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Meet the team: Dar

Dar (26) is the Technical Manager at Startblok Riekerhaven. Soon he’ll start studying mathematics. For this he followed a matching program in which he attended a lecture for this study. ‘’I really like how applicable math is on life. I once had to make a formula for the volume of a ball. If the formula is correct, you can apply it on all balls. It’s always right.’’ Especially the challenge of the lecture appealed to him. ‘’It was so much more difficult than in high school. There I had no problems with mathematics, but didn’t understand anything during this lecture. I really liked that.’’ In his spare time Dar likes to go for a walk in Rembrandtpark and he also likes to dj. Dar also likes to read and he often reads multiple books at the same time. From fiction to informative books. ‘’I’m currently reading ‘How to spend 75 billion dollars to make the world a better place’. It’s written by a financial expert who did some research for ways to make people and countries develop. I think it’s very interesting that he only looks at the data.’’ Besides that he also likes to read the novel series The Weel of Time written by Robert Jordan, which he’s already reading for 2,5 years now. ‘’At the first book I already thought that this was going to be something big. I didn’t want to read it too quickly. It’s still fascinating and I think I’m going to read all 14 books.’’ Before Dar started working as Technical Manager at Startblok, he worked in a small restaurant. With a maximum of 6 tables there was plenty of time and attention for the guests. ‘’In big restaurants it’s a sort of mass production. Sometimes you have 15 orders at the same time and the whole night you’re busy preparing the same burgers. In this restaurant we had many different dishes and I always know who I was making the food for.’’ The restaurant felt like a second home to Dar. His only colleague was a friend, who was also his boss. ‘’Whatever you expected of a day, happened. People came with high expectations and we never disappointed them.’’

Dar started living at Startblok Riekerhaven in August 2021. He visited our social living project for the first time with his Cris, who already lived here. ‘’’He told me about the treehouse. We imagined what we could do with this place and I intended to fix it. When I came here more often, I learned more about what Startblok means and I started to see how interesting and special this place is.’’ Besides a close community Startblok also has a big cat population. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as there is plenty of space around here to let the pets roam free. Dar is quite happy with that. ‘’I love cats, they’re cute and beautiful. I love animals in general. How much life is there around us that we can’t communicate with? I sometimes ask myself what a cat would say if we spoke the same language.’’