August 28. 2012

Hello friends,

Onam greetings from Ben Varghese (President), Wilson John (Treasurer) and myself-the Secretary (Simon)

First of all, I wanted to convey a word of appreciation on behalf of our patron Most Rev. Bishop Dr. Joseph Mar Thomas to all those (about 30 of us) who attended the meet and greet on Thursday, 16th August at Tandoori Flame Banquet Hall in Brampton.

It was a wonderful evening with delicious Indian food and high-quality networking & information sharing. We hope that we will be able to meet all those who were not able to make it this time, for the next event.

For the benefit of all those who missed the event, the highlights of our discussion were as follows.

1) Mar Ivanios college management is working hard to convert MIC to the status of an autonomous university.
2) MIC is planning a 7 story building (Est. IRS. 7.5 crores) to house a research center to be named after Fr. Geevarghese Panicker.
3) MIC complex will be re-named as Mar Ivanios Edu City as there are so many other educational institutions in the vicinity.
4) MIC management will employ a full time paid staff exclusively to look after the alumni affairs.

During the meeting, the following members were nominated to lead our small group to do big things.

Ben Varughese (President)
Simon Plamthottam (Secretary)
Wilson John (Treasurer)

We have two positions open for the post of event co-ordinators. We will make an announcement once the President and his team find willing and able candidates. We have decided to keep our activities to 1 or max. 2 in any year.
The next event hopefully will be an Amigos/Amigas Picnic in the summer of 2013.

Mr. Jimmy Kulangara from Dallas chapter was nominated as the Co-Ordinator for AMICOS in North America at a recent meeting held in New York. AMICOS -Canada extends our support and conveys our congratulations to Jimmy Kulangara.

We will also take this opportunity to thank Mr. G.Chandy (President 2008 -2012), Ranjan Koshie, and Binu Sajan (Secretaries) for their energy and strategic leadership during the past 4 years.

Simon Plamthottam