Newsletter #61 - Settling In


Newsletter #61 - Settling In

After two months, we're kinda settled in Amsterdam

Kinda

Because the kids go to daycare, my spouse is starting work

But I don't have a plan yet

Let's figure it out together

The Would Be Plan

Before moving to the Netherlands, I was working on AI image generation, and I gave myself a lot of time to come up with something before exchanging time for money again.

But I need to put a money tap on, at least for a while. Partly because Netherlands is $$$, partly to prove my point that it's easy to find something here.

I met a bunch of Insead people (the school I studied) a weekend ago, and they always provide inspirational energy when it comes to future aspirations.

I'm pretty certain Amsterdam offers a lot of options for (highly $$$) freelance work. There's a lot of money going around in this city, I just need to find the right way to tap into it.

I know a handful of people in Amsterdam, that's a starting point to inject myself in the local ecosystem.

Joining a coworking might help to speed up this process. Meeting people for coffee or lunch even more. And doing cold calls and emails. Maybe even join the local Toastmasters?

Though I need to be realistic with my expectations. It will take a couple of months. Maybe until the end of the year.

In the meantime I did some smaller admin stuff.

I setup a limited liability company, and I tried and failed the theoretical motorbike exam.

(Unfortunately though rightfully so the Thai motorbike license cannot be simply converted to a Dutch one, though if you can ride the Thai streets, the Dutch should be peace of cake.)

And we had fun with the kids!

If you wanna know why Amsterdam is great for kids, below's a picture of our new wheels!

Have a great week ahead!

Hi! I'm Joris

This is my weekly braindump. You can read it, but I don't write it for you, I write it for me.

Read more from Hi! I'm Joris

Newsletter #60 - Step Change! I should write more often because it structures my thoughts because I want to have a record of my progress and thinking for the future Especially in times of significant changes Significant changes like right now Change happens in multiple ways: (1) Incremental progress, like dieting or learning something new, which requires effort every day (2) Big step changes, which change the course of life Currently we're in a Step Change The Step Change I'm writing from a...

Newsletter #59 - Update! My local coffee bar has a promotion: 150 THB for coffee and cake. As a child or student I would have tried to choose the most expensive cake, and the most expensive coffee. As students, we even theorized that alcohol price labels should contain the amount of alcohol you would get per euro. So we could optimize for that. I used to check the different European Amazon websites to find the cheapest price for a book. I could save 1-2 euros. Somehow my dominant optimization...

Newsletter #58 - Alea Iacta Est ! I write to document my thinking at that exact moment in time. I wrote the draft for this newsletter last week, in the moment. 10 days ago Monday Toyota announced they wouldn’t extend my contract as the USD JPY exchange rate is making me significantly more expensive Two days later on Wednesday they informed that due to headcount pressure they also won’t be able to convert me to full time if I would want to. That means the Toyota story comes to an end. I’m very...