High School Reunion

Through a little snooping on the Internet I found high school friends Steve Sterner and Des Surles, married (!) with a couple of girls out the door. We finally got a chance to get together when I stopped in Minnesota on my way back to Tokyo.

Steve is an ER guy and has reduced the hair on his head, while Des has been taking care of the horses and obviously chopped her hair short in sympathy to Steve's reduction. Ha!

We have agreed to meet up in the summer when I go through Minnesota with Thor.

Rudolph Voll is 97

On my way to London I stopped in Bangkok to catch up with the stock exchange on a number of issues. On the weekend before heading to London I had the chance with Max Petitjean to visit a former Tokyo resident Rudolph Voll at his daughter Aloha's home outside of Bangkok in a gated community. Rudolph escaped Berlin and the Gestapo in the 1930s and while making his way out of Shanghai by boat was blown by a typhoon to Japan. He settled in there for the war and got started in shipping pearls to Europe. That remains his career, and Aloha is running the business from Bangkok. They've still got offices in Hong Kong and Tokyo. Rudolph won't be traveling much anymore. I made a video of his message to the open table at the FCCJ you can see on YouTube.



Later that evening Max and I had the Seafood Market experience. Great stuff!

Together after all these years

Dick and I worked together at Time-Life back in the early 1980s. Here we are in my backyard in Tokyo several years later enjoying a Jacuzzi with our wives.

Ha! Who woulda thunk it?