Jane's blog

Alan & Wei
Cambridge, UK, 2010
I met Wei in 2005. She was my second Mandarin teacher in Shanghai. One day we ended class shopping at the XiangYang market. Great class I can tell you! Over the years I went back for visits and Wei even had the opportunity to visit me in Utrecht. Later I visited her in the UK and last year we had a end of summer break together in Spain. A friend for life! This spring Wei asked me to be her bridesmade. Of course! It was such an honour! I felt like being part of her family. The wedding was lovely and I look back to a wonderful day!

Chilling with Mehdy, Ryan and Mona-LizaAmsterdam, NL

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I had my annual check up with the dentist this morning. That means another visit by car to the North of Holland. While driving up there the road reminded me of all those hours I had to spent on this road on a daily basis. I still can’t believe how much time (read: how many years) is needed to get this road work on the A2 highway ready, and I’m primarily talking about the Utrecht – Amsterdam part here.

Anyway, I don’t think that expanding them from 3 to 5 lanes will magically improve the throughput of the traffic. There will just be more space to go out and play! More speeding bills, more trespassing of the traffic laws such as passing cars from the right side. That will be fun. Fun for the people who need to recollect the money they invested in the last couple of years on building this particular highway.

But let’s see it from a positive perspective too. There could be a chance you’ll see more people showing off their speedy Porsches, classy Ashton Martins and sexy Ducaties on the road, especially outside rush hours. Wouldn’t that be awesome?! OK, I have to admit, it will never be a Italy or Germany setting here but please forget that idea and keep on dreaming with me. Also, there is less probability you will end up in a car accident as there is more space to divert when a car suddenly makes an unpredicted move. That leads to less accident claims per year. And of course, for those who want to believe in what has been promised to all of us: there may be a chance that you won’t be stuck all morning and late afternoon in traffic anymore simply because there is more lane capacity now. 50 minutes instead of the usual 60 minutes? For the MS Excel people among us: That’s a gain of 17%, lucky you! This time I was home in no time again since I had no complications and therefore I could just get my free toothpaste samples and return before rush hour.

That rises another question: Do we need those 5 lanes *only* for our daily rush hours?

I’ve been going through my documents and files lately and came across this piece of text I sent to a friend 4 years ago after my first week in my first job at KLM. Read with me:

“…I started my job at KLM last week. The first day was an introduction day. We paid a visit to the hangars and got a chance to climb into some planes (as if I had never seen a plane from the inside before in my life haha). A lot of knowledge about that I still need and want to learn. Right now, I have to reads tonns of documents and get to understand why certain decisions have been made in the last couple of months since I’m kind of falling into the middle of a project (not so handy) and have to succeed the person who is leaving next month. Busy, buys, busy….but life at the company isn’t too bad. I’ve found two old-classmates and it’s nice to go to other parts of the airport just for lunch or a meeting. It keeps me moving around instead of sitting behind my desk all day…”