The funny thing is that people actually still visit my blog. Even though, I hardly post any new information on this thing. And, the theme is absolutely terrible, and probably not even responsive either. More on that later.. So, what has changed; a lot, really. I finally graduated from University, YEAH! (3 years ago) Took me bit longer that the average soul, so that’s not that great really. So, first thing on your mind once you graduate is: “let’s find a job at a fortune 500 company”. DREAM BIG! Preferably even Apple! or Shell, or some other awesome valley tech company.

I would have no issues whatsoever moving to the States, or packing my bags and just leave if there is an awesome opportunity abroad and I would be crazy not to do so. My sis has done this several times and it brought her mixed bag of successes, but you got adventure! Some Indiana Jones lifestyle, that be awesome. But, almost exactly three years ago, I just wasn’t that adventerious and was looking for a new job closer to home. At that point in time, I also wasn’t so sure about how well my hip replacement was going to hold up, so traveling to a country with mediocre health care didn’t seem like the best idea then. Neither did ending up in a foreign hospital… But it was 2012, our economy in Holland was recovering from the recession, and  the job market was not that great. (translation – shite) Thus, as many grads from Uni at that time, I started applying for jobs, traineeships and the like, like a maniac! And that approach wasn’t so successful.

I was old, by standards of the average Uni graduate (average is 24-27), so that did’t help me that much. At my 29 years of age that time, competition was a bitch. Most “young professionals” at that age, the term used for employees with like 1-3 years experience in Netherlands had more experience than me. And if they wanted someone with a clean slate, they rather take someone a couple years younger than me, preferably with boobs. Kinda like, “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, BS if you ask me. I wasn’t that old either. Its not like I couldn’t learn new things, or that I was at an disadvantage compared to other young grads. So most rejection letters could be summarized like this:

• You do not fit the profile for this function…
• You got a beautiful Resume, but were still not hiring you..
• No reaction what so ever.. the worst if you ask me
• Your too creative, why not follow your passion…
• Or, telling me to change something I can’t easily change.. really annoying
• Finding some other random little thing to reject you on..

Now if I did somehow manage to pass the first selection, either getting an invite to one of those really annoying online competence test, or convo with a recruiter.. For example, I applied for the “Rijkstrainee programma”, quite popular under young Uni graduates. It was 3 year trainee programma within the government. There was no job guarantee, but if you did well in the program you could be quite successful. I never made it through those tests, i just really hate those type of test because it puts so much pressure on you to perform. So, I applied twice to this program, and I was rejected twice because you guessed it, I didn’t fit the profile. I was more an leader rather than taking a orders from someone else. Being rejected for a job, or by a girl for is part of human life. But, if your not sure why you’re being rejected all the time, or if they give a different reason every time isn’t very useful. This means you can’t do anything, improve yourself, or paint a better picture so that you have at least some chance getting further into the application process.

After having been rejected by a variety of reasons from all sorts & types of employers, I decided something need to change. This was in the summer of 2012, so I could get some type of temporary work, like a job a blockbusters or maybe in a call center. In my free time during the last couple years, I ran a little wordpress blog. Actually, this the one you’re reading right now. It was quite Daily back the then, but not so much now. So my Mom, who was in board member of the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs’s foundation for partners and family members of diplomats sent abroad, asked me If I could update their website. So I heard about this little blogging platform called wordpress, which you could use to run a simple blog, or a feature complete content management system. Sure, i took the job. Me, as a tech geek really couldn’t resist the challenge, and it shouldn’t be too hard. I studied Business, but at heart I’m just a tech geek wanting to find a job where I could get paid for following my passion for tech. The sweet spot would of course be a job at Apple, but I didn’t see that happening any time soon. Mind you, I was still studying while I was building, and managing the site for the foundation.  This was the start for change I was going to start this summer.. which is going to be second part of this blog post. So, you just have to wait for bit.

Beste Mensen,

Zoals je allemaal misschien weten,  sta ik op het punt om de laastse fase van mijn studie af te ronden. Hier hoort ook een scriptie bij. Deze gaat over het kopen van medicijnen via het Internet. Het was bedoeling om dit onderzoek te doen bij een data panel, maar jammer genoeg lukt het niet om de financiering rond te krijgen. De recessie, zeggen we dan maar. 😉

Dus doe ik nu onderzoek, op kleinere schaal en daar wil jullie vragen om daar aan deel te nemen. Het kost ongeveer tien minuten van je tijd. En als het lukt, om dit voor volgende woensdag even in te vullen.

Mocht je nog vragen of aanmerkingen hebben over de enquête, kan je dit aan het eind van de enquête even invoeren in tekst vak.

Hierbij de koppeling naar het onderzoek: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z3ZZXGN

Ken je iemand anders die niet erg vindt om een korte enquête in te vullen, stuur dan deze link of webpagina door.

For the international visitors, this is a survey, in dutch about selling medicine via the Internet. It’s specifily made for the dutch market, so there is no need for your to complete it. Thanks anyway!

Wow, it’s been some time since I’ve last update my blog!! I think I just saw that the last time was in April, friggin April peepz, that’s like more than half a year ago. Too long, really but I’ve been quite busy with my thesis. My sister left for Dalian in september, she is doing her hotel management final internship their at the Kempinski hotel. Quite a few miles away actually. But, it’s china and if I’ll get a chance I’d still go in a heart beat. That is, too a large city with a big foreigner community. Nor some tertiary shite whole like Dalia n. No offense sis.

Anyway, I’m finanly on my way with my thesis, it’s nice to see it finally gain some speed, but only one small issue. Don’t know yet where I’m going get my data set from. Database which I was going to use kind of decided to charge some serious for the research, the exact price i’m not yet aware of, but it probably won’t be 3 cents either. In case your wondering, it’s going to look at the reasoning behind buying medicine via the internet. Interesting topic, but nowhere near easy. If it was too easy, it won’t be called a thesis.

Also just took exam, and I’ll just have to wait and see how the results turn out. I really want to finish this whole studying, when I am at uni, starting to feel old. That’s not good and definitly a sign I need to leave uni asap.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I’m in the train now as heading from Tilburg to The Hague as writing this on my phone. Are Dutch railway company is doing there job properly, so I had to do something to pass the time.

Cheerz,

Seb

Hey Peeps,

The website macappstorm is offering an really rad deal. You can win a free copy of either Tweetie or Devonthink Pro at MacAppStorm.com. Follow this link http://bit.ly/t1GnV <—- to have a repost a the link to competition either via twitter, or your blog to have chance on win one of these great apps.

Seb

Wow, its been a while since I updated my blog… like a long time.. at least with a decent post about something actually relating to my real life.!!! Anyway, I’ve decide to split this blog post into three parts. Today, I will start with how I ended up in hospital again…

The shit storm starts…

Well, one thing was for sure, Sometime in the future, they were going to have to remove the pins or screws from my hip in the future. There was no date yet for this set in stone, but It was going to happen anyway. The shit storm started back in december 2008. I noticed that I had more pain in left hip, the one that I broke last year February in a bicycle accident. It was really pain from the muscles themselves, so I wasn’t too worried about it, or at least.. something that some more physical therapy could solve.  At least, thats what I though.. the only thing with this new pain… was the timing.. It was right about when I had my exams for International Business, the master I am studying @ Tilburg University. Pain is not something that helps you study, and neither does extra physical therapy come in well with the time that it takes. My therapist said it was probably the muscle shortening due to change in length of the left leg.. not good, but not anything that could kill me. The physical therapy did help, so and it went ok till end january when I noticed that was also a significant decrease in my overall condition and the fitness of my muscles… At this point I realized that I probably couldn’t wait until the summer to take take out the pins, and that operation should maybe moved to march.

Not only my physical condition started to get worse, but the symptoms started to change as well. My colleagues at work noticed every week that my walking wasn’t getting any better and that I started to lean more to one side. The pain changed, from being muscle pain to pain that was coming from the groin and hip area. It seem to come from the hip bone itself, very similar to what I felt when I broke the thing last spring. I made appointment with my orthopedic surgeon to see if we could maybe move the surgery for removing the pins to earlier date, preferably after my re-exams that I had in the third week of march. My conditioned further worsened to the point that I couldn’t really walk without crutches, so that every single step was painful. I had to stop working, and this really didn’t help either with my preparation for my re-exams in march. I had to make another appointment two weeks after that last with my orthopedic surgeon to see what was going wrong. So, he ordered another x-ray of the hip and decided that another x-ray, a cat-scan was necessary to see where the problem lies. This wasn’t  a guarantee either for a solution since the pins would block a proper view of the hip structure.

Diagnoses: New Hip

Anyway, to cut to the chase.. all was not well in hip land (obviously)… It was still holding together, and thank god… it didn’t break again but the arteries around the ball of the hip joint never really recovered.. So, the bone started to slowly and slowly deteriorate to point that there isn’t much hip bone left. Usually, something that only happens to old people because of wear and tear on the joint. A pretty drastic decision had to be made, and that was that I was going get total hip replacement surgery. Nothing besides completely replacing the hip could fix it at this point in time. This also explained the severe pain I was having, similar to the amount of pain that I had when I broke the hip last february in the first place. Now, only one problem was left. Setting the date for the operation. The doc wanted to do it as soon as possible, but this wasn’t really option because of my re-exams I had in march. Dutch university are notoriously inflexible in make changes or exceptions to exam schedules or allowing you to take your exams at different time even if you are half dead or you broke your hip. So I had to delay the operation till the end of march, march 25th to be exact… I had to duke it out, with my hip and some serious abuse of pain killers for about another month till I could have my operation. Not something to look forward to, but there was no other option. This wasn’t that great either for my study, since studying with shit loads of pain isn’t very effective either. By this time, I was walking again with two crutches, almost in the same condition I was in right after my first hip operation… not so good.

In my next post, the operation… fun fun fun.

For today, no boring blog post about my life or my love for gadgets, twitter or whatever but about my master thesis. I’m nearing the end of my studies at Tilburg University, so now it’s time to start it. I’m going to focus my master thesis topic on international business, specifically marketing. The topic I went with was grey markets and parallel imports. The definition, according to wikipedia.org is

A parallel import is a non-counterfeit product imported from another country without the permission of the intellectual property owner. Parallel imports are often referred to as grey product, and are implicated in issues of international trade, HIV/AIDS management, and intellectual property.

With all the sales today via Internet, ebay, online stores and various other methods of getting your goods overseas or boundaries, it very easy for grey markets to exist. Take for example Apple’s iPhone, you can buy it here Holland via ebay.nl or markplaats.nl Several telecom webshops even offer the iPhone with dutch gsm plans for free, even though the iPhone is not officially released here yet. Even when they do, with the current dollar to euro exchange rate, it will probably still be cheaper to import the iPhone from the United states than to buy it. The iPhone grey market in Holland is doing very well, and Apple is really isn’t doing anything to stop it.

Now I don’t necessarily want to write my thesis about the iPhone’s grey market in the Netherlands, but it an idea.  My first proposal, which i will attach as an pdf to this blog post was even broader. I wanted to look at various consumer goods, see if there are grey markets for that good exist. Once I’ve done that, I will do a survey under the general public to see if they prefer grey goods to normal goods if they have the same waranty terms. I had to present this to my thesis coordinator, and it’s just way to broad to do all once and it would take much more time than i will have available to complete my master thesis. His advice was, go search for a company which competes with grey markets or has parallel import issues. The other option I would have is to go a marketing research bureau, like GfK or Nielssen and see If I can get access to there databases so that I can do research based on that data. When I need to collect the data myself, i need to use survey and use anova and regression analysis to analyze that data. So, in a nutshell it would very beneficial for me find company to do my thesis at, and I’m hoping they will respond to my letters, and or blog post.

Companies

• Apple – iPhone related grey market in the Netherlands
• GfK – research company with access to several interesting databases
• Philips / Sony / Other consumer brands – online sales much cheaper than brick / mortar prices
• Pharmaceutical companies such as Astrazeneca

Grey markets exist pretty much everywhere, but i think it most interesting to look at grey market sales that occur because of the Internet.  A lot of research has already been done looking at parallel imports in the Pharmaceutical industry, but not much to day regarding consumer electronics and grey market sales via the Internet. That why I’m hoping that Apple or Philips will allow me today thesis at one of those companies in a way that I can combine my research about grey markets with there problems so that research will constructed in such a way that it is beneficial to both parties.

If you have or own a company in the Netherlands or elsewhere that is struggle with parallel imports and you want to have research done into this issue and how to solve it, please drop me a line at sebastiaanvda [at] hotmail dot com.Thank you in advance.

If you have any tips or comments, please reply to my post. Anything can help.

Watch It, Cheerz Sebas

I have gotten pretty fond of twitter lately, and I am one of those poeple who like get twitter, at least, thats what I think. My problem with it, is that I’m having a hard time getting my friends to join twitter. The geekish, they understand and love it. I also do, that way I can follow a few of my favorite tech hosts, like Leo Laporte, Cali Lewis, Kevin Rose and so on. I hardly have any dutch friends on twitter, besides for one, who I actually found by accident via Twitter search within you area search egine, or something like that. So where is everyboy and why aren’t you on twitter. Its like Instant messaging, only better. It’s not as much a pain in the ass bloggin, because it easy to use. Its not as annoying as IM, since you don’t need to respond to every message you recieve. And the more friends, and followers, the more fun it gets.

Twitter can even be usefull, some people use it for research. I think I will do same for my Master Thesis, see how other poeple view my topic. Anyway, I blogged enough for one day. My twitter account is @ http://www.twitter.com/Sebdude follow me.

Well, I have done a pretty bad job at keep my blog update. Not that my health has changed alot in the last month. In the beginning of April, I went to see my doctor specialized in hips, and he said I had to continue walking with two crutches for another 4 weeks. In the end of April, I went back again to the doctor, and he told me that I had continue walking with two crutches for another six weeks. I really did not expect, in the end I might end up walking with two crutches for another two months. This isn’t all negative, on my most recent x-ray of my hip compared to the one made in the beginning of April, the hip has stayed in place. And it’s slowly, very slowly growing back together again. But it still sucks, especially with nice weather, i want to Rollerblade, i want go for a long walk, go to the beach or go for a bike ride in the dunes, not just stay home like an old fart. I’m 25 for gods sake.

Last week me and my parental units went to Keukenhof, which is a flower exposition which is held in the Netherlands every spring in the Netherlands. its one of those extremely touristy hot spots where are al tourist visit when go to Holland. I had never been there before, and it was truly beautiful. I didn’t know there were so many different types of tulips, and other flowers. Keukenhof is pretty large, so i had to pushed around in wheel chair which was fairly humiliating for me. Still, I’m glad at the end of the ride I could get out of the wheel chair unlike some very unlucky people who will never get out the wheelchair again.

Its easy to rant, its easy to blame someone else, but accidents happen. The truth of the matter is that life goes on, and that given some time, the hip fracture will heal, and if does not, I will just get hip replacement. Eventually, I will walk again, the question only is, how long will it take for my hip heal to level were i can function easily without too much problems. Lately, I have been ranting  a bit on twitter as well, but I guess its not bad as at home. That’s about it for now. Cheerz, Sebas

The she lies down

Originally uploaded by Sebdude

Hey, just wanted to share this picture with you guys. Our cat Coco loves lying in the sun or under her personal heat lamp. lately, she noticed that our Apple TV is also warm and toasty, so tried lying on it. I couldn’t help myself, so I pulled the Apple TV from under our tv so that she could complete lie down on the thing. So, we are not the only one in our house who enjoy the Apple TV anymore!!!!

Cheerz,

Sebas