Moon, Mandela, Muslims

Today the moon is round again — we have been liv­ing in Gilling­ham for three months. I have not exact­ly expe­ri­enced them very con­cious­ly. Espe­cial­ly since I work in the office, my life is a bit lim­it­ed and not very excit­ing. An overview of the high­lights: Fred­dy and I sang in a gospel choir during …

It has not gone unnoticed

I recent­ly watched a few episodes of a Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­gram called The Hok­jes­man, trans­lat­ing to the Box­es Man. Dif­fer­ent groups of Dutch peo­ple are mild­ly iron­i­cal­ly scru­ti­nized in the pro­gram, and it always turns out that the box is much more colour­ful than you’d expect. In the episode about ‘Ani­mal Friends’ the Hok­jes­man visited …

Remember remember

There is good news, because since last week I work at the research insti­tute where Fred­dy also works. My con­tract is for three months, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exten­sion. So from 9 to 5 I am now a research assis­tant Mon­i­tor­ing & Eval­u­a­tion, where I can indulge my love for Excel and paper house­hold surveys. …

Musical education

I feel a bit like Don­ald Duck, rolling from one job into anoth­er. The shoe store turned out to be a shady was a shad­owy busi­ness, where I did not get a con­tract and was back on the street after three days. For the past few weeks I worked through a recruit­ment agency for a …

Cows ethics

For me, a veg­e­tar­i­an diet is an impor­tant part of striv­ing for non­vi­o­lence. Writ­ing about this puts me in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion, because the great major­i­ty of peo­ple do not share this belief, while it is very cen­tral in my life. Veg­e­tar­i­ans can also make the impres­sion of being moral­is­tic; Thieme calls this the ‘accu­sa­tion …