Guus Bosman

The secret of the mysterious Christmas card has been resolved.

If you open the flower by pulling on the sides, it has a secret message: a happy 2006!

Friday evening was the Christmas party of my company in Philadelphia. I took a train with three colleagues from Union Station. I don't think I had ever taken an Amtrak train before, so this was a nice experience. We left at noon and it's about two hours from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia.

It was a very nice party, in a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia. When the bar closed around 11 pm we went to a Southern style restaurant with a live jazz band. I spoke with a lot of clients and colleagues. We closed the evening with drinks in the lobby of the hotel.

After Thursday's Christmas happy hour of Augusto and Ewa this was my fifth Holiday celebration in little over two weeks.

On my way back the next day I saw that my train had a three hour delay. I was glad I could exchange my ticket for an express service that was leaving only 40 minutes later.

Last Friday we went to the Christmas party of Sasha's work. When arrived around 7.30 pm there were already a lot of people. Like last year the food and decorations were excellent, and there was a real festive atmosphere.

We met a lot of Sasha's colleagues -- Sasha is working in a different department since last year so there were many new faces for me. We had dinner and talked a lot. A bit later we found Rosa and Jenny in a line for the buffet, a very pleasant surprise.

In the crowd I saw Paul Wolfowitz, the new president, surrounded by a lot of people.

After dinner we went to a bar downstairs where we had deserts and some drinks, and then to our favorite destination, a disco-style dancefloor. It was really crowded and dark, like a club, with a great mixture of Latin music, greatest hits and others. We danced for a long time, and had a realyblast.

Later we moved to the dancefloor upstairs, where there was a life band playing rock & roll music and we met a lot of Rosa's friends. We danced all night and were among the last ones to leave the party.

Yesterday was my first day after a week in Puerto Rico, and the change in weather was dramatic: there was a nice layer of snow on the world when I walked to my work.

For the first time since a long time I was wearing my real winter shoes again. At worked I changed to work shoes, and of course in the evening I forgot my winter shoes at work.

Every time the weather is slightly different than average the news channels are covering the "snow storms" full time. This time CNN had a special reporter in Secaucus, to show how much it was snowing there.