WELCOMING THE NEW YEAR 2007

Dear Aunti Patti Koh,

Yes, I finally celebrated the New Year 2007 with my wife and friends. I have no life to be honest with you, ever since I worked for the airlne. As you well know, we are open 24 hours a day, all year round and I always worked on all the holidays. Since I am now semi-retired, I was able to spend some of the holidays with my wife.

We joined the rest of our friends and celebrated the new year in one of the houses of our friends who is an engineer and married to a nurse. They have a big house in one of the northwest suburbs of Chicago and there are approximately 30 - 40 people who attended the party. I cooked and catered the party. That is my hoobby. There was even a DJ. Since it was very cold outside, we held the party down at the basement of the house which is also very big.

After the fun and the toast has been done and all was drunk and fed, I was the only who did not have any alcohol or champagne. My wife was also drinking and having fun. There were five couples who stayed at the house, including myself and my wife. And there five singles who stayed also. We were able to accomodate ourselves in the house because there are six bedrooms in the house, plus a library that can be converted into a bedroom with a sofa bed and the solarium that can also be converted into a bedroom with a trundle bed inside.

It was fun, and the next morning we all gathered at the main dining room of the house having coffee and breakfast at 1130am. We all slept late so we stayed in bed longer than our usual. We had lots of fun and stories to talk about and the many to reminisce and re-told again and have fun about it.

I love my group of friends. We talk about our times inside the seminary and the many things we did, the people who went further and got ordained and the ones who got ordained and left and got married and now part of our group called PAX CHICAGO. We are a group of ex-seminarians and ex-priest from a religious-German congregation back home in the Phils.

We have no regret leaving the seminary and the priesthood. We have out individual vocations now, raising our children and having a family.

We welcome the coming year 2007 and look ahead that this year bring forth more Understanding to the world and its people.

And so Auntie Patti Koh, I salute you and hope for the better year ahead and wish that there will be more laughter on this planet, from people whose only aspirations and ambitions in life is to be good to its fellow men!!