It was raining in Norway, as it always does, in fact, at this time of the year. In this weather, Bergen is no longer a city; it becomes an open-air museum displaying puddles of every sort and size: big and small, muddy and clear. As a museum visitor, you can do your utmost to take care, but at some point you will inevitably be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You will be caught out, you’ll get soaked.

As happened on Sunday. Still, getting soaked didn’t stop me from resuming my role as a supporter. Every Sunday evening, I stare in wonder at a screen full of baked goods on the TV show Heel Holland Bakt (the Great British Bake Off, Dutch style), and the contestant whose progress I’m following is Aline. Not only because she’s from TU/e. No, I love people who use lemongrass to help balance out the heaviness of chocolate. People who add spices to a cake because it’s something they - and their grandma - like to do, and they aren’t interested in grandstanding; impressing someone else or pleasing a jury isn’t what they are about, they do a thing because they have faith in their own ability. People like Aline.

Which made Sunday so unfair. Aline was sent home. And while I was watching this episode, I saw more injustice happening on a second screen. To someone else who was following their own star. Someone who had made their way to the very pinnacle of global success, but who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

I had the privilege of seeing Kobe Bryant play one time. I had tickets for two men’s basketball matches during the London Olympics in 2012, without knowing which teams would be playing. I could have found myself watching, say, Tunisia vs. Nigeria, but I was lucky enough to see the giants of the game from China, France and Spain, and none other than the USA Dream Team. Durant, LeBron, Westbrook, Harden, and to cap it all Bryant - a symphony of first violinists and woodwind and brass players who flowed effortlessly into every inch of open space on the court. I was in the right place at the right time.

Although on one of my screens Aline was baking a cake with lollipops, the time I really felt like I was in a candy store was that day in 2012. I saw Michelle Obama sitting across the court from me, and she too saw what I saw. What we all saw. How Kobe Bryant danced nonchalantly past a Frenchman, like a ballerina wearing sneakers in a London performance of Swan Lake.

Kobe Bryant, whose nickname was ‘Black Mamba’ retired from basketball a couple of years ago with the farewell words ‘Mamba out’. But on Sunday none of us chose the ‘Mamba out’ moment. A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. By the end of my evening’s viewing I could take solace in knowing that Aline ‘only’ had to go home. Because hopefully she will carry on baking for a long time to come and for a long time in the right place.