news into a few paragraphs. working backwards, Nicola has graduated
from Bocconi completing her undergraduate degree in Business Economics,
she is currently doing a six month stage with a pharmaceutical company,
working with the MD, before doing some more studies next year - she is
currently undecided as to exactly what post grad degree to do, but it
will probably have something to do with strategy. See thephotos of her
grad under the tab with Nicola's Graduation. Calvin is finishing his
last year of school and has already been accepted into the Milan
University to do maths and physics. Catrina in doing her last year of
middle school and is going to do Scientific High School. Catrina is
still very active with her Ballet and Modern dance. The other two do not
have any real passions at the moment ( well Calvin does try his best to
wear out his computer playing games). This winter Calvin is working in
the ski resort, as Nicola did last winter. Cindy continues to lead a
very busy life, organising the house and kids, making jewelry, pottering
with her computer business and organising walks and other events through
the Benvenuto Club to raise money for charity. 2007 saw the 3rd Walk to
Health in the Monza Park - over 200 people participated walking either
8km or 16km - all organised by Cindy and her band of merry friends with
the patronage of the Monza Municipality. Riccardo ran it this year,
anything to get out of helping again! Unfortunately for him the running
bug bit and he continued running this year completing the Monza half
marathon in September in 1:42 - he was really happy as he had been
aiming for a 1:45. In 2008 we have committed to running the Dublin
Marathon, well Riccardo will run it and Cindy will walk it.
2007 also saw a career change for Riccardo, close on 2 years of
extensive traveling and working in the UK began to take its toll and
Riccardo decided it was time to take a cut in salary and spend more time
at home. In April he joined SAP Italy as the COO - earning a lot less,
but working 10 minutes from home and hardly traveling. It has been
fantastic from a family perspective, eating dinner every night with the
family has made a world of difference. Stress levels have come down,
weight has dropped and we are more like a "normal" family. Riccardo has
had a bit of a culture shock working back in Italy but is really
enjoying being home even if the job environment is very difficult.
Between leaving Vodafone and joining SAP we realised a long time dream
and went heliskiing. We took just over a week away from the kids and
went to Snowbird UTAH, we spent two days heliskiing, which were
fantastic! and the rest of the week in the resort. We also spent two
days in Vegas on the way home and one day with our friends Rob and Linda
in Phoenix. Snowbird had its worst winter in 20 years, which meant only
3m of snow instead of 6m but we still had a fantastic time. We also met
some really nice people from New York, Amy and Whit, who later came out
to Monza to stay with us and watch the Monza GP. we could write pages
and pages on that trip alone but we won't bore you - we will instead
upload some pics if you are interested.
This year our summer holiday was spent in Sicily, we went back to a
place we really enjoy called Fontane Bianche - pretty low key beach
holiday but is was great to have the whole family together for a few
weeks. We have loaded some pics of that trip as well. On the extended
family front Riccardo's folks and sister are all doing well, they all
drove up to La Thuile for Christmas dinner with us. The cats, General
Julius Ceasar and Princess Lea of the Naboo are growing bigger each day
- they stressed a bit with Zigzag in the house over Christmas but are
all happy now to have the house back to themselves. Cindy niece, Sam,
passed her matric and her nephew Jason is working as the Phys Ed master
at a local school in East London.
We have tried to keep the news short not to bore you - the pics will
fill in some of the gaps so do take a look at them as well. As a quick
aside Riccardo has also invested in a start up company in Finland called
Ubipart - www.ubipart.com - he is the Chairman of the company, a non
operational role, but he does go up to Helsinki a few times a year for
board meetings. He is hoping that one day this will be his big
opportunity to become rich - none of us is holding their breath right
now though :-) though the company did sell its first real deal a few
weeks ago in Indonesia One more piece of news - I finally folded and
bought a red 1982 famous Italian convertible car starting with an
F...... no not a Ferrari i wish - its a Fiat 124 Sport Spider America -
some pics of that on the site as well - on the page with the cats.
Well take care until 2010 when we next update the website :-) - below a
little more rambling to read for those of you who have nothing better to
do....
As sports fans always feel that somehow supporting a winning team makes
them better people or that in someway without their support the team
would not have done as well, I can say that the last few years have been
very good to us! I kind of feel I am writing to you all as a triple
world champion - in 2006 I was lucky enough to be at the world cup
football final when Italy won - what an experience! Then this year Cindy
I were in Paris for the semi finals of the Rugby world cup and saw the
springboks beat Argentina, of course we all know they went on to beat
the limey's (for the 5th time in a row) to win the Rugby world cup -
funny how I can switch from being Italian to being South African in a
blink of an eye! and blinking again, Ferrari won both the constructors
and drivers world title this year....I could go on about how Ducati also
won the Moto GP title and the Italian women's volley ball team won the
world champs, but since I did not actively watch every game or every
race in those sports I feel slightly less responsible for those
achievements....
Take care all. Lots of love from the Brizzi's |
