I’m always quite wary about posting sponsored content on my blog. My stance on it though is: if it fits with something that I find relevant for this blog, I’m happy to write about it. In this case it’s a campaign for the British Red Cross and it came at exactly the right moment.

A crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

Two weeks ago when visiting my sister’s place, my dad fell down from the top of the staircase. The stairwell was narrow, steep and high and my dad pretty much bounced backwards head first down the stairs. Earlier this year I had done first aid training, but at that moment I blanked out and couldn’t remember what to do, besides calling an ambulance which my sister’s boyfriend was already doing. I kept going over all the things I had learnt, but it’s stressful when it’s family. After the ambulance arrived, it took my dad to the hospital, and we spent the rest of the day there waiting for test results to come back. Everything turned out fine, except for some small broken bones in my dad’s hand.

Everything turned out fine, but a crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

The British Red Cross help more than a million people in the UK every year. They support them in emergencies, provide care in the home, teach life-saving first aid skills, and do a ton of other services. I’m glad I did the first aid training course; even though I wasn’t that helpful this time around with my dad, who knows when what I learnt might come in handy.

If you want to learn more about the British Red Cross or more about their first aid courses, check out their website.

Disclaimer: this article is sponsored by the British Red Cross. All thoughts and opinions are my own though.

Two weeks ago I got to visit Berlin for a couple of days. I have quite fond memories of Berlin; I previously went in 2007 for a BarCamp and a conference and had a great time then (and met loads of awesome people).

This time around I was there for Campus Party Europe, a large unique tech event. Campus Party started originally in South America and from all accounts I’ve heard the original events are really good. It’s a bit of a mish mash of an event; it’s a weird mix of conference, hackday, LAN party, with thousands of attendees.

This was the first time it was held in Germany and they had managed to get an awesome venue: Berlin Tempelhof, a huge old airport in central Berlin. The event took place in most of the terminal building, which is shaped as a huge crescent spanning 1.2 km. In the middle section most of the hacking/presentations took place, while in the outer arms tons of tents were set up for attendees to camp in (luckily I got to stay in a hotel, camping is really not my thing).

I was there specifically to help out with the Think Big workshop. For 2 days, groups of 18-25 year olds worked on defining and designing their own mobile app ideas. I was there as one of the mentors helping out and explaining stuff to the groups. It was a lot of fun, and the ideas the participants came up with were great.

Because I was helping out with the workshop though, I didn’t get to experience much of everything else that was going on at Campus Party. I didn’t really have time to go to presentations or to work on a hack. It seems like it could be a great event, but I didn’t really get that feeling I most of the time get at great hack days, like Over The Air or Mashed. At those, you always get inspired to start working on something, just by the pure vibe of everything thats going on around you. I didn’t get that with Campus Party. I’m guessing that might have to do with just how large and vast the venue was, but you just didn’t get that feeling of “cool stuff is being created here”.

I did have a great time though, and it was awesome to be back in Berlin again. Keep an eye out for another post one of these days with my photos of sightseeing in Berlin!

I can’t believe the London 2012 Olympics are over (well, the first bit at least: we still have the Paralympics coming up too). I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it all quite this much, but it’s been an amazing two weeks. Up until the week before the opening ceremony my response to the Olympics pretty much was: “ugh, public transport is going to be so screwed, I’m going to be a hermit for 2 weeks”. But then London transformed… the weather became awesome, the atmosphere around London became electrifying and everybody was suddenly so friendly. The Olympics were so much more fun than I ever imagined they could be and I’m truly happy that I got to witness London like this firsthand.

There were quite a couple of highlights for me, so I thought I’d do one post rounding all of those up. What were your Olympic highlights? Let me know below in the comments!

The Opening Ceremony

I think most of us were expecting a very cheesy opening ceremony, but Danny Boyle really delivered here. The Opening Ceremony was awesome to watch, even though I wonder how much it made sense for foreigners. I knew the 007 and the Queen bit was going to happen (and it was as great as I was hoping it would be), but I was surprised (and laughed out loud the moment I saw him) that they brought on Rowan Atkinson. I also loved the concept of the Olympic Flame Cauldron, having each country be represented as a part of the whole. Seeing that all come together was beautiful.

Opening Ceremony by Sum_of_Marc on Flickr

Women’s 4×100 Freestyle Swimming Relay

This was the first event I watched where I was screaming at the TV, rooting for my favourites to win. It was such a close race with Australia winning gold and Netherlands winning silver (but only by overtaking USA and China in the last laps). You can watch it here on the BBC (from chapter 18 on).

Watching SPORT! with friends

It was a lot of fun hanging out with friends (well, it’s always fun to hang out with friends) and to watch sport with them. I had friends over for dinner one of the days and we kept switching between three different sports, not being able to settle on just one. Then I also went with friends to Hyde Park Live and Victoria Live, which were a bit underwhelming the days that we went (although I got to go on a zipline, which was fun and terrifying at the same time). And of course going to see the Gymnastics and Volleyball with friends.

Playing Reserve-The-Ticket-Roulette and Winning

I thought ticket sniping for Barcamps and other geek events had prepared me well, but wow I was wrong. After seeing all those empty seats the first days, I of course was one of the thousands of people that attempted to get tickets. The ticketing website really sucks though; the flow of interactions and the bad copy makes users have the wrong expectations about the state of “their” tickets. It was frustrating as hell attempting to get tickets, but in the end I managed to get some! Gymnastics AND Volleyball!

Jessica Ennis’s 800m, Mo Farah’s 10000m

These were both amazing events to watch. Even though I’m not British, it made me proud of my adopted country. Seeing Ennis give it her all to end up first over the finish line, even though it wasn’t actually needed to win her the gold… it was really amazing. And then to see Mo finish the 10000m. The slow motion capture of that is just brilliant.

Olympic Stadium by interbeat on Flickr

Holland Heineken House at Alexandra Palace

This was a lot of fun, watching the Olympics with a hall full of Dutchies. See my blog post to see more pics of that evening.

Going to the Gymnastics and seeing Zonderland win gold

I still can’t quite believe that I got see a Dutch guy win gold! Zonderland’s routine was so spectacular to watch, and it was awesome just being in the crowd for that. I won’t rehash the entire day here again, I already wrote an entire blog post about my trip to the Gymnastics here.

Watching Volleyball

I still need to process all the photos I took that evening, but I think I got some great action shots. We got to see two Women’s Quarterfinals: USA vs Dominican Republic and Italy vs Korea. The first match was a bit boring; USA won 3-0 from Dominican Republic. The second game the teams were much more evenly matched; it was pretty exciting to watch!

Friendly London

Everywhere I went in London the past two weeks everyone was just super friendly. The awesome volunteers at both Olympic venues I went to were super friendly and helpful. The security at both venues was painless, quick and again super friendly. And almost everywhere you went someone had a smile on their face. I want Friendly London all the time!

Schwarzenegger tweeting about Boris Bikes

Feeling motivated to sport more

After watching all those sports on TV and in real life, I now really feel motivated to go out and sport more. I went running again yesterday for the first time in ages and it felt great. This time though instead of sticking to a schedule and looking at my watch every couple of seconds, I just ran as I wanted: balancing on small walls, jumping over steps, it was just so much more fun. I realized that what I really want to do is maybe some basic parkours; nothing too fancy, but I think it would be fun to learn the basics. Besides that I also want to see if with some friends we can hire a sportshall every (other) week and do a different sport each time. I like volleyball and basketball, but not enough to join a club for only that specific sport. Doing something different each week though? That could work.

So those were my Olympic highlights! What about your’s? What made the Olympics special for you?

I never expected to be this psyched for the Olympics; the past week has just been amazing! I’ve had friends over for dinner to watch sport. I’ve been with friends to Hyde Park to watch sport. I’ve visited the Holland Heineken House… to watch sport. And then two days I actually went to the O2 and Earls Court to watch real life actual sport. And it was awesome.

I managed to get tickets to the Gymnastics last week, after enjoying the men’s team finals on TV. Four finals: men’s parallel bars, men’s horizontal/high bar, women’s beam and women’s floor. Great! What I didn’t realize at the time though was that a Dutch gymnast (Epke Zonderland) had made it through to High Bar finals and that he was likely to win… Oh, and his nickname is the Flying Dutchman (obviously).

So on Tuesday I made my way to the O2 the North Greenwich Arena. I often go to the O2 the North Greenwich Arena, cause our closest Cineworld is there, but I’ve never actually been there before for an event (I have gotten stuck there accidentally during events though, visiting the cinema and getting stuck between Glee fans trying to getting home). I have to say everything was well arranged: the security check, picking up the tickets, getting into the arena, everything was painless.

The seats I got were the cheapest ones they had (at £50 per person), so we weren’t exactly sitting up close, but it was still great to be able to see it all live. Before the actual finals started they had a cool mini performance about gymnastics and how it needed agility, strength, grace and balance. They apparently showed this before each gymnastics event; I found a video if you want to watch the entire thing.

Then the finals started! First up was the men’s parallel bars, which was awesome to watch. None of my photos turned out great though; I was too mesmerized watching it all!

Second was the women’s beam finals, which had a fair bit of drama. So much balance, precision and strength is needed to pull off these routines; it’s a tough sport. A lot of the gymnasts messed up, loosing their balance, falling from the beam and getting points deducted. The gold and silver was pretty obvious, both going to China (Linlin Deng and Lu Sui). The bronze though initially was going to go to Catalina Ponor who had 15.066 points. In 4th place though was Alexandra Raisman from the US with 14.966 points, who contested that score. The judges re-evaluated it and gave her 0.1 extra, putting her on the same score as Ponor! Raisman had a higher difficulty score though (the overall score is an average of the difficulty score plus the execution score) and she ended up with the bronze!

Kseniia Afanaseva (ended up 5th):

Gabrielle Douglas (ended up 7th):

After that it was time for the high bar! I think it’s my favourite apparatus; it’s just so awesome to watch. There were 4 gymnasts before Epke Zonderland and each of them was amazing. But then it was Zonderland’s turn. WOW! His routine was absolutely stunning! If you haven’t seen his routine, check it out here on the BBC page. The crowd was also going completely mental during it; with every jump he made, the crowd cheered, each cheer louder than the previous one. The three jumps at the start are one of the hardest release combinations, a Cassina to Kovacs to Kolman, and Zonderland pulled it off. It was just so awesome to watch.

With such an awesome routine he of course got GOLD! Whohooo! I can now say I saw a fellow countryman get GOLD at the Olympics! He’s the first Dutch male gymnast to win a gold medal in gymnastics ever, and it’s the Netherlands’ first Olympic gymnastics gold medal since the Dutch women’s team win in Amsterdam in 1928.

Last up was the women’s floor finals. Again this was pretty great to watch live; the jumps and flips these girls can make are so impressive. This time Alexandra Raisman got gold (who ended up getting bronze on the beam), Catalina Ponor got silver (who ended up 4th on beam, edged out by Raisman) and Aliya Mustafina got bronze.

So that was my first Olympics event ever! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m so glad I managed to get tickets for it. I had to make a mad dash across London after that though to go to my second Olympic event: Volleyball at Earls Court. More about that tomorrow!

The past week has been so awesome; I hadn’t expected to do that many Olympics related stuff, but my entire week has revolved around it. And it’s been great.

Last Sunday we visited the Holland Heineken House at Alexandra Palace, the official house of the Netherlands and its sporters during the Olympics. There are big screens to watch all the events on (with commentary in Dutch), Dutch fast food to eat, and a huge party with special guests once all the sporting events are over. Also each time an athlete wins a medal they eventually show up at the House and get their own special ceremony! Sadly the evening we went nobody won anything.

It was awesome to be there though. After watching the men’s 100m finals on the big screen, the entire place turned into a huge party. First 3JS performed on stage and after that DJ Sander van Doorn performed. To be honest, I had no idea who they were; I haven’t been following Dutch music since I left.

Here are the photos of that evening:

Awesome time lapse of building the main Olympic Stadium in Lego:

The guy who did this (Warren Elsmore) actually created the entire park in Lego and it’s currently on display by Visit Denmark at the St Katherine Docks. Here are some photos from his Flickr set:

I’m really enjoying the Olympics so far. I wasn’t expecting to be this excited for it, but I’ve gotten quite in the Olympic spirit, rooting for both Australia and the Netherlands (and maybe even a little for Team GB). I’ve mainly watched the swimming events from the past two days (the Women’s Freestyle Relay was awesome), and I’ll need to catch up with some of the other sports. I’m now also regretting now trying harder to get tickets; it would have been so good to see some of these events in real life!

For me the Olympic atmosphere properly started a couple days ago on Wednesday. A friend saw on the National Theatre’s site that they were doing a “Fire Garden” exhibition and thought it would be a good plan to meetup with some friends, have dinner and watch whatever the “Fire Garden” was. It was gorgeous weather that day, so of course the Southbank was completely packed with people and of course all the restaurants had large queues. Instead of queueing and waiting to be seated in a overly hot restaurant, we had the brilliant plan of picnicking in Jubilee Park and ordering Wagamama’s takeaway. I’m amazed I’ve never done that before! It was so much more fun and relaxed than actually sitting in a Wagamamas.

After a great dinner, we all realized we were still hungry and had at least an hour to kill till the Fire Garden. So we ended up crossing the river and getting ice cream at Gino’s. I still prefer Lick for the more unique flavours, but Gino’s do really nice traditional Italian ice cream (the website says they even have Bacio flavour which I didn’t notice that night).
With our ice creams in hand we walked to Trafalgar Square to sit on the stairs and enjoy the atmosphere. You could really feel London buzzing that day; everyone was excited for the Olympics and you could sense that excitement in the air. Cristiano made a couple of great pictures:

After sitting there for a while, we slowly made our way back to the Southbank to see what the Fire Garden was. Turns out it the name was exactly right: it was a “garden” of fire to celebrate the Olympic flame coming to London. It looked awesome! I didn’t manage to walk through it though; the moment I got close to the path my eyes teared up completely.

Pretty, right? So fellow Londoners and non-Londonders, are you feeling the “Olympism”? What Olympic events have you seen so far?

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, it will be five years ago that I moved to London. It will be five years ago that I showed up here with only a single suitcase to start a one year student exchange at Imperial. It will be five years ago that I was that shy, scared girl that I remember I was.

My plan was to finish my masters that year, and then to most probably go back to the Netherlands and find a job there. I remember wondering at the time about the 2012 Olympics and thinking that by then I wouldn’t be living in London anymore. Somehow I got a bit distracted along the way. What was supposed to take only a year, took me 4.5… oops. I never thought I would become the perpetual student.

I don’t regret it though. Within these 5 years I’ve done stuff, I never thought I would do. I started this blog, which has led to so many cool experiences, giving me the chance to meet awesome people and to cover awesome events. I attended GeekDinners, BarCamps and HackDays, learning to present, to code, to not be afraid to talk to people I don’t know. And then I also started organizing those events, allowing me to give something back to the community who had taught me so much.

They say that with every choice you have to make, the universe diverges and creates the realities of both choices. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder: what if? What if I had finished my degree within that first year? What if I got a job after that first year? Or had moved back to the Netherlands? Would I still have gone to GeekDinners, BarCamps and HackDays? Would I have met the same awesome people? Would I have done all those things that I never thought I would do? Would I be the person I am today?

I don’t think I would be. Part of me regrets not having finished my degree sooner, but I don’t regret all the things I’ve done and learnt instead. I don’t regret the wonderful people I’ve met and the amazing friends I’ve made.

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, it will be five years ago that I started the beginning of the end of my student life.

This Sunday, the 15th of January 2012, will be the last day of my student life.

This Monday, the 16th of January 2012, I will be working at EmberAds. Working with some of those awesome people I mentioned: Baz, Caius, Cristiano and Dom.

Part of me is scared, most of me is really excited. One thing I know though:

It’s going to be fracking awesome.