last updated September 30, 1996|
last updated September 30, 1996 |
News from Summer 1996Some news: Bridget Eng is engaged to be married! Todd Burdette is
engaged to be married next August! Josh Bers is getting married in
January in Buenos Aires, Argentina! I am now living in Chicago where I have just started business school at
the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. That is the major
update for what is happening in my life right now. I've got some exciting news to share with my fellow '93s: Jon Ruiz '93 and
I are getting married! We vacationed in Europe this summer, and he proposed
in Budapest, in quite a romantic setting, I might add--a park on the
Danube, with a view of the palace and cathedral. The wedding will be in
Chicago next summer. Jon's a programmer for Apple out in California, I'm
building educational software for the Learning Sciences Corporation
(affiliated with Northwestern University) in Chicago and applying to
business school. With any luck, we'll have this silly long-distance thing
worked out long before the wedding! This is my first letter
to the alumni news bank, since I have been building democracy in the
wastes of the Former Soviet Union for the last year for the National
Democratic Institute, along with several other Dartmouth grads, namely,
Katherine Switz 93, Alexander King 95, Laura Jewett 83. I got to monitor
parliamentary elections in Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, as well as the
presidentials in June in Moscow. Now I'm back in DC, hanging out with Erick (Squirt) Peterson 93 and
Marshall Billingslea 93.
Karen Ehrhardt '93 and Marshall Billingslea '93 are getting married in
August 1997 in Connecticut!! I've been working at MicroStrategy, a software company. It's pretty much
been my life since I
finished my Master of Engineering at Thayer School. You would think that
after studying electrical
engineering for 5 years that I would do something with electronics.
Guess again! I spent my
first year with MicroStrategy working with customers on the phone in
Technical Support, talking
about software. Now I'm managing the Technical Support service. Who
knew? I can only guess
what I'll be doing next. Quick run down on life-after graduation moved to Hongkong and then to
London to do a Master's degree and work part-time as a faux yuppie in the
CIty of London. Then I finally did what I had wanted to do for years and
moved to Hanoi, Vietnam to finish my MA thesis, job search and keep
learning more Vietnamese. I landed a job down here in Singapore with
Citibank. I moved to singapore in april 1995 and am actually maintaining
my Dartmouth patriotism as Enrollment Director for Singapore country!
This is somewhat nightmare-esque given that about 15 alumns live here and
half of us spend a good portion of time travelling. Hence, interviewing
season is somewhat compressed. However, life in Asia is always
entertaining and Singapore is an easy place to live. I get up to Hongkong
a lot so I do check in with the alums up there. I have some very good
Dartmouth/Tuck friends there from my summer in Hongkong after we
graduated. I am sorry to report that the Vietnam Dartmouth contingent has
disappeared-Gary Orenstein '89 and Jeff Swiatek '90 both ditched for
business school. Encouraging to learn of all these marriages-sounds like
I am in the wrong hemisphere for dating but no one ever said white girls
had an exciting lovelife in Asia! I seem to note more divorces than
weddings so this was very optimistic to see people still do get married
and not run off with 20 year old Indonesian girls!! Nonetheless, great
group of friends out here and some Dartmouth people do pass by. Todd
Donovan '92 spends a lot of time out here with business so we met up for
a weekend in Tioman island (great diving, snorkeling) and in Bali with an
upcoming two week trip planned to Nepal in October. Otherwise am just
taking in the usual interesting quirks of business in Asia. Certainly we
never have recessions....Travel has been good although somewhat slow of
late. But springtime I lived on SIngapore Airlines-to the extent that I
was very cross with the lack of new music channels in the inflight
entertainment system!! I've been
living down here in New Orleans for the last two years, mostly
memorizing things for medical school. This week I finished the first
step of my licensing exam, a two-day mother-scratcher of an exam on
everything. Fortunately you only need to now about half of everything
to pass. I am
currently living in Portland, Oregon, where I've been for just about two years,
after living in San Diego, CA for the year following graduation. I work for Tekt
ronix, part of Oregon's growing "Silicon Forest", the next hot-bed for high-tech
firms. I am a Product Specialist in the Color Printing divsion, where we make high-end color printers and try to chart a course for the defeat of Hewlett-Packard. My own personal addition to the Web is that I have finally found a way
back to Germany after working for the American Institute for Contemporary
German Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. for the
past year and a half. I have an internship in the German Parliament this
summer in Bonn and I was also accepted to a different program for the
academic year where I will study at the University of Bonn for a semester
and then have another internship in the Parliament. In short, I will be
in Germany for a full year. So I extend an open invitation to whomever
crosses the Atlantic to come drink some real beer and crash on my floor!
I am taking reservations now! My last day on email and in Washington is
May 31. I am sad to be leaving the Dartmouth Washington D.C. crew: Gregg
Serenbetz has been celebrating spring with his usual style (just ask
him). Rick Farmer got his car towed in a heavy rainstorm last weekend.
Dave Goldfarb is a very tan ninth grade teacher. Doug Chia is finishing
up another year at Georgetown Law. Matt Boniauto recently became a Price
Waterhouse employee. Seth Alpert is enjoying an easier rotation as a
third year med student. Katie Stiff is learning the meaning of
bureaucracy at the US Agency for International Development. Last time I
checked, Jeff Allen worked at Rails to Trails one floor down from my
office, but since he is only in town about one out of every four weeks, I
can't say for sure. I believe he has plans to move to Boston. Also
recently, I was happy to act as tour guide and show the San Franciscan
Chad Thomas "the Hill."
Right now I'm a Macintosh Sysadmin for the Internet Commerce Division of
VeriFone. We used to be Enterprise Integration Technologies, but we were
acquired late last year. I don't have much to do with the operations or
products of VeriFone itself, though. I just maintain the Macintoshes used
mainly by the administration and marketing staff.
This is also the fourth job I've had since I moved to California in August
of '93. The other jobs were Mac stuff as well, except for a few months as a
Technical Recruiter. I didn't like that much at all. |