2008 Year in Review
- We arrived in Bangkok to start my tour as the Director of the Gobal Financial Service Center in July.
- We had a lot of visitors, mostly relatives, while in Bangkok from the States and even England. Brother Chris and my Meehan cousins from Norwich, U.K. Liz and John Froud visited Thailand end of January.
- Raine and Dick visited us in February and we made our way up to Chang Rai and from there took a boat ride on the Mekong river through the "Golden Triangle" where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet and is infamous for trafficking of opium and heroin shipped across the border to Northern Thailand and down to Bangkok.
- My old Peace Corps buddy Jack Colbourn visited us as well. We took him to a performance of Siam Niramit in Bangkok.
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Jack with a couple of performers
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Our Boat on the Mekong River
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Dinner Open Roof Top Vertigo Grill Above Bangkok
- Doris and David Visited Viet Nam the end of March
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Tunnel in Ho Chi Minh
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| David on the Mekong River Delta |
- Jeffrey graduates from Virginia Tech on May 9th. Hoda Kotb, of the NBC Today Show, a 1986 graduate, was the commencement speaker
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| Graduation Announcement |
- Tennis Tournament with Thai Police in
- Visit to Phuket May 17-19
- A farewell dinner in early July at the J.W. Marriott was hosted by my tailor Bobby Raja. Butch Davisson from CGFS/Charleston and my old friend from Peace Corps days, Vince Abramo were also able to attend.
- We had an excellent American dentist on the JUSMAG compound by the name of Dr. Dick Graham. After serving as a dentist with the US Army in Viet Nam Dick was reassigned to Thailand to work alongside 30 doctors and nine dentists at the US Army’s Fifth Field Hospital, known today as the Sukhumvit Hospital in Bangkok. In June 1974, he left the military but remained at the hospital as a civilian dentist. Two years later, America’s military presence in Thailand was winding down and it looked as though Dick would be heading back home but, instead stayed on to serve the American Embassy community.
- We participated in a 10 K charity walk to celebrate the 175th Anniversary of U.S. - Thai relations. Doris is standing next to Ambassador John. Doris came in first for her age group. The ambassador lost his 17 year old daughter, Nicole, who tragically fell to her death from a window ledge in a hotel in NYC.
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| Charity Walk |
- Good friends at our favorite Italian restaurant La Buca. Steve, Fran, Bert and Mary. Bert worked for Deloitte Touche.
- We departed Bangkok July 16, 2008 and stopped in San Francisco for a few days to see Mom, my brothers and relatives.
- Our house on Daniel Island (DI) was under construction when we returned so we had to move into my town house on DI drive, which was rented the whole time we were in Bangkok. We ended up not moving into our new custom built home until March 2009.
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Our new house under construction
- From August 8-11 we took Josh and Brielle up to Washington D.C. for a long weekend and toured all over on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus stopping at all the historical sites and monuments. We even got a pass to visit the White House gardens since President Bush was not in residence and were given some plant seedlings.
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- On August 16 we attended the Bruce Springsteen concert at the North Charleston Coliseum.
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| North Charleston Coliseum |
Magic Tour The Boss with Clarence Clemmons
and Danny Federici
- Mom passed away in her sleep on November 8th while I was finishing up the OIG inspection in Ouagadougou. I ended up having to take a flight back to San Francisco via Dakar and Paris and remember completing my portion of the inspection report at the Paris Charles De Gaulle airport waiting for my flight to SFO.
- I did catch the results of the election of Barack Obama at the American Cultural Center in Ouagadougou.
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