Eindhoven city, The Netherlands

Eindhoven is a city in the South of Holland. It started off as a small municipality and once Philips started his famous Philips company the village started to grow. now it is considered to be Holland’s fifth largest cities. What makes Eindhoven a special city? Well it all starts at the Central train station (Eindhoven CS).

In the main hall, there is a quote in large neon yellow letters that reads:

“Conventie, een soort herinnering, is het grootste beletsel om te genieten van leven en kunst.” Piet Mondriaan

Which means convention is the obstacle between art and life.

It is the kind of quote that makes you question your life, your actions and your independent role as an individual. It is because of this one quote that I changed. I changed my vision of the world, my vision of people, my goals, dreams and aspirations, I no longer could find peace within tradition or culture instead I knew I needed to follow my own way.

To me, going to Eindhoven and seeing that quote in the CS was the most valuable experience in my world travels.

 

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A stop gap, July 2017

A Stop Gap is a method that is used to prevent something from happening. It starts as a short-term situation and it can then lead to a longer term situation. The idea of a Stop Gap is to prevent something unwanted to occur. It is often used in business communications.

(Photograph of Vincent van Gogh, with one ear cut off)

No Tulips Please

In 1945 January my father was born in Amsterdam during the Hunger Winter. It is a miracle my father was born at all because there was virtually zero food in Amsterdam at that time. It was a time was a lot of Dutch citizen in this area were forced to eat tulips. Later on in my life, I learnt that both of my grandparents worked in the tulip industries in the province, North Holland in the Netherlands. When I was 17 years old in the Netherlands in the city of Haarlem, my grandfather took in to Hillegom to peel tulips for  summer job. It was a hard job, and I could not peel as fast as the other Dutch people in my group. Later that week my grandfather took me to a tulip factory that he knew about in Velsen-Zuid and got me a job auditing the tulip bulbs. I did that job for 4 – 5 months. Later on in life, I moved to Victoria, Vancouver Island and when I landed at Company X they forwarded me directly on to the Garden Center because my last name was van der Pol. Somehow the upper management of Company X could stereotype me and my Dutch heritage in a matter of a micro-second based on my last name. But in actual fact I do not like tulips myself, I am allegic to them. I get an adversary emotional reaction to the different colors of live flowers – especially tulips.