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Humans of Wing Chun: Desi Tamboer

Desi Tamboer, born in 1986 in Voorburg, living in The Hague, working as an anaesthesia assistant and pre-operative screening assistant at Haaglanden Medical Centre (HMC) (Westeinde, Antoniushoeve and Bronovo sites), daughter of Ab Tamboer, the drummer with “Earth and Fire” and “Het Goede Doel”, Wing Chun Kung Fu WuDae The Hague

Year of birth: 1986
Profession:
- Anaesthesia assistant at Haaglanden Medical Centre (HMC)
- Pre-operative screening assistant at Haaglanden Medical Centre (HMC)
Place of residence: The Hague

Life before I turned 30 and life afterwards

I’m an anaesthesia assistant at the HMC in The Hague; I enjoy sport and I’m a huge animal lover. I have four cats, who mean the world to me, and if I could, I’d love to have dogs in the future.

What characterises me is that, whenever I start something, I give it my all and, above all, want to do it well. At the same time, this is also a pitfall that manifests itself in perfectionism and being hard on myself. This attitude was instilled in me from a very young age. My father was a professional drummer with an international career, and the expectation was that this ‘legacy’ would be carried on through me. As a result, I had little – in fact, no – scope as a child to discover who I really was and what I wanted in life.

I certainly have a talent for music, and I lived up to expectations by eventually studying the saxophone at the Rotterdam Conservatoire. I also completed this course. At the conservatoire, I realised I was different from my fellow students. They loved nothing more than playing all day, forming bands and working on projects. I, on the other hand, did the bare minimum to get by and was searching for other things in life, but I simply didn’t know what I wanted. I felt very adrift during that time, and my enjoyment of making music turned into a habit which, sadly, I eventually developed a strong aversion to.

After finishing music college, I started teaching music in secondary and primary schools. Back then, there was still some chance of a more secure livelihood. I’d never intended to stand in front of a class, but that’s how I ended up in the profession. I did enjoy teaching, but I didn’t want to teach music exclusively. There were also massive government cuts to the cultural sector and cultural education, which meant that a career as a music teacher also became precarious. So I decided to study for a Pabo qualification. I completed this in two years and then spent several years teaching as a class teacher at various primary schools across all sections of society.

Schooling didn’t make me happy either, and I kept searching for what I actually wanted to do with the rest of my life. My father died when I was 29 as a result of a ‘rock ’n’ roll lifestyle’. I hadn’t been in touch with him for a few years, but his death gave me more emotional space to find my own place in the world and become who I am.

Desi Tamboer, born in 1986 in Voorburg, living in The Hague, working as an anaesthesia assistant and pre-operative screening assistant at Haaglanden Medical Centre (HMC) (Westeinde, Antoniushoeve and Bronovo sites), daughter of Ab Tamboer, the drummer with “Earth and Fire” and “Het Goede Doel”, Wing Chun Kung Fu WuDae The Hague Part 2

The more macabre, the better

I can still clearly remember talking to my mum about what I wanted to do. She was a surgical assistant and had always worked in a hospital. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been fascinated by scary, morbid things. I like hospitals, and I really get a kick out of gruesome stories about diseases and medieval torture techniques. I remember that, as an eight-year-old girl, I was annoyed that the Gevangenpoort didn’t even have a guillotine. I loved watching hospital dramas like ER and reality programmes about trauma care like Rescue 911. The more macabre, the better. My mum said: ‘Even as a child, you were always fascinated by hospitals, medicine and all things gruesome. I reckon you’d be well suited to anaesthesia.’ Not long after that, I spent a day shadowing staff in the operating theatre at Erasmus MC. A patient was rushed in with his leg completely torn to shreds following an accident at work. And I was completely captivated by the hustle and bustle, and by the surgical team operating like a well-oiled machine. And that’s how I began my career as an anaesthesia assistant.

Here, I felt completely at home, and for the first time in my life I was seen as a ‘model student’. I had the feeling that everything would turn out all right. That, for the first time, I was in control of my own life and doing what I wanted. When I look back on my life, I often think of it as a life before I turned 30 and a life after I turned 30. And for me, the physical principle of ‘the path of least resistance’ took on a whole new dimension. Physiology, psychology, Wing Chun; for me, it applies to everything.

The continuation of the interview with Desi will soon be available here!

Text and photos by: Robine Hillen

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