1999-01-10: A Happy New Year - 1999

From Peter and Ladina:
A lot of success for all of you in 1999!

From Shona and Alexis:
Stay healthy, keep in touch!

Our life here in the Silicon Valley is very different from Japan. Here we need two cars, can't live without. For example, there is a line of cars waiting in front of the school when Shona is picking Ladina up from pre-school. She has a sign behind the windshield with big letters saying [ L A D I N A ]. The teacher who is waiting at the door calls her when she sees the sign. It's all well organized, but totally dependent on cars. You even can go to the bank, fast-food and cinema without leaving your car, well you already know that.

Ladina, now 3 1/2, likes her pre-school a lot. She shows me with pride the pictures she was drawing at pre-school. And then, she is using the mouse already very proficiently (not the hairy one). She likes the educational games where she is learning the ABC and numbers. If you have kids, I highly recommend the JumpStart CDs by Knowledge Adventure.

Living in Japan for 8 years has been a long time, I miss my friends there and the parties we had in our "Kotobuki Restaurant". The Silicon Valley is the next step in our life, we are still working on finding good friends, a question of time. We plan to stay here for several years. If you happen to travel to California, make sure to give us a buzz.

happy new year! as usual a late greeting from the thoeny family. we live in the states already half a year. the life in here is very quiet. we didn't got to know more friends yet, but even though i could feel the life in here is not as excited as hong kong, japan and switzerland.

alexis will be two years on january 24, he is very very cute and already helps to bring the dishes to the kitchen after supper and washes the dishes too. at the moment, there is one thing that makes me like here: tasty chinese dim sum restaurant and shopping for chinese cooking is much more convenient than in japan or switzerland. some of the food is even cheaper than in hong kong.

A word about morphing. Morphing is the technology to gradually change one picture into another one. We took the "daughter like father, son like mother" theme and morphed Ladina out of Peter, Alexis out of Shona. If you got this letter by mail you only see 4 static pictures. How about going to an Internet Cafe and have a look at the morphing in moving pictures?