My profile

I was born and brought up in Delft, The Netherlands. Marriage and work brought me from place to place in the Netherlands: Maassluis, Zoetermeer, Amsterdam, Rotterdam. In 1982 I moved for work temporarily to Singapore for 6 months. Those 6 months turned out to be 3 years in the end. I still consider Singapore one of the best places I have lived and worked. I really enjoyed working there, and I still have many Singaporean friends. After having worked many years for design offices specialised in the petrochemical industry as a civil engineer, I decided it was time for a change. And the change had to be something dramatic, not just swapping civil for e.g. structural engineering! A number of things helped tremendously; bankruptcy of the company I had worked for for over 30 years, being employed by a compatitor which, at least that was what it seemed, was heading the same way, and last but not least a partner who was also fed up with her employer. And that was the start of a couple of years holidaying in France trying to find the place we would like to settle down in, a few weeks of intensive house hunting, and finally the move from the Netherlands to France.