I’ve just signed up with Schoolbank.nl, a Dutch web site that does the same kind of thing as Classmates.com, only, er, in Dutch. Not many people from the Bernardinuscollege have signed up yet, but the site looks to be pretty solid and easy to use, so I’m hopeful about it attracting more old classmates.
You see, every now and then I get curious about what the people I went to school with are doing now. I go Googling for names from the past, but so far I’ve only found a handful of folk. I’m not sure if I want to get back in touch again (for one thing, my Dutch is now at best “gebrekkig”, and I’m a little embarrassed about that), but it’s fun to see what they’re up to, what they’ve done with their lives, and whether they’re happy.
- Roger Koumans is now Dr. Roger Koumans. He seems to be hanging out at Caltech now, and looking like a surfer dude. (Photo)
- Evert-Jan Garretsen looks like he is married, and has a young baby called Claire, who was born on 5th September 2001! (Site)
- Frederique Borghans graduated as a physics teacher. (site)
- Elke Rettberg got married to Jeroen van Duin in 1999. (site)
Using four search engines as my primary tools (Google, AllTheWeb, Altavista, and Ilse), I have found the names of half a dozen or so others scattered around the web, but without photos attached to them. If there’s no picture, it’s hard to tell if that is really the person I’m looking for. (Which makes me think that I should probably attach a picture of myself to my own home page. Right now, I don’t have any obvious links to any photos. You’d have to know to go to Alex’s home page, and then flip through the images there to see me.)
To be honest, I’m a little surprised not to have found more people from my class. I would have thought that by now more of them would have had their own home page. Maybe I’m not casting my search net wide enough, but more likely they all have better things to do than blog. If I really wanted to track them down, I would start making contact through the variety of email addresses I’ve found, but I’m not that dedicated. I certainly wouldn’t turn away any contacts from old classmates, but seeing their photographs is enough to keep me happy for now.