Long night, little rest. Monling wakes up all the from my trips to the toilet and has decided to take a sleeping pill. I wake up at 06:30am and can’t sleep anymore but still decide to stay in bed. Headache. The sun is shining, the cat settles on the pillow and my iPod Touch is helping me to relax. Nice and warm. I get up at 9:00am, feed the cats, prepare my medication and have breakfast with a nice large cappuccino (Illy 100% Arabica). Good for the headache. Aspirine as well.
We’ve started thinking about a new place to live last week although our house is actually ideal in many ways: conveniently located near shops (15 minutes on foot), highway (5 minutes by car), the centre of Amsterdam (20 minutes by bike) and public transport (5 minutes on foot). Living left and right from us do we have very kind, understanding and helpful neighbours, they are about our age. We live along a rather busy street (Dutch standards) but opposite from a park with a great lake. And last but not least there are a massive sports centre and a swimming pool on the other side of the lake (15 minutes by bike) to burn those calories.
Our house is also what we’ve always wanted to have. It is spacious, it is bright, has good environmental parameters, it is low maintenance, has modern architecture and we turned a respectable part of it into a great functional office (almost large enough to put a full size pool table). We’re very pleased with our house.
“So why consider moving?” I can hear you think. Good question! There are a few reasons, some more important and relevant than the others. Very important is that we would like to live in an apartment rather than a house to avoid having to walk stairs (I assume that my right leg will at least not become better than it is now). Also important is that we have the impression that this neighbourhood is perhaps not developing itself in our best interests. Then there is our (my?) dream to still live a few years in Asia (Taiwan, Japan) or at least in the centre of a city like Amsterdam and with my life expectancy we better do something soon or forget all about it.
So this morning I queried the Internet for construction projects for new apartments in the area of Amsterdam, preferably the “Nieuwmarktbuurt” (centre and the place of China Town). I was not very successful so I extended the search area to Haarlem (a very nice “town” with an old centre with lots of restaurants). My first conclusion is that either nothing is (becomes) available or the prices are 4x of what we have now. I’ll keep you posted.
This afternoon we went cycling for the first time in weeks. With my new basketball shoes, my new sweater and my new cap. The shoes give me a lot of support and I was able to do about 75% of the lake before I got tired and my foot started flopping around. We didn’t stop though, we went for the full lake. Putting on these basketball shoes is a pain in the neck. I have to undo some of the shoelaces and then still I can barely manage to put them on. For sure I need a shoehorn. It was a great trip though and a big confidence builder!
The attached foto was made today in the “office”. I look fat because I have become very fat. I’m not proud of it. The Dexamethasone is making my face swell like a football and the eating frenzy it gives me is not helping very much. No matter how often I go to the toilet: this is the sad result. Bear with me.
