What sparked the cancer diagnosis in December was thyrotoxicosis. A thyroid storm.
A lil’ rave thrown by your thyroid, and your whole body is invited.
That beautiful, butterfly-shaped organ wrapped around your trachea controls your metabolism, heart rate, body temperature, mood—among other things.
Usually, it just does its job. But sometimes, it doesn’t.
And when it doesn’t? Everything speeds up or shuts down.
The end result is the same: you feel like shit.
So in addition to cancer, which was Lo…
When my daughter, Megumi, was born in 2014 I made a conscious decision to speak to her in English.
My reasoning was that the English language would get her a lot further than fluency in Dutch at an early age.
I tried to talk Dutch with Megumi when she was four years old, but alas the proverbial ship had sailed and she
resisted learning the language of (50% of) her home country. She now speaks English and Japanese fluently, however.
She aced her Eiken not too long ago either. A small humble brag,…
Here’s my spiced cake recipe. No backstory.
Ingredients:
250 g all-purpose flour
8 g baking powder
150 g dark brown sugar
8 g ground cinnamon
1 g ground cloves
1 g ground nutmeg
1 g salt
2 eggs (approx. 100 g total)
200 ml whole milk
100 ml neutral vegetable oil (e.g. sunflower)
50g of raisins
Recipe:
Turn on your oven, preheat it to 170~ degrees C or around there.
Add the dry ingredients into one bowl, wet ingredients in the next.
Mix together the dry ingredients. Make sure to use a sieve or …
We recently moved our Mastodon server Famichiki to a Japanese VPS.
It used to be hosted on servers of an American company, but given the state of the U.S.
and the increasingly hostile rhetoric toward its allies, it felt inappropriate to continue to send
money to U.S. companies. Also, being an instance for users in Japan, the very least we could do
is spend our money on a Japanese company to provide us with hosting.
So now we’re hosted on Conoha, a Japanese company whose parent, GMO,
is arguably …
Last week the kind doctors at Hospital B performed a biopsy on my thyroid. I have never done a biopsy before,
and I wish to never do one ever again. However, I don’t think I’ll escape that. And you’ll find out why in a bit.
If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you’re probably familiar with these two phrases:
You’re now breathing manually
You’re now aware that you’re blinking
And just like that, you have become aware of two parts of your nervous system that are highly automated
and that …
It’s been a few days since my diagnosis and my hospital—who I cannot name due to libel laws in the UAE—is dropping the ball.
I was waiting for approval for a blood test. Let me give you a quick timeline.
d-day: “Hello, what is the status of this blood test?”
Insurance: “We are waiting for your hospital to provide us with additional information.”
*Hospital: “We will call you back.”
d+1: “Hello, what is the status of this blood test?”
Hospital: “We will call you back.”
d+2: “Hello, what i…
I have thyroid cancer. Finally something new to blog about.
If you frequent my blog or follow me on Mastodon, you know that early December I was hospitalized following a thyroid storm.
A thyroid storm is when your thyroid decides to release all your stored thyroid hormones at once.
Your metabolism shoots up. Your heart rate shoots up. Your anxiety goes through the roof.
And if you’re unlucky the credits to your life start rolling.
I was lucky enough that it was a mild storm, and after 2 days in …
The quarter has not ended yet, but it is about to. Just 12 more days. Or 13?
Who is keeping track.
At the beginning of the year I set some goals for myself, across 3 disciplines.
Lets see what I have done, what I have not done. And what I am going to do different.
Personal Goals
I am still on track to move to Japan by September 2025. In fact, we actually might arrive earlier in August, July or even June.
All my papers have been submitted to immigration and now we essentially have to play the wai…
January 1st 2025. I love typing it. 2025-01-01. The first day of the year.
After I shared my 2024-in-review, Famichiki user @slims, shared his,
listing not just highlights of his years but also listing goals.
I really liked that idea, so this year ,thanks @slims for the inspiration, I’m going to set my own goals as well.
I’ll be splitting up my goals in 3 sections. Personal, Professional, and Social. I want to make sure my goals
are attainable so I don’t get dissuaded from giving up if I end up …
Unless fate has one last trick up it’s sleeve, I will have witnessed my umpteenth changing of the year. 2025.
I remember switching from 1999 to 2000. “We will never live in the 1900s ever again” I recall thinking.
Inflating the gravity of the situation of the changing years,
feeling a sadness of what is essentially an arbitrary numbering of our days.
And now we’re about to close 2024. I like to look back through my images on my phone and see what happened.
Reflect on the good. The bad. The unusu…