THE START

Welcome to my blog, my new voice to the world, a voice that can also listen. This first blog will be about the reasons for starting this blog. Read on to discover this reason and to find out what's in it for you.

About 3 years ago I retired, after working for Philips for 29+ years. As you probably know, you fall into a big empty hole when you retire, because from then on life is useless. All retired people will of course deny that they are in that hole. They say that at last they have time to do all the things they always wanted to do. They are suddenly successful experts on the stock exchange market, they work as a volunteer for the local charity, they read all the books they wanted to read for a long time, they have a busy agenda babysitting the grandchildren or they have at last time to create a beautiful Japanese bonsai garden. Do not let them fool you, they are all trying to fill that hole, but they are bored to death. Literally. But they refuse to admit it. Well, okay, some of them may enjoy life, but most of them cannot handle the freedom.

So you might think that I am now writing a blog to fill the hole I fell in. Wrong! I think with the little time left, I should do something really nice and satisfying. Writing a blog is not that nice and satisfying. Most nice and satisfying activities are against the law or very unethical or cost a lot of money. Since the first two types of activities do not have my preference (or this is not the place to tell you about it), I am in desperate need for money to pay for nice and satisfying activities that are not against the law or unethical.

Pensions from Philips are not what they used to be, until some 20 years ago you got more or less automatically 70% of your last salary. Those were the days, it is much less today. On top of that my ex-wife gets a considerable part of my pension. Besides, we (my present wife and I) lost a lot of money on the sale of our house in Breda and we bought a more expensive house in the country side. After moving in we experienced that when it freezes outside, it also freezes inside, so we needed to take all kinds of insulation measures. Double glass everywhere and 16 m3 of tiny rubber balls in between the outside walls (that is a large truck of rubber balls). That cost a lot of money. You should also realize that we live in the eastern part of the Netherlands, close to Siberia, where winters are long and cold. That also means that we now pay more for heating per month than we used to pay per year in Breda. 
And then we have the garden. Part of it appeared to be a forest, that could have served perfectly well in the movies of the Lord of the Rings, to hide a herd of orcs. Another substantial amount of money was needed to make it accessible (and to get rid of the orcs). 
Next step was renovation of the bathrooms in our house. I do not know who designed the toilet, but to leave a space of a bit less than 1 m2 for the toilet, when you have 428 m2 available in the house, was not the right decision. For the Dutch people: "Je kunt er je kont niet keren", literally. So another large amount of money disappeared in the toilet, in fact we shifted many walls in the house to make the necessary visits to that room more comfortable.

Anyway, given this situation it is time to make some money. I wanted to make money by writing a book. In fact, I already wrote a book, about my career in MRI. I happened to start to work with Philips in the field of MRI when MRI was just invented. So I was there in the beginning until the time that each average hospital has an MRI system and MRI has become a routine technique for diagnosing what is wrong with you. I love my own book, because it gives insight in how this process went and of course in the book I can complain about all the things that went wrong because they did not listen to me. But when I retired early, at my 60th birthday, the Dutch government required a statement that I promise not to work for two years, otherwise for all income I had to pay extra tax, on top of the already high tax rate. So they encourage you to work as long as possible, but when you stop working you are not allowed to work anymore. It does not really make sense. 
Another issue is that I wrote my book in Dutch and that makes it more difficult to sell it in the large quantities I was dreaming of. Anyway, no money from the book until I am 62 (and the book will be a bit outdated by then). What I did learn was that I should write things in English or something that resembles that language. Over time I got many connections all over the world and most of them are not so eager to learn Dutch, for reasons that I cannot understand. So for several reasons this blog will be in English.

So I need this blog to make money and survive and do all the nice and satisfying activities that are expensive. I guess I need about a million to do the things I want to do (euros or dollars, I do not have a preference, preferably not Chinese yuan). The new millionaires are all bloggers and vloggers, so it should not be a problem, I only need in the order of a million visitors a week to become commercially attractive and get that income. By that time you will have difficulties finding my text between all the commercials, so you are lucky to come here early.

You already came quite far in reading this first blog. I may have lost the youth that only read pictures so I will add some pictures here, showing that I understand the youth of today.

What is in it for me, you might also think. What I will do is to try to get you thinking about things. Are you eagerly awaiting that kind of messages? Perhaps or perhaps not. Some questions in life will come to you and it might be better that you are prepared, because you thought about it, because of this blog. Just by reading you will create your own opinion. It might be useful at your first date to sound more convincing to him/her or it might be something you are happy to tell your grandchildren. That is your win. But I could also consider giving a percentage of my millions to my visitors. We will see by the time I hit the 100,000 visitors a week.

Anyway, this blog is going to be popular and you should realize that you are amongst the first to read it. It is going to be a success because of your reactions and of course the reactions of people you refer to this blog. It will not be about my writing but about the interaction with the rest of the world. So please notify your friends about the amazing adventure we are going to embark on.

The contents of the blog will be determined by what I encounter or have encountered during my life. So it will be personal. I have opinions about things and advices from my own experience. I hope you will disagree with me or learn from my experiences. Learn about my view on electrical cars, the dangers of internet (or lack of it), high heels, tax rates, carbondioxide storage, bonuses, South Africa, hotel prices, Chinese and American culture, coffee machines, television and the prospect of dying. But I can also start discussions on request.  At some point in time I might even tell you the story behind dr.B. and why I use that name.

See you again soon. Take care, be healthy.

Yours, dr.B.