Month: June 2020

I will be starting a new job tomorrow at a small startup in Utrecht, and I am very excited to join this young company as employee #6.

As senior frontend developer, I will be crafting new and interesting features, honing my user design skills to new levels, and helping them to professionalize their web platform.

The best part though is that I will be an active member of a very enthusiastic team with various backgrounds in the health sciences.

The platform to create better medical protocols and guidelines.

"It is our mission to help hospitals structure the medical knowledge their specialists need and create easy-to-use protocols that can be integrated in the EHR. The use of flowcharts and prediction models makes it possible to deliver personalized health care. With the structure to keep protocols in sync with the latest publications and guidelines, we ensure that you keep knowledge at the heart of your care organization."

I always claim that you are never too old to learn new stuff, and I feel very privileged to be able to pursue this variegated path of new knowledge wherever it might lead me. See you around ...

I had just crossed the bridge next to the hockey field, turning left on my last leg of the journey back home. That's when a white hockey ball flew right past my head missing it by only a couple of inches.

On the other side of the wire fence about ten yards away stood a husky twelve year old girl leaning nonchalantly on her hockey stick. She had severely misjudged the height of the goal and had launched the hockey ball over the net, over the fence, through the highest tree branches, and at an obtuse angle onto the asphalt path leading back to the bridge.

The hockey ball is a good bit larger than a baseball, weighs about 5.5 ounces and has a diameter of nearly 3 inches. It is harder than hard. At that velocity, it easily qualifies as a deadly projectile. It slammed into the wooden bridge with a loud thud, ricocheted off of the metal railing, took another bounce in the opposite direction and then splashed into the water. Forever lost to the depths of non-existence.

The young girl seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she had nearly killed an innocent bystander. Then she broke her posed stance and continued running around as if nothing had happened. I can imagine that she felt pretty embarrassed about making such a bad shot and didn't want any of her fellow team players to notice her gaff. Indeed, peer pressure can be pretty bad these days, especially at that tender age, when even near death episodes are irrelevant.

How ironic it is nowadays when everyone is so completely preoccupied by the dangers of catching and dying from the corona virus. Little do they realize that an other completely random event could just as swiftly end your life right here and now.

If I had been walking a fraction faster or had tilted my head a bit more to the left, I would not have made it back home in time to write this interesting and philosophical blog entry. Thanks God for saving my life.

Well, I used to be a folk singer
Keeping managers alive,
When you saw me on a corner
And told me I was jive.
So I unlocked your mind, you know
To see what I could see.
If you guarantee the postage,
I'll mail you back the key.
Well I woke up in the morning
With an arrow through my nose
There was an Indian in the corner
Tryin' on my clothes.

- Neil Young