clearpix.gif - 43 Bytes
Who is Marion?


At last, after 8 months of having my homepage up and receiving many kind reactions, for the curious amongst you, a little something about myself. I never took the time before, and also I didn't have space to place it.

As you guessed, my name is Marion, and my nickname is Schippie. I live alone in a small, old house with a tiny garden, my plants are my children and I have a close relationship with my computer. Like to see how I grew up from a cute girl with curly hair to a rather grey-haired spectacled spinster of 56? Watch closely!

I was born in Willemstad in the Netherlands, in 1944. We moved around the country quite a lot, until my tenth, when we moved to The Hague, where I went to college and later got my diploma as a lab-technician.
I worked for 3 years in the Municipal Hospital in The Hague, until I became restless and got myself a job in Switzerland in 1967.
Living in Lausanne at Lake Geneva was more or less like a very long vacation: the surroundings are beautiful, like a calender picture. In the summer you could go skiing in the morning on the gletscher just an hour away, and go to the beach in the afternoon. Being close to Italy and France it was easy to go there for a weekend, or just go to a chalet in the mountains somewhere.
My French improved a lot, and so did my English (lots of American med students around) and my German, although I never took the trouble to learn Swiss-German. But after five years, I was fed up with the lab-work, also many of my friends, mostly foreigners, were returning home, and I decide to leave also and try my luck in Spain. I traveled around a bit, stayed in Madrid for a month or so, beautiful city, and then found myself a job on the coast in a little hotel, playing the receptionist.
It was fun, getting to know the ins and outs of tourist-business in a small hotel, but after 4 months (without a day off), I knew this was not really for me, I am not the representative type and don't like to put on a big smile for people I don't care for. So I said good bye, traveled around some more, and finally went back home and got a job in a research laboratory of the University of Utrecht in 1973. After 4 years the lab was closed down, and I started at the research lab of the Department of Hematology of the University Hospital in Utrecht, where I still am, and probably will be for the rest of my working career.

I like my work well enough, but it shouldn't take up too much of my time, because I want to do a lot of other things. Looking back, I have had quite a lot of hobbies. I become a real fanatic, when I am interested in something, I want to know all about it, buy books and stuff, am rather a monomaniac about it. Then, after some time, I loose interest, often because I realize I will never be really good at it like playing bridge , playing the recorder or painting watercolors, so I look for something else.
In 1981 I kind of rebuilt my house (it is from around 1900) with the help of many friends, that kept me busy for a while. When it was finished, I knew I didn't know anything about woodwork, so I took a course in woodworking, and made some very useful things and learned to do odd jobs around the house. My tools are in the attic now, don't use them unless I need to.
I like to make things, but I need a purpose for them: pillow lace making is fun, and beautiful, but how much lace can you use nowadays? And after I had sent all my family and friends cards made with calligraphy and origami and put up a small exposition in my room, the challenge was gone, time for something new.
During the renovation of my house, I expanded the small courtyard by pulling down the kitchen, took out the paving and tried to turn it into a garden. I didn't know anything about plants or gardening, so it wasn't much of a success. But a friend of mine made me an enthusiast. She gave me my first garden book, invited me to visit other gardens, and after a while I was hooked. And it looks like this is a stayer, I have been at it for more than 7 years now, and still in spring I get excited about the new life coming up.
The real garden did suffer a bit last year (while the virtual one was growing) from my other ongoing hobby, the computer. I started with a VIC 20 home computer with 4 Kb memory some 12 years ago, soon replaced by a Commodore 64, dabbled a bit in Basic, took the jump to a 286 PC in 1991, to end up with a Pentium 60 3 years later. And then, in April 1995 a whole new world opened up, when I discovered Internet.
Combining gardening and the computer by making my Garden Homepage, really got things going. I spend most of my free time behind the keyboard or, now that spring finally burst out, in the garden.
I also started making Web-pages for others on a more or less commercial basis like (in chronical order, you may notice there is fashion in WebDesign too):

So if you want a page for yourself and like the way these look, send me an e-mail.

What more is there to tell, I am not a very good cook, spend as little time as possible housekeeping, no sports (I used to row years ago), rather lazy, used to devour books, no time for that anymore, traveled to most countries in Europe, the east coast of the States and one memorable trip to Bolivia and Peru, but now I got the world at home.
Lately I discovered the fun of taking pictures with a digital camera, you can see some of the results, and the panorama's on my site Pictures from Holland with the Mavica FD-91

Well, it was nice meeting you, hope I didn't bore you too much. Have fun,
Marion

 



Please, send reactions and comments to Schippie.
Back to my homepage.