Sunny Side Up Breakfast Benefit for Haiti Disaster Relief

Today was a great day!

I had the opportunity to put together a breakfast along with several of my co-workers to raise money for Disaster Relief in Haiti.

Here’s what our company’s website had to say about it:

Jon Stolpe, Max Schindler and Eric Vander Hyde gather for a good breakfast and an even better cause.

Wednesday, February 3, the Blue Bell Branch Solutions group in Penn., headed by Jon Stolpe and Eric Vander Hyde, got up extra early to host a breakfast to benefit the people of Haiti.

Jon, Eric and Max Schindler cooked and served up egg and cheese bagel breakfast sandwiches and sausage and bacon to the branch. All the food was donated by employees, and the eggs were provided by Jon and Eric, who raise their own chickens.

Almost $900 was raised for the American Red Cross to aid in the disaster relief efforts. Siemens Caring Hands will be matching the donation.

After popping the circuit breaker in the kitchen, we were forced to be creative.  Here’s Max and I cooking up the bacon and sausage.

Here’s the “Sunny Side Up” Breakfast Team serving up bagel, egg, cheese, bacon/sausage sandwiches to the employees at Siemens Industry, Inc. in Blue Bell, PA.  After waking up early and getting to the office at 5:30AM, it was nice to grab a cup of coffee.  Max demonstrated his culinary skills on the eggs.  And Eric helped to coordinate the assembly line – while he shows off the eggs from his farm.  (Yes, Eric has been one of my consultant’s in my own chicken raising.)  Together with other employees from our office, we gathered 14 dozen eggs, 7 dozen bagels, 100 slices of cheese, 6 gallons of orange juice, 2 pounds of coffee, 6 pounds of bacon, 6 pounds of sausage, and many cooking and serving items.

With Siemens matching the donations of our employees, our efforts contributed towards over $1700 towards American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.  This was truly one of the best days I’ve experienced in my 14+ years at Siemens.

I’m An Engineer

Last night, I had the privilege of explaining to 17 Webelos Cub Scouts what I do as an engineer.  I enjoyed the opportunity to share, and it was interesting to me to hear some of the different reactions from these boys:

“You work really hard.”

“You work a lot.”

“I’m a software engineer.  I write some of my own software, and I work on computers.  I know all about this stuff.”

“An engineer drives a train.”

“Did you work on my school.”

“This seems pretty technical.”

“It was interesting.”  (Isaac responding to whether I was boring or interesting.)

“Thank you, Mr. Stolpe.”

After sharing with these kids, I thought about ways that I could have explained myself in a way that was more understandable to them.  But more than that, I’ve been thinking about how important it is for kids to hear about all the different opportunities that they have as they grow up.  I’m glad I had the chance to share.

Sonic