Kudos to Ildikó (and Ilari), Burcu, Jen, Gabor, Artem, Nina, and crowd for organising a great Summer Party. Well over 70 people turned up for the event.
It was well attended by quite a motley crowd.
I was so happy to renew contact with so many of the older CHAFF participants (Nina, Nina, and many more (not Nina's)...). Narendra Khatri and his wife (from Pakistan) took part for the first time in a CHAFF event, although he has been corresponding with Ildikó and me for quite a while. Narendra is a fund of knowledge about Oulu and has been helping out the O-Indians with useful information. (I am sorry for missing several names as I could not meet everyone in person and also because of dementia, including the very lovely person from China. Poor journalism... My bad and my sincere apologies.)
It was really wonderful to see Kaija Välimaa again. She has contributed so much to the success of CHAFF, especially Burcu! Seeing her reminded me of many old Chaff participants as Subramaniam Paneer from India, Anais Guimard from France and Michaela Tomasovska from Slovakia!
More importantly it was great to meet so many new faces. I met several new people as Omar a Peruvian with Palestinian roots and Juan Miguel Diaz Castro from Spain. (Juan is looking for a Base Guitar, which I learned has only 4 strings, unlike one of the other types of guitars which has 6 strings.)
There was plenty of food on the table. The really hot and sweet stuff vanished in a flash. Ilari made a fabulous chocolate sweet, which helped me lose another battle with daughter Joanna.
Tony did his job managing the grill where there was some fabulous chicken. Juan was a little surprised to see Annikki eating a sausage after she had just told him that she does not eat pork! It was a broiler sausage!
Grandkids Samuel and Daniel had a whale of a time. (Most of the photographs in this post are the doing of Samuel.)Better half Annikki had a job on her hands keeping track of the little fellow. Baby Maria, as usual, was smiling at everybody!
The Indian contingent, especially the engineers with their wives was strong. Lady engineers Swathi and Neena, Anil with wife and baby, Mandar, Suman, Roland, Ankit, Samba, Senthil, Surat and wife, Sreekant, wife and Dipankar, Sitaram and wife, Ram Prasad, and many more were present.
Unfortunately, as the Nokia Midsummer party coincided with this event at exactly the same time, more than 80% of the Indians were caught in a dilemma. Several called me to ask whether they could come later, but as I was not sure how long the Summer Party would last, I was not able to commit a time!
The Thai Association Secretary, Rachaya Ronkkainen, was ill and unfortunately could not get the word out to her members. When I spoke with her on Friday morning she was coughing constantly that I could hardly make out a word she said! But she tendered her apology as also President June Bunchen Koskela, who was also ill.
Arindam Mallick, a now regular CHAFF participant, arrived with his entire intensive Finnish language class (two and a half hours every day!!!!) including the teacher. Sadly, studying the Finnish language was their prime objective, so they came in quite late and missed all the great food.
The newcomers were from South Africa, Japan and Romania (a professional photographer who is setting up shop in Oulu) from that crowd. 
Thank you all for a wonderful summer party. Annikki and I are looking forward (as a participants) to more CHAFF activities with renewed vigour!
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