Recently a couple of interesting things have happened in my life.

- There was a (mock) competition that aimed to locate the longest 
temporary employed scientist in the Netherlands. I won with 25 years and 
4 months so far. The runner up has a month less, we have a safe distance 
from the rest (http://platform-hnu.nl/prijsvraag/). For comparison: the 
legal maximum is 4 years.
- that result was published on the cover of a national newspaper 
(https://twitter.com/PLATFORMHNU/status/506568172695474176/photo/1
article at
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detail/3733455/2014/09/02/Zorg-in-de-universitaire-wereld-de-wetenschapper-als-flexwerker.dhtml)

including a picture of me :( inside there was also an interview.
- This week a national magazine (Vrij Nederland) ran an article making 
the point was that public funded institutions (like universities and 
hospitals) use all sort of tricks to circumvent laws and among other 
things keep employees longer on temporary positions than legal. The 
author even invented a new verb for that sort of unethical behaviour. I 
am also a verb now \o/

So far the fun part. Temporary inherently implies that the contract ends 
at some point. I am unemployed since Aug 1st. (The runner up is also 
unemployed, so (s)he is not catching up while I am down)
Being unemployed costs a lot more time than I expected, so I am just 
slowly getting more time to do new things. But I am (re)studying some 
programming languages, so that at least is fun.


-- 
Everytime the IT department forbids something that a researcher deems
necessary for her work there will be another hole in the firewall.

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