A healthy lifestyle and having fun at the same time

According to a new Swedish health study I live in the unhealthiest part of Sweden. I am still surprised about all the hikers and runners I see all over Ulricehamn every day and to me people come across as extremely healthy here. Nevertheless the study is probably true and we are all a part of the Internet generation stuck behind our computers.

A healthy lifestyle is the base of so much and it’s something you have to transfer to your children. Jochem and I try to encourage the kids to try different types of sports. In Ulricehamn we are spoiled with options but just as most of us we have ideas about what sports we like or what sports they should try. For years we desperately tried to get them into tennis but with no luck. Obviously the most important thing is to have fun and therefore the choice have always been theirs. We can try to direct these choices but they have to make them.

I turned our 200 kg dining room table into a table tennis table yesterday and for the last 48 hours we’ve all been playing table tennis together. Jochem was very reluctant at first and did not want to participate but as the kids got lauder and had so much fun he had to come and watch. After watching for a while and then getting into it he leaned over to me and said.
- I hate to admit it but I think she’s got it!
- Well that’s great, don’t you think? I said.
As a teenager Jochem played in the national youth team in the Netherlands and during his years at university he made his money playing table tennis in Germany. From an early age he spent several hours a day practicing but at 19 he got a knee injury that never really healed. When I met Jochem at 25 he was still playing but he had lost the energy for it and the love for the sport was gone.

He stopped and every time someone has brought up the question if our kids should not play table tennis Jochem has made clear that that is not a sport for his kids. I’ve never really understood his reluctance toward the sport but as the kids had interest in many other things it did not matter. Well, until now. When they came to me and asked why they couldn’t try it I had no arguments to say no. A quick explanation of the game and Ingrid started playing on the dining room table with a wooden stick being the net. It was directly obvious that the genes have been transferred. Naturally she needs a lot of practice and with only a talent you don’t get far but now she’s signed up at the local club and Jochem is almost convinced.

We are most likely not creating the next elite of sportspeople but hopefully we can get them into a healthy lifestyle where friendships and team spirit is a part of everyday life. And maybe Jochem can find some pleasure in a sport that for so long was a great part of his life?

Living glocally (global and local)

Autumn is here with wonderful colours, early mornings of scraping ice off the car windows and heavy wind during the night. I want to sit down with some hot chocolate and get going on my always-increasing pile of “books I want to read” but so far this is not happening. Until the end of October my agenda is full of EU proposals that has to be written and two trips abroad. In two weeks time I’m off to Scotland to see how they work with youth in exclusion and the week after I will be in Brussels. Just to be a real jet setter I will go to the Netherlands for the weekend in between. The kids have a week off and will visit grandparents and friends and I will join them for a short time, as will Jochem who is flying in from Italy. Looking at our family timetable at the moment one can only conclude that it’s a bit out of the ordinary right now. In November I will do as little as possible! Well, accept for the 18th.

On the 18th of November I will be at the EU Ministerial eGovernment Meeting in Malmö and receive a price for best marketing idea in a competition held by the European Social Fund (ESF). The price will be handed over by Mats Odell, Minister for Local Government and Financial Markets in Sweden. Actually this is all I know about it. The ESF called me up yeasterday to tell me I had won first price and informed me to book this date and I was so stunned that I didn’t ask any more questions. Guess I will find out more in due time.

But right now, my head is into competence development of caretakers, writing about drop-out prevention strategies, creating a program for vocational training and continuing our work on attracting dutch people and businessess to Ulricehamn.

November is still very far away and its time to tuck the kids in! Take care everyone!

The time in between, before and after!

The last 1 ½ years of our stay in the Netherlands I travelled 5 hours a day between our house and my job 4 days a week and worked one day a week from home. I liked my job, it was different to what I had done before and took me into a new direction. All which made the travelling worthwhile. According to studies made on travellers most people find it acceptable to travel 32 minutes to their work. For people choosing to travel further the job has to give them something extra. I guess getting up at 5.30 every morning to sit in a full train for 2 hours between Nijmegen and the Hague and then getting on a tram for half an hour shows a certain dedication or stupidity. Not to mention the time you lose on other things. Nowadays it takes me 5 minutes to go by bicycle between my house and the office and its interesting how easy it is to get use to this. I have at least 20 hours extra with the kids each week and when I leave the office I know that no time is wasted on “being in between things”.

Occasionally I do travel in my work and last Friday I participated in an EU conference in Gothenburg about unemployment and life long learning. Gothenburg is situated on the west coast of Sweden about an hour and 15 minutes drive from Ulricehamn. I got up at 6 am and left Ulricehamn by 7. At the bridge of Rångedala the car slipped due to the ice on the road but I was fortunate to get back on track. Three other cars were not. In total more then 10 cars were involved in a traffic accident due to the cold weather and the icy bridge. I continued another 10 km and then a moose ran across the road. Luckily no one hit him and I could carry on. At the airport of Landvetter I suddenly heard a lot of sirens and soon I could see a large pipe of black smoke coming up behind the forest on the south side of the road. Somewhere a fire was burning. This was becoming one of the most exciting trips I’ve taken in a long time. With all this action it occurred to me that I had forgotten to put on deodorant in the morning, something that has probably not happed to me since puberty. The idea of sitting in discussions with lots of people trying to sell in a project proposal while stinking like a pig was not an option so I stopped at a gas station to buy a deodorant. Getting back into the car it didn’t want to start.

Looking at all these individual happenings one could ask oneself if I was supposed to reach Gothenburg? Well, I’m not superstitious and if I’m going somewhere I will get there. Talking nicely to the car and changing from biogas to “the unfriendly gas” got the car going again. I reached Gothenburg and weather it was the Rexona deodorant or the good proposal that did it I don’t know but the day was a success. Driving back nothing out of the ordinary happened but I came to the conclusion that the road between Ulricehamn and Gothenburg must be one of the most beautiful highways in Sweden on a sunny October day.

While travelling that the morning I thought I would never accept a job where I would have to travel again but going back those thoughts were gone. I guess it is not so much the actual time spent on travelling that matter but what you do with the time in between, before and after.

Today it’s Sunday and heavy rain is falling outside. Elsa is out bicycling with her friend Sofia. Nils and Ingrid are playing Star Wars on the Wii. The fireplace is burning, we’ve been melting marshmallows and Jochem is off to the Netherlands, travelling 6 hours to reach his destination.

We are all trying to find the best solutions for the time in between, before and after!