It has been quiet on my blog for a while, because I had to put my energy in other things in life. All good things, by the way. But still, writing something on my blog didn't have my priority, so for the past 9 months there were no new articles.
Anyway, I'll sum up the 3 big changes:
New job
I found a new job near Amsterdam, at Schuberg Philis, where I started working April 2019. There was nothing really wrong with my previous job, but I was lacking energy recently and it just didn't feel as the best job for me anymore. So after interviews at 4 different companies, 1 in Enschede where I lived and 3 in the west of the country, did I feel the most connected to Schuberg Philis. It just felt like coming home. The people, the atmosphere, the positive energy, I don't think you can find that anywhere else.
Moving to Amsterdam
Because a commute of over 2 hours wasn't really an option, I lived at my parents in Zaandam for a few months and then we started looking for a new home in or near Amsterdam. Which we found in Diemen. So it's not literally Amsterdam, but Diemen is enclosed by Amsterdam, so it counts as Amsterdam 😉
They were building new apartments in a project called Holland Park and the first towers were just ready. There were available homes (which is rare around Amsterdam), it was allowed to bring the cats and there is a parking space in the garage for the car. Also, it's just 3 minutes walking to the nearest subway station with a 15 minute travel time to the city center of Amsterdam and about 8 minutes walking to the nearest train station. The apartments were new, luxurious (floor heating, beautiful kitchen, nice finishing), not too big, but also not too small. So it was the perfect place for us and in the beginning of September 2019 we moved to Diemen!
New car: Tesla Model 3!
At my previous work I got a Tesla Model S 85 kWh in November 2014. So we had to look for another car when I quit my job there. Although the Tesla Model 3 seems a very good successor, we had many doubts. Customer Service at Tesla is getting worse and worse, they are doing unexpected downgrades of the car (slower supercharging, sudden loss of range) and the Netherlands is pretty much flooded by Model 3's, in some months it's the #1 sold car here! So it didn't feel special.
But after comparing all options, there was no better car than a Tesla Model 3. We drove a Renault Zoe for about 2 months and although it was really nice to drive, its charging speed was limited to 22 kWh. Many cars can charge faster, but most of them are limited to 50 kWh. And if they can charge faster, they are relatively slow (Hyundai Ioniq). Also, many cars are relatively inefficient, or simply not fun to drive.
So the only logical choice was a Tesla Model 3, with 180+ kW fast charging at Ionity, basically the efficiency king of all EV's and it's an absolute dream to drive. Handling is just the best of all EV's (okay, maybe the Porsche Taycan handles better, but that's another class) and with a 0-100 km/h time of 4,5 seconds it's also pretty fast. Keeping that in mind, with a little under 60.000 euro's, it's not that expensive. Gasoline cars that have such a sporty drive and are able to accelerate this quickly are also expensive. And most of the time use a lot of gas. So that's expensive as well. And kills the environment.
Anyway, after some delivery problems causing a delay of more than a month, we finally took delivery of our Tesla Model 3 Long Range AWD in September this year and we lived happily ever after.
