I was born in 1971 in the Hague, the Netherlands. I grew up in a neighbouring town, where I lived until my 19th year. By then I was studying business oriented computer science (or however you should translate it in English) at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I felt like my life had finally started at that time, but in hindsight I also know that my childhood was not that bad. Live was very outdoor-oriented, with always people living more on the street than inside. I miss that sometimes.

While studying I lived in a house with 7 other people in a house on some distance from the city-centre. I think that made it a rather special experience, where I had a very close relationship with several of my house-mates, some of which I still meet quite often. I lived there for a total of four years. In the meantime I met Martijn, who became my boyfriend and we moved into a two-person student flat in 1995.

Shortly after I graduated from college, and had by then started working for an IT-company Cap Gemini. The travelling and lack of challenge made me apply for another job after less than two years, and since that time I work for Robeco. Robeco is an asset management company in Rotterdam, so travelling is minimal now and I work as a project manager. Challenges enough in my new job, but frustrations also alas.

In the meantime Martijn and I like travelling a lot and try to go on small trips as often as possible. Photos of some of these traveling experiences can be found on this website. We've bought a house in 2001, the first house we will own after renting for 6 years and are preparing for moving on somewhere in May 2002.

I'm not a very artistic person, but I would like to be, so I've taken some lessons in painting and photography and I try to create something now and then, and I found that even without being a natural talent it's quite possible to create a good painting, and I'm definitely going to create a dark room in my house for developing photos.

This is a picture of my family, with from left to right my sister Susanne, my mother, Martijn and my brother-in-law Cees. I also have a father, of whom I have no picture available at this moment. My sister had a son on January 19th 2001, who is called Daan.

Martijn's sister has a daughter called Ana Sara, pictured here with her favourite uncles.