Merry Christmas from Lynn & Zoey

Lynn posted some nice snowy, christmassy photos on facebook for us all to enjoy.

Merry Christmas from The Rowes In Ireland

Christmas Message from Dave in California

Blue Ribbon

I took these photo's in Disneyland and have been meaning to add them to the blog, so I thought I had better do that before I forget once again. 

New Additon to the ex Premier family

In all my excitment with our trip, I forgot to mention Mark Vuurman.  It just so happened that Mark I think googled Premier Milling and came across the Premier Blog.  Mark worked in Networks with Mario, Melony, Lawrence and Gavin, it just happened that Mark left about a year and a bit after I joined Premier.  Anyway to cut a long story short Mark has been emailing me and it also on Facebook for those of you who are not linked to him yet, and is off on a 3 month stint in India, he may have left already I am not sure.  So Mark please keep us updated and send us some photos of India would love to see what it looks like.  For those of you who want to get in contact with Mark email me and I will send you his email address.

Here is the first or 2nd email I received from Mark:

Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2009 12:12 AM

To: "Rose-Marie Rowe"
Subject: Re: Mark - Mario


 Hi Rose,


My surname is Vuurman. I worked in the network department with Lawrence, Gavin, Mario, Riaaz and Melony. I remember derrick well.   Seems as though a lot of us left SA. Whereabouts are you these days?
I haven't been back to SA since I left.


Anyway, I enjoyed my time at Premier, it was definately like a family to me as well.  I remember Lawrence and Melina's wedding, also Gavin and Edwina's and Mario's too. I remember you being on the Oceanos, I remember the premier talent show and being conned into a couple of performances. I remember the "Chip Inn" and getting rather tippsy, and being part of the social club orginising a couple of outings, one being the day at the motor races(which i saw some pictures of on the site).....the list goes on.

Mark has been living in Auckland and Melbourne for the last 10 years.

Jozi, South Africa

Every time we go home to SA we try and hook up with some of our friends from Premier, this time was no exception, however this time we managed to see people we don't normally see. I saw Mario for the first time since 1999 when I bumped into him while doing Y2K testing for the SABC, so it was 10 years, longer for Derrick it was the first time we met his beautiful wife Paula as well.

Trevor and Kirsten were at my Stork party back in 2003 which is the last time I saw them, it was so good to see you guys.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie yep got to say it three times, it was good to see you also long time since we last saw you, I think it was back in 2000 when Ken & Jean came over for a holiday.

To all the other Premier friends I spoke to on Facebook or the phone sorry we did not get to see you, Karen, Melony, Maria and everyone else hopefully next time - so make a date for 2 years time. By the way we had lots of fun and catching up at Cobblestones, thanks for all coming!!!

Perth, Australia

When I joined Premier MIS, I was in the Qpac team (still not sure why it was called the Q poke team, reckon it must have something to do with Facebook) anyway, there were only two girls on the team Maria and Zelda, we were all good friends and a brilliant team. Zelda is now in Perth and the last time I saw Zelda was back in 1999, I had the privilege of spending time with Zelda in 1998 on my first trip to Oz.

It was say good to see Zellie again, we had a Braai at their house and I got to meet Reece for the first time, who is a beautiful young boy. Then on our last day, Zelda generously fetched us from the house we were renting in Freemantle and took us back to her place for dinner and then to the airport. Thank you Zelda.

Sydney, Australia

If there is one thing that we should be thankful to Premier for is for helping us acquire the skills that we may work in any country in the world. If I see how far and wide everyone has gone it just goes to prove that we were a clever bunch of IT people. Another thing we have to be thankful for, was the fact that we worked with wonderful people that we can all be friends today in one way or another.

Whilst on our travels, all our Premier friends showed us such generosity that it was overwhelming, Lawrence, Melina and Alex picked us up form our hotel and took us the the Wildlife park, and then to lunch at Waga Mama, we then did some sight seeing and went back to their beautiful home for dinner, after which Lawrence dropped us off at the hotel. Emily took a shine to Alex (a bit old for her), but she got her fair share of meeting different boys.

Thanks L, M and A for a wonderful time in Sydney, it is still one of my favourite cities.

Auckland, New Zealand

Its' amazing how some people come into your life for always, I have known Daryl and Dion since they were kids running around at Sunday School across the road from where I lived.
It was so good to catch up with Daryl after almost 6 years, the last time we saw him, Emily was just born. Although we were only in Auckland for 5 days, we saw Daryl four out of the five days. I think Daryl had just as much fun showing us around his city as we did. Thanks for an amazing time Daryl and I hope we get over again someday!

California

When we were planning our trip, we never took into account that we would meet up with so many of our ex premier colleagues, it just turned out that way. The original round the world ticket that seemed the most exciting was LA-Tahiti-Fiji-Auckland-Sydney-Perth-Johannesburg-London-Dublin. So when I told our told everyone our plans it was amazing how we managed to meet up. Pete, next time I promise we will do a cruise from Houston!

We had a fantastic time in LA, 3 days in Disney, a day at Sea World in San Diego, a day at Universal studios and of course a Braai at Dave, Amy and Alex. It was so amazing catching up after all those years, the last time we saw Dave was in 1997 and it felt like just yesterday.
Amy had made the most wonderful salads and really made us feel at home, Emily had fun with Alex and all too soon we had to leave. So lets just hope it isn't another 12 years till we see Dave again.

Premier People around the world

D and I have had the immense privilege of meeting up with some old friends, ex Premier people around the world, we saw Dave in California, Daryl in New Zealand, Melina & Lawrence in Sydney and Zelda in Perth. On Friday at Cobblestones Pub, we will meet some more old friends and I will write a longer post about our trip soon and what everyone is up to.