Lee Note 53 Cathy Novosad June 9, 2001

Dear Kay,

Thanks for contacting me here in Malaysia. You don't give up easily! I got a message from Martha Lynne (Jones) Trautwein. She and I have tried to keep up with one another. But other than going to the reunion last summer, I've really not been in contact with many of our classmates.

This move came up so suddenly that I had little time to contact anyone. My husband works for Conoco, Inc. and we are just a couple of years away from retirement. So the offer of this overseas assignment was pretty unexpected. We got our kids' permission, sold our home and our cars and here we are in Southeast Asia. I had to look this area up in our atlas. We live in Melaka, which is on the western coast of peninsular Malaysia about half way between the capital, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore.

The climate is a lot like Houston in the summertime, or maybe more like Galveston. We live on the 31st floor of a high rise condo and look out over the Straits of Melaka. The expat community is very warm and welcoming and is made up of about 30-35 people. Our ocean shipment just arrived today and we have spent the entire day unpacking and feathering our nest, so-to-speak.

Our son, John, is coming to Singapore in a couple of weeks. He works as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments out of Houston. He will be attending a CommunicAsia 2001 conference. We'll be going over the latter part of his stay and hope to do a little sightseeing together and a lot of visiting and catching up. What a nice Godsend his visit is!

Thanks for making the effort to contact me and I look forward to hearing the news of old friends from the Class of 1960.

Fondly,

Cathy (Novosad) Gardner