Woah! It’s that time of the month again. June has gone by very fast, full of activity, travel, and a - way too hot for The Netherlands - heatwave. Let’s look back and reflect on everything that has happened this past month!
βοΈ Website
I’ve made a few updates to the AT Protocol integration of this website. Because I haven’t posted a lot recently, I hadn’t noticed that there was a very annoying bug that I introduced the month prior. That bug was preventing the syndications to correctly be saved on the posts.
Other than that, I also updated the syndication of the photos to Bluesky to use the new gallery format, which supports up to 10 photos, instead of just the 4 photos of a default embedding. Can’t wait to use it, but haven’t had a reason yet!
π Life
Quite a few things have happened, but I want to focus on Portugal! Chris and I went a week to Portugal, passing through Lisbon, my hometown, and then Faro. We met with some friends, Chris met a lot of people from my family that he hadn’t met yet, and we also went to the wedding - for which I had to drive! - of a friend of mine. It was so pretty!
It was nice to be back in Portugal, even though it was for quite a short trip. Unfortunately I don’t have that many vacation days left this year, especially considering the visits that I’ve received and that I’m yet to receive. So the chance that I’ll travel this year is quite low. Maybe for a weekend.
πͺ Health
Things are generally going well. I thing my wrist is a bit better? At least I’ve had less complaints. I still can’t put my whole body’s weight on it, but seems generally fine. Swimming lessons are also going great, and I’m almost getting my second diploma.
This month I also went swimming for the first time in a 50 meter swimming pool. What a length! I think it’s easy to underestimate how long 50 meters is, especially for an unexperienced swimmer. Went there again today and did 800 meters. Bit tiring, but nice!
πΏ Entertainment
This month was calmer when it comes to entertainment, but we still managed to see a live show! We went to Soldaat van Oranje, which is a Dutch play based on an autobiographic book of a resistance hero during WW II. The play has been running since 2010, and 2026 is the last year.
When it comes to movies, we watched Mother Mary, Hoppers, and Disclosure Day. I absolutely loved the last one, but as with every film I love, the rating on IMDb is not that high. I would be interested in seeing a sequel.
Finally, we watched quite a few series, or at least finished quite a few seasons: The Testaments, For All Mankind, Amsterdam Centraal 24/7, Your Friends & Neighbors and Widow’s Bay. If I had to choose just one, I probably couldn’t. I really enjoyed all of them, in different ways. For the train fans, I’d definitely recommend the documentary series about Amsterdam Centraal. It’s very enjoyable!
That’s a wrap! It was a very eventful month even though I didn’t write that much this time. I think being a bit tired from swimming today isn’t helping. Anyways, until next time!
]]>At the end of April, I wrote about stepping back into the driver’s seat. I ended that post with two remarks: that I was going to take a refreshers lesson, and that I wanted to try a manual transmission before the lesson. It’s been a while!
It turns out that the idea of a refreshers lesson made me anxious enough to decide trying a manual transmission car before the lesson. That is how we ended up going to the Lommelse Sahara at the beginning of May and taking some nice photos around there.
The trip there went fine, it wasn’t as smooth as with the automatic car, but I was expecting that. On the way back, I ended up stalling at the entrance of a roundabout because I forgot to downshift. But I solved that fast. In general, it was fine.
A week after, I had the lesson. Oh, the lesson. I felt so bad after it. I think I felt like the instructor was too negative, especially at the beginning. The car was just very new for me and there were a lot of things I had never seen before: button e-brake, brake hold, etc. Those modernities that older cars don’t have.
At the end, he ended up telling me I should just drive more often to get the hang of it. During the lesson, he also gave me a few tips for things to pay more attention to, and I think I’ve kept them in mind since then.
Anyways, for the next month I didn’t drive. I was either on vacation or just not have a reason for driving. In the meanwhile, I’ve been to Portugal for a friend’s wedding and I ended up driving my mother’s 20 year old car.
Also stalled it twice but it was quickly solved. But that car has an unusually high bite point apparently. Everyone online complaints about the clutch of this car, so I’m happy to not be the only one. The line between riding and stalling is very thin. Very annoying.
Anyways. That day I drove to the wedding and then back, at night. After fiddling with the buttons to find the lights, it all went well. I think it went much better than the driving lesson, but then again: there I wasn’t nervous about someone evaluating me.
When will I drive again? I don’t know. Maybe this weekend, maybe not. It’s good that I did it. I will try not to worry too much, and just do it often enough to not be as anxious about it again.
It’s been a while since I wrote something that wasn’t my monthly update. It was not that simple to find a topic, but I’m happy I did. There’s another topic on my mind, but I will wait until next week for that one. Until next time!
]]>May was an incredibly packed month, which sort of explains why it took me so long to write this post. Now that I have some time to go through all the events, let’s take a look back together, and go through some of the things that happened in May!
βοΈ Website
May was packed with real life events, which means I barely had any time to update this website. However, right before writing this post, I managed to update my Bluesky syndication to include the new new support for standard.site publications.
π Life
At the beginning of the month, some friends from Portugal came visit for a few days. It was a packed week. This time, I didn’t want to give them the “normal everyone does it” Netherlands experience. They’ve been here before, they’ve been to Amsterdam and the randstad. I wanted to do something different.
The first day, we went to the National Park Hoge Veluwe, where we biked around 25km across all types of landscapes, from heathland, to forest, to sandy scapes, among others. That same day, we also had some amazing Dutch pancakes, which they had never had before. Salty - not sweet - pancakes, what an experience!
The day after, we stayed in Eindhoven, since one of my friends was leaving that day. We took some walks, checked out a cow farm, had great noodles, and even managed to take a sneak peak at the swimming stadium here in Eindhoven.
On the remaining days, we checked both Utrecht and Maastricht. In Utrecht, I introduced them to my favorite fries from Dapp, and in Maastricht to vlaai. Both extremely tasty delicacies. We also did some gourmetten at home, which is also very Dutch.
A week later, Chris and I went to London to visit another friend. This was my 6th time in London and 7th time in the United Kingdom. Another reason to visit London was the concert and play we had planned to see, which I will write a bit more about below.
We did quite a lot: went to the Stonehenge and Bath, had a high tea at The Original Maids of Honour, saw and walked through a lot of parks, went to very nice cafΓ©s and pubs - including The Nightingale, if you know you know, and The Nelson’s. I would summarize it as: lots of walking, lots of great food, lots of fun and entertainment. For more details about the latter, see below.
πͺ Health
I had a physiotherapy appointment for my wrist to check out how the exercises are going. Despite doing the exercises well, and not having pain while doing the exercises, I still have pain, and the improvements are not dramatic. I felt like the physiotherapist was expecting more improvements. That was a bit sad. Anyways, got new exercises and will keep doing them.
Swimming lessons and other sport are also going well. I’ve gotten the physical diploma, so I finally updated the post about the swimming diploma with a photo. You can check it out here. This week I’ll have a lesson with clothes again. Pff. I already feel the weight.
πΏ Entertainment
There was a lot - and I mean, a lot - of entertainment this past month, especially live performances, fueled by being in London. But I’ll come back to that in a second. First, let’s go through the usual stuff, the movies and the series.
We watched a single movie in May, Michael. I enjoyed it, as I did not have a lot of background on Michael Jackson, and I think the film gives a good idea on how he became who he became. When it comes to series, despite having watched a lot, we only finished the last seasons of Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Abbott Elementary.
Now, the fun part. We attended 5 live shows in total: 2 concerts, 1 stage play and 2 musicals. The first concert was Haute & Freddy, who performed at the London Calling festival in Amsterdam. It was very nice to see them live, despite being at a festival setting. I hope one day we get to see a longer concert from them.
The second one was MARINA, who we had seen a few years ago in Brussels. The show was incredible, and, despite the venue being hot as hell, extremely enjoyable. It was a full circle moment for her. She performed at the Alexandra Palace, in London, and that’s where she also signed her first deal.
When we arrived in London, we only had one play planned: The Hunger Games On Stage. We had heard bad things about it, and… people did not exaggerate. It was entertaining, but not really… good. It didn’t even feel like the actors were enjoying it, and the theater was half empty. Such a shame.
Despite being the only theater planned, we just yolo’ed it and decided to try getting rush tickets for other shows. Rush tickets are tickets you get on the day itself for very low prices, and sometimes - spoiler alert - fantastic seats. On two different days, we managed to go to two musicals.
One day we saw Titanique, which is a parody of the film, telling the movie’s events from CΓ©line Dion’s perspective. It was incredibly funny, and my cheek muscles hurt when I left the theater from laughing. Ah, and this was 6th row up front. It was a relatively small theater, cozy, and the vibes were just good.
The day after we went to Kinky Boots. Mind you, just like for Titanique, we didn’t know much about the show beforehand. We managed to get incredibly cheap third row seats! Third row in the stalls! In a theater with 4 upper levels. I really enjoyed it as well. The story was very well told, and… it was just a great musical.
And let’s not forget: there was a gigantic heat wave across (at least Western) Europe in May. It was hot, and houses up here were not built for it. Both in the UK and in the NL we got to some 30C degrees inside. Now it’s raining again, and that makes me secretly happy.
Happy June, and Happy Pride Month π³οΈβπ!
]]>The other day, I visited the Hoge Veluwe with some friends that came visit. We spent most of the times on the classic white bikes, so I ended up not taking many pictures. However, we did stop here and there and I really like how this tree stood out in the middle of the heathland.
I tried something different and managed to capture an insect - maybe a Megarhyssa - walking on a log. It feels like I’m spying on their secret life.
Today, I bring you the final chapter of the Lommelse Sahara: sand, the reason why it is called a “sahara” in the first place. After the land, and the water, we end this series focusing on the fine grains that make this landscape. This is the third of three mini photo galleries: land, water, and sand.
Yesterday, I brought you the first of three mini photo galleries of the Lommelse Sahara, where I focused on the land. As magical as it may have been, that was just one of the three highlights of our hike thorough the Lommelse Sahara. Today, I want to focus on water. This is the second of three mini photo galleries: land, water, and sand.
Yesterday, we drove to the north of Belgium, right at the border with the Netherlands, to hike in the Lommelse Sahara. It was incredibly pretty and the hike route takes you through many different landscapes. This is the first of three mini photo galleries: land, water, and sand.
This week was King’s Day here in The Netherlands, where the whole country unites as a gigantic flea market. I took some photos here in Eindhoven during that day, and I thought it’d be nice to share the β¨ vibes β¨. I also ate some orange tompouce as one should, but I didn’t take a nice photo of it!
April is now coming to and end, and with it, a new blog post is born. Around 33% of the year has now gone by, and we’re starting to head into the prime time of the spring. Looking back at this month, it’s been quite quiet. I know I said the same thing last month, but now it’s for real.
π Life
There weren’t any major events happening this month in my life. Well, there were, but I’ve already talked about them as they happened. This month, I got my first swimming diploma and I started working on conquering my driving anxiety after not driving for more than five years.
On a completely different note, yesterday I hit a door and the left temple of my eyeglasses almost broke off. The optician managed to fix it a bit. They’ll check if they can order another temple. Otherwise, I might need to get new glasses, which is a shame since I got new lenses back in August.
On a brighter side: spring has started, and it’s been quite sunny and warm. It’s a nice feeling, but also not good for the Netherlands. Too dry. I’m also trying to get back on taking more photos again. I really enjoy it, but lately I haven’t done it as much. I know have my camera on my desk, and I notice I take it much more often with me.
πͺ Health
Things are going well. I went to the physiotherapist again for my wrist, and I’m very happy with what she said: she also agrees that I should be able to do everything with no pain, including putting my whole body’s weight on my hand. So we’ll work on it! Until now, I felt like all other physiotherapists wanted me to just accept that I’d need to live with it forever.
Swimming is going nicely. Haven’t been this week and haven’t had a lesson because of the school vacation, which means there’s also no swimming lessons. I might go tomorrow. Maybe I’ll check out the Tongelreep. Strength training at home is also going well.
πΏ Entertainment
This month we went to two concerts: Sophia Stel and ROSALΓA. Sophia Stel is a quite small artist, and we saw her at the upstairs room in Paradiso. It’s such a small room: capacity for around 250 people. It was a cosy concert. Never been there before. ROSALΓA, on the other hand, was a completely different scene: magnificent, phenomenal, enchanting.
In the cinema, we watched three movies: Project Hail Mary, The Drama, and The History of Sound. They were all three very good. The Drama was a bit… dramatic and sometimes too predictable, so I didn’t enjoy it as much. But the other two? I’d definitely recommend watching them!
When it comes to series, we watched a lot. Not a lot of series, but we finished a lot of seasons. We finished all seasons of The Man in the High Castle, the latest season of Shrinking and of Knokke Off. All good, all different, all recommendations.
Until next time!
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