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Twenty years

Today it is exactly 20 years since I left The Netherlands. I moved to Stuttgart, Germany on December 31, 1995. I had lived in several other countries before that already, among others during primary school in Curaçao, during high school in the USA and as a university student in France, but always returned to live in Holland after a period of time. So I assumed I would live in Germany for 2-3 years and then move back. But that never happened.

Within 3 months after starting my first job (a management traineeship at Daimler-Benz headquarters) I got a project in Indonesia. I was involved in a SAP implementation project at the Mercedes-Benz plant south of Jakarta. The project was not very exciting but it gave me a taste of life as an expat for a multinational. 

Marc at Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart (1996)

At my desk at Daimler headquarters in 1996

So after moving back to Germany later that year and finishing my traineeship 2 projects later, I decided to focus on my new job in financial planning and controlling for a few years and to become really good at it. I wanted to make sure I would be able to get an interesting job abroad after that.  And that worked, because in 1999 I managed to land a job as financial controller for Mercedes-Benz Canada.

But before starting it I heard a similar position would become available at Daimler’s regional headquarters in Beijing, China. I had to give up my future job in Toronto in order to apply, which was a risk I was willing to take. My thinking was that I could always go back to Canada later, but that I might not choose China anymore when I would have a family (turns out I was right, although I had not really expected it). I was lucky and also managed to get the job in China (I later heard there were several other applicants), and started my career at Daimler Northeast Asia in Beijing in January 2000. Marc in China 2000

With my 4×4 Jeep Cherokee (a great car for Chinese roads) in 2000

My thinking was that I would stay in China for 3 years and then move to a different country for Mercedes-Benz, but working and living in China changed me. I quickly realized that China was going to see some major changes and I wanted to be part of that. But not in a corporate position: things move too slowly in big companies and I thought I could do a lot more things when I would strike out on my own as an entrepreneur. So when the topic of renewing my contract came up I decided to quit my job in late 2002. I then studied Mandarin Chinese at Beijing Foreign Studies University for a while, while also setting up my first (consulting) business. 

Well, 13 years after moving to Beijing I was still in China. In those years I did a couple of start-ups, moved to different places in China about 8 times, and I started a family with 2 young kids. It was time for a change again, especially because the pollution got totally out of hand. 

This time we moved to North America and we’re still in Vancouver almost 3 years later. I plan to stay here for at least another couple of years, and maybe even for a much longer period. Vancouver is an amazing place to live, maybe the best place in the world in terms of lifestyle and nature. I may go back to Holland for a few years in the future, mainly so the kids will improve their Dutch and understand Dutch culture better (they both have a Dutch passport, so I feel that’s important), although it’s unlikely I would go back for good.

One thing I learned over the past 20 years, is that I can feel at home almost anywhere. People are not that different once you get to know them better and you can make friends everywhere. I also learned that I don’t want to be in one place too long. I have travelled a lot over the past 20 years (literally hundreds of transatlantic or transpacific flights) and I realize I don’t want to be in one place for more than 4-6 weeks at a time. Change makes life more interesting.

Let’s see what 2016 will bring, Happy New Year!

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A Christmas Present from Scott

First of all a Merry Christmas to all my readers! Even though I don’t blog as much as a few years ago (mainly because of Facebook), the number of readers of this blog still goes up slightly every year. This year I had over 63,000 unique visitors so far, in 2014 that was just over 56,000. The increase mainly comes from Canada, that’s now the number 3 country in terms of readers and it passed The Netherlands which is now in 4th place.

Geo overview blog users 2015

Geographic distribution of the readers of my blog

In 2015 I taught Scott the basics of computer programming. We started off with some Python during the school holidays, and after blogging about that one of my readers suggested to check out Scratch. I did so and it’s the perfectc language for kids: easy to understand, not much typing required (it’s drag and drop) and a steep learning curve that allows kids to make games in days instead of weeks or months.

Scott did a college level Scratch course over the past months, and I helped him with some of the concepts that he was not familiar with yet. For example, if you don’t know that a circle is 360 degrees it’s impossible to make a game character move left, right, up or down. Scott picked it up very quickly and started developing his own simple games right away.

He then had the idea to make a Christmas game for his school friends and after a few afternoons of trial and error he managed to come up with a fun game. I promised him to put the game on my blog as well, so here it is: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/76626698/. It won’t work on most mobile phones because Scratch uses Flash, so give it a try on your laptop or PC.

Scott's Christmas Game

 

Screenshot of Scott’s first game

The aim of the game is for the snowman to reach the Christmas hat while avoiding the big snowflakes that fall from the sky. You start the game by clicking the green flag and you can stop by pressing the red button. You have 5 lives in total, each time a snowflake hits you or if you hit one of the walls you will lose a life. If you manage to reach the Christmas hat you will get one extra life. Once you have no lives left you lose.

Keep in mind that Scott is only 7 years old (almost 8 he would say, he will turn 8 this week), so it’s not a highly polished game and there are still some minor bugs. But I am quite proud of what he managed to make without almost any help. Enjoy the game and looking forward to your future games Scott!

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I am worried

Donald Trump

I normally don’t write about politics on this blog. It doesn’t really interest me. Politics is a game to me, a game by people who are good at playing games, but not necessarily at ruling a country. I’m not a big believer in democracy anymore, I would prefer to see a country being run like a succesful multinational. Don’t elect people every 4 years, but let them grow from within into leaders that have a long-term vision, instead of only going for short-term results with slogans that sound good but have no real meaning.

That doesn’t mean that succesful business men are per definition good at leading. Some certainly are, especially ones that are decisive but can also work together with others to achieve their goals. But others, such as ones that reach their goals by being arrogant and not caring about their employees, are not the ones you want to see in power. They can be worse than the worst politicians. 

To me Donald Trump is the ulitmate example of a ‘successful’ business man who can be extremely dangerous to not only the USA, but to the whole world. This man is a bully who does not care about anyone else, probably not even his own family. That’s what made him his money and that’s fine, but those are the same traits as some of the biggest dictators in the world. I would normally be hesitant to make a comparison to Hitler, but after what Trump said this week about not allowing Muslims into the US anymore, I think a comparison might actually be justified. 

I am worried, because this guy is dangerous. The average Republican American doesn’t see it, because Trump’s dumb rhetoric is so simple that they don’t even think about his message. They want America ‘to be great again’, without understanding what that means. A great country does not close its borders, only a scared country. A great country doesn’t discrimate based on religion, especially not a country founded by people persecuted because of their religion. And a great country should be a free country, free for all to enter and free for all to leave.

I write this post after reading some of the comments on Donald Trump’s Facebook page. Reading those comments made me really worried. I know the average Joe generally doesn’t really think much about the world around him, and the comments made that very clear. His thinking is more or less emotional, based on simple messages (that’s why TV ads are so successful) and slogans that can be easily memorized and repeated. 

I am worried because Donald Trump knows that and uses the same tricks as advertisers to get these people to vote for him. He wants to become the ‘leader of the free world’, another one of these slogans mainly uttered by people who have never been outside the US. They don’t realize that the US is not a real free country anymore, and has not been like that for a very long time. If Donald would win the elections (still a big if, but one that becomes more likely now that nobody is able to stop him and the masses seem to adore him) and would indeed try to bully the rest of the world, the USA is doomed and we may end up in World War III before we realize it. 

I am worried because none of the US business leaders seems to be willing to make a stance against Donald’s racist words. There are some exceptions (Mark Zuckerberg’s note about Muslims always being welcome at Facebook being a notable one), but most companies don’t seem to care. 

I am worried because I realize that his popularity is a sign that the US population is unhappy and wants to have a better life. People are looking for scape goats (Mexicans, Muslims) and Trump delivers that to them. I see parallels with what was happening in Nazi Germany. The way Trump talks about Muslims is very similar to how Hitler talked about Jews. The masses love it without thinking about it, just like the Germans during the crisis in the 1930s. 

I am worried, because for a long time I thought that what happened in Germany would not be possible in the Western world anymore. Social media and free press would be able to stop it, but that’s not the case it seems. The debates on the Internet are tense, with many people really believing in Trump and completely defending his statements. Not as anonymous trolls, but with their full names and backgrounds on Facebook! How is it possible that people are so stupid that they don’t see what is going on? History is repeating itself and people don’t want to see it. 

The other Republican candidates should make strong statements against Trump, because if they don’t the next thing might be that he will tell people that all Muslims should be rounded up. And although that won’t happen in reality, many people may see that as a statement to take their rights into their own hands and a new civil war could start. Far fetched? Maybe, but nobody could have predicted a year ago that Donald Trump would be able to get away with his current statements about Muslims.

I am worried, and I don’t know what I can do about it. I don’t live in the USA, but that doesn’t mean I should just sit still and not say anything. If everybody would do that Trump might eventually really be elected. So at least I want to put my thoughts on virtual paper and hopefully make some people think. Of course I realize that the people who vote for Trump likely don’t have the attention span to read more than a few sentences and would never find or read this post in the first place. 

Is this a sign of the times? Real wages have gone down over the past years and that’s a trend that will only get worse. That is one reason why people are angry. Because of artificial intelligence and robotics most people will lose their jobs in the next 15 years (many people still don’t want to see this, but it’s inevitable with universal machines that get exponentially better, faster and cheaper, and won’t just do one job, but will eventually be able to do most jobs).

This will lead to mass unrest, unless visionary leaders take the helm in the US and some of the other big countries on this planet. With people like Donald Trump that won’t happen and the fact that he is so popular and gets away with racism might be a sign of what is to come. I have been contemplating a post about mass unemployment and potential solutions for a long time, maybe it’s time to sit down and write down my thoughts on those topics. They may be more relevant now already than I had realized.

I am worried.