Sander tagged my blog; now it's my turn. Five things you (probably) don't know about me and maybe don't want to know either.
- Over the years I already introduced my sons Niek (1996), Cas (1998) and Mees (2000). Their mum, my wife Mirjam, so far escaped public chatter. She is the nightmare of any IT department; managing to blow up any application others have been using without a problem for months. She is also a marvelous usability tester; when she understands an app the majority of potential users will find their way. Don't get me wrong; she knows how to work with the regular Office apps but I never managed to explain her what a blog is. Never mind, there are more things to family life.
- My passion of cycling already reached the web in my CycleBetter blog. Recently I started running as well; this year's ambitions is to run the Groninger 4 mijl in a somewhat respectable time. I don't feel like a real sportsman at all; just need some compensation for all the desk work. And don't get me started on soccer; this country's most popular "sport".
- I started programming while studying biology. My main specialization was systematic zoology and evolutionary biology. My claim to fame was describing and publishing Tachysphex picnic, van Ooijen 1987. Which is a 10 mm sized digger wasp from Turkey.
- Over the years I did travel a lot of countries which taught me to put my life in a wider perspective. These days you can find loads and loads of global (musical) culture on the web. But nothing beats being there in person. My favorite, most fascinating country is India. The most remote place I visited was eastern Turkey at the foot of mount Ararat.
- In the Netherlands I've lived all over the country. Born in the west (Rotterdam), primary school in the South (Eindhoven), secondary school in the North (Drachten), university in the middle (Utrecht) and now quite happy in the North-East (Groningen). I even spent a year outside the Netherlands. My dad worked for Philips, when I was 11 we spent a year in Sussex England. I was dropped on an ordinary British school; quite a crash-course to learn English. Which helped me later when we moved to Drachten where the street language was Frisian. Without a passive knowledge you were an outsider. In every other country I visit since I try to pick up something of the local language. Nobody speaks Dutch.
This should provide some fodder for casual chatter in case we meet in person. After all, that what the game of tag started about.
Hereby I'm tagging:
Warner Boekkooi living nextdoor
Dennis Vroegop omnipresent in the Dutch .Net community
Arie Leeuwensteijn Dutch MS evangelist
Brendan Tompkins fellow CB blogger an Code/Cycle-better blog evangelist
Jay Kimble fellow CB blogger making .NET evangelism into theology.