At the end of the afternoon yesterday I took a walk around the neighbourhood to clear my head after an intensive day. I walked through a part where they are still building, with some houses already occupied. I love how our entire part of town is so water rich, and the sight lines they have created by adding those waterways.
I think often of my proximity to water: I was born on the south shore of Lake Ontario, grew up on the north shore of Lake Ontario, moved to a town on the Trent Canal, lived in El Paso, Texas with a view of the Rio Grande, in Montreal with a view of the St. Lawrence, and now live 5 minutes walk from Charlottetown Harbour. I have never lived away from water, and I cannot imagine doing so.
I grew up in a village on the bank of a river, next to a city with medieval moats and canals. When I moved to Enschede, where I lived for 29 years, I kept missing the presence of water in the city. Now that we’re here in Amersfoort, I notice every time how much I enjoy seeing the canals in town, and the water ways in our suburb.
One of the few things I dislike about living at the top of a hill is being far from water. The most enjoyable aspects of my brief stay in Utrecht a couple of years ago was walking along the small and large waterways. Some of the houseboats are just so beautiful to look at. To live in, who knows?
Yes, I also liked the houseboats on the canal near the IndieWebCamp Utrecht venue last year: https://stream.jeremycherfas.net/2019/the-houseboats-here-are-a-lot-more-house-than-boat
I feel rather stressed this week, mostly because of a rapidly approaching deadline where I have to my taste too little material to work with for the report that needs to be delivered. Ten weeks into the lock-down, with now some measures being eased, and more to be eased after June 1st, I am not particularly pleased with my progress and productivity over the past two and a half months. I think it maybe isn’t necessarily different much from usual per se, it’s maybe more visible now as it doesn’t get obscured by having lots of meetings or traveling to clients which provides the sense of being busy even if in practice less gets done than it seems. Yet I felt awful at times because of it this week, fighting procrastination continuously.
Worked a lot of hours, including the entire weekend, on the EU High Value Data List study, with too little progress to show for it. The deadline for an interim deliverable now looms large (coming Friday the EC needs to have it), so coming week will only focus on this, much as it was this week. I noticed that today is exactly 2 years since I posted my review of the proposed new PSI Directive I am now doing the high value data study for.
Did two online workshops for the EU study, one on Earth Observation and Environmental data, one on Meteorological data.
Did a number of interviews for the EU study, a.o. with different Dutch and Maltese public sector bodies. More interviews still planned for coming week.
Had our monthly all-hands meeting of my company, followed by a half-day storytelling workshop.
Took a much needed walk twice, through the neighbourhood and in a nearby nature preserve
Slept one afternoon, as I was too tired for anything else
Procrastinated too much, with my mind continuously going over all the various details of the EU study. Even dreamt about it several nights.
Ordered a couch and chairs for our waterside terrace. Since we will be at home most of the summer, we decided to ensure we could sit comfortably