The first meeting CHAFF for 2007 was an event which showed that we are going to have an outstandingly great year. This first meeting was attended by persons from Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Poland, Thailand, Zambia, and many many Finns.
The Restaurant Pailin went to no end to make sure the even was a success. Unnop is a master carver, but this time he allowed Pailin to carve her first water melon.
As is said, behind every successful man is a lady. In this case there are two ladies, mother and daughter. The watermelon was made as a gift to two of them behind the Nobel Laureate, Julista and her daughter Ildiko, who is one of our earliest CHAFF participants.
The meeting celebrated not only the visit of Nobel Laureate Arpad Hamos and his wife, Julista, to CHAFF, but also the marriage of Ilari Sohlo to Ildiko, the daughter of the Nobel Laureate, week before last. Ildiko and Ilari are the celebrated authors of the book "Culture Shock Finland" which has been published in German.
Arpad is an expert on the safe transportation of hazardous materials, especially nuclear stuff. Although now just retired from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he is so young at heart and is eager to continue his work as a Consultant. With enormous projects like the Olkiluoto expansion of the nuclear power plant, there will be no shortage of takers for his knowledge!
The meeting was very much a family affair as besides Leena (Poland) and her husband, and two children, we had Ville and his wife, Fumi (Japan) and her baby daughter, Mari, at the meeting.
Ilari gets two thumbs up from me.
Besides Leena and her family, who were attending for the first time, we had three new Indian engineers working in Oulu also attending their first CHAFF meeting. Two are from Chennai and the third from Bihar.
(Photograph from Ville's site.)
Fumi has just started an experimental project to make soap which is based on olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil. As was described by her, it is matured in the cold process, which lets the saponification reaction go slowly at room temperature. As a side product, the soap contains glycerol, which is good to keep the moisture in the skin and which is usually removed in commercial soap. The reason why Fumi has started this soap making project is this point.
This soap is good for the skin and also good for shampooing. After washing the hair with this soap, simply rinse the hair with vinegar water. (Approximately 2-3 shot glasses of any kind of vinegar for eating in a bucket of water).
Let us hope Fumi gets this soap into a production scale fast, as having tested her soap last night, I can say it certainly was a great experience as my dry skin was tingling with freshness!
Fumi is a biochemist doing research at Oulu University. But at the moment she is enjoying her first throes of motherhood looking after her beautiful daughter, Mari.
There was much work executed at the meeting behind the scenes. Connections were made to help those in trouble, and contributions were received to the CHAFF Help Fund.
We especially missed those who were ill, still away of holiday, those who were out of town, or those who could not make it to the meeting for reasons beyond their control! But the spirit of Tero, although feeling sick, made it to the meeting. Those who missed this meeting certainly missed an event which truly represents the enormous people power of CHAFF.
See you, as usual, next week on Sunday 14th January 2007 at 1300 hours at the Pailin Restaurant, Kenttätie 9, Kasarmi Area.
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