Gone to the dogs

Last night I had a typical British evening out. A friend invited me to come along to the greyhound racing track in Wimbledon.

I didn't quite know what to expect so in my naivety I asked what I should wear. I had images in mind of women in flowery dresses and hats, sipping champagne. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dog racing is also known as the "poor man's horse racing" and is far removed from the high society image of horse racing. It was more a spectacle of big bellies, beer and betting. It was very entertaining to see the whole experience. The dogs waiting in their traps, eager to go chase that fake bunny, the trainers in their white coats, the betting frenzy and the tacky bombastic music as the race is about to start.

I did bet a few pounds myself that all woefully went to waste. My friend won £0.60 and one other person in our group managed to actually go home with a few more pounds than she came with. Other than that though we all lost. My bets were all pretty much wild guesses anyhow. We did get a stat book before the races but I had no idea how to interpret all those facts and figures. My chosen ones were primarily based on the dog's name. Unfortunately Fear Haribo, Rhincrew Molly and Unique Pharaoh did not bring me any luck. O well, I am more of a cat person anyway.

Sour grapes

I was hoping today's contribution would be a triumphant one. Instead what you will get is the sour ramblings of a sore loser. You may have guessed it by now: we did not win our business plan competition. We came in second. My rational side tries to tell me that is actually really good but to be honest, I am gutted and so is the rest of the team.

We gave a stellar performance today and I really can not see how we could have done any better a job. In fact, this is what our lecturer confirmed to us afterwards as well. This will sound very, very bitchy, I am well aware of that, but our lecturer confided in us after the ceremony that had it been fully his decision we would have taken home those brand new laptops that were the first prize. Even worse, he told us we could have taken home the first prize in the MBA competition! Not exactly much comfort, is it? Unfortunately it wasn't all his call and the other juror was somebody from the computer industry (hence the laptops) who had no full appreciation for the intricacies of the biotech business we were pitching.

I think I am mostly upset because I saw the presentation of the winning team and they were by no means my favourite. It is hard enough losing to a team that in your heart you have to admit were better, but the team that I felt were our genuine competitors only came in third. I know I am being ungraceful in defeat here but as I have said before: we were in this to win. Besides, I really could have used that laptop for my trip to Russia (I'll explain soon). Instead, I now have a brand new 20''W flatscreen monitor sitting in my room for which I have no use whatsoever. Does anybody want to make me an offer for it?

Petit Paris

There are days when I wonder if I managed to get on the wrong plane and fly to Paris instead of London. I live in a part of London close to the borough of South Kensington, one of the most affluent parts of the city (mind you, I said 'close to', not IN!). This area is so full of French people it is like little Paris out there. Aside from the French consulate, the area houses a French high school , a French cultural institute and several French bakeries and bookstores. The population of French people in London is in fact so large that Nicolas Sarkozy actually came over to campaign here a few months ago.

Out of the 4 people that I currently live with, 3 are French. We try to keep English the predominant language around the house but I do still get my fair dose of French. I should be able to handle that. I have had French lessons for six years in school and it was in fact one of my best subjects. I vaguely remember discussing the meaning of 'Le rouge et le noir' at my final oral exam. On my CV I actually claim to be business conversational in the language. At some point in my life I would have had no reservations about making such a claim but those days are long gone. I haven't practised it since I left school all those years ago and it has gone pretty rusty. I realised it again this morning at the bakery, buying my croissant, when two ladies were carrying on a conversation in French. I could just make out the words 'plage', 'soleil' and 'Marseille' so I assume they were discussing their holiday plans. My teacher would be very disappointed in me.

As I have mentioned many times before I would really love to end up working for international organisations such as WHO or the Red Cross. Their requirements include that you are fluent in one of their official languages and at least conversational in an other. The options are English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and... French. Despite my efforts this year to learn some Spanish my best bet at this stage probably still is to go for French. Also, the headquarters of both these organisations are in Geneva where the primary language is, again, French. I suppose I should start taking more advantage of being exposed to the language so much. Who knew you could go to London to brush up on your French?

On your marks...

Everybody loves a winner. And everybody loves to be a winner. I'm not proud of it but I am one of those übercompetitive people. I will choose my battles though. I don't care too much about losing at boardgames and I am certainly not sporty enough to ever win a medal in any kind of athletics. But when it come to battles of the mind, my darker side takes over.

I have always had this drive to be the best. Getting a good grade in school, even an excellent one, wasn't enough as long as somebody else had a better one. Of course that philosophy becomes harder and harder to maintain as you move up the academic ladder. The playing field gets tougher the further you go. By the time I got to university I had to acknowledge that there will always be somebody out there smarter than you. A valuable life lesson.

Our business plan competition draws to a close this coming week and it has seriously brought out my competitive streak again. I find myself wondering what the other teams are up to, trying to spot the favourites and the dark horses. Fortunately my sentiment is shared by the rest of the team and we are all working very hard to iron out the last flaws in our plan. It has even put us on a plane to the Netherlands this week to meet with the brains behind the patent. Now that is going the extra mile, 202 of 'em in fact! We did really well in the first round and I do believe we stand a fair chance of coming out on top but we can't get too cocky just yet. Arrogance breeds ignorance and that we can not afford.

There are rumours flying about surrounding the prizes to be won. I'm no holier than the next person and of course I would welcome a material reward but the main reason we are all keen on winnning is the prestige that comes with it. A resume that can boast winning a business plan competition carries some real weight around here and in the cut-throat world that is the London job market we can all use a competitive edge.

Echt HEMA

This week I'm off again for another short trip back home, this time on school related 'business' (more on that later). On the way back I won't be carrying a lot of souvenirs. I used to bring back stroopwafels every time but I've recently discovered that the snack shop at my local tube station also sells them! The other thing I tend to pick up is old Dutch cheese. That is something I haven't been able to find here anywhere. Occassionally I bring over some other small things. Like most people I am fairly brand loyal and I can't get my favourite toothpaste and shampoo over here. Other than that though there aren't many things that are so exclusively Dutch I couldn't buy them in London.

There is one thing, however, I really do miss: HEMA! My non-Dutch friends living in Holland have been singing the shop's praises for years and I never fully understood why they would think it so special. Now I do. You don't know what you've got till it's gone! HEMA is the ultimate "go-to'' shop. It doesn't matter what you are looking for; electrical extension cords, hold-up stockings (ask a girl, guys), curtain hooks... I don't know how they do it but they always seem to have just the thing you were looking for. If there is a shop anything like it around here, I for sure haven't been able to find it yet.

It turns out I'm not alone in my craving for HEMA. Research among Dutch expats has shown it's our biggest common denominator. Good news might be on the way for us. Last week HEMA was taken over by a UK based private equity firm that is planning to expand its international operations. "HEMA; Coming soon to a highstreet near you"? I can't wait!

Pucker up

The eskimo's rub noses, the Japanese bow and the Dutch...well, we kiss. Not one, not two, but THREE ferm ones you get: 1x left, 1x right and 1x left again (or vice versa so you wish). I've always found this greeting ritual a bit excessive. Especially if you have a room full of people to work your way through, it's very tedious to have to kiss everybody three times.

Here in England I have quickly abandoned the 'triple X' practice. I haven't quite been able to work out what the local custom is though. It seems to be something in between one and two kisses, with a kind of semi-hug thrown in for closer friends. Most of the time I get it right these days and I don't usually end up sending kisses into thin air anymore.

This weekend, though, I've had some culturally confused encounters. None of the people I met up with are Dutch funnily enough, but they all know that I am and are clearly familiar with the ritual. So when we exchanged greetings and I moved away after the first kiss there was instant confusion. The receiving parties were fully expecting all three! In one case the confusion got such that when I then leaned back in to offer up the remaining smooches, the other person was just turning away; limbs got in the way and the glass I was holding was sent crashing to the floor. Admittedly, as far as culture clashes go this is not a very serious one. Nonetheless, I feel a universal greeting ritual is in order.

Blowing out the candles

Well, that's it: only 364 more days separating me from the big three-oh...!

Thank you all for the emails, cards and other messages I got from you yesterday. I loved them. I celebrated my birthday on the weekend already as obviously Mondays are not the best days for partying. First, on Friday I went out for a nice lunch with some of my classmates and then on Saturday there was dinner and lots more partying. It was maybe a bit weird that most of the people I celebrated with this year are people that I didn't yet know on my previous birthday but it was great fun nonetheless. It makes me feel like I am starting to settle in here somewhat.

Turning 29 doesn't affect me much but in all honesty: I am not really looking forward to the next one. I know I am being silly about it, it's just a number, but I can't help it. Maybe it's being back in student life but I can't come to grips yet with the fact that my twenties are quickly fading away. When did we get to be old enough for that?! I could swear I have already even spotted my first grey hair. How scary is that? At least I have the next 364 days to get used to the idea...

Slaying the dragons

Today we had to give the 'elevator pitch' for the Business Plan Competition. I want to thank those of you who have been so kind to send me their ideas. It was great fun to see how some of you really got into it. Unfortunately most of the ideas did not turn out to be feasible for us, mainly for lack of the right expertise or the connections to pull it off.

Eventually we ended up staying close to home for me. I was so caught up in the novelty of my life here that I temporarily forgot that I still have a nice network to deploy back in Holland. Just last week it finally dawned on me that I actually knew somebody who could help us out. A few e-mails and phone calls later I found myself going over a highly promising patent application straight out of the Gorlaeus. And it gets better. The inventors are two very familiar faces; they work only one floor up (Gilles and Erik)! Although I have managed to stay away from their soil dwelling bugs in my Metprot years we are now actually writing a business plan to exploit just that technology. You can run but you can't hide!

I obviously can't divulge here exactly what our plan is since this is all patent pending but even more importantly; the university is actually looking to get clients for this patent. This means that our business plan is more than just a paper excercise. Whatever we produce, the university may use to attract interested parties meaning we better do our job properly. This real dimension of it makes it all the more interesting to us as well.

Since we only got the patent this Monday, we have been working very hard this whole week to get an initial feeling for what we are dealing with. Today we got to pitch the preliminary plan to our lecturers. It was a smash hit! I believe the exact words were "outstanding" and "fantastic job" and we have been shortlisted as candidates to win the big competition in 3 weeks time. I didn't expect I would like this part of my course but I am in fact very excited now. Although personally I don't intend to set up any business and for me it's all hypothetical, some people have already expressed a serious interest in the whole idea. I love it when a plan comes together.

Down memory lane - Part 2

Seeing some of my old teachers again at my reunion brought back some long forgotten memories of things I used to know. Latin conjugations, French vocabulary, geometry... wow, so much information has passed through my brain and so little of it stuck!

Sunday I decided it was time to give my old room in my mum's house a good clear out. The thing about that room is that I pretty much left everything behind when I moved out. So all the stuff I accumulated in my teenage years and even before has been mummifying in there for years. A real trip down memory lane! I found old 'avondvierdaagse' medals, a hideous clay pot made for Mother's day (how appropriate to unearth that again on Mother's day!), 3 old Sony walkmans but most of all: piles and piles of school notes. Every note book since my first year in high school has been preserved. Treasures of knowledge. Had it not been for the fact I recognise my own hand writing I wouldn't have believed that I once actually knew all that. I am in awe of high school me and feel very ashamed that all that knowledge has gone right out the window. The crown on my cleaning excercise was the discovery of every single one of my old high school exams, safely tucked away together in a big envelope: the ultimate shrine to knowledge long-forgotten . Here are some of the things I used to know back in 1996:

Mathematics (wiskunde B)
See the Figure and:
- calculate the distance between point C and the line AD
- calculate the volume of the body

Latin
Laocoon ardens summa decurrit ab arce
et procul "o miseri, quae tanta insania, cives?
creditis avectos hostes? aut ulla putatis
dona carere dolis Danaum? sic notus Ulixes?
aut hoc inclusi ligno occultantur Achivi
aut haec in nostros fabricata est machina muros,
..."

-Translate and indicate (scan) the metrical pattern

Physics
The isotope ⁸₃Li decays with emittance of a b-particle to form ⁸₄Be which then splits into 2 a-particles, according to:


-Calculate the speed with which the a-particles are emitted, assuming the ⁸₄Be-core had zero velocity.

Errr, right... anyone?

Down memory lane - Part 1

For reasons obvious from my last post I spent this weekend back in Holland. By sheer chance my trip coincided with the reunion of my old high school, the Johan van Oldebarnevelt gymnasium. I didn't attend the previous reunion some years ago. It was too soon and I was far too absorbed in my life as a student to care what my former classmates were up to. However, I graduated in 1996 so it's been over 10 years by now. Enough time to start getting at least a bit curious. Since I was around any way, why not go and find out..?

Reunions are all about showing off what you have accomplished since high school (degrees, jobs, wedding rings, babies; the usual suspects). But after you have exhausted those topics, there is not much left other then repeat to each other how you all haven't changed a bit. It's actually true though, you know; that last statement. People hadn't changed a bit. Within minutes all the old cliques had regrouped and despite some changed hairdo's and a few extra kilos here and there, everybody was essentially still exactly the same as 10 years ago. Unfortunately not so many of my old classmates had shown up. Of the people in the picture (class 2C, 1991!) only 2 other people showed. There were a few more from the parallel classes but still not that many. Maybe another 10 years need to pass first before everybody else gets curious enough.

I don't recollect my high school years with any great fondness. To illustrate, not long after this picture was taken I got my first pair of glasses and I would be wearing orthodontic braces for several more years. Not a happy combination when you're 14 years old! Throughout the 6 years of high school I was cyclically and frustratingly falling in and out of love with the same poor guy (yes, he's in the picture), sometimes also with others. Teenage anxieties reigned freely. I had plenty of people I used to hang out with but considering there are only two people from all those years that I still occasionally talk to, I didn't make many friends for life there. To be honest, I much preferred my years at university. When are we having the next ACD reunion?

Apple off the family tree

Today it is exactly 5 years ago since my mum, my brother and I suffered the hardest day of our lives when my dad suddenly died. Now, five years later, I still miss him every bit as much as I did then but life does go on and so do we. I was still in the first year of my Ph.D. back then and I used to go home at least every other weekend. A lot has changed since. I obtained my doctorate, decided bioscience was not the place for me and moved to the UK to do a degree in Health Management, a discipline right at the crossroads of what my mum does and what my dad did.

I discuss a lot of what I learn on my course with my mum. She has the practical experience from the medical world and can tell me how all of my wonderful text book theories work out in the real world. But I also so would have loved to discuss these things with my dad and hear his thoughts from a manager's perspective. I am sure he too would have had some things to say about some of what I am being taught. In some regards my dad was quite 'old school'. For instance, he didn't like slick slide presentations at all. He much preferred using flip charts to draw his diagrams on. Maybe he would have eventually come around and learned how to work PowerPoint. Who knows?

I don't know how he would have felt about my career change. I think he would have supported it though. Although I am constantly being told I look the spitting image of my mother, I think that in character I take after my father quite a lot. I'd like to believe that in what ever career lies ahead of me in the near future, I will be able to combine the best of both my parents.

My golden ticket

It's been a while since I gave an update on my plans for life after I finish my degree. Mostly that's because with all the assignments and exams going on I simply haven't had much occasion to think about it, let alone take any action. Well, the lecture & exam part of my course is behind me so it's time to start focusing on the future. And it looks like that future will involve me hanging around in London for another while.

I have mentioned before that over the summer I will be working on a really interesting and exciting project for my final thesis. In a nutshell, we'll be looking at the resource allocation (techno-speak for spending money) on combating tuberculosis in parts of Central Asia. I won't be doing this all by myself obviously as it involves a lot of work and, even more importantly, requires some real serious experience. The work will be part of the ongoing research at the College. The whole project will also most likely take substantially more time than the three months I have to do my thesis work in. Which is why my time here in London will be stretched out.

My supervisor on this project has invited me to stay on in his group for a while so that I can gain some relevant experience and further build my resume. He is a real authority in his field and this is a great opportunity for me. Naturally I am taking him up on his offer. We'll be working on some other projects as well. My position in the group will more or less be that of an intern. I will not be directly employed by the University but I will be getting some sort of pay. I haven't even asked how much or for how long. The opportunity is too good to let such 'trivial details' matter. ;-) The idea is that with the added experience and his contacts doors will open for me that without are much harder to crack. I will have to prove myself of course but at least I am getting the best leg up I could possibly hope for. Now it's up to me to climb that wall to my dream job.

Six degrees of separation

Do you know that game called "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon"? The challenge of the game is to take any actor or actress and link that person to Kevin Bacon through no more than 6 consecutive people who have worked together. Within the tight-knit world of Hollywood the question is probably not whether or not the trail exists but more whether you can find it. There is also a more general theory, however, that suggests the '6 degrees of separation' rule applies universally; that we are all connected to each other through only 6 people or less. I find this a bit hard to believe. Even with the highly varied and international circle of friends that I have, I can't think of any way to connect me to that shepherd on the steppes of inner-Mongolia or the medicine man in the jungle of Brazil.

It seems though that since coming to Imperial College my 6-step network has had some interesting new additions. At the moment I am taking a class in Entrepreneurship; how to go about when you want to start up your own business. A crucial element in any such endeavour involves who you know or how you can get to know the right people. Yes, that most intangible of skills called networking! The staff and alumni of the College offer a rich source of contacts. Even if you don't feel very entrepreneurial such a network is a valuable asset for life. After this week's lecture, for instance, I have learned that I am just 3 small steps removed from Borat and only 4 from Mr. Microsoft himself! Just imagine where I could get within those next couple of steps...

These boots aren't made for walking

When I first moved to London, I made a rookie mistake. In my 32 kg suitcase I carried one pair of chic high heeled shoes, a pair of even higher heeled boots and my second pair of boots was on my feet since that was easier than trying to cram both pairs into my suitcase and wearing sensible shoes. I figured that being in business school meant having to dress a bit more businesslike and so I didn’t pack any of my sturdy, yet inelegant flats.

It didn’t take me very long to come to regret that decision. London is a city where you walk & walk & then walk some more. In Holland, you just cycle everywhere but here: you walk. For women like my mum, who walk around in heels 24/7, that is not a problem but I am not one of those Sex & the City women. In my opinion heels are great for when you need to look fab but they are not meant for all this power walking! Within days my feet were in miserable shape, aching with every step. I needed a pair of new shoes and I needed them immediately. You know how whenever you know exactly what you are looking for, you can never find it? That’s exactly what happened to me. In the end I decided I would just buy the first pair of comfortable flats available in my midget size that wouldn’t look totally ridiculous. The shoes I bought were actually not too bad. Simple brown and white trainers. Not really my style but honestly, not that bad. They have served me well these past 7 months. They have carried me all over the city. But now their time has come. I have worn them out to their very last breath. The soles are cracked and the fabric looks ragged. May they rest in peace. They’ve earned it.

Enter the dragon's den

Okay guys, I am going to need your help. I know there is a bunch of you brilliant minds out there reading this blog and I need to pick those big brains of yours!

My course has now moved on to the final assignment before our individual research projects: The Business Plan Competition. As the name suggests we have to spawn a new business idea and then develop it into a full blown business proposal. The second part is what the course has been training us for so I won't ask you to be bothered about that. The first part is where I can really use your help though. Any suggestions, no matter how wacky, are welcome. Of course I personally am most interested in anything health or (bio)science related but anything outside of that is good too. (Just keep in mind I have to get up in front of a panel of judges and sell the idea to them so please don't make me look like a total fool...) Ever thought the world could really use that new gadget you thought up? Ever felt your scientific results deserved to be converted into a real product? Tell me now.

The only thing at stake here is the glory (& a good mark for me) so I can't promise you a cut in any future profits. There won't be any. The best I can do is get your name on the credits. I know that isn't much but the main prize is my eternal appreciation... We need to present our "elevator pitch" on Friday next week so please start sending me those suggestions as soon as they pop into your heads. I'll keep you updated!


P.S.: I understand there is such a thing is corporate confidentiality and I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble for 'selling off' their trade secrets. The Business Plan Competition is strictly an internal affair though and your secrets will be save with me. Maybe e-mail them to me rather than post them here if you have any concerns.

Oranje boven!

I haven't really felt homesick since I moved to London -Holland just isn't that far away- but today I am feeling a bit melancholic. For the first time in years I can't join in the wonderful madness of Queen's day in Amsterdam. I am neither very patriotic nor a big fan of the monarchy but I do love Koninginnedag. I love strolling through the Vondelpark and seeing all the kids with their tiny screechy instruments, the egg races and all sorts of bizarre games. I love the organised chaos of the boat parade and I generally just love the whole party atmosphere that takes over the city. It's 'gezellig'!

To soften the blow of having to miss all of this this year, on Saturday I went to the London Holland House event sporting a bright orange top. Everybody with Dutch blood running in their veins and living in London was probably there. It was really weird being in a place where so many people were dressed in orange and speaking Dutch...while being in London. As one might expect it was quite a cliched event. (pictures!). Obviously there was a Volendammer herring cart, a stroopwafel vendor, dutch cheese girls, flowers and of course Heineken. There was even a guy making clogs, something I have never seen on any Queen's day before! Amazingly enough I even ran into a familiar face from the lab. It was fun but it can in no way match the real thing.

So today I am feeling a bit sad knowing I'm missing out on all this. I have put on my white trousers and a blue shirt and varnished my toe nails bright red so in my own subtle way I'm still keeping up our national colours. Next year I will definitely try to be there again. I hope all of you in Holland are having a great time today. Happy Queen's day!

Sloshed

To any teetotallers out there and to my mum: please stop reading now. The picture I am about to paint here is not a pretty one.

I have just had what I sincerely intend to be a one-of-a-kind Friday night. There are a few things you need to know in order to understand what happened:

1) My exams had just finished. It had been a very stressful week and we were all celebrating it was over.

2) A week before I had literally burst out of one of my tops, a none too subtle sort of way of telling me perhaps it was time to shed those winter kilos. So for all of last week I have been dieting. Not the sensible kind but the kind where you essentially just starve yourself. I had had no more than 2 slices of bread and some tea all day...

3) English wine glasses are HUGE. They generally hold about 250 ml so even if you have had "only 3 glasses", that means you have drunk a bottle.

With such a dangerous cocktail of ingredients the result should have been predictable. I can honestly say I have never made such a spectacle of myself before. The only good thing is I made it to the restaurant's bathroom in time. The bad thing is I didn't quite make it all the way over to the toilets. Also unfortunately; I was drinking my usual red, not stainless white. I am ashamed to admit that I was regurgitating a bit more than just the principles of Marketing yesterday. That is one place in London where I can never show my face again!

Even worse than being this horribly drunk is being horribly drunk in a foreign tongue. English comes pretty natural to me these days. Most of the time I think in English and sometimes I even dream in it. There are really only two instances where my English starts to break down. The first is when I am exhausted, the other is when I am drunk. Yesterday night I was both. I fear I must have been talking complete gibberish, or at the very least some awful 'Dunglish'.

I was kindly taken care of by a friend who guided me out of the restaurant and into a cab. Angela: you are an angel for putting up with me! Now that the killer headache has subsided, embarrassment is taking over. So this is what it feels like to be a student in Britain.

Never again!

That's it. I'm not doing this again, not ever!

Over 10 hours this week have I wasted regurgitating things that by next week I will have irrevocably forgotten. My arm is sore from writing. My back aches from stress and sitting in very unergonomic lecture theatres. My brain is suffering from information overload. What was I thinking when I decided to embark on this? No more. This is the last degree I ever hope to do in my life. Please tie me down and read this post out loud to me if ever I would be foolish enough to suggest otherwise. Enough is enough.

Blessing in disguise

This week my lifeline connecting me to the outside world has snapped: our Internet has been disconnected! The line we had was being paid for by the company of one of my now ex-flatmates. Of course now that he has moved out they will no longer extend us this courtesy.

I suppose the timing has been somewhat of a blessing in disguise for me. It is amazing how much time one can waste being online when really all you should be doing is studying. I live and breathe internet & e-mail these days. It is killing me to be cut off from my digital world. Turning on the computer is almost the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before I go to bed. It is absolute agony that I can't check if I have any new e-mails on my GMail account (just a few), my College account (even fewer), my old Uni account (about 30 messages about cheap drugs) or to see if he has left me a message (he hasn't). I miss checking the Dutch news (no world peace yet) or the BBC news (no world peace there either). I miss looking up random words and facts on Wikipedia, Google or YouTube. And of course the worst: I can't even update my blog without having to go to Uni!

For my exam results it has probably been a good thing that I have been cut off but now exam week is almost over... can somebody please, please, please reconnect me again?

In an English country garden

There is no more effective way of getting me to do those laborious chores around the house than exam week. True to the spirit of escapism, I will be defrosting the freezer, painting the bedroom or rearranging my drawers. Anything not to have to sit still and study! This time it is no different. My new distraction is the most unlikely so far. Instead of working on my Marketing exam, I have today taken up that most English of hobbies: gardening!

Anybody who has ever lived with me will appreciate the unlikeliness of this. I have the least green fingers ever. I have repeatedly managed to kill off cacti! I was once even given a "how to take care of your potted plants" book for my birthday by friends who took pity on the sorry state of my flora. So gardening wouldn't exactly seem to be my thing. In all honesty; it still isn't. The gardening I have been doing so far is no more than trying to rid our patio of the thick layer of weeds that is covering it. Our flat has a small garden in the back but because of the high turnover in occupants no one ever feels responsible for it. There is not a single plant in that garden that is actually supposed to be there. It is a big jungle of weeds run amok. It is further adorned with a completely rusted through barbeque and a collapsed wooden bench. All in all a pretty sorry sight. Now that the weather is getting so warm and sunny though, it would be nice to be able to sit outside without nettles stinging my legs all the time. So rather than focusing on the "4P's of marketing"(I'll tell you but only if you really, really want to know) I have been attacking this jungle with some garden scissors, uprooting a lot of creepy many-legged crawlers in the process.

My back is killing me and my hands are a bit rough but the patio definitely looks much better. I can even see the tiles again! Ideally I would like to do something about the rest of the garden as well, maybe even plant some real plants and flowers. Then again, by the time I would have the garden ready enough for that, my exams will be over and the spirit will most likely have left me again...

No place like home

In the past couple of days I have spent time in all three of the cities that at some point in my life I have lived in. Back in Amersfoort, the town I was born and raised in, I have apparently become somewhat of a tourist attraction. People were stopping by because they heard I would be home for the holidays. For them, Amersfoort is the place they most closely associate with me so going there means coming home. I don't really feel it as such. Amersfoort is a nice, fairly pretty place and, having spent 20 years of my life there, I know it well enough but I just don't feel a strong connection to it. If anything, home in Amersfoort is my parental house. My old room is still there, looking pretty much the same way as it did on the day I moved out all those years ago. Except of course it is full of moving boxes these days with most of my stuff in storage there...

Amsterdam is where I feel at home. I love my apartment there. I have lived in my place for close to 9 years and it is really the place that best reflects who I am. But it's more than that. Amsterdam has always been special to me, even before I moved there. Living in Amsterdam has been great. It took me a long time to get to know the city properly -my infamous lack of directional sense again- but in the end I knew just where to find those nice little shops and restaurants, I had my personal hairdresser, my favourite park and have memories all over the city. All the things that make you feel you belong rather than are just a visitor.

Now, in London, I have to start all over again. I still can't find my way even around the centre. Leave me at Picadilly Circus and tell me to walk to Covent Garden and there is a fair chance I'll end up in Notting Hill. I have a supermarket but am still in desperate need of a good hairdresser, dry cleaner and shoe repair shop. And I won't be able to find any of the nice restaurants and pubs I have been to with others any more. My house is not a home either. Although my room is cluttering up at amazing speed, it's mostly with paperwork, books and clothes. I don't buy anything unless it is functional because I know I'll just end up having to move it again. The house is fine but it isn't my own space. I like London, I really do, and I can picture myself living here for another while but it is still a long way off from truely becoming a home.

Brittania rules

This island is a quaint place in some ways. It so completely rejects the notion of being a part of Europe. l don't particularly think of myself as a "European", but here there is a real 'us vs. them' mentality. One aspect in which this is blatantly apparent is in the adoption of the metric system or, to be more precise: the lack thereof.

For some time now officially all business should be conducted in metric units and indeed shop prices are quoted per kilo and per litre. Much of the signage and packaging, however, is still firmly rooted in the old British Imperial system of pounds & pints. To this day a container of milk, for instance, holds 568 ml: exactly 1 pint! Also in people's everyday conversations it is apparent that metric units have no place whatsoever. I often find myself struggling in conversation. When people tell me they lost “a full stone” I try to look impressed but I’m unsure whether that is more like a pebble or like a boulder. Similarly, I'll nod appreciatively at a height of 6 foot, 5 inches still not knowing whether the person we are discussing is a Lilliputian or a full blown Goliath. And with 12 inches in a foot, the bloody system isn't even decimal so there are no quick and easy conversions!

I can't foresee the British giving up their habits any time soon so if I want to integrate into their society I’d better familiarise myself with this odd, archaic system. So I have begun practising: I am 5’8” and weigh 123 lbs. No, honestly!

Babylonian nights

One of the best things about my time in academics is the wonderfully diverse, multicultural, multinational and multilingual circle of friends it has given me. Living in London has only amplified that further. Until recently I shared this house with 4 others, none of whom spoke the same mother tongue. Amongst the people I consider my friends I can quite easily count about a dozen different nationalities. The world really has become a global village. Our only common denominator, our lingua franca, is English. I am not saying it is all the Queen's English but it serves us well enough. Without English many of the precious friendships I have would have never gotten beyond the stage of a Babylonian mime act. Last night I got a taste of what that world could have looked like.

Together with a friend -indeed one of the English speaking variety, though she more than holds her own in Dutch as well as half a dozen other languages- I went to see a very special performance of A Midsummer Night's dream. The play was performed in 8 different languages of which I can boast only 1 at best! And that one is in "Shakespearean" so perhaps it is more accurate to claim none. Astonishing. The actors seamlessly shifted from one language into another leaving the audience to wonder what had just been said. Thank goodness we had bought the programme book with synopsis beforehand! Of course the point is not at all to understand every word (most likely even in all-English Shakespeare performances most people don't manage that!). It was kind of liberating in fact to just sit back and simply let things unfold before your eyes. The motions, the expressions, the costumes, the dances; they all conveyed the magic of the story without much need for words. However, once the lights came back on I suddenly felt very grateful again for having been given the gift of English!

Heathrow hell

Aah, no better way to start the holidays then with a nice weekend break! I have just come back from a few wonderfully relaxing days in Switzerland (the one in Europe, not the Central Asian cousin just yet). It was beautiful. Fresh snow upon my arrival meant that we even got to spend a day enjoying the slopes, whereas yesterday I spent the whole day strolling around Zürich basking in the sun. That's the life! It was a great way of recharging the batteries before facing those long weeks of study ahead of me.

They say you have to take the bad with the good. The bad in this case then would definitely be Heathrow Terminal 2. I don't normally fly out of Heathrow, mainly because it doesn't get those bright orange planes. London Gatwick is my airport of choice. It is closest by and has plenty of affordable flights. Unfortunately the orange people have had some difficulty breaking into the Swiss market so a Swiss airlines flight out of Heathrow it had to be. I was stunned! Heathrow T2 was built in the '50s and by the looks of it, it hasn't so much as seen a paint brush since. There is also something really disturbing about the check-in hall. The ceiling is so low you get the impression they actually forgot to include this floor in the original design. Then when somebody finally noticed the omission they split one of the levels in half. Truely claustrophobic. Everything about that place feels so hopelessly outdated, improvised and just generally inefficient.

Going through security is your basic comtemporary airport nightmare. At Heathrow, security checks are done before entering the departure lounge so everybody has to join the same endlessly meandering queue. Clearing security itself has these days become a rather embarrassing experience, especially if you travel with carry-on luggage only. The transparent zip-lock bag for your liquids allows your fellow travellers to scrutinise exactly what brand of toothpaste you use and how many tubes of facial cream and war paint it takes to keep you looking presentable. As if you weren't feeling exposed enough not only do you have to remove the usual coats and jackets but they also make you take off your shoes. If only I had remembered to buy some new socks.... Then while your luggage is scanned for explosives and pointy objects, some big burly security woman gets to feel you up. By the time you reach the departure lounge you feel strangely violated.

Thankfully after all that humiliation I could put myself in the hands of the Swiss who reassure you in no less than 4 languages that all will be well and you should just sit back and eat your chocolate. The plane arrived right on time with proverbial Swiss precision. The airport looked smooth and spotless. Within minutes I was outside. Time to let the "Zwitserlevengevoel" begin!

Bless you

Tomorrow morning I have to get up early and be in College much earlier than I have gotten used to recently. The last week of any lecture block is typically characterised by a sudden flurry of activity as all assignments for the courses are due. These assignments make up 30% of your overall mark so, although they are not crucial, it is still worthwhile to do them properly. The reason I have to be in early is that tomorrow we have to present a poster for my class in Project Management. Then on Friday is the deadline for our Marketing essay. Both projects are group assignments which means we carry them out in our allocated "syndicate groups". No, I am not kidding. That really is the official term they label us by. I think it makes us sound like some white collar crime organisation but is is probably meant to make us feel like the budding business people that of course we are.

For our presentation tomorrow we have chosen a somewhat unusual topic. Since the course is on Project Management most groups have chosen to work on things like the Wembley stadium, the Sydney Harbour Bridge or some other major construction project. We have decided to emphasize the fact that we are doing a degree in Health Management instead and are discussing the management of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong. It is an interesting topic but, as it doesn't really fit the frameworks we have been taught in class which were often designed for construction or IT type projects, it is not an easy one. For our marketing essay we have taken a similar approach. I am so sick and tired of hearing about Easyjet, Tesco or the iPod. All my classes recycle these same examples over and over again. There is some logic to it but it is not something that interests me personally. Our essay instead deals with marketing of Tamiflu, the anti-flu drug.

As you can imagine a lot of my reading over the past few days has focused on infection risks and viral spread. I think I may have discovered a new method of disease transmission in the process. I now have reason to suspect that viruses can be transmitted from computers to humans. For two days now I have been sniffling and coughing. I have already had to restock on Kleenex. I can only hope that it is flu rather than SARS.

Cultural learnings for make benefit me

This coming week will be the last week of term, meaning that from next weekend onwards I will be enjoying a mixture of holidays and days spent in solitary seclusion studying for my next round of exams. In all honesty, I have lost much of the zeal that I managed to muster during the previous series. Most of the courses I had this term were just not as interesting to me as they had substantially less to do with the healthcare sector. I did courses in Strategic Management and Marketing, for instance, which are simply not my cup-of-tea. I will still study of course and, being me, I will still want to do well but my heart is not really in it. After my exams I only have one bit of collective course work left where we have to engage in a business plan competition with each other. Everybody assures me this part will be a lot of fun but I am not convinced yet. I simply do not see myself as a true-blooded entrepreneur, but I will try to keep an open mind about it.

What I am very excited about, however, is what we will get to do after that: our individual research reports. This will be the major assignment of the whole course and constitutes an individual part of research and the writing of –here we go again– a thesis. You are largely free to decide what topic you want to work on and it is generally considered a useful stepping stone into whatever career you wish to pursue afterwards. Although recently I have been applying for consultancy jobs my dream is still to work for organisations such as WHO or the Red Cross. Early in the year I spoke with one of my professors about this as he does a lot of work for WHO and he suggested that I do my final project in his group. Last week we discussed what sort of project I can do that will put me on the radar of these organisations. I came out of his office with a big stupid grin on my face that lasted for several days! In fact, I think I might still be grinning now.

I have been given the amazing opportunity to work on a project that will likely involve working with people in WHO and several other healthcare institutions. That is not even the best part of it though. To phrase it in my professor's words, I will be getting my “boots dirty” and not exactly in the most obvious of places… The dirt I will be scraping off my boots is to be found in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan! I had to Google a map to see where exactly Kyrgyzstan is but eventually I was able to locate this “Switzerland of Central Asia” somewhere between Russia and China. I have no idea yet on the details of anything. I am not even sure what it is exactly that I will be doing, or how long I will be doing it for, over there. It will definitely not be before the summer and there are a lot of other things to do before then but I am already so excited about it that I simply had to share this news. Once things become clearer I will certainly keep you updated. In the mean time I will alternate reading my boring text books with staring at the pictures in my brand new Lonely Planet on Central Asia. Very nice!

Auld Lang Syne

It's almost five months ago now that I moved into my current place, having been rather suddenly booted out of my first London residence. Finding a decent place to live in London is a real challenge, particularly if you're on a tight budget. You wouldn't believe some of the apartments -if that's what you can even call them- I have looked at! By the time I went to view this place I was beginning to feel pretty desperate so it was a pleasant surprise to find a nice and reasonably spacious room. I did have some doubts about sharing a house with no less than four others though. After all, in Amsterdam I had an entire apartment all to myself and I had become quite comfortable in that luxury. The landlady didn't give me much time to think it over and I had to make a snap judgment. Fortunately I have not been disappointed.

The house is old and definitely has some flaws but what has made all the difference is really the flatmates. They are a good bunch. We are a very mixed group with no two nationalities, occupations or personalities alike but that is probably part of the charm. We all get along wonderfully and occasionally do things together; go out drinking in the pub or stay in and have a movie night. Most of them moved in only a few weeks before I did which means that their 6 month contracts are about to run out. All three of the boys have chosen to move out and are now looking for a new place together. For me it would not make sense to move out. I have no idea where I will be in a few months time, whether it be London, Amsterdam or yet another destination, and it would be too much hassle to move for what could well be only a short period.

The past couple of weeks we have seen a parade of potential new flatmates pass by. The landlords seem eager to make the place look as presentable as possible and have cleaned up the mould in the bathroom, replaced the shower curtain and are telling us to do all sorts of bizarre things. They ask us to switch on all the lights, especially in the bathrooms, whenever there are viewings and want us to turn the TV on at MTV. I would be put off by a place where the TV is continuously blaring loud music and the lights are on for no obvious reason but clearly they have a different view on what constitutes effective marketing. So far, however, only one of the three available rooms has been taken so maybe I'm not the only person who doesn't care for MTV after all...!

It will be interesting to see how all these changes are going to affect the atmosphere around the house. I just know I will miss these guys. In a way they have become the people I am closest to in London as we spend so much time together. I have come to think of them as friends and I definitely do hope we will stay in touch.

I blog therefore I am

Many great people have kept diaries. These meticulously kept documents of course really come in handy when they write autobiographies on their equally great lives. Tony Blair recently expressed regret at not having kept a diary of his years at no. 10. Too bad indeed. I am sure we would all have loved to know exactly just what he was thinking on more than a few occasions! Some people even owe their fame exclusively to their diaries. Think Anne Frank, although I am sure she would have preferred owing her fame to X-Factor had she been given a choice.

Personally, I have never been very good at keeping a diary even though I did have one as a kid. It was one of those classic little books with a red leather(ish) cover and a shoddy lock even your five year old brother could have picked. To be fair, I don’t think mine ever tried but he could have… I wrote in it only very sporadically, maybe about two, three times a year and some years not at all. To me it always felt unnatural to write something that was to be read only by a future, distant version of myself. I never understood the point. I also assumed my brain would provide sufficient storage capacity for all those memories I could ever wish to preserve. Even though I know better now, I still don’t feel the urge to pick up a pen and write “dear diary”. I need an audience.

When I was younger I used to be a champion letter writer. My friends and I would write long letters, overflowing with all the usual teenage drama, and then give them to each other the next day at school. Keeping a blog is in some ways the logical extension of that. Let’s face it; blogs are mainly ego-documents craving for a captive audience. It is like keeping a diary but deliberately leaving the lock open in the hope that somebody will come along to read it and think you are the smartest/funniest/most interesting person to have ever walked the Earth. There is definitely something exhibitionist about putting your private thoughts and experiences out there for everybody, not just your curious little brother, to see.

I don't keep count of how many people visit this site, nor do I know exactly who you are. Chances are I know most people personally. Just occasionally, however, a complete stranger may stumble upon this site. I can’t deny I find a certain thrill in that thought. At the top of this page there is a little button marked "next blog". It is my own little magic door to a world of voyeurism. I often simply start clicking and surfing around, stumbling into the lives of unknown others like they might into mine. I get to read about their loves and their losses, their passions and their grievances and yet, they will never know that I have been there. We are all eavesdropping on each other’s conversations, raising our voices just loud enough so that they can hear us too. We don’t worry about a Big Brother watching us; we welcome him in for tea.

Hunting victim

It was bound to happen sooner or later and now it has. Today I received my first rejection letter or actually: rejection e-mail, paper is just so last century. It's all part of the game called job-hunting, I'm well aware of that, but that doesn't make the process any more fun. And I must say, the first one is a hard hitting one. Not because I particularly had my hopes up for this job but because of the big flashing Neon letters in which the message was brought home to me. You see... I only put in my application yesterday!

I found the position advertised on the website of another one of the big consultancy firms yesterday afternoon. From what I could tell the job looked potentially interesting and the profile encouraging enough. Since only two weeks ago I had already polished and shined my resume for a fairly similar position, my CV didn't need that much tweaking and I sent it off some time late last night. Now of course I can only speculate what happened next but I imagine the scene will have been somewhat like this:

Somewhere in London an alarm clock goes off. It's 7:30 AM and the still slightly groggy company recruitment officer drags herself out of bed. Time for another day at the office! A shower, a bowl of Weetabix and a cup of tea later she gets on the overcrowded tube, wedged in amongst the other city workers for an uncomfortable half hour journey to the office. Once arrived there she pours herself a coffee and has a quick chat with her colleagues. It's just the usual chitchat: men, kids, what happened on Gray's Anatomy this week. Then, just before 9 AM, she turns on her computer and checks the company e-mail account. She glances over the new harvest, opens a standard reply message, adds a name to the heading and presses 'send'.

At exactly 9:01 AM this morning I was informed the company "will not proceed further" with my application. Wow, I don't think I have ever been rejected that rapidly before! I'm sure it must be some sort of record. No waiting, no anticipation, just a lightning fast resounding NO. I get no explanation and worse, am informed that I will not be able to ask for feedback or further comments. Such are the rules of the game. I'm sure this will not have been my last rejection either so I'd better learn to get used to it and develop some thicker skin. I do hope though that the next person considering my application will at least take somewhat longer than a minute before giving me the thumbs down.

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain

Being a foreigner in this city, I frequently get the question where I am from. Almost without exception my answer triggers an unbelieving "really? I wouldn't have guessed" type of reaction.

Londoners are quite used to hearing all sorts of foreign accents. The city is full of French, Russians, Poles, Italians, Indians and so on. You name it, they've got it. All these nationalities have a tendency to flavour the English language their own peculiar way, the Dutch being no exception to this. The thing about me is, I don't really sound very Dutch. In itself this would of course not be such a bad thing if it wasn't for that pesky little line that usually follows: "But you sound so...American"! Now there are plenty of reasons why this is not something I care to be mistaken for.

It has made me think about how this could have come to be. It surely can not be because I have spent a lot of time in the US. I have only ever been there once in my life and I was 10 at the time. I have had formal training in English since I was about 7 years old or so. In total I am guessing I will probably have had about four different English language teachers. Each and every single one of them was a fervent advocate of good old-fashioned Oxford English. Also my spelling is completely British. I don't write 'color' but 'colour' and I'll spell 'centre' rather than 'center'. So if I have been trained to sound like a stiff Brit, how on earth did I end up sounding like a swaggering American? There is only one explanation I can plausibly come up with and it is an embarrassing one. I must have been watching too much Friends and not enough Morse!

Living in the UK, I am now desperately trying to clean up my act and transform into a modern day Eliza Doolittle. I am getting completely tongue-tied changing my pronunciation from "vaitamins" to "vittamins" and from "tomehtoes" to "tomahtoes". I no longer go shopping for a pair of pants but I will buy trousers instead, of course only while walking on the pavement, never on the sidewalk. If despite all of my best efforts at the end of the day I still can not manage to convince, I can of course always try to throw in the odd "Jolly good" or two. It sure can not get any more British than that. Cheerio!

Careful, she bites!

Some days you just wonder why you bothered opening your eyes at all. Today I'm having one of those days. It actually started yesterday already. The day had started well enough, despite some lack of sleep, as I had just had a great weekend with friends. Then the trouble started. Just as they were about to leave, the landlord unexpectedly showed up giving us a rather inquisitive, disgruntled look. Sure enough, in the evening I received an email sternly reprimanding me about having allowed multiple guests to stay over at the premises. Now, there are no consequences or anything but that email was a non-too-subtle reminder that at the moment I am living at the mercy of others. It put me in a foul mood for the rest of the evening.

Sometimes a good night's sleep can have a soothing, tempering effect but not today. I must have gotten out the wrong side of the bed this morning or something because my spirits had dipped below freezing point. I'm usually already fairly slow in the morning but today I was moving at the speed of a slug. I finally managed to drag myself out of the house, much later than usual, only to find that my bus was nowhere in sight. Of course when at last a bus appeared it was completely packed. I had to squeeze my way in, nuzzling my face into somebody's smelly armpit. I think the bus driver must have been in an equally bad mood because about halfway along my route he suddenly decided to dangerously cut off another driver who reacted in predictable fashion. The two men clambered out of their vehicles and entered into a display of verbal abuse. As they did not appear to be coming to a quick resolution of their dispute I, like most other passengers, got off the bus and continued my way on foot. If at this point I had been a cartoon character, you would have seen a dark black thunder cloud suspended over my head! Even without the cloud though, it must have been obvious to the unsuspecting passersby that I was in no mood to be messed with as people arched their way around me at a safe distance. Naturally I was late for class so I had to slide into one of the few available seats left in the front, in the immediate line of sight of the lecturer, making me the obvious target when he marked out some 'volunteers' for a class presentation. Things have just kept piling up all day. They are all small, little things that on a good day wouldn't bother me at all but today my tolerance threshold is alarmingly low.

I don't know when I will finally manage to snap out of this grump but I reckon it won't be today anymore. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to encounter me on the street this afternoon on my way home: better beware. You'll have no trouble recognizing me. I'm the girl who looks like she is ready to bite your head off should you look at her the wrong way!

Hello World!

A few minutes ago I pushed the button; hit submit and sent myself off into the world. What I have sent out is my very first real job application.

It's quite ridiculous come to think of it. Here I am, 28 years old, and I have never seriously applied for a job in my life. Academics is a funny place to be in in that respect. Everything is done so much more informally. I remember when I was looking for a Ph.D. position I sent one single e-mail, casually enquiring about the possibility of joining that group. A few weeks later I was sitting in the office of the man who would end up being my supervisor, feeling absurdly overdressed in my skirt suit and high heels. We had a chat, I was dragged around the labs and that was essentially it. Sure, for correct form he asked my undergrad supervisor for some references and I did give him some rudimentary C.V. but there were no tough questions, no formal assessments. My next job was thrown my way by the Institute Director who was looking for somebody with a scientific background but with an interest in management. As there are remarkably few of those people around -wonder why- and he knew about my plans for the future, the job was mine for the taking.

This position I applied for now is at one of the big consultancy firms and things couldn't be more different. I uploaded my details online and it will end up at the desk of somebody whose name I don't even know. Should it kindle an interest on their behalf, I expect there will be a long trail of tests and interviews ahead of me. I'm not overly fussed about it. It will be interesting to see what my chances are, particularly since the job description asks for somebody with more experience than I actually have, but I won't be terribly upset if they show no interest. Of course I'd prefer not to be rejected but I have to be realistic about my odds. Even if they would offer me the job, however, I'm not convinced I would take it. The job description was rather vague and I am not at all sure it is what I am looking for but you can't win unless you compete, right?

We'll see what happens but at least the wheels have been set in motion. Hopefully in the next few weeks and months I'll find some more job opportunities. It's time for me to get out there and start facing the scary 'real' world!

Going political, just this one time...

Every once in a while you may read a book that grabs you by the throat; a story that stays with you long after you have put the book down. About three years ago I read such a book. In English it was published under the title “Until death do us part” (published in Dutch as “Woede in mijn hart”) and it is an autobiography written by the Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. I don’t remember any more why I bought this particular book. I probably just picked it up as part of my regular dose of Waterstone’s, but it has been one of the most powerful stories I have ever read. I must profess my political ignorance as until I read this book I had never heard of Ingrid Betancourt. This is perhaps all the more shameful because at that time she had already been in the hands of the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC for almost two years.

Today, 23 February 2007, it is exactly 5 years ago that Ingrid Betancourt and her campaign manager Clara Rojas were kidnapped. The last proof of life their families received dates back to 2003 when the FARC released a video tape with a powerful speech made by Ingrid Betancourt. Since then there has been nothing to tell whether they are dead or alive.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t really ‘do’ heroes and I certainly am not inclined to any hero worshipping. This woman’s story, however, has deeply moved and inspired me. At serious risk to her own life she tried to take on a deeply corrupt political system to fight for democracy, stability and peace. The Colombian government that came into power shortly after her disappearance has thus far refused talks with the FARC stating they will not negotiate with terrorists. The FARC in turn continues to drag civilians into this armed conflict. At present it is uncertain if and when this conflict will ever be resolved or what the outcome will be for the hundreds of hostages.

I believe the story of Ingrid Betancourt is one worth being told and I strongly urge you to read this book. It provides a detailed insight into the political situation in Colombia in particular and the American politics in the region in general. If you are interested and want to know more, a good place to start is at http://www.betancourt.info/indexEng.htm

Better late than never

O, irony of ironies!

Five years I have spent mastering the skills of scientific research. Stacks of articles have I read, dissected, interpreted and paraphrased. I have slowly but steadily unravelled the intricacies of the Web of Knowledge. Through endless sessions of trial and error I have conquered Reference Manager. Statistical analysis was never quite within my reach and was largely restricted to 'guesstimates' of reliability intervals but other data sets were subjected to rigorous fitting sessions. Like a blind person I have been feeling my way through the scientific maze. It must have borne some fruit for after seemingly endless years I emerged into the light clutching my thesis, filled with graphs, data and references.

Today I had my first lecture in "Methods of Enquiry".

Exploring the territory

Today it was lovely weather here. A nice bleak wintry sun but with a chill in the air that left me in two minds as to whether or not I should wear my gloves and scarf or not. You can feel spring is around the corner but at the same time winter has not quite passed. It's my favourite kind of weather. It definitely seemed a shame to waste such a day indoors so I chose to explore the urban jungle of London a bit.

I've been living in this city for almost five months now and it's shocking how little of it I have seen so far. Every day I travel from my house to College and back but, with the exception of some of the more obvious hot spots, I have hardly seen a thing. Most tourists know London better than I do. Today was therefore I good opportunity to make my acquaintance with the city and what better way to do this than to go for a walk? Wearing my scarf, though not the gloves and with the A-Z street map safely tucked away in my bag I set out for a walk along the river bank. I actually love strolling along the water. I believe no city should be allowed to be called a city unless it has a proper river running through! It's not that the Thames embankment is all that beautiful, parts of it are even downright ugly or filthy, but it still gives the city a certain character. However, after some point the riverside had nothing more to offer than yet more luxurious but utterly soulless apartment blocks so I abandoned the river and continued my random walk into the neighbourhood. The advantage of having no fixed destination is that you can't get lost on your way there. As I am one of those people who have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever that is a considerable bonus. The downside of course is that you don't always end up at those places which are most interesting or aesthetically pleasing.

I now know that what on the map looked like a nice park in reality is not much more than a large open space of grass and mud, that Wimbledon is a fairly pretty yet mostly boring residential area and that some parts of Wandsworth are a tad grotty. None of what I saw today has any touristic value and I very much doubt I will go out of my way to visit these places again but at least I can now colour in another little piece of my blank mental map of London. For my next trip I might consider some more picturesque places though.

It's not easy being green

My mail box is being flooded at the moment with messages from British Airways and Easyjet, promising to take me to Paris, Vienna or Madrid for 30 pounds or less. This barrage of emails has most likely been triggered by the fact that I have in the past few months been utilising their services on a regular basis. This coming week I’ll be crossing the Channel for the seventh time since last October and more trips are bound to follow.

I didn’t use to be a very frequent flyer. During my Ph.D. time I didn’t take that many vacations and even when I did go abroad, it didn’t always involve flying. Nowadays from this island I have very little choice in my means of transportation. Yes, of course there are trains from London to Amsterdam. There are, however, some compelling reasons for me not to use these. For starters, the train is a lot more expensive. The ticket I have booked for my flight this week cost me ₤59 inclusive of taxes. The train would have cost me about three times as much. Then there is the time consideration. Even if you add the travel to and from the airport, the check-in time and the time spent at security and customs to the total flight time, it should under normal circumstances not take longer than 4 to 5 hours for me to get door-to-door. The train journey from London to Amsterdam, on the other hand, takes on average about 7 hours. With flying being my fastest, easiest and cheapest option it seems the logical choice to make. It is, however, not a guilt-free choice.

In my daily life I try to make my small contribution to helping the environment. I don’t drive a car, I turn off the lights whenever I leave a room -sometimes even when there is still somebody in it; force of habit- and I try to recycle as much as possible. The flying, however, trivialises these well-intended efforts. To merely offset the carbon emissions from my seven Channel crossings I should be planting no fewer than 4 trees! I could of course choose not to fly so often but phone, email and chat just aren’t proper substitutes for the pleasure of personal interaction. I try to appease my conscience the same way everybody else does: 'hey, that plane would be flying anyway, be it with or without me, so I might as well be on it'. It doesn't take a genius to see the flaws in that logic.

Both the UK and Dutch governments have in recent months expressed their intent to raise airport taxes as part of their new green policies. On pure principle grounds I can not be against this. I do firmly believe it is time we start taking more serious action to protect our environment and discouraging flying is a sensible place to start. At the same time, as a consumer I am naturally not too happy about the fact that the price for my tickets will go up. But as long as I could feel confident that this extra money will indeed be spent for 'green' purposes, it is a sacrifice I would be willing to make. As always the devil is in the details and I am enough of a cynic to have my doubts on whether this really is what my money will end up funding. For once I really do hope I will be proven wrong and that each and every single penny of that money goes where it belongs.

Whatever will happen, there is still the damage that has already been done to atone for. Well, I guess I better start taking action then. It seems I have some trees to plant.

A cry for help

This may well be the last message you'll ever receive from me...

The country is under siege. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring; the enemy is amongst us! Our radios tell us not to leave the safe confines of our houses. Mothers are advised to keep their sons and daughters at home. Those who must go out do so at their own risk. 'Bring food and blankets with you if you must venture outside', they tell us. 'Arm yourself with a shovel and be prepared for the worst'. Trains have been halted, airplanes have been grounded, society has grinded to a shrieking halt.

I don't know if I will be able to finish writing you this message. We might loose power soon. I call out to those who can hear me: come and rescue us! They say this night the white demon will strike again and once again take us into its paralysing grip. Its crimes will not go unnoticed as it leaves its visible tracks wherever it goes. Faceless though it may be, it answers to a name... it is called 1.5 inches of snow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6338151.stm

The illusion of cheap

This Friday it's rent day again and so I just transferred a substantial amount of money into my landlord's account. Ouch, that really hurt! For the umpteenth time since I moved to London my account balance is flashing at me in big red numbers. It's an unfortunate combination to be unemployed, enrolled in a scandalously expensive school and living in the most expensive city in Europe (well, not counting Moscow apparently). I won't scare you with the exact amount of rent I pay for my room in this house that I'm sharing with 4 others, but suffice it to say there is a reason they tend to quote rent prices per week rather than per month in this town.

That London is an expensive city can't be a surprise to anyone. Living in it has had a weird effect on my personal perception of money though. When you go on holiday to a country with another currency you tend to look up the exchange rates beforehand. Once arrived you probably spend a good part of your vacation converting the prices of your souvenirs into more familiar currency. Moving to that country is a different matter I have found. The thing is that many costs are unavoidable anyway. You simply do need to buy groceries and you do have to pay that rent, there is nothing you can do about that. And so, after some time, you stop converting Pounds into Euros. After all, what would be the point? The thing is that by no longer converting them, in my mind's eye the two have become equivalent so I end up quite happily forking out 20 Pounds as if they were 20 Euros...and that's where the trouble begins! A few weeks ago, for instance, I was at this club with some of my flatmates and decided that I should treat myself to a special drink and I ordered a Mojito. This drink, consisting of some ordinary ice cubes, a bit of sugar, mint, lime and a fairly small amount of rum cost me the dear sum of ₤8.50! At that time, I didn't think much of it. Later on though, after the alcoholic haze had lifted, I started doing the math and realised I had just not only paid €13 for a single drink but that this in fact equated to 28 good old-fashioned guilders... Now that's one expensive drink! I don't know what you would pay for this same drink in a bar at the Leidseplein these days, it might not even be all that different, but my point is more that I have stopped REALISING how much money it really is.

This arithmetical self-delusion even goes as far as to have me believing things are cheaper over here than at home. At the moment 1 Pound more or less equals 1.5 Euros. Perhaps if the cost of living in Amsterdam or London would be about the same this ratio would be big enough to stand out. It would, for instance, be very clear that a ₤5 lunch is something very different from a €5 lunch. The thing is though, that because London is about 1.3 times more expensive than Amsterdam(1) the prices you see actually do look a lot like Euro prices. But just that little bit LOWER... and so the illusion is complete: London is cheaper! I guess that might help explain my current cash flow trouble.


(1) Look it up for yourself at http://www.mercerhr.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml?idContent=1142150)

To cycle or not to cycle...

Here's a riddle for you. It glows in the dark and rolls around the city in a funny hat and shorts. What is it? For anyone living in London this will be a no-brainer. For most dutch people , however, this may sound a bit mysterious. Well, let me solve the mystery for you guys: the correct answer is 'a London cyclist'. Every day on my way to College I get to enjoy the amazing spectacle of watching these borderline suicidal people working their way through traffic. By far most of them wear some sort of fluorescent yellow clothing of the kind that in the Netherlands only police men or road workers would dare to be seen in. The outfit is generally complemented with a sturdy biking helmet. The worst of them all though are the ones who, despite the fact that it is only February, go around treating the whole city to a glimpse of their milky white legs. Trust me, it isn't a pretty sight!

Cycling in London is on the rise and more and more people are abandoning the tube to pedal their way to work instead. One of the reasons that is frequently quoted for this is the London bombings of 7/7/2005. Ironically, people have traded in the very slim chance of getting blown to smithereens in the underground for the far more realistic chance of getting squashed above ground on the tremendously congested roads of London. Let me illustrate my point... In total the London bombings, which hit 3 tube trains and 1 bus, took the lives of 52 people. Two weeks later another 4 bombs were set off on the underground but this time the explosives did not fully detonate and nobody was seriously injured. Since then it has been quiet in those tunnels down below. So to sum it up: in the last 19 months 52 people have been killed by terrorist actions in public transport. The number of fatalities amongst cyclists, however, is far more alarming. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents here in the UK, in 2004 alone 134 cyclists were killed in traffic and many more were injured. As the number of cyclists has increased dramatically since then, it seems only fair to assume that so has the number of casualties. Mmm, you do the maths on that one and tell me what you would put your money on.

Getting run down by road raged bus drivers or cabbies is not the only danger faced by London cyclists. This morning I read in the Economist that apparently London has the most polluted air in all of Europe and that yearly about 1,000 people die from inhaling this toxic atmosphere. Small wonder so many cyclists around here wear these odd looking face masks that give me the creepy feeling I'm in Hong Kong during a SARS outbreak.

As a dutch girl who for years has braved the elements cycling to school, work or wherever, I have seriously considered getting a bike here too but with the odds so heavily stacked against me I have decided not to do it. The bus and the tube get me where I want to go just fine and my college is close by enough for me to walk, the British weather permitting. Fair enough, the public transport doesn't come cheap but what does in this town? I'd rather be poor but alive than sprawled out on the city pavement with a few extra pounds in my pocket...