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Interview met Aleksander Borger over zijn afstudeerscriptie ‘Opnieuw beginnen: De invloed van faillissement op hernieuwd ondernemerschap’ voor zijn studie Bedrijfskunde Sommige ondernemers kiezen na faillissement voor het maken van een herstart. Voor zijn afstudeerscriptie heeft Aleksander Borger acht ondernemers geïnterviewd over de invloed van faillissement op hun hernieuwde ondernemerschap. Hij heeft gekeken naar de ondernemers zelf alsmede hun omgeving:   banken, klanten, leveranciers en familie. Naast de zakelijke gevolgen voor een ondernemer heeft hij gekeken naar de persoonlijke gevolgen, of een ondernemer bijvoorbeeld veel vrienden is kwijtgeraakt en of hij persoonlijke groei heeft doorgemaakt. Zijn conclusie: herstartende ondernemers zijn betere ondernemers geworden, maar moeten werken vanuit een moeilijkere omgeving.   Is het niet zo dat je financieel helemaal niets meer kunt na een faillissement? "Dat is alleen als je zogenaamd in privé failliet gaat en niet alle...

Walking to work today I had my earplugs in, listening to an AFX track I hadn't heard in a long time. The sun was beating down on me so I stared down focusing on the ground and the music. Walking and walking, the nice heat, the focus and the music got me into a blissful bubble I seemed to be floating in. As I walked under a tree something lightly touched my hair. When I looked up I saw it was a wasp. It had popped my bubble but also made me realize I had been in one.

I can. I tried really hard. And now I can. It's just a fourth dimension , nothing special, I already had three. It's just a dimension like the other three. No ghosts or visual time or any of that stuff. The world as I knew it looks more flat now though.

One gets to be familiar with places. When I get back from traveling I notice how well I know Holland: I can only but imagine how weird our trams, roads and traffic lights must look to foreigners; as weird as those look to me when I'm abroad. One should keep track of how long it takes before one gets familiar with the place they're moving to. Places are like picture books from our youth. One attaches experiences and emotions to those (they are their carriers). I've lived at places in which I'd blown so much time and that had become such a mess that I'd better move to get myself back into action again. Because it's hard to change places, I feel. When I'd then packed the boxes the place had changed. Maybe one can move in one place, or travel.

(I don't have a container for my knäckebröd .) I used to take the knäckebröd that was on top in the package. That one then always had gone a bit soft. But I always knew that there'd be a crisp one waiting for me right after. Nowadays I lift the top one and take the crisp one underneath. The lesson taught is that one shouldn't needlessly have to suffer for a little treat that may result from it. One is is allowed to enjoy a bit right now. (Nowadays the last knäckebröd in the package always is disgusting though.)

After my studies I couldn't go on believing in God . Maybe to believe in something else I picked up yoga. I was startled to find out yogi believe in the divine as well. They believe in a more general version of God though: the divinity that's inside of you and that you're supposed to find. This God more sober people can believe in as well. You can start by not (just) letting God love you unconditionally, like the Christian God does, but by letting yourself love you, no matter what mistakes you may make.

You have to accept people the way they are. You're allowed to judge people on what they do. I believe niceness is a set trait. One person is naturally more or less inclined to do good than another. Niceness in people is spread out according to the normal curve. I have to admit that I too much, too often, have wanted to judge people as nice or not nice; have wanted to put them in boxes instead of placing them somewhere on that curve. I probably did that in times of uncertainty about myself, to compensate for that uncertainty I tried to create certainty in my surroundings. But you have to accept people the way they are. That's what makes life easier for you. You don't have to accept everything people do however. Despite the fact that people are naturally more or less nice, (almost) everyone knows what doing good is. You may therefor expect them to indeed do good, for they expect others to do the same for them as well. The person that does good despite him being...

My impression of the stuff I saw at this year's State-X New Forms . I could give an overall impression: some bad, some good, but I'll just go over all the artists I saw. Unfortunately because I was invited to a cheese fondue I missed Merzbow . It would have been cool to have seen him live one time, but cheese is nice :). So the first thing I saw was Stellar OM Source . This was a rather cute act; anyone that has 'OM' in their name automatically has my sympathy really. After a heartfelt synth-solo, miss Source basically gave us a lot of arpeggios. This, the old-fashioned Windows screensaver tracked squares in the background and her robe gave the whole thing a distinct 70ties feeling. So thumbs up. Maybe it would have gotten boring if the concert had lasted over 20 minutes. But it didn't. Like a few other times during the festival, there were some technical difficulties and the schedule was kept tightly. Next I saw The Melvins . A legendary band, because as the progra...

Here's day 1 . The second day the State-X New Forms Festival was combined with the Dag in de Branding Festival (Day at the Breakers Festival, I think that is in English). Like State-X New Forms, this festival focuses on avant garde music, but then more with a focus on classical music. But actually the programmed styles of music of the two festival really seemed to blur into each other. The idea of the schedule of Dag in de Branding is that it's like a regular, few days festival, only spread out over four separate days during the year. The combination with State-X now was nice because I got a classical festival for free and people that came for classical get contemporary music as well, if they're up for the adventure. ' So today my festival started in the afternoon at the theatre at Het Spui. I probably would have skipped this part to get enough sleep, but I'd made an arrangements with a friend who went because she'd seen and liked the first act, the Lunapark...