Happy Birthday Sadhana

Many of you may notice the new emblem we have for the blog. This was submitted by the person whose birthday we celebrate today.

One of my most frequent contributors, and now one of my best friends, Sadhana celebrates her xxxxx (rating - means very very young, almost child-like, I am xxxxx- x) birthday today.

Here is a picture of our dear one

(to be posted later)

looking as young and as beautiful as her days in school.

Here is her daughter, Gopa, and her Finnish husband, Timo, when they visited us recently in Oulu. Gopa is now my goddaughter.

(to be posted later)

Sadhana is busy organising the 54er reunion. Her tentacles have reached out far and wide. I thank her for keeping me posted on the reunion plans.

Such distinguished personalities as Rahul Bajaj, Rumy Kapadia, Ravi Jaitly, and many many more will be attending from many corners of the globe.

If you need further details please do contact me.

Is This Typical Cathedralite Character?

Sunil Sahni (57er) and his wife, Kamal, are due here in Finland, on a holiday. During the process of planning their holiday, well well in advance of the time, I found Sunil performing all his functions so meticulously, I was amazed to see the amount of detail he went through.

What really took the cake was when he asked whether I could buy their tickets from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, which I gladly accepted to do. Sunil, quite rightly, did not want to send his credit card details over the internet - a very wise move.

When I informed him that the tickets had been bought, I had an unusual request. Sunil wanted to know the seat numbers so that he could inform the taxi driver who would meet them at St. Petersburg so that they could be picked up at the station to be taken to their hotel!!

Well, when replying to him, I gave him that piece of information and also told him that the tickets would be in the top right hand drawer of my office table in the cellar!!!

He promptly wrote back asking whether the top drawer was locked - to which I replied that we have no keys to anything in our home!!!!!

Birthday Boy - Best wishes

Our dearest and most respected physics teacher, William Shiri, more commonly known to all of us as just "Willie", celebrates his 79th birthday at his home in Canada.

It is my pleasure to convey the greetings of Cathedralites of many generations who had the privilege to study under Willie, all the very best on his birthday and to wish him several more such happy occasions.

It has been my special pleasure to have had him as my email friend these last few years and I do hope that I will have the opportunity to meet up with him and his better half, Pushpa, also a Cathedralite, as well.

Need I Say More?

Wednesday 5th May 2004, 18:44 Finnish time, our daughter, Joanna, delivered a beautiful baby boy, 53 cm length and weighing 4 kg and 300 gm. Samu, Joanna's first born, was 54 cm when born but 3.9 kg.

Annikki and I were looking after Samu all afternoon and evening as dad, Tony, stayed at Joanna's side right from 09:00 hours.

I have just picked up Tony, giving Samu a chance to see his baby brother.

Samu was all excited telling me that his briother had brown hair, but he could not see the eyes!!

Annikki and I are thrilled to have an addition to our family, our third grandchild after a gap of 7 years!!

Mother and baby are well and that is all we asked of God.

Sasser Virus And You

How many of you have been hit by the Sasser virus?

Tony's computer closed down on Sunday as the virus hit Finland. There is worldwide chaos. With this virus you do not have to download a virus email or open any attachment. The virus finds the computers that are connected to the internet and which are not protected, and then infects it.

Of course, you have to be running a PC with the Windows operating system to be infected, which represents 95% of the world computing population.

On the other hand, I am perpetually connected to the internet, do not have any virus protectioon software, and in my 20 years of computing have never experienced a single virus since I run the Mac operating system.

As reports come to me from every corner of the globe about horror stories related to each virus, and there are over 120000 of them for the Windows platform, all I can say is that I am not following the rats off the plank into the murky waters below. I can sleep at night knowing that no-one can infect my computer network.