My office at Lenculenstraat 14 faces north. It doesn’t get too hot in this weather until around two p.m. My colleagues on the south side, the street side of the building, are less fortunate. At 8.30 a.m. last Monday, it was already heating up. By the time everyone left my office after our morning meeting, around noon, it was sweltering, even with the fans running at full speed and the blinds drawn. There’s no air conditioning in the building. The coming days, my colleagues on the south side will have to work mainly from home.
Boring
Summer break is almost upon us. The last print newspaper of this academic year will come out this week, but we’ll continue to publish articles on the website for a few more weeks. Next week is our annual team outing. We’re going to go walking near Epen, where our colleague DV was raised. Walking? Again? How boring, one team member sighed when we democratically decided on our summer outing. She’s not entirely wrong; ever since the pandemic, we haven’t got beyond going for a walk followed by a lunch somewhere in South Limburg. She reminisced wistfully about our excursion to Liège, Belgium, where we went on a nice off-the-beaten-track tour of the Walloon city. I personally wasn’t very invested in our visit to the arms museum, though. Boring!
New hires
I actually like walking as a team activity. It’s nice to get some fresh air and you can talk to your colleagues about anything and everything as you walk, which is a good bonding activity. It’ll be even more fun this time, as our new hires are joining – not just our new editor Peter Doorakkers, but also our two junior journalists Simon Wirtz and Lotte van de Loo. All three will start work at Observant in mid-August.
Last Monday, the junior journalists came in to meet the team. They introduced themselves, after which everyone else had 90 seconds to share something about themselves. Not a lot of time, no, but our weekly deadline was fast approaching and there will be plenty of opportunity to talk more during the walk next week.
Efteling
For our next annual outing, we’ll do something different, I promise. Junior journalist Lotte already dropped a hint without realising it. She grew up in Kaatsheuvel, near theme park Efteling. Who knows…
But first, summer. Enjoy your break!