The R&D day 2017

Today the complete R&D department of my work got together for the annual R&D-day. There were talks, workshops, activities and.... BBQ!

The activities were all outside, so we spent 2 hours in the cold wind and rain. I took this photo during our first activity: building a catapult. The best thing was that our team won with the furthest shot :-)

All in all it was a fun day :-)

Tanja's farewell dinner

Today after work a bunch of colleagues and I went to a restaurant called "Pont 13" for Tanja's farewell dinner. It's opposite the NDSM area where I used to work.

I finally got close to this building. It's an old oil-rig turned into a restaurant.

Our restaurant is in a restored ferry that used to run on steam. It looked really nice inside.

But since the weather is great we all sat outside. It was a very fun evening with nice food.

At some point this little bumble bee came to sit in between me and my colleague Ernst. I think it wanted a rest. After just sitting there for 5 minutes it flew away again. A lovely little visitor :-)

The cooking studio

This evening after work I had a work outing to which I went with some 28 colleagues. We went to a cooking-studio where we were split up in random groups and each group was to prepare some food for out big dinner. And big it was!

I was in team "dessert" and I did the eggs. I split them and then beat the egg white until you could keep it upside down without falling out of the bowl. New skills for Vincent! ;-)

We also prepared the dessert plates.

Another team made a delicious tomato soup.

There was plenty of food! On another table there were delicious chicken nuggets coated in honey mustard and meatball in tomato sauce.

Dessert-team made this (also) delicious lemon tart. It was actually really good!

My colleague Hans made these crispy cookies. They were awesome, loved them (and ate too many).

My colleague Sicco made this photo, I'm gracefully stealing it to put it up here simply because it's a really nice photo of all the people on our floor. I had a really nice evening!

Running the stairs

Now that my company owns that huge office tower it was time to have some fun with it! So my boss organised a little staircase marathon to see who could climb 54 flights of stairs (27 floors) in the least amount of time. It was fun to watch and cheer for my colleagues.

Here's my colleague Ernst giving his all to climb those stairs. He did survive and set not too bad a time ;-)

Bye Dustin!

I made another KIVA loan. Hopefully this will improve some people(s) situation somewhere... I like to think it does.

In the evening I had a farewell-dinner with colleagues. Our colleague Dustin is leaving the company and he will me missed, it's a nice guy.

Changing wheels

View du jour. It was a nice day, weather wise anyway. Work wise was a different story...

After work I helped my colleague Dustin swapping wheels. It gave me an opportunity to use a car-lift. I learned. That's good.

When I came home I exercised. I was pretty knackered afterwards.

For dinner I made myself a lovely thai red curry.

The new year's dinner

Just as I was waking up a big fat truck stopped in front of my house to unload stuff for some neighbour somewhere. I have too many neighbours. I need less neighbours.

The morning was crystal (tower) clear, contrary to yesterday's morning. Beautiful.

Sun rise on the other side of the tower.

In the evening my work's new year's dinner was held in the restaurant at the first floor.

It was nice but more than half my floor wasn't there so that was a bit crap...

The move

My colleagues and I moved our stuff today.

We did well and everything was at the new place before noon.

Bye bye old office!

Hello new office! Lennart and Hans put together most of our desks.  I stayed at the old office a bit longer te help fill up the second load.

Meanwhile, enjoying the new work-view ;-)

Stuff is coming together and it's not even lunch time yet!

My desk. I have a lovely window-spot.

With time to spare I put up the Christmas tree.

Our new head quarters.

In the evening we drove to Den Bosch where Larissa and Milan were going to a concert kinda thing. There was a coca cola truck.

After dropping the kids off Simone and I hit town and went out for dinner at a place called Van Puffelen. Very nice place.

In Den Bosch a lot of folks hang out in the streets at night, drinking with friends.

After dinner we walked around a bit and ended up on a terrace somewhere. We got home around 1:30. This has been a long, loooong day.

Happy birthday Hans!

There was a birthday in the office and we got cake! Thank you Hans! (I know you'll read this being one of the more loyal readers ;-) )

The tower

There are normal chocolate sprinkles and super mega kingsize chocolate sprinkles. I prefer the latter ;-)

This is the new taxi stand at Central Station. It's at the back now. They choose a good spot.

In the afternoon colleagues and I went to check out our soon-to-be new office.

It's got pretty big floors with nice kitchen areas.

However, the views are the absolute best about this new office!

There's also a lounge area with a bar and artifarty staircase.

The tower.

After visiting the tower (as we simply call it) we went to a place called "Escape room" with the whole financial team. Here are colleagues Tanja, Inanc and Hans.

Escape rooms are rooms you get locked in to for an hour with a team and you have to use clues to find the key that will open the door so you can leave again. Typically you have an hour. If you haven't made it by then, the door will be opened for you by staff. My team was in the Van Gogh-room. In the end it actually has 3 rooms which was fun and exciting. We managed to open the door with 1 minute left! It was a fun thing to do :-)

Afterwards we chatted a bit before moving on to our next stop: dinner!

Martin, Sylvester and Ernst.

JD, Nicolette, Sicco, Emma and Margie.