Sinterklaas day with the Board of the VU University Medical Center

Five December is Sinterklaas day in the Netherlands (see http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas for detailled information in Ducth, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint_Nicolaas for information in English). Sinterklaas or Sint Nicolaas (Saint Nicolaus) was a bishop from Myra in present day Turkey during early Christianity. His remains were abducted to Bari in southern Italian where a very beautiful Roman Sinterklaas church can be found. But the Dutch Sinterklaas legend tells us that Sinterklaas comes from Spain to the Netherlands with his ‘Moor’ servants (‘Zwarte Pieten’), bringing all children who have been good presents and treats. The story goes that the Coca Cola company adopted this wonderful celebration, transferred it to Christmas, and created Santa Claus, a kind of weak and stupid looking cousin of the real Sinterklaas.
This year I spend Sinterklaas day and night in the castle-hotel Vanenburg (http://www.vanenburg.nl/cnt/devanenburg.htm). The board of the VU University Medical Center (http://www.vumc.nl/) had invited the heads of the six Divisions to discuss such issues as the VUmc’s mission, the key stakeholders that the VUmc wishes to serve, and necessary human resource management to fulfil the mission.
For me it was a great opportunity to get to know the chairs of the other Divisions a little better and to join in fruitful discussions on VUmc’s ambitions (yes, we do wish to get better in what we do in health care, education and research) and the way we wish to realise these ambitions.