Gaspard de Jong

As I have missed the reunions I also thought I ought to tell you all a bit more about my life after Telopea.

After high school I went back to the Netherlands to study medicine in Rotterdam. There I quickly developed an interest in policy making and management. I did my masters and PhD in public health and social medicine. Stayed on as a lecturer at the medical faculty until 1986.

By that time I had taken a keen interest in information processing, both at the level of knowledge production (artificial intelligence was hot in those days) and at the more technical level (programming). So I went into IT, first at the university computing center and then as IT-manager at a large university hospital. Exciting times, but I found I had to spend too much of my time on technical issues instead of the real issues of improving health care.

In 1996 my wife Christine and I moved to Maastricht where I was appointed director of a research institute for rehabilitation and handicap. Although Maastricht is very close to Rotterdam by Australian standards (200 kilometers) it is a nice but different world. So when I was offered a job as director of the information institute at the royal academy we moved back to the center of the country near Amsterdam in 2000. Unfortunately I found a major shakeup of this institute was necessary; this involved breaking it up.

In 2005 I decided that after some 30 years I had done enough organizing and reorganizing. Since then I try to make us a living through investments. Not easy; but I love playing with data and information and I am totally independent.

So much for my professional career. Christine and I met in 1972 and were married 9 months later. Being married I was exempted from military service, which was a nice bonus. Our two sons were born in 1976 and 1977. They both lead a very active life in Rotterdam.

In 1990 we bought our first farm, or rather a ruin, in France at the foot of the Pyrenees. We spent as much time there as we possibly could. But the drive started to take longer every year and after 10 years there was still a lot of major building work to be done.

In 2002 we switched to a farm in Burgundy, famous for its wines. We now spend half the year in France on top of our 500 meters high hilltop overlooking the green countryside; on some days in winter you can even see the Mont Blanc in Switzerland some 150 kilometers away.

My mother and my two (younger) sisters with their families have stayed in Australia. They now live in Newcastle. My last visit early 2007 did not turn out well. I had a heart attack a week after my arrival. But luckily for my old mother I had to prolong my stay for an extra month. All in all it slowed me down for much of the year. Now I can walk my dog as I used to, visit art galleries and museums, in short do as I please.