December Chairman’s Corner

Christmas is coming, and that means…         …Sint and his Zwarte Piets are here and the UN is criticising the Dutch tradition as racist…

…Xmas is coming and the goose is getting fat

…Santa Claus is coming to town

…the CADS Jokathon is almost upon us J

Yes folks, Friday 13^th is coming, and it’s time to be afraid! Book your tickets now for the CADS Jokathon.

Recently we have become late in confirming numbers to the hotel, and that has caused problems. So please reserve your places with Allan at luncheon@cads-amsterdam.org before Wednesday 11^th December to ensure you and your guests are not disappointed. Jeroen has designed a special Xmas menu for us.

News around the world is gloomy despite the message that the recession is over. RBS and HSBC are fined record amounts for corruption, and major business leaders are reporting pay increases of 14% compared with 1% for their workers (why don’t I get these rises?), and we are facing the coldest winter ever (how do they know? And what happened to global warming?). So escape the gloom for a moment and come to the CADS Christmas Jokathon!!! Blonde, brunette, diplomatic, political, animal and cultural jokes all welcome. See if you can lift the amazing CADS Jokathon trophy from the hands of John Richardson… J

And to get you in the mood, a recent poetry competition came down to a tie-breaker between Sarah, a Cambridge graduate, and James, an oil rig roughneck from Aberdeen. They were given a word and allowed two minutes to come up with a poem containing it. The word they were given was “Timbuktu.”

First up was Sarah. She stepped to the microphone and recited:

Slowly across the desert sand, trekked a lonely caravan; men on camels, two by two, destination Timbuktu.

The audience went wild – it must win! But the roughneck calmly made his way to the microphone and recited:

Me and Tim a huntin’ went, met three girls in a pop-up tent.

They were three, and we were two, so I bucked one, and Timbuktu.

See you on the 13^th!!!