Han and his wife lived in Panama for two years for this project. “Living ‘far away’, where everything is different, was fascinating. What was so different?” Han thinks for a moment... “It’s a combination of a lot of small things. It is very hot there and nature is very different. For example, in March, around the rainy season, the entire forest is buzzing and suddenly, bears (‘gato solo’) are strolling through the garden, with their distinctive tails poking up above the grass. There is also corruption, you must always have money in your passport or wallet, especially at the end of the month. The police checks are always around the 13th or the end of the month. Their budgets are mostly used up by then and they start making extra checks for ‘violations’.”
Working internationally was also a nice challenge, says Han: “We had European experience at Iv, but not outside of Europe. We had to adjust our way of working. For example, in the Netherlands, we work on A4 paper, but internationally Letter format is by far the most used. This sounds like a small detail, but it meant that all our reports were not normally printable and were not easily read. So, I had our repro service produce special letter paper for us. We also learned how to use video conferencing or conference calls. What was the greatest challenge? The collaboration. Forming a team while we were in four different locations around the world. Try getting that to work as just one team.”