Small details that makes you wonder

I have this very nice Philipino girl who cleans my apartment once a week. It is sooo nice and I love the feeling of coming home from work and finding my home shining clean and smelling fresh. However there is this one thing I can't help but thinking about. We seem to have very different opinions on how to place decorative items in the home. Every time when she has been here I have to make a round and move candle stands, flower pots and other decorative items back into the right positions.

If I have a group of candle stands for example, I like to place them in a group, maybe a little asymmetric or askew. My five Malian elephants I like to line up a little diagonally so you see them both a little from the front and the side at the same time. But every time she has been here, everything is lined up in straight lines, totally symmetrical and the elephants facing you up front. And then we have the Dutch house!! It is one of those small blue and white Dutch houses in china, that one use/used to get when flying Business class with KLM. It stands on the kitchen fan with the front, which is in this case the gable, facing you, like it would face a Dutch street, or canal. But every time she has turned it 90 degrees so the side is facing front. Ok, maybe it is not totally easy to know that the gable is supposed facing that way and maybe the other way around is more common in the Philippines, but hey it is a DUTCH house, and we live in Belgium, not very far away (I believe she has lived here for quite a while) and anyway, why moving it??! Why not just leave it the way I have left it!?

But of course that goes for all the moving of candles, plants and vases etc. Why not just leaving the way I left them, especially since she must notice that I keep moving then after she’s been here. .

Maybe she just think I am messy and she just has to put things “right”. And ok, I admit, I can at times be a little messy and of course I appreciate that she puts all the shoes that I just leave in a mess in the hall in order, and that she takes care of the laundry that needs to be ironed and folded. But then again, that makes me wonder, why on earth does she think I would mess up among the candle stands at the mantelpiece? Or among the flowers at the windowsill!? Or accidentally turning the elephants and the Dutch house?! What does that say about her thoughts about me??
 

 

The wrong way!

The right way! Its's a DUTCH house!!

First visitor!

I am sooo looking forward to receiving my first weekend guest this weekend!
The place is still a mess since I have not been at home much he three weeks since I moved in and things have not at all found their places in my apartment. On top of that then packing, travelling and unpacking again, even though I had not unpacked in the first place, that made even more of a mess if by place. Nevertheless it will be so fun to have a friend visiting over the weekend. And I am so happy to have a nice guest room. All those years I have been living in different temporary homes without proper chance to receive guests I always felt I missed having a guest room. I have spent so many nights at good friends' places all over h place, now finally I can offer something in return.
So please come and visit!! :-)

Where old people go

Took a couple of days off to have some time to breathe. My friend and I were thinking a lot of where to go this time of the year. We wanted some sun and preferably beach or pool life, some golf and not to much time spent on flying, which can be a challenge this time of the year. Anyway, we ended up on Madeira.
That far I only knew Madeira was known for being very green and and flowery, popular for hiking and among retirees. But I had no time to be picky so why not, let's go!

This far, I must say I am so positively surprised and very satisfied. Weather nice, water nice, excellent food and service and good golfing. Yes, indeed most of the visitors are definitely over 65, but that is really no problem, rather I would even say it is an advantage. They are quiet and well behaved and leave you alone and don't bother you. Much more pleasent than shouting teenagers or screaming kids and families. Around the pool there is a nice calm atmoshpere and you don't risk getting a ball or a frees bee landing on your head. Perfect for just lounging and reading your book in the sun. These retirees are also quite a demanding, but still independent, well off and quality concient bunch of people, meaning they have done all the bickering and complaining for you so service is excellent and prices still very decent.

And you don't have to worry about you beach body not being what you would have wanted it to be. At the poolside with the retirees you will still feel very slim, young and good looking without doing anything but being there. I think from now on I will always travel where the old people go! :-)

A Brussels experience

There are a few things that bind expats living in Brussels together and where you will find almost unanimously experiences. Two of them are registration at the commune and having Belgacom installing tv and internet in your home. Both of then can be rather challenging as I understand.
As a diplomat I don't have to register so that is an experience I will not be able to share, but right now I am waiting for Belgacom to show up. They should come "in the morning" which I understand can last up to one o'clock. Then, if they show up, of course that is no guarantee things will work. They havre already indicated that there is some problem on my address... In a newly renovated house in the city centre...
From what I have heard the compulsory Belgacom visit often includes them digging up the street in front of the house!! Anyway at least I may have a true Belgian expat experience to share.

Brussel buildings

Buildings in Brussels can be very fascinating. These two are just opposite mine and both rather derelict. It is a little difficult to tell if people are living there or not, at least on all floors, but definitely on some floors. There are curtains and flowers in the windows, but at the same time windows are broken and curtains are hanging out. However on both buildings the roofs look quite recently renovated, so someone still cares a little about them, but anyway with those facades and broken windows I guess the houses are still quite rotten. 

My house is nicely kept and my apartment very nicely renovated but still the outside of the window frames would really need some painting, but when we mentioned that while looking at the flat, the landlord just said that it would be too expensive and that you can not do everything at the same time (inside and outside). Which is true of courses. But on the other hand painting the windows now would not cost that much, taking care of them later can get very costly.

Back again

Ok, a Friday morning off from work with the new apartment full of cardbord boxes screaming to be unpacked, i decide to pick up my long time no see blogging again.... don't really know how that happened, but I think it started by me feeling I wanted to write to someone, and tell what's going on in my life, but could not decide to whom, who would be interested in my normal everyday life? Then I vaguely remembered that I used to have a blog called Normal Life and there we go... Or maybe it is just the same old-fashioned procrastination...

Of course I could have decided to pick up the Travel blog instead, but since I now am supposed to live in Brussels for three years I thought this will be the normal life. Who knows, maybe I will be inspired enough to pick up the Travel blog too, once I get going.

There is some work to be done. And before I can do anything I really should clean, since the place was still a building site just two days ago, and has not been cleaned after that, but I will get started soon....

Change

The last couple of weeks a lot has happened. Quite big changes.

But before that I was starting to feeling bored and frustrated. Coming back from the moste wonderful holiday in Rio I found there was nothing much to look forward to. Nothing much happened at work and all my friends were to busy with their families and I don't know what, but I never saw them. All normal people started to look forward to the summer holidays but that is just another stressful moment for me as I never know what to do on my holiday until last moment. Everyone was just tired or ill or just in a very bad mood. Life was simply not very fun. I took out some of my frustration in a status up-date on Facebook, a couple of minutes later I had received and basically accepted an offer of a job in Brazil!

It was an almost religious expereice, as if someone up there saw me and realised I really desperatly needed something to happen (although I know perfeclty well how it all happened). Two days later I had an official offer and the concent of my boss to leave. It all seemed like a good idea for everyone. As my previous office need to cut costs and there was not too much to do anyway it would all be fine.

What happens after that?! Well it seems the whole world seemed to go crazy. First a civil war in Libya and then the absolutely mad situation in Japan with earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accidents. Since then we have worked more than ever. It has been crazy busy and all the time I thought I would have getting ready for Brazil has just vanished. I still look very much forward to Brazil, but at the same time it feels strange to leave the office at such a busy time and sad to say so, also interesting times. Not that I like disasters or conflicts to happen, of course not, at times I have felt some kind of disaster fatigue, feeling I cant't hear any bad news anymore, getting all depressed and cynical, but still this is what we work with and then of course it is interesting to see how the systems work when things happen, it is interesting to be a part of the handeling.

But soon it is time to change focus completely! I wonder what that will be like! :-)

Change

It is amazing how fast things change sometimes. Unfortunatly I sometimes have the feeling it is more often to the worse, but sometimes it is really for the better. This Mondya I was so irritated and frustrated about my situation and my life here in Stockholm. I do really like my job, but felt a certain frustration for some time but worse is actually the lack of social life as everyone is so caught up in their relations and families or just simply too tired to do anything besides working.
I can understand that people are tired and don't have too much energy to do somthing else than just go home and watch tv. I am also tired at times, but I could not stand my life if working and sleeping was all I could do. Therefore, no matter how tired I am, or how much work I have I try to do things after work anyway. I go to the gym or would like to meet friends for a coffee or a movie or whatever. But this "whatever" is becoming rarer and rarer as no one seems to have the time or engergy. This makes me very frustrated. And this Monday it had really annoyed me. This time of the year makes things even worse, it is cold and people are sick and irritated with everything. So this Monday was just not a good day and I started seriously considering how to make a change.
The, out of the blue there was a light on the dark sky. A hope was lit and everything felt much better. Since, this have keept my mind preoccupied and things are still working out well. I have an interesting challange to look forward to! :-)

Not My Party

I have received an invitation for a school reunion, 25 years after leaving that class. It is the second reunion being arranged. I suppose the first one was ten years ago. I didn’t go then. I was living abroad at the time so I did not even consider it. This time I would be able to go if I wanted to, but I don’t think I will go this time either. I know a some people find these gatherings traumatic, where everyone will compete and show off who is the most successful or failed. Some may even worry about meeting their old school romances. I have no such worries whatsoever. I don’t have any old school romances and I don’t feel I have anything to prove and no need to show off. On the other hand I don’t feel I have anything to be ashamed of either. I feel quite happy with the way my life has turned out and to some I might even seem successful and having made some kind of career. The thing is I couldn’t care less.

I feel I have no interest whatsoever to meet any of my old high school class mates. The few that I like and would like to stay in touch with, I am in touch with and see every now and then, the rest… Well I suppose there are reasons why we don’t stay in touch. I have plenty of other friends in my life.

Not even the arrangement as such can tempt me to spend the 400 kr and drive the 350 km to go to the party. The dinner menu was extremely boring and the music described as “the greatest hits from the good old days” which in this case I guess would be around 1986. Oh my god! I can not think of a worse setting for a party. I simply don’t have that kind of nostalgic nerve at all. My life has moved on. I don’t feel any need to waste time on people I have nothing in common with, more that the fact that we happened to be born the same year at the same place, and talk about things that happened 25 years ago and listen to the same old music as we did then. I just don’t want to. I believe people who like to go to this kind of parties are the ones who either feel a need to prove they have achieved something or the ones that never get invited to any real parties.

Back to Winter again

Coming back from Rio has almost been a little traumatic. It was simply such a wonderful holiday. Maybe the best I ever had. I just love the place and want to go back soon again. I think I would also like to live there for a while.

Of course the coming back didn’t get any better by catching a very bad cold. Well, as a matter of fact I might actually have caught it in Rio, but there it never was a problem. Coming back to the cold climate however, it got really bad. I had to stay home from work three days this week and it caused me to miss a business trip to Bonn that I had looked forward to. But in spite of this and in spite of the cold winter and snowstorms raging I keep Rio in my mind. I keep humming some of the songs from the soundtrack of the trip and today I decided to look at the snowstorm from the perspective of a Brazilian. That turned the snow into something rather exotic, which made it much easier to endure

Rio next!!

Well, for some time now I have been considering taking up blogging again. The plan was then to continue on the Normal life as I am not travelling too much at the moment but still often encounter things that I want to write about. Most often it just results in a somewhat extende status-update on Facebook. However there are many things that would need more words that fit on FB and some things might not fit at all.
So having said this, I will most probably start blogging on my Travel-blog!
As things turned out I very spontanously decided to go to Rio. Made the decision and booked the ticket Thursday and I am leaving tomrrow.

This feels like a very exciting trip so I hope I will have time to write some and update on the travelblog. Rio next!!

Kajaktur i solnedgång en tisdag i juni

Really True?

This picture lookes more and more unreal somehow. Still it is so very real. Taken by myself with my own very simple mobile camera and no photoshopping at all. And it was my own reality just a little more than a month ago. Oh I whish I was back!! The winter never seems to end this year...

N.B. the white stuff is not snow!!

Part of the cooking...

Among my friends (and people I know) I would say there are more men who say they enjoy cooking than there are women. I haven't thougt that much about it, more thougt about it as a trend or sign of the times. I myself, would not like to say that I like to cook either. Not that I really dislike it, but it is simply not one of my favourite things to do.

The most obvious reason for my aversion to cooking is that I really don't like cleaning up the kitchen afterwards. Recently it struck me that there might be one of the reasons men still say they like cooking. They just simply don't regard cleaning up the kitchen as part of the cooking. They just seem to assume there are someone else taking care of that little detail....

Sun and Snow

Today it was somewhat of a chock waking up and see the qiucksilver standing at -33 degrees. Not too inspiring for a day on the slopes. However, we learned that today there was "inversion", meaning that dispite -33 in the village there was "only" -15 on the peak. That meant once up there we had a very nice day of skiing in the sun, not half as cold as yesterday and great slopes. Italian after-ski with prosecco and aperol! :-)

So not a winter-person!

So; went north for a week of skiing holiday with friends. Lovely!! How nice you would say. And it is. I do like skiing. What I don't like however is the cold! No matter how try to like winter; I am just so not a winter-person! Winter for me is just a matter of coping, endure and survive. I really wish I could like winter, I do! And I really try to, but it just don't work. It will never get abow the level of "ok".
As I said; I do really like going fast down a nice slope. The thing is there is just so many other things around it making it more of a hassle. And worst of all; it is cold. You have to put on such a lot of clothes and it just isn't comfortable. There's simply nothing comfortable about winter (unless you stay indoors!). Today we went shopping for some additional winter outfits and sometimes you are asked the question "does it feel comfortable?" But hey! There is nothing comfortable about skiing-boots, layer after layer of clothes, ski-goggles, helmets or thick gloves. It is all just a matter of trying to find something that works and isn't too uncomfortable or simply unbareble.
Ok, you do some nice things and get involved in plenty of physical activities, which is nice. But I can not help thinking it would all have been so much nicer if it had been 30 degrees above zero and sunny.

Happy-therapy

It is really amazing what the time in The Smal Town did to me! Not that I really can remember much of it, my self-protection system has deletet that file, but having moved avay from there has had a tremendeous effect. I am almost constantly happy since I moved away. Even now in winter and the last weeks when it has been freezing cold have I been in a very good mood and not even been freezing very much. Yesterday i was out walking with a friend who was freezing and complaining a bit. I was very happy and just went on about the bright, white, glistening snow and the beautiful view from the bridge. When I tried to convince my friend that it was not cold, but fresh and crispy, she finally told me to shut the f**k up. :-)

I think The Small Town could be the remedy for every negative and pessimistic person. Force them to live there for a year or two and only then let them move back to where they want to live.

2010!

2010 is here!! And it has started very well this far and I have good hopes it will be an interesting year. Looking forward!!

Happy 2009! Happy 2010!?

2009 is slowly coming to an end and it is time to make a summary. I must say 2009 has been a very good year for me. Looking back; one could even say that the 1,5 year in The Small Town almost seem worth it. It has made me happy every single day for almost a whole year, only because of the fact that I don't live there anymore. I hope it will last 2010 too. Right now it feels good and promising!