1st, Utrecht.

The fact that it is 2025 hasn’t hit me.  If you hadn’t elucidated it being the Year of the Snake, I probably wouldn’t have heard of it until Manchester United dropped their Chinese New Year collection.  It’s a good sign, not least because my oldest friends christened me with the nickname Snake over thirty years ago.  Lore has it that the origins are because my name Jack resembled Jake, and someone in our group of friends was a WWF (World Wrestling Federation) fan, and at that time you had a massive bloke called Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts on the circuit, who after defeating his opponents with a suplex or a chokehold, would reach for his bag ringside, and to rub salt in the wound, released a fully grown boa constrictor into the ring.  So they started calling me the Snake, and sometimes on whatsapp I’ll still get a message starting with Snake!  This might be the least weird thing we share among ourselves.  Anyways, it’s a good omen.  

On the 30th I woke up at 4 am to start work, not quite Dutch time but let’s say an acceptable Spanish one.  I can’t quite recall what I did, some spreadsheets and SAP transactions, meaningless and useless as usual.  I scoffed down some vegetarian chili and drove with my mom to Fortino’s, one of the nicer supermarket, just to keep her company.  We didn’t drive back together, from there I went for a run, taking in some last hills and clocking a dangerous 8:00 min / km.  A final coffee with a friend was put on hold until the summer, since I still had to pack and wanted to spend some more time at home.  After a final meal, where, thinking back, I probably berated my mom too much for consuming too much meat, my parents dropped me off at the bus terminal where forty minutes later I was whisked away to Pearson Airport.  That’s still the homecourt, Pearson.  Schipol is still a place of transit.  Do you know what I mean, kind of?  When I’m in Pearson I’m still among my people and my culture.  There’s a Tim Horton’s cafe, CIBC (Canadian bank with whom I still do business), it’s still my language, my weather, my phone area code.  More on these feelings to come.

I had with full intention copied your long string of questions into a document and taken my laptop out of the overhead to write a lengthy reply, but the 4 am wake up caught up to me and after reading a few pages of a new book and eating the chicken with rice option, I was overcome with fatigue.  I’ve never been a good airplane sleeper, and this one was no different, but I was in some form of light sleep for nearly six hours.  

So things got delayed until the airport, where I was to be reunited with my family.  Even after a double shot of espresso, the engine just refused to start.  

Milo was hiding from me for two minutes until he realized it really was me, Papito, not some blurry figure on Fatima’s phone.  After unpacking, we all fell asleep together at 9 pm, and not even the war that raged outside at midnight could bother us.  We forced ourselves out of bed at 11 am, to start the day, and tomorrow, when I’m at work, I’ll think of the start of the year, but only just – we are still closing 2024 as it is, the books are officially open until Jan 8th.  If you’ve got any outstanding invoices for services that we owe you, you have until then to send them in.

Today I wanted to write a lot.  To read, to run, to trumpet.  Then I was reminded of Daytripper, a graphic novel I squeezed in on my final days in Canada.  In one of the last chapters, the main character finds a letter from his deceased father.  I wish I had read it a while ago.  It’s something I need to keep in mind.  Happy New Year too.

Dear Son.

You’re holding this letter now because this is the most important day of your life.

You’re about to have your first child.

That means the life you’ve built with such effort, that you’ve conquered, that you’ve earned, has finally reached the point where it no longer belongs to you.

This baby is the new master of your life.

He is the sole reason for your existence.

You’ll surrender your life to him, give him your heart and soul because you want him to be strong….

…. To be brave enough to make all his decisions without you.

So when he finally grows older, he won’t need you.

That’s because you know one day that you won’t be there for him anymore.

Only when you accept that one day you’ll die can you let go…

…and make the best out of life.

And that’s the big secret.

That’s the miracle.

3rd, Utrecht.

Five, six, seven canisters of pills are on the table.  Without conspicuously counting, I can’t tell for certain.  A walker is next to the couch, where a bedridden male lays with a scruffy three week beard operating three remote controls.  We’ve brought him a hot meal and a coffee from the drive thru.  He laughs as he tells us to go look at the shower, where we see a new seat has been installed to make washing easier.  You think I’ve paid a visit to a seniors home, but this was an old childhood  friend I was seeing, incapacitated, diagnosed with three herniated discs. Meanwhile the prognosis is pills and the couch.  A physio appointment the next day.  

This one is a real head scratcher for me, and you need some background to understand why.  The friend in question comes from perhaps the most wealthy family that I know.  Wealth accumulated by old fashioned hard work and a strict adherence to the capitalist bible ‘Rich-Dad Poor Dad’:  a real healthy portfolio of commercial property.  Fine, this is allowed.  Encouraged.  Respected.  We must bow.

So then why does the son, my friend, work on the factory line at a big automobile manufacturer?  On the one hand, I totally respect this:  no nepotism, and just because they’re already made, doesn’t mean he can’t pull up his sleeves and work.  But the factory line?  Repeating the same motion 1000x per shift causing pressure on the spine and temporary paralysis at 43?  Wouldn’t someone from this background in The Netherlands be groomed for the service of ‘bettering society’, or am I romanticizing the place again?

Just one of the events that baffled me on my last visit.  We sat in his condo which overlooked the GO ‘Government Operated’ train station, which these days operates as a makeshift homeless shelter.  No less than twenty vagabonds can be found there on most nights, train commuters must be careful navigating between fresh mounds of human feces in the morning.  Again, why is this guy living here?  It was awkward for me to sit there.  The dominant thought running through my head was, if this is what it’s like for him, then what’ll it be like for me?  If this is what the have’s have, and the have nots are out shitting in the wind, where do I fit in?  Coming home with my tail between my legs, sure, I’ve read a few books, but that’s entirely meaningless there.  That doesn’t count.  I should’ve known all along.  So why go back, you ask?  Well, if I can get twenty years of compound interest I might just make it out with financial freedom, whatever that means.

This is likely going into a series of meditations about moving back.  The good and the bad. Until Monday.

6th, Utrecht

Today is not the day.  It’s 4:50 pm and I’m going to stay true to the 10 minute window of writing, since I have a phone call at 5:00 pm.  It feels like I’m just starting the day truthfully – a morning spent with all sorts of domestic duties while wiggling the mouse to make sure I’m present online (how’s that for freedom), a run at lunch to get trace amounts of vitamin D, one or two errands, meeting the family at the library.  Just now two appleflapen and an AH coffee, and I”m ready to tuck into the ‘year end closing’ of 2024, which truth be told, has seemed rather ordinary in comparison to previous years – the worst of which saw me having night sweats since I couldn’t find over two million euros to balance the books.  Which no one in their right mind really gives a shit about, but there are audits, and eager young business leaders of the world questioning where those two million euros went.  Eventually I dodged all the questions they threw at me, and since no one really has any clue about what is going on, and since we all wanted to get on with our lives, they just left the topic open.   I won’t face any such pressure this year, someone else is doing all the bullshitting, I’m just doing my standard month end procedures which basically means if the glorified AI was as good as they say it is on LinkedIN, it would be doing what I’m doing.  I’m a machine.  I have no feelings.  If I encounter an error in running the procedure I have no way to solve the operation I’m performing.  Basically I’m one degree away from someone working on the assembly line, the one that Marx criticized.  How far we’ve come.

7th, Leusden.

Your days are infinitely more interesting than mine.  You’ve likely lived a near carbon copy of my day thousands of times.  Perhaps the only discernible difference might be that I slept in a toddler’s bed; if I curled into a fetal position I could fit and I thought at the time it might be cozy.  Then what?  Coffee, shower, get dressed, ride a bike to the station, get the train, get picked up by a colleague, head into the office to say Happy New Year to people that I respect but saying that I care for them could be a stretch.  God, what an unbearable asshole I am on the inside.  Then it was straight into the Inbox, more Happy New Years, for people I care even less about because they’re located somewhere off in cyberspace.  The icing on the cake was an SAP consultant who was on site, and I swear the three hour meeting we had with him could have been an email with five bullet points.  If there’s anything worse than an unbearable asshole then it’s some unbearable project manager.  I paid my dues at lunchtime; a can of Ortiz Tuna, an avocado and a broodje croquette from the canteen, where I possibly for the 20th year in a row posted the deep and insightful question of what everyone’s New Year Resolution was.  God, what an unbearable asshole I can be.  I nearly let go of my mask and was about to go full on Goodreads rant when they asked me what I thought about golf.  Still I suspect I may have raised some eyebrows with my response; that I had no aspirations to golf and that in my hometown the golf country clubs took over any pleasant piece of nature and that they’ll shoot you if you trespass, which is why I hate golf.  My saving grace and return to normality was talking about Milo’s first day of daycare.  Back at my desk, with my fourth Nespresso of the day I made some calculations in a spreadsheet and then transferred this data into SAP.  I now thought it would be a good time to write, with an hour to kill.  Everyone else seems busy, I don’t know why they don’t give me more work.  Probably because they think I’m an unbearable asshole.

8th/9th/A few minutes of the 10th. Utrecht

Although I’ve already prefaced my current state of mind on another medium, I’ll do it again here.  Tired, overworked, underpaid, twenty tabs open on Chrome ranging from Gmail, three booking.com properties, Puma.nl, and some unrecognizable website icons where I drifted to god knows what – in short, the, the pure antithesis of Han’s pathos.  The sun is shining, and I’d rather be doing other things, but somehow, what I’m doing doesn’t feel too bad, and I’m wondering if that’s only because ‘I’m being paid’.  Enough about me; let me address two things here: 1)  Biography ⇒ Oeuvre VS Ouevre ⇒ Biography & 2) Your life sans social media.

Starting with 2).

Sometime ago I may have sent to you or written about something that I read, paraphrasing, it was something that through writing we reveal ourselves, perhaps to the greatest degree possible. Yet even so, even in that sense, it is still difficult for me to judge the real you; how you want to be, what you want to feel, what can trigger those feelings.  I’m afraid I can’t offer more than the generic answers ‘some social media in moderation’ is okay.  A couple of years ago we tried going vegan for a month.  It was good.  I slept better.  I felt better.  Going to the grocery store you realize that 90% of it is filled with shit, everything you need is in the fresh produce section.  Going out, it was annoying to ask waiters if this or that was vegan, and I missed salivating over a massive chunk of meat.  We didn’t continue it, though.  I dunno where I”m going with this analogy – something like try it?  Or maybe that yes, no social media for you would be good, but there’s that 10% that you may consider good.

Number 1) is an interesting question, because I have experience going deep in both ways.  Several years ago at the second hand bookstore I stumbled upon Blake Bailey’s biography of Richard Yates – an author that I previously had not read, and was captivated by the self-destructive behaviour I could glimpse from flipping through the pages.  I bought it on a whim.  While it was interesting to read about Yates awful life, the biography used several excerpts of his work to show where his inspiration came from, and I remember not being entirely pleased with this technique, as taken out of context from an entire novel was confusing.  While it did peak some anticipation for reading his works, I prefer the other option.  Not to say reading about an author beforehand doesn’t have its value.  A whole, biography – no, not necessary.  One day I’ll finish Roth’s works, and Blake Bailey has also written a book about him.  I’m undecided if I’ll read it.

Meanwhile Ryszard Kapuściński is my one of my favourite authors, and after finishing most of his work, I read his biography, titled ‘Non Fiction’.  It cemented my fondness for him.

Kapper, Yates, Kapper, Yates… enough.  Like most good ideas, I got a good response to your answer yesterday while out for a run.  Time was of the essence, so I opted for speed (relative speed, sub 5 min /km).  Refer to above; revealing oneself.  It’s perhaps a guilty pleasure and with perhaps some shame (since, let’s not beat around the bush – this is mainly a high brow literature blog)  that my go-to soundtrack for fast runs, an almost guaranteed endorphin release is Avicii.  This has been the case for 15 years.  It never tires.  

In 2017 I watched a documentary about him put together shortly after his death.  A sad lonely death in Oman of all places.   I just couldn’t square it.  His music, his presence on stage, the fame, (I mean yes fame can be tiring but in your 20’s when one is at their most egotistical self, could there be anything better?) simply did not match.  I wish I hadn’t watched it.  It made me sad.  

“It isn’t good to admire people for being perfect, because if they turn out to have faults or stains on their resume – and they always have – our faith is bound to collapse in ruins. Better to admire our idols for the extraordinary things they do, despite being completely ordinary people.”   Quote from Kapuściński non-fiction.  Artur Domosławski.

Come to think of it, watch this video for a few minutes starting at the 1 hour 13 min mark.  Maybe there is your answer.

Avicii Tomorrowland 2011 (Full Video Set)

“No PHONES, No SELFIES, No superficial/fake influencers,.. just awesome people being THERE, present IN THE MOMENT.  RIP AVICCI.” Random Youtube User. 

10th, Utrecht, at the Launderette.

I see your point, I think.  All good, interesting, connecting ideas jizzed out onto the page, and then missing the magic ingredient.  So do we just leave it?  Because the next logical step would be to step aside from this, and do it.   Maybe that is such a herculean effort that we stop here, only with the ideas, and leave the connected polished pieces to the pros.  Maybe by the time you read this, the enthusiasm for your ideas is gone.  Maybe we need a coach of sorts.  What do you think?

Carrying on with our modus operandi, I’m just sitting here in a laundromat waiting for an 11 Kg machine to be free, to wash away the putrid puke containing Wednesday’s lunch; half digested chunks of sausage and pesto.  When the machine becomes free I’ll likely spend a half hour figuring out how to pay and start the cycle.  Then around the corner there’s a cafe with Turkish (Syrian?) baklava, for I am in the multi-cultural Kanalieland which is only a few minutes cycling from white Oog in Al, where I’ll wait some more.  I like it here, there’s a lot of life.  Meanwhile, I am working and writing.  I’m ‘book-free’ for the last couple of days; a conscientious choice since I really could not afford myself this luxury among all the other chaos that has encroached my life.  I’m trying to install a new door to make a makeshift additional bedroom in our open living room.  You can’t begin to imagine how stressful it is, even simply finding someone to do the work. Meanwhile a door has been delivered, but I don’t know why, it has got to weigh more than 100 kg, and I don’t think our measly door frame can hold this thing, it’s so dense that it has it’s own gravitational pull, and all I can picture is Milo is being crushed.  So I put it outside, to deal with later.  Back to the books; I haven’t heard of Pelevin either, but if there is one tagline where I always take the bait then it’s a mention of David Foster Wallace.  Homo Zapiens or another?  I’m waiting for Hamsun’s Hunger at the library and if that takes too long I’ll resort to a Roth.  Then I could check out Pelevin, any time after two weeks.  

I clicked on the beginning of a Youtube video that the algorithm procured, and its first sentence was something like ‘The Dutch value personal freedom’.  But I don’t see it, at least not in my case, because, what is it that I want? I want to be free to read, write, play my trumpet, play with my family, blah blah blah.  And I can’t.  I simply can’t.  I mean, sure, I can do those things, for a year, and then the bank account is on empty and then what happens to this sacred ‘value’.  It’s gone.  Or are there really Dutch people that are allotted food, housing, recreation from the state?  That’s where I really want to live, somewhere where personal freedom is a real thing and not dictated by the bank.  Or I’d give up some of my personal freedoms in exchange for less obligations to the bank.  I know I know, I’m a broken record.  There’s just too much of an asterisk on that statement.  We value your personal freedom, do what you want, worship any god, choose any sex*.   The more correct statement is that  the Dutch value personal freedom if you contribute 40 hours per week or some other form of GDP.  Don’t get me wrong, that is 60-80 hours per week in Canada, I just think that this aspect of Dutch society may be overhyped.

You know, there is some part of me that wants to liquidate all my holdings and move to a small quiet town somewhere where my personal freedoms can be stretched, if I play my cards right, until my grave.  I’m thinking of all the places that we commonly refer to as dysfunctional.  Somewhere with low GDP, that holiest of holy economic measures.   My Croatian friend complains that in Croatia people are known to go out for three hour coffees, as if this was a bad thing.  The Dutch work/life balance is also overhyped!  Burnouts are rampant.  

Anyways, when I’m there, I can connect the dots.  

15th, Utrecht.

Having only read the first paragraph of your writing from today, I immediately wanted to write some feelings of relief.  There was a small part of me that thought you may have taken offence as I took a swipe or two at your country.  Rest assured, while I may stray from time to time, I still think this place is at the forefront of how a modern, civilized, country – at times damn near a paradise ought to function.  Me, being a human, I’d probably have a thing or two to shit about if I was living in a place that served filet mignons for dinner and thirty virgins for dessert.  So, I’m pleased to read that it was only the man flu that caused your absence.  Even though as we age, I suppose the don’t give a fuck meter ramps up increasingly, I’m still occasionally stricken by these irrational worries.  In fact it happened over the weekend, and for a good thirty minutes I was offended that someone had been mocking me, when later it turned out to not be true in the least.

As for myself, the suspension of weekend writing carried on to Monday and Tuesday, partially because of what I referred to above, and secondly a mixture of professional (lol) and domestic duties, which I am learning to be more at peace with when I must make concessions.  The magnitude of the  to-do list on these fronts is comical.  At times the best course of action is to ignore it completely and tuck into a Roth.  My Life as a Man has many scathing reviews, but so far it is one of the best accounts of the charming moments of the life of a budding writer.  It does bring on feelings of envy, because, as I suppose is often the case, the writer knew he wanted to be a writer already from a young age.  Imagine that, being twenty four and already discovering this is your calling.  Supposedly it’s loosely autobiographical, and supposedly later it turns into misogyny.  Nevertheless, for now, it has kept me happy.  As I currently have my two cups of coffee, random piano on Spotify, some reading and writing in the basement, under the pretense of work, I feel a rare moment of peace, swaying dangerously to contentment.  

Yesterday Milo was completely not himself.  He wouldn’t smile, he didn’t laugh at anything, he said no to anything offered and only ate two or three bites of his dinner.  The night before we tried to train him to sleep alone in his own room and bed, and then in the morning he was dropped off at a gastouder.  Abandoned, day and night, I couldn’t really blame him for acting this way.  It’s hard to imagine that one day he’ll fly across the ocean and live alone in a foreign country on his own volition.

16th, Leusden.  

Incognito mode, a tiny pop up inconspicuously minimized  on my laptop screen, passersbys will be drawn to the two 17 inch monitors showcasing Microsoft Outlook & SAP.  Foolproof.  I excused myself early from the dreaded team lunch, ten minutes of moaning about the quality of canteen food, though categorically correct, was enough for me, and I headed out for a walk, in the hopes of lifting my mood.  Exiting the building I walked along a massive parking lot, reminding me of the plazas back home.  I entered into an enclave boasting several BVs with similar set ups as ours..  A shitty ass looking canteen, workers huddled around uitsmeeters and Douwe Egberts machine dispensed filth.  Some of them ventured outside, even though we were one in the same, we barely acknowledged each other.  It could have very well been the demeanours of Eastern Europeans under communist rules.  Is it really that different?  We’ve got bosses, they had party bosses.  More parking lots and I reach a small wooded area that has entrance over a small canal via a bridge.  A board listing the wildlife that can be found in the area doesn’t interest me at all, and a map of the area shows I can do a small loop, some 400 meters.  So I venture on, pretty soon it gets muddy and my shoes make a squishing sound.  At the far end, I hear the din of a highway – you can’t have one without the other in the Netherlands it seems.  Nature area next to a highway.  On the return portion of the loop it strikes me odd to see another soulless zombie walking towards me.  He looks like he holds the title of supply chain director, or after sales service manager.  As we pass each other my hello is returned with a blank face.  Is this real life?  In retrospect staying at the team lunch, however dire, probably would’ve been the better choice for lifting my mood.  Now, in this sombre mood, there’s nothing left to do but enter an SAP module and try to forget about the life mistakes that have led me to this.

17th. Utrecht. Bagels & Beans.

I appreciate the invite you’ve sent, but it seems you’ve mystically transmitted something else, which will cause me to miss Sunday’s liturgy.  Somewhere, someone else must absolve me of my sins.  At the moment everything is under control, it is only a sore throat and fatigue, if a friend would, on Sunday perhaps go and say some prayers for my well-being, it may stay as only a minor inconvenience, instead of flooring me for days a-la-Jitse last weekend.

We carry on however.

Straight into the fire, the depths of hell tonight.  The criteria was simple, no more than an hour away by public transport, and a bathtub.  Instead of painstakingly reading ten reviews of all properties available, I booked the first one that I came across.  Hilton in Soestduinen.  A swimming pool to boot.  The problem is that later it occurred to me that it backs on to a golf course.  Now, a Dutch golfer may be an entirely different animal than that of a North American one – whose main objective is to conspicuously flaunt their free time, wealth, control over nature, control over serfs, control over fake titties, to be able to say ‘stroke’, to ‘master’ something, the struggle of which entails driving around in a cart, then walking ten meters, and putting it into a hole.  Better than sex they say, once you get it right.  Do these people even fornicate?  The Dutch version is probably a lot tamer, given the egalitarian society over here.  There’s still a knot added to the tension in my head, at the dreaded thought of seeing someone wearing a polo shirt tucked into some corduroy’s with a flashy watch, who upon seeing me (in a football jersey)  may ask me what my handicap is.  Now look, the funny thing is that I want to be that douchebag with a set of Taylormade (remember them?) clubs in the back of my Audi, eating breakfasts croissants with my fake titted wife while checking on the performance of my high yield equity bonds in the Financial Times before hitting the fairway, hitting nine holes and shooting three under before getting back to the club house to have an ‘amuse-bouche’, tipping my caddy a tenner, before retiring home to slap my nannies ass for a job well done, and then whisky and cigar time with the boys.  That is living!!!  Instead I’ll be arriving at the place, sick, on public transport, reading a Roth, once again, wondering where it all went wrong.  THREE!! No, I mean, FOUR!!!

20th, Utrecht.

It’s a pleasure to read your posts – the photobook piece, the list with your grandfather’s name and most recently Ajax.  Agreeing to do this again has been the best decision I’ve made in a long while, furthermore, I have to pat myself on the back for having the foresight to take the weekends off, since it feels like I’ve ran three marathons in successive days.  The physical aspect is most likely my fault – if you haven’t already determined my character, I think it’s clear that I’m a pushover.  And so it goes, Milo has already learned this, and he puts on his waterworks everytime we step outside, to which I concede and do as he demands, which is, to carry him.  So since Friday afternoon until Sunday evening I’ve been carrying around an extra 18 kg, leaving my arms sore and my back twisted.  Fatima looks on with disapproval at how she could’ve married such a softy.  My rationale is that I’d rather carry him and suffer than go through a tantrum, however short lived.  At one point I put him down and screamed while clutching my back, to show him how painful it is for me to carry him.  This only amused him and he laughed as I suffered, before returning to crying.  The hotel trip was a resounding success – we didn’t encounter a single golfer.  There was a low mist.  Literally, I think the fog may have prevented those foul creatures from surfacing.  There was a pool that Milo loved and it was nearly empty both times we went.  A return trip in the next week or two is being discussed.  Still, I am tired.  I am slightly worried how my life will look after March 2nd.  I guess there’ll be less of a shock about losing my identity, though it feels that anything that I am able to scrape by these days will be all but gone.  Oddly enough, work has become a kind of sanctuary because at least there I can get snippets of things I like in – coffee, a workout, some reading and writing.  I take back anything I ever said about capitalism and corporate life.  In fact I think you should try a pair of Puma running shoes (assuming you’re still running).  

At some point last week I ordered a book which I think will be one of the lightest reads of the year.  Maybe you’ve heard of the author – Tim Parks, since he’s written a lot about Italy, but for some reason I have never been fully inclined to pick up his books.  He strikes me as an annoying British pensioner, the kind you see in sunny destinations who’ve reaped the rewards of the British Empire and can now be found in a mediterranean enclave still eating bangers and mash.  Nevertheless, he seems to have lived the dream and followed around Helas Verona for a season in Italy.  I’m aiming to read it when the next bundle of joy arrives, since my capacity for reading will be nearly non-existent.  

I’m not fully on board with this idea – but what would you say as a writing exercise you and I attend a local football game and write about it?  I can’t say I’m terribly excited about visiting FC Utrecht, but for the sake of the craft – I will.  You already know my piece will be five percent about the game and ninety-five percent randomness.  

There’s shit on my hands now – I’ve been called into action upstairs to help with the little man’s kaka.  And now for the third time I’ve tried to break away and finish writing this, and then there’s an email that I need to tend to.  There’s a nagging person inside of me telling me to go run even though I’m sick, to spend an hour on the trumpet.  There’s some food in the oven and rice on the boil.  How can I do it all. I simply must submit myself to the machine, I think.

21st, Utrecht.

Relocating from my flat to library Oog in Al takes all but five minutes.  I can end a Teams meeting, close my laptop and fire it up again here in the blink of an eye.  Increasingly, I find myself doing that, instead of taking the ten minute cycle, maybe twenty minutes when all is said and done, to get to Central Library.  It seems to be exam season there however, and if you’re not there at 9 am sharp, seating is limited, which could cost you an additional ten minutes of searching.  I also increasingly like the Oog in Al location because I can roll up in my Walmart Swag; which today is my pair of Altra’s (more on those), black Saysky sweatpants stained pink with bleach, a three euro thrift store winter jacket, winter gloves courtesy of Albert Heijn since they were on 50% discount bonus, and a random hat and scarf grabbed from the closet.  The last time I showered was ages ago, it doesn’t even register in my memory bank.  I like it here cause it means business.  Either, this, reading, or actual work, whereas in the central library it becomes a bit of a show.  

Today was the day I had envisioned writing more about Canada and some of the questions you asked, since Milo would’ve been off to the gastouder and I could probably get by with not focusing on work during the afternoon.  Well, the shit hit the fan this morning.  No, that’s the wrong idiom.  We wanted the shit to hit the fan, but Milo is going through a phase where he seems to be terrified of pooing, to the point where he reaches hysterics.  So basically the whole morning was shot, tending to him, calming him and urging him to poo.  We feel like terrible parents because of it, and more so because we actually sent him to the gastouder in the afternoon with his bowels full.  

So Canada stories will have to wait, and quite frankly I’m happy that you shot down the football idea.  Truth be told there are much better ways that I’d like to spend those three hours, even if I was ‘on assignment’.  This goes for attending FC Utrecht and watching Ajax.  Let’s *incoming corporate jargon* park it for another day.  Maybe next year I’ll be up for going to a Toronto FC match  – not for the quality, in this context it must be several notches below the Korean League -, rather more so for sentimental reasons.  One of the angles I intended / will take will be that of ‘my team’.  I’ve been asked that a few times over the last year, and it’s a question I struggle to answer adequately.  My heart and soul formerly belonged on the ice, to the Toronto Maple Leafs.  For football, at the moment, I have some weird inclination to say it’s Juventus or AC Milan, if only for those odd Italian fantasies I’m stricken with.  Anyways, let’s just keep the writing to this randomness – next week is full on in the cubicle, and Fatima is becoming more and more immobile, and Milo won’t shit.  Next thing you know it’ll be March, and then I can cut and paste our Autumn 2022 entries.

The shoes!  Let me first say that I was rather nonplussed with the Altra’s at first – I mean they were ok – ok to walk in and dangerous to run in.  Fast forward a few months and I’m rather addicted to using them.  I’ll happily forgo any street cred and rock them any chance I can get.  I even chose quite possibly the ugliest colourway available to increase my visibility of ‘I don’t give a fuck’’ness.  I’ll be buying another pair one day for sure.  For running I still can’t find my go-to shoe.  For a time it was the adidas Energy Boost – at one point I had six pairs on stock, but even that shoe was bought out of an indifference – meaning that while running in them I was free of blisters and injuries, rather than any overly positive feelings.  Which I do have for my trail shoes, the Saucony Peregrine.  I did have a brain fart last month and went with something completely against the grain of Altra – I bought a pair of New Balance 1080 which offer the maximum cushioning out on the market.  They felt good in the store, and far less so on the road.  After a half marathon run in them I was awarded a black toe for my foolishness.  Nevertheless I’ll run them out and continue to hunt for THE shoe.  Which likely won’t be a Puma – with my discount I bought a pair of Magnify Nitro’s (black) but they’re just too heavy to feel good in after anything beyond 8 kms.  They’re in the same category as my NB.  The rest of their offering is, as you pointed out, too ugly, or impractical for me.   I’ve no need for some carbon plating to crack a sub 40 min 10km.  I did talk some shop with Run2Day while purchasing my new shoes, and they said that while Puma has made progress, the product just isn’t yet up to par with the other brands.  Nothing a blow job to the right exec couldn’t fix, in my mind I quipped, before biting my tongue to let the young sales person figure it out on their own.  I was gifted a pair of casual shoes on my first day, nothing more, nothing less.  There’s still a lot of three stripe attire hanging around but slowly I’m shedding this skin.  Eventually all that’ll remain are some football jersey’s which I hope to keep for my lifetime.  The wardrobe is being replenished by sample sale leftovers from Puma, which I’m quite happy with.  If/when the move to Canada happens, looking ‘presentable’ doesn’t make anyone’s list of social etiquette, something which appeals to me more and more.  

We’ve received a notification that the boy has pooped.  Tonight, we slaughter our fattest pig and celebrate.

22nd, Utrecht.

I’m pumping this straight into the website – there’ll be no red underline to notify me of my errors or suggestions of better grammar. The fact of the matter is, that I’m fried, I have been all day, ever since in the middle of my deepest sleep I was called into action to help Milo go pee. A good preview of what’s to come in March I suppose. It was an ordinary day. 90% of my weekly work gets done in one day in the office. I’ll take that. I do feel I may have met my match in this hall of mirrors. There’s a project manager that visits us once every two or three weeks, and he’s the king of bullshitting. Today, to my horror, in front of the group he asked me what I’ve done for the project. The only thing I’ve done was sent one mail to a lady that I’ve never met. So that’s what I told him. He was rather grateful to hear this, because he could launch himself into a wise monologue; something about that this was a game of ping pong, and that I had offered a ping, but I didn’t get a pong. Then I tuned out and he went on for anywhere between five minutes to an hour. Bizarrely, I believe I was thanked at the end of it. Tomorrow we’re back at it. Did the guy ever even consider that I aced it right down the middle, hence the lack of pong?

23rd. Utrecht

Workshop day.  Just another day that I’m throwing away.  Before, sacrificing a day was somewhat palatable, because after all living expenses were accounted for, one would still have enough leftover for savings – to be used for days at the end of life, the classic North American model.  These days, that doesn’t occur – it’s a day thrown away and one that I’ll never get back.  I’m telling you something, I’m only playing this game for another year or two.  Then I’m hightailing it somewhere cheap and living out my days in peace.  Poverty, perhaps, but I know I’ll be infinitely more rich than today.  I’m on my second Nespresso, this, like all of them, tastes like ass.  The entire concept pisses me off.  I’m sorry if you or anyone that you know uses Nespresso.  Maybe it’s because I associate them with deadend jobs.  Maybe it’s because the ‘brand’ is ‘positioned’ to give one the sense of La Dolce Vita – which I’m all about, but these fuckin capsules are the furthest thing imaginable from that.  It’s not even hot.  Chances are, if you drink Nespresso you’re wasting your life away in front of a screen.  Stop being sour, you say.  Fine, fine.  Let me shine some light.  There’s a huge water machine that dispenses incredibly crisp and cold sparkling water.  Perfect for getting the foul taste of Nespresso out of my mouth.  Christ almighty, I am tired again.  This post, this few minute writing exercise just feels like I am ticking off something on my to do list.  Mentally I think I just want the evening free so I can vegetate in a state of shell shock about the workshop.

Several hours later I am in bed and ruined.  Puma stock price closed the day down 23%.  I can’t help but feel a little responsible.  Milo went to bed at 9:30 pm.  He’ll be up at 6:30 am.  The world carries on forward.

24th, Utrecht.

It’s been the week from hell.  The only run I was able to get out on was Friday at 9 pm, despite wanting to every day.  I just couldn’t fit it.  I still haven’t showered.  Today I was percolating at dangerous levels – we had a guy come install a door which took ages, Milo hasn’t shat so we haven’t taken him anywhere for fear of Mount vesuvius levels of shit erupting, Fatima can’t move, and on top of that, there was work (which again, let me point out, the amount of work reflects shareholder sentiment).  Another layer of worry was that my mom was summoned by the doctor, for god knows what.  Simply put, there has been next to no time for self care, and this is not good.  It has the potential to snowball into something unpleasant.  I’ve been slightly sick, so I hope that once that goes away I’ll have the energy to do what I want , no, NEED to do.  Next week does not bode well.  No, it does not.  There are at least 80 reports that I have to send (not even prepare, just send).  So the free time that I’m able to carve out while WFH won’t be available.  If we survive until the end of the month, we’ll have some three weeks before Fatima’s mom arrives.  And while this is a good, if not great thing, I’m worried about the mental strength required to co-habit with 3 adults and 1.5 kids, in 60 square meters.  I’m afraid I have to face the music, that there’s nothing left to do but dedicate myself solely to work and domestic duties.  Just maybe with my last ounce of strength I can go out for a twenty minute run or read a few pages here and there.  No, I’m sorry to say, the future is looking bleak.

As I cut and paste this into the site, it’s obvious this has taken on a journal, which isn’t really my intention, but I hope you don’t mind to hear about my trails and tribulations.

27th, Utrecht. IBIS hotel to be exact.

It may be hasteful to say that one door closes and another opens, but it’s definitely on my mind.  Things have snowballed here.  Following a week of general malaise that continues this morning – the thick neon green expelled from my nose and observed with disgust as proof – it’s rolling down the hill, gaining momentum, soon the locals will start yodelling that an avalanche is on the horizon, and where that ends, one can only speculate.  If it really is the end, then, it will be a boon to the arts; an open door to more writing and trumpeting.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, the trumpet was a backup plan for when the body gave in, and if it is really the case, then I played that card well, I just didn’t expect to use that ace up my sleeve so early.  (I realized I’ve used a lot of cliches in this paragraph – apparently this is a big no-no in writing  Fucking hell, who makes these rules?).  One might say it began during Christmas – where I devoured one Polish Panczki after another – in the basement after the church service, fresh from the Polish baker, and in emergencies out of my parents freezer.  So there was a little more baggage to carry, but this was tempered by still keeping up some kilometers.  Returning back to the Netherlands after the holidays, I continued the festivities with baklava and Peruvian sweets labelled !Mas alto in azucar!  Currently we’re working on a tub of fresh pistachio paste, a hidden treasure found at the corner Turkish grocer.  Nevertheless, despite sickness, I managed a few kilometers, the last coming even on Friday evening.  Everything was going to plan, when on Saturday I felt some pain in my foot.  It’s difficult for me to say if it was in the morning or after a day out with Milo – though I’m certain the extra pastry tax that is being levied, along with Milo’s tyrannical demands to be carried – that a sharp pain started to bother me on the outside of my heel.  My logical conclusion is that it is this additional weight that has caused… what?  A stress fracture?  Plantar Fasciitis?  A figment of my imagination?  Nevertheless, my altered gait then resulted in lower back pain.  Which means I can hardly walk or bend over.  We’re only a small step(?) from the biggest toll this will take, that is, the mental aspect of not exercising.  If writing and trumpeting can replace that magic, then I’ll be ok.  Honestly I don’t know what to do, so I’ll probably do nothing but wait and see where this leads.  If you ask Fatima she’ll tell you that I have hypochondriac tendencies, so maybe the plantar fasciitis diagnosis is premature, but I’ll tell you what; right now I’m reading Roth and his descriptions of life as a writer are so tormented – I’m going to do everything I can to get back into reasonable health, and I’m not sure if it extends to something as innocent as writing about Korean Labour movements or if if it only applies to fiction – but we may want to reconsider.

28th, Utrecht.

Frequently, I find myself experiencing sadness in the grocery store, of all places.  It could’ve been back in 2020, when I bought a massive container of peppercorns to refill the pepper mill.  I’m talking a bulk style vat with half a kilo.  The thinking with these things is always not to buy too much, because a move back home is always on the precipes, thus, within a few months we’d have to throw away what is left.  Perhaps back then it was a choice of economics, and with home cooking levels at a maximum, I thought it would make sense to have a lot of pepper.  This past weekend I melancholily refilled the pepper mill with the last of the pepper.  I’m tempted to make an analogy of grains of sand flowing through a timer.  Where have those years gone?  Why am I not home yet? When will I go home?   Because if I was home, I’d have no problem buying a 3 kilogram container of pepper, knowing that I wasn’t going anywhere, not for the next twenty years.  

In a couple of hours I’ll head to the Turkish grocer where I am faced with the same decisions.  They’ve got excellent olive oil, which we’re in need of – but does it really make sense to spend 25 Euros for a nice bottle when we may have to discard it?  The spice rack remains sparse – because in reality it takes several years to go through even the smallest pouches of kukurma and za’atar.  

This line of thinking extends to other, bigger elements of life, but it is perhaps in the kitchen where I feel it the most, where I have the strongest sense of home, no doubt by the nurturing labor intensive meals that my mom serves.  As far as I can remember she’s been making gołąbki, which already at step one – the boiling of an entire head of cabbage – seems to me a herculean effort.  Later the boiled cabbage is carefully disassembled, to be used later to wrap a filling made of rice, herbs and ground meat.  Once that is done they are cooked some more, meanwhile a sauce must be whisked.  Traditionally in our house this would be made from tomatoes, and if I made my bed and cleaned my room, there’d be a velvety creamy mushroom reduction.  

Needless to say, I’ve never made a serving of gołąbki myself.  In theory all the ingredients are available here.  So maybe it’s not the pepper passing through the mill that doesn’t sit well with me, it’s that I haven’t shared it with my family in a place I call home.

29th. Utrecht.

Seats2Meet session today.  That’s the exact text I just sent to my old flatmate Pasi, who now plies his trade in Finland, though having a Dutch girlfriend frequently visits the Netherlands.  Last time he was here, we had the aforementioned Seats2Meet session.  Let’s see what he comes back with.

There’s hell and then there’s this place.  Talking about cold calculations, who made the business model for Seats2Meet?  If I hold my head up high I can catch a whiff of socialism.  The selling point being that it’s a place for people to congregate and work together.  When making a reservation for a workplace, you fill in some details about what you’re working on and what’s keeping you busy.  “Reporting Deadlines” was the description I put for today.  But even had I written, “Plotting Assasination Attempt”, “Testing My Time Machine”, or the truth, “Fuck All”, it wouldn’t have made a difference.  If there was a social angle to the place then we all missed it – as I entered the big workplace room no one even momentarily lifted their heads from their laptops.  An hour in and zero eye contact.  Thus I conclude that rather than a socialist ploy, this is a cleverly disguised capitalist one.  That becomes ever more clear, as I walk around the hallways, where fishbowl meeting rooms allow me to glimpse flip charts, powerpoints, and herds going through either 2025 objectives or a dreaded team building.  Thankfully I can avoid that and now I sit in the main area with the other people that have gathered here today so that we can be lost and lonely behind our screens.  The lucky ones will have caught on to a corporate gig which will require a spreadsheet and an Outlook Mail here and there that will allow them to go from tab to tab dreaming, perhaps of a digital nomad destination in Bali, or the next Zalando 50% discount code.  The more risky types are freelancers; your life coaches, your digital marketing specialists; consultants – I wonder if they suffer the same agonizing  ‘what the fuck am I doing with my life’ episodes as a lifelong corporate slave.  A few older women have perhaps scraped the bottom of the socialist state bucket and landed a role in one ‘Stichting’, the likes of which are looking down the barrel of Elon’s revolver in the US.  

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to do something meaningful.  To attend a workshop which I could find genuinely interesting and useful to something that I want to achieve.  Sometimes I wonder if I’ll get the courage to actually do that.  When the calculations and risk analysis will tick the boxes to proceed.

Of course I’m projecting my own feelings onto these people, perhaps, and more likely they’re content with their daily doings.  I’m probably just finding comfort in the thought that they’re all like me.   

Time for a meaningless email and a coffee.   The grease that keeps the capitalist machine going.  Upwards and onwards, as they say.

30th, Utrecht.

LOTR; loved the movies, never read the books.  Haven’t seen the movies in twenty years.  I remember watching them in my good friend’s dorm room at the University of Toronto with my girlfriend.  Great times.  The best of times, I might argue.  Toronto had everything I ever wanted in the universe.  There was an adventure to be found on every corner.  Probably like every other young twenty something, I without hesitation say that we owned that city.  Anyways, LOTR.  I’m bringing that up because I find myself at Seats2Meet again.  This time, I find everyone disturbingly social.  It’s as if they’re networking.  I’m cutting and pasting 100 emails today; “Please see attached”, so I don’t have time for that.  But the more I observe this behaviour the more I liken myself to Gollum.  I’d much rather sit here and read a book or listen to some music and go out for a walk then to engage.  Same goes for when I eat at work.  I suppose the only difference between me and Sméagol is that I want to do those things surrounded by the very people that I wish to avoid.  When it comes to eating, I simply cannot enjoy the full sensory experience if I have to engage in conversation of any sort.  I must have wrote about it before, but I like the idea so much that I’ll write it again.  Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano is much like me, at one point he is dining with a woman and they’re completely silent the entire time.  He recalls a play or maybe a Greek mythological world, where the act of fornicating is switched with that of eating.  Meaning that eating was done in private behind closed doors, while fornicating was done openly in public, say at something like a restaurant.  

“We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Hobbitses. Wicked. Tricksy. False

30th, Utrecht.

I’m lounging in the same space with you, but I’m thinking of taking off elsewhere.  Kristiania to be more exact, I think at the end of the 19th century.  Some fifteen pages into Hamsun’s Hunger, I’m having difficulty adjusting to the drop in writing quality after an ice cold Roth.  Furthermore, the Scandinavia I dream of is one filled with Fika’s, a strong social state and ABBA, not before all the came when they were mere peasants hunting for potatoes.  Throw a pie in my face and call me an elitist bastard.  I’ll give it a few more pages before deciding if I’ll carry through.  The fact that it’s strongly backed by KOK is what is giving it a second chance.  Speaking of KOK, I scanned the read list, as there have been several literary forays into the Nordics, but I will not back down, KOK is the one.  Everything else I’ve read from there is for me, marginal. 

Somewhere down the line, are we dipping our toes into Pelevin?  The fact of the matter is, right now I have nothing else lined up.  After finishing this, and attending a Teams meeting where I plan to say hi & bye, I’m going to check what remaining Roth’s I can borrow from the library.  If memory serves me correctly, I’m down to one or two, and I’m quite certain one of them was written was when he was seventy or eighty even, which, I’m sure they’re excellent but if possible I wanted to save those for when I’m older.  Does it make sense?

Aha, I’m to write a review of Roth.  So I”ll keep this one short.  He really sucks me in.  Years from now, when you finish all of Ferrante and Knausgaard I’m going to endlessly pester you to get on the Roth train.  

It’s the weekend, so I’ll go into full-time dad mode and not write.  Then it is February, and I fully plan on continuing writing.  Back-tracking a little about what I said – I found some value in this.  If not for someone listening to my gripes, then some use of language.  Often I have to check if the idiom I have in my head actually works, and sometimes it’s a word even.  In the above paragraph I used the word pesker instead of pester.  Or am I pulling at straws?  Ooo just like that,  another one!