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Happy New Year 2003 |
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December 2002
Dear Friends,
Another year has gone by, and here we are
again, writing to our friends to share with you how 2002 was for us. The photo
that comes with this letter was taken in early December in front of our house
right after the first snow storm of the season.
As you can see, the kids are growing fast!
Sasha is turning 15 on the 31st of
December! She started high school in
September, and once again made it into Honors English. This year, she wants to
be a psychiatrist when she grows up. She
drives her mom and dad crazy by locking herself up in her room and listening to
punk rock, burning CD ROMs with MP3 tracks downloaded from the Internet, and
chatting online all the time with her friends.
In April, during Spring break, she traveled to Orlando for a week with
her two best friends (Debbie and Edith) along with Edith’s parents. She and Alec traveled unaccompanied to Rio,
two weeks before Lucia and Mauricio did. After considering drum lessons (which did
not please her parents too much), Sasha started taking electric bass lessons in
September.
Alec was 11 in August. He is into math, computer programming, music
(he learned to play the
guitar this year - thanks to
Geraldo), and soccer. He’s become a
little bored with swimming. Alec is in Honors Math and currently plans to
become a neurologist when he grows up.
He says that while he thinks that he will enjoy studying the brain, he
doesn’t think he would really like to operate on one! His travel soccer team (Stallions Torpedoes)
did quite well in the spring, claiming first place undefeated and climbing to
the National II division. In the fall,
they were able to hold onto a spot in National II. Alec, who loves playing forward, was moved
back to midfield this year by coach George.
Though he didn’t like playing midfield in the beginning, he actually
says now that he also enjoys playing that position. In November, Mauricio obtained his soccer
coaching F-license from the US Soccer Federation. Starting in Spring 2003, he will assist with
coaching the Torpedoes.
While we are on the subject of soccer, this
year Brazil won the Japan/Korea FIFA World Cup! Brazil played a very weak
elimination round in 2000-2001 (the weakest in history). Right before the cup
started, we saw Brazil’s team start to improve a lot, which made us really
excited for the cup. Mauricio got up in
the middle of the night for every match in June. Lucia and the kids saw all of the Brazil
matches and Lucia actually saw some of the other matches. She said she couldn’t sleep with all the
yelling downstairs! It was great having
more than 20 people over at 6 AM for the final against Germany, and drinking
German beer at 9 AM as penta-campeões (five-time world champions). It was great watching the Brazilian fans
cellebrating on the Brazilian TV Globo Internacional. Alec now often proudly wears the five-star
Brazil jerseys to soccer practice.
Our friend Geraldo Veiga, who left AT&T
last year, moved in to live with us in April.
He plans to return to Brazil next year after a 25-year period in the
U.S. It has been great having Geraldo
over. The kids love him. He teaches them so much: music, history,
current events, French, computer programming, … He has also setup a wireless
network at our home, so now we can get on the Internet from anywhere in our
house.
We traveled less this year than last. Lucia and Mauricio went to Boca Raton
(Florida) in March for a telecom conference.
We visited with friends Joyce and Marcel in Palm Beach. Joyce and Mauricio went to school at Escola
Americana in Rio together. In July and
August, the family spent time with friends and family in Rio (seven weeks for
the kids, five for the parents). In
Brazil, we spent most of our time in Rio, staying at a friend’s (Silvia
Barandier from California) nice apartment at the Lagoa. We traveled several times to Renalva’s
(Mauricio’s mom) country house in Itaipava, to Búzios for five days on the
beach, and also to Angra dos Reis for three days at a beach resort. It was great! And Mauricio even got a little work done in
Rio. His first Ph.D. student (Renata
Aiex) defended her thesis in August and Mauricio was, of course, on the thesis
examination committee. He was very proud
of her. In September, Mauricio traveled
to L’Aquila (Italy) for a three-day conference of the Italian Operations
Research Society. An
unexpected opportunity that presented itself to Lucia in November was a
non-work trip to India with almost everything paid for (thanks goes to our
friend Marina Roesler for that!). Lucia and Marina spent a week going through
Bombay, Goa, and a few different places in the state of Kerala. It was great!
Great food, kind people, amazing colors... The last night was spent on a boat
going through the Backwaters of Kerala. There was a cook, a driver, and the
machinist on the boat with the girls. Waking up at sunrise in the middle of a
lake with the early sounds of the surrounding villages... what an
experience! Finally, in November,
Mauricio traveled to California for another conference. While the conference was in San José, he and Brazilian friends Luciana Buriol
and João Lauro Facó managed to squeeze in some sightseeing and visit much of
the Bay Area: San Francisco, Berkeley, Sausalito, Monterrey, Big Sur, … Mauricio also got to see his god daughter,
Joana Goic, who he hadn’t seen in four years.
He was amazed to see that Joana is almost as tall as he is! Joana is a very good student and will start
college in 2003. Sasha and Alec, as well
as the other god children of Mauricio and Lucia (Dominque Resende, Felipe
Monteiro, and Breno Guimarães) have big shoes to fill!
At work, the year started quite tense. With the meltdown of the telecommunications
industry, AT&T had to make major cuts in personnel this year. At Mauricio’s laboratory, the cuts were
draconian: about one-third of the scientific staff was let go. Fortunately, everyone in Mauricio’s
department, which does network optimization, among other things, survived. Lucia’s part of the business also suffered
cuts, but she was unaffected. Lucia
continues to design telecommunication networks for large corporate customers.
Mauricio’s current Ph.D. student, Luciana Buriol, spent the last 15 months
working with Mauricio on Internet routing research which will make up the bulk
of her dissertation. Her stay in New
Jersey ended in December with a big feijoada (typical Brazilian dish) for over 40
people. One of Mauricio’s biggest
professional achievements this year was the publication of two books that he
co-edited: Handbook of Applied Optimization, published in March by
Oxford University Press, and Handbook of Massive Data Sets, published in
May by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Each
book has over 1100 pages, with contributions by over 200 authors, taking more
than four years to finish.
In 2003, we plan to travel with the whole
family to Brazil in July and to Japan in August, where Mauricio has a
conference in Kyoto. That should be fun!
We hope that you all have happy holidays and
that 2003 be full of happiness, health, and achievements.
Kisses and hugs,