So it’s been  about a year since I finished my adventures in Denmark and since I last wrote anything new on my little blog here. So no more excuses: here’s what’s up:
Masters degree:
First order of business after returning from DK was graduating, which I did, finishing my studies of industrial design/product development/product design or whatever other translation people have thought up for ‘productontwikkeling’. I graduated on a project I started in Denmark, with Retap: a refilling station for the Retap bottles. And although my teachers were not entirely convinced by it, the project got an honorable mention in a Flemish ecodesign competition:Â www.ecodesignlink.be/nl/winnaars-studenten/2011/7Â and got featured in an edition of the design magazine Kwintessens (the one about Food Design:Â www.designvlaanderen.be/nl/kwintessens/2012/1/food-design.html). So all in all, I’m pretty proud of it.
Holidays
So I took the liberty of marking what could be my last 2 month long summer holiday as ‘free time’. Quality-time I spent on my family and friends and by going abroad a few times,  I led a group of teenagers on a bike trip to Paris (6 days, 500km) and explored the beautiful island of Crete. Alas, I couldn’t take pictures since my camera broke.
Girlfriend:
I stumbled upon a girl that can stand (and even enjoys) being around me for more than 24 hours 🙂 (and that I enjoy having around as well) So I’m now half of a happy couple!
Job:
Searching left and right, sending emails to loads of intriguing companies and going for meetings with a number of companies, I had a hard time finding a job. But not having a job meant that I could spend time on other people 😉
In December I got a surprising call from the director of my secondary school, asking me if I wanted to fill in for a teacher in January. I agreed. So for almost 4 weeks I taught chemistry, physics and nature sciences to 16- to 18-year-olds. Teaching was quite fun and afterwards I heard from the teacher I was replacing that the kids even remembered what I told them! But if I ever became a teacher, I would prefer to teach subjects that are closer to my interests.
In Februari, I finally found a job that looked promising, fun and challenging. And It hasn’t failed my expactations. Quick example: now, after not even 3 months, I’m head of the research, design and engineering departments (which is is all, in fact, just me. For now.) and I’m head of the metal production department, which makes me the ‘boss’ of 5 men who have been working in the company between 10 to 40 years or so. All this implies that I don’t have much time to get bored (and that’s a good thing of course) 🙂
So my life is actually pretty good. Busy, but good.
I don’t want to make any promises on making new updates regularly (although more frequently then yearly would be a good start), but I’ve got a few things I brewing in my mind that I want to put out here for you to read.