Background of the author of the stories

I was born in 1956, in a very small village on the border of the provinces Groningen and Friesland.

At about 4 years old, I moved to a small town near the sea, not too far away from Amsterdam. My father was working in the dairy industry, and he often wasn't satisfied with his job, and wanted to move to another place.

So at about 8 years old we moved again, this time to a small town near Utrecht. I lived there until mei 1968, just a few months before middle school started.

We now moved to Roden, close to Groningen, and my mother had had enough of all the moves, so my parents stayed there. I went to middle school in Groningen, the kind of school you need to prepare for university.

I didn't have a real vision about what job I wanted to do, so I more or less randomly chose between law, psychology and mathematics. In 1974 I started my mathematics study, and later also did several other things, like spending a whole year on learning Russian.

In 1977 I was halfway during my study (bachelor's degree), but then things slowed down a lot. The 2nd part of my study I focused mainly on computer science, but although I should have finished that in 3 years, it took me 7!! So in 1984 I became master.

In 1981 I moved to Groningen, a nice city in the north of the Netherlands.

Shortly after my study was finished, I got a job at the Dutch telecommunications company (now KPN), as a database specialist. In about 2005 the KPN datacenter was acquired by my current company. I still do the same job today as I did in 1985, but it's never boring.

In 1997 or 1998 I started studying Chinese, but I can't remember the reason why. My brother adopted 2 Chinese girls, 1 in 2000, and 1 in 2003, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with my interest in Chinese language and culture.

Somewhere around 2000 my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Although luckily her condition deteriorated only very slowly, from about 2005 she began to fall regularly. After she broke some of her bones in leg and hip 3 times, my parents moved to an elderly home very close to my house.

Because my dad (85 years old at the time) was still physically quite strong and healthy, he didn't like it in the elderly home. He missed all the activitities with other, relatively healthy people, he used to do.

My mother became confused more often, and also fell a lot of times. This was very stressful to my dad, and after another serious injury in may 2011 she moved to a nursing home in juli 2011. The change was too much for her, and she died in september 2011, within 2 months after the move. 2 months later my father died, too.

Since my brother lives quite far away, I often had to accompany my mother when she had to visit the hospital. I also visited them a lot, especially when they were living close to me. And in the last 4 months, I regularly went several times daily to monitor how things were evolving and try to do what I could.