Short biographyI lived in the little village Lexmond from the age of five. I thought the surrounding area of the village was wonderful, and I was often away alone, walking in the polders and through the orchards, or out biking. I had learned to read when I was three, and learned to speak English around the age of five. I was a dreamy child, often busy drawing pictures of cars of a brand I called Muka. I was fascinated by numbers and lists of all kinds, but I also very much loved to read. I hated any form of sports or game.
Polder somewhere near Lexmond.
The Christelijk Gymnasium in Utrecht turned out to be a wonderful school. It was grammar school, and I went there from when I was twelve until nineteen (I doubled one year). I was very impressed with Latin, which I was being taught from the first class on. "Whatever those Romans can do, I can do too!" I thought, somewhat reckless, and immediately started to devise my own language. As soon as I had made up the initial ideas behind the language I also devised a whole society to go with it. That way from the end of 1981 on my first big fictitious country came into being, Vixati.
Christelijk Gymnasium Utrecht.
When doctors diagnosed my mother had cancer, I was thirteen. A year later she died. The stories around the car-factory Muka and the country Vixati grew quickly and enormously in those years. A few years earlier I had grown to be very interested in music too. I listened to the radio a lot, and my first album was a compilation album by the Beatles.
When I was fifteen my father took me on a journey to Egypt (story in Dutch). He worked there for a week and afterwards we stayed for another week of holidays. Two years later, when I was seventeen, I went for the first time alone on holiday, and went to Lisbon and other places (story in Dutch).
When I was sixteen I started to regularly write a magazine with news from Vixati, called the Post uit Vixatië (translated: 'Mail from Vixati'). The Post uit Vixatië contained information about diverging subjects, amongst which were politics, art and philosophy and religion. The magazine was issued on an average once every two or four weeks, and was mailed to around ten people I knew were interested. I did the contents, lay-out and copying myself. I wrote the articles on a Commodore 64 homecomputer. I made the last issue (48) of it when I was nineteen.
By then I had only just moved to Utrecht, to go and study there. Vixati fell silent. There were too many internal inconsistencies to ever rewrite it all, and so I decided to start writing about a new fictitious country. I was soon fed up with my studies. I wanted something more out of life. I went to a job agency, and found myself the next morning behind the assembly line in a factory of sausages. That's how it goes, I guess... I remained a member of the unconventional students' club BITON. Of all the people I met there I still see my present-day best friend Bas on a regular basis. Three years later I again started to study in university. The relationship with my girl-friend had just broken up.
The street where I first lived after having moved out.
In 1990 I started to write about yet another fictitious country, Ubilan, a country in an early stage of technological development on the continent Gmune. The country lasted for five years and then (just like Vixati before) got too tangled up in its own inconsistencies. Two years later, in 1997, I tried to thoroughly rewrite the language, but it appeared that that would be too much work, and I finally decided to stop working on Ubilan. From 2000 on I again wrote stories about a new fictitious country. It changed its names and appearance a couple of times and now it is called Caltura. It is a municipal society in the Northland Iliria, which is situated on the planet Mimia (this website is named after that planet). When I was twelve I had very stupidly ended my subscription to the brilliant Dutch weekly magazine Donald Duck, but when I was twenty-three I subscribed anew, a decision I never regretted, not for a single moment. Since around this time I also enjoyed reading other grahic stories.
I have always been inspired by maps. These are some maps and books that fuelled my sense of fantasy.
In 1994 I didn't succeed in making friends at university. All of a sudden very many students wanted to specialize in economic subjects, and it seemed to me that many of them had only a very shallow mind. From 1996 I worked as an attendant for ex-criminal adolescents, but it exhausted me and I quit way too late, in 2001. I was good at it, because I am a good listener, but I didn't succeed in letting go, so I found myself lying in my bed at night, tossing about and puzzling about the previous day. I wanted too much to be good at it, but in fact from the start it had been the wrong choice to try. Afterwards I was burned-out for a long time.
My sense of order and accuracy make that a job as an administrator fits me best. In the meantime I've also found that that is the work I am the most interested in. I love order and archives, and editorial work. In January 2007 I found the ideal job at the Freudenthal Instituut, a division of Utrecht University. Here you'll find my work-homepage (in Dutch).
A picture of me, taken in May 2010, using a self-timer.
14 April 2004 I met Laura, who I used to run into quite often at concerts. We immediately spent a day in the park, the Griftpark in Utrecht, and less than two weeks later we started a strangely familiar relationship. I am crazy about her, and have rarely before felt so very comfortable in somebody's company. In the summer of 2004 the two of us went on a fantastic holiday to Marocco, about which you will find a story in Dutch here.
Since these days I was online, thanks to her, and managed to find a lot of new music. We share amongst others our fascinations for music and computers. Together we are the administrators of the website Huize LaMa (in Dutch), that we sometimes update. Her activities in building websites inspired me to build my own, as from November 2006.
In September 2005 I moved, after which for the first time I lived in a house by myself, and for the first time with more than one room for myself. The previous twelve years I had lived in one room in a students' home, in a former monastery with a garden and a view of the river. I now had a view of a different and a bit smaller river, closer to the centre of the city. Being in the vicinity of water makes me feel good.
In February 2008 Laura and I found a house where since 1 March we live together. It was a lot of work, but we both are very happy with it. It is a spacious and light house, with our own front-door, a terrace and a garden. Apart from the livingroom and bedroom both Laura and I each have a room of our own.
March 26 we got married. Here is a page about our wedding.
Laura, in August 2007.
 | a page with the latest news |
 | a page about our wedding |
