Dare to be different and learn to be lonely

Last week I went on an international worktrip to Zadar in Croatia, a country I never visited before. When I was traveling Europe back in the 1990s, Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia and that whole area was in the middle of a civil war. (Croatia declared independence in 1991 and the last occupied areas were restored in 1995).

My Dutch colleagues and I flew into big city Split and from there drove to Zadar, which is about 170 km to the North. On the way we stopped at Vransko Jezero (Lake Vrana), a nature reserve, where we spent the late afternoon bird-watching before driving on to our hotel.
On Sunday I explored the old city centre of Zadar with my British colleagues and we caught the ferry across the Zadarski Kanal to climb to a viewpoint in Preko, on the Ugljan Island. Back in Zadar we saw one of the most amazing sunsets EVER.

The conference took up most of the time from Monday to Friday and it was dark early, but I did manage glimpses of a few more of the famous sunsets. During the week I had to present quite a few briefs. I had a side meeting with the delegate from Sweden on Monday evening, but on Tuesday evening we all got to go into town for a guided walking tour in the dark. On Wednesday I swam in the -very cold- seawater pool, just before the fancy hosted dinner. Best thing on Thursday was the green apple icecream I had for dessert. On Friday I went to a supermarket, that's always exciting in another country ;-).

After a very fruitful week we traveled back home on Saturday, with a short stop at the Krka river viewpoint for a final goodbye of Croatia.
I made tons of photos, here's a selection (check out the sunsets!!!).

( Day 1: Travelday(s) from the Netherlands to Croatia )

( Day 2: Exploring Zadar and the ferry to Preko )

( Day 3-7: Workweek breakfasts, lunches, and dinners )

( Day 8: Views while traveling back home )

What a wonderful week!

J.

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This is a relatively short picspam to give an impression of my work week. It was a very succesful week; I had a lot of proposals to present, and I'm happy to say all of them were approved, yay! (Just a majority of votes is not enough, you need a consensus of all nations. We have a lot of technical meetings to streamline proposals all through the year, but decisions are made at these biannual in person meetings. One of my proposals required finetuning at three of these meetings to finally get full approval!).
In between work we were spoilt rotten with great food and facilities. At the end of each workday, a whole bunch of my international colleagues and I would meet up at the outdoors pool, where we'd hang until closing at 7 p.m. Then we would get dressed and spend the evening at the restaurant for scrumptious buffet dinners. Some chose to sit outside, which was too warm for me; I prefered the indoors section. Different colleagues would join me every night.

I must say this eating arrangement inside the hotel made for a very relaxing week, as we didn't have to have discussions every evening about where and when to eat and with whom and how to get to the restaurant. (There were three other restaurants in this fancy hotel, but most of us chose the included dinnerbuffet;-) There was an abundance of food from all over the world, including very fancy desserts; everyone could eat whatever and how much they liked. There will be a bonus foodpost for the finale of my trip to Abu Dhabi.
Photos below are a glimpse of food and work, an eveningwalk to the mosque and views from the plane home.

( Abu Dhabi, Workweek April 2025 )

This was the final travelpost, but I will share some photos of the hotelbuffet later!

J.

Part 1: DW / LJ
Part 2: DW / LJ

Summary in 10 photo's on my Instagram

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Well, hello! Checking in with a picspam, because I've been on another amazing businesstrip! I went to Abu Dhabi for work and was fortunate enough to start with a weekend to explore this capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Here's day 1: I took the local bus into town, quickly figured out the place isn't made for walking outside, so I got on a Hop On/Hop Off bustour to see ALL the things :-)

( Abu Dhabi Saturday 12 April 2025 )

To be continued!

J.

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It's been a busy month; after the two week renovation of my toilet and shower, I went on another international worktrip. I flew to Bucharest, Romania for a one week conference (where I presented three proposals and three briefs!). Beforehand I had one day to explore the old town and in the middle of the week we got a tour of the Parliamental Palace where we had our meeting. Other than those sight-seeing photos, there is a lot of food in this picspam, enjoy! ;-)

( Day 1: Travel and a jacuzzi )
( Day 2: Strolling through Old Town Bucharest )
( Day 3: Climbing to the Conference )
( Day 4: A traditional Romanian soup )
( Day 5: A Tour through the Parliament Palace )
( Day 6: Ate my lunch vegetables! )
( Day 7: Final evening at the Fountains )
( Day 8: Flying home )

The End.

J.


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Two weeks ago I went on another international businesstrip; this time I had a week of day long meetings in Strasbourg, France! I had one day to wander around town and for group activity we went on a boattrip:) There were two days when the meetings lasted until 7 p.m., but on the final day I did have some time to check out the inside of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Besides work and those sightseeing moments, we spent quite some time eating; for each lunch our host had picked a different restaurant and another local dish to experience. So much food! Sadly the meeting chair denied our request for naps before continuing our meetings in the afternoons;-) Nevertheless, it was a very succesful week. Enjoy the picspam.

( Saturday Sept. 23, 2023: traveling to Strasbourg )
( Sunday Sept. 24, 2023: exploring Strasbourg )
( Monday Sept. 25, 2023: Meeting Day 1 )
( Tuesday Sept. 26, 2023: Meeting Day 2 + Boattrip )
( Wednesday Sept. 27, 2023: Meeting Day 3 )
( Thursday Sept. 28, 2023: Meeting Day 4 )
( Friday Sept. 29, 2023: Meeting Day 5 )
( Saturday Sept. 30, 2023: Traveling Home )

Had a few days extra off to recuperate. My brother and his family were over from Australia and on Monday I took my nephew to the Efteling themepark: see photos on Instagram:) Now it's back to work and regular life again.

J.

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I would have been squeeing ahead of time, but I don't really want to advertise when I'm leaving my home;) At the end of January I went on another international businesstrip! I had a weeklong working-session in Paris, where I spent all days in a meeting-room having heated discussions with other geodata nerds \o/ It was brilliant:) We did get out of the room for lush lunches (the amount and quality comparible to my cruise trip!) but most hours of the day it was workworkwork.
In the evenings I had additional meetings, so there wasn't any time to explore the town. Luckily I got to see the Eiffeltower in the distance when I crossed the Seine on my walk to the meeting, which is how I at least knew I was in Paris, haha!



Fortunately, when I planned the trip I had thought we might need time on Saturday for additional meetings and I had booked the last train of the day to go home. After we managed to get our whole agenda done with the evening sessions, I had the whole Saturday to wander through Paris!

There are a few photos that summarize my workweek on my Instagram, but here's my full Paris experience!

( Trains, metros, walking and cycling in Paris! )

( DAY 7: A stroll (and a boatride) through Paris! )

Without giving away too much, I can say there will be more worktrips this year;) Keep watching this space if you want to travel along!

J.

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Well, it's been a *month*, pfff. At the end of March, just before I was going to travel for work, I overextended my already painful shoulder to the edge and had to see a physical therapist who told me what I already knew for some time: that I needed to take a break, haha. No time for that yet, because I had an international geodata conference in the Czech Republic to go to! So I put my arm in a sling to avoid more damage to that shoulder and got on planes and trains to go to Mikulov, a small town just over the border from Austria.

When I got back home, I finally managed to slow down a bit. I'm on partial sickleave and only work half days to allow my shoulder (and me) some rest and time to go to physical therapy. I have to avoid computer work as much as possible, that also includes playing with photos, journals and blogs, hrmpf. So I had to limit typing about the sights and took a lot of breaks, but eventually I put together this picspam of the first part of my trip :-p

( Saturday, 2 April 2022 )

( Sunday, 3 April 2022 )

( Monday, 4 April 2022 )

( Tuesday, 5 April 2022 )

To be continued!

J.

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This week I've returned to the office to train new employees and it's been physically exhausting as I usually start the day standing during a long presentation and then spend the rest of it walking around answering questions. Most evenings I barely managed to eat a bowl of yoghurt before I fall asleep on the couch. It's been mentally rewarding though; we've selected a great bunch of 'students', none of them have any experience with GIS (Geodata Information Systems) and it's been a joy to teach them all I know:) I also love that I get to cycle to work again!

Having to adjust to the Corona measures is still a bit tricky, as I have to do my explaining from a safe distance and I can't simply grab their mouse to show them what I mean on the screen by doing an example drawing. But I happily wear my funky map-patterned mask for one-on-one talks and I found this lovely berry-scented hand desinfectant that also amuses me.
Now that everybody is settled in, things should calm down a bit. My fellow tutor is on digital stand-by and we plan to have the new people interact with him even more next week to take the biggest pressure off. I still have two major presentations to give, but I'm actually looking forward to those, as I get to talk about a subject I love and I really enjoy sharing knowledge:).

This weekend I will be finishing the final version of the paper story-banner for my first SPN_J2_BigBang artwork of 2020 which will be revealed after the weekend, dundundunnnn. I haven't been able to work on that during this busy work week and I also haven't had time to check up on all the awesomeness that has already been posted in the spn_j2_bigbang. Go give all creators there some love if you can!


I did manage a few creations for Land of Art; creating graphic designs is as relaxing as a lovely hot bubblebath: it's instant pleasure and it clears my mind. I found some gorgeous pics of Jeffrey Dean Morgan/John Winchester to play with (I have a bunch left to fiddle with too, woohoo!). Of course there's also a CSI Tumblr design plus bonus Hannah Gadsby!
These were all made for Hide & Seek, where you make graphics based on given themes. Each piece you make is a vote for that theme to be included in the next round. I spread my votes across three themes: Looking Up / Vintage / Action. Can you tell which is which?



( Two bookmarks & two Tumblr graphics )

As we used to say and it still holds true: comments are love!

So how have y'all been doing? Still social distancing and working from home? What's going on in your part of the world?

J.

Earlier rounds of Phase 14's Hide & Seek: Round 3 | Round 2 | Round 1
For all my other Land of Art posts, just check the tag:)

J.

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So... I got a promotion! I now officially have a senior position at the MGCP project (Multinational Geospatial Co-production Program). I still get to do the same geographical data collection, but in addition the senior team also checks the data. We get to explore new areas before the rest of the team to make decisions on how to draw new features (such as for instance the elevated highways they have on Java, Indonesia:)
Last week we mostly spent our time in meetings to get the whole team up to speed with documents and management, and I'm very much looking forward to getting back on the floor and dive into real work again, pfff.

In fandom news: looks like a whole bunch of youngsters have discovered the CSI: Nick/Greg fandom, and since they are mostly on Tumblr, this means they are making the most marvelous new gif sets or our old boys:) It's very cool to be able to fill up the NicknGreg Tumblr with new pretty.

The (Supernatural/RPF) MatchMakerChallenge at quicky_bang is counting down; you can still join in for a date until March 15, with posting until the end of the month.

I'm considering starting up a Graphic Banner challenge next over there, would anyone besides me be interested in that? Asking artists and authors of short fic (<4000 words:)

J.

It was a very exciting Monday: when I checked my mail upon arrival at work around 9 am, the program didn't respond. After a little investigating it turned out my automatic response mail had been on a loop ever since I started my vacation 2 weeks ago! An 'unable to deliver' mail had been sent around again and again and all the regular mail had gotten stuck in between.
I was able to reach the inbox through an online server and started deleting these messages. Around 1 pm Outlook started downloading mail on my computer again; it had 30,944 messages waiting in line... *gulp*
( screencaps of the exploding inbox )

I finished deleting the massive amount of messages a little after 3 pm. I had just enough time to deal with the few actual mails before I went home around 5 pm.

This week business hours are reduced to 'mornings only', due to many clients still being away on vacation. If this mail mayhem hadn't happened I could have gone home at noon. *pouts*

I'm already done with this week, hrmpf. I had planned a lot of online time tonight, but I'll get back to y'all tomorrow, okay?