From Brian.

It is what it is, I suppose.

2024 was not my best year.

December 30, 2024

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…

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Sarah and The Rest of the World.

October 09, 2024

A few years ago, while drinking with some buddies, I ran into a woman named Sarah. I forgot her last name, but I remember that Sarah was Swiss. Probably. If it turns out she’s not, she could easily be. I enjoyed talking to Sarah, she was funny, smart, and had good stories to tell. As is customary, our drinks were consumed sitting down. Without fail when I meet new people, my height is one of the first things they will bring up. But because we sat down, my height probably went unnoticed. Nothing.…

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623 Days later.

January 05, 2024

Japan used to be what I called home. It’s where I had my business. My friends. Where I created a family. Then stuff happened. I lost the family I created. But unlike the Hollywood tropes, business was still good. And I quickly fell in love again too. Love doesn’t wait for anything. Especially not when you’re me. With the events that happened came an irresistible urge to leave Japan. It was an accumulation of feelings and circumstances, which I initially attributed to wanting to experience life i…

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Hey Dad.

December 28, 2023

March 8th, 2025 Update I’ve made some changes to the original post, after reflecting on my own emotions at the time. Original Post I met with my dad today. For the first time in 25 years. Technically it’s only been 15 years. But as I told him, that one time didn’t really count. He lives on a small farm. It’s adorable. My mom would’ve loved it. But they’re divorced. So probably not so much these days. It was the first time I was able to see why my mom and dad were in love at one point. I’ve been …

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And so this is Christmas.

December 24, 2023

It’s Christmas tomorrow. And for the first time in 14 years I’m celebrating it in my home country of The Netherlands. I also visited The Netherlands about 2 years ago. But this time it feels different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps the whole Christmas atmosphere amplifies whatever I’m feeling. I honestly don’t know what to write. Maybe I just needed an excuse to wish you all a merry Christmas.

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With my head in the clouds.

December 17, 2023

I can be quite impulsive. Not “buy a Snickers at the checkout” impulsive, (okay, that too), but “drive to another country at 22:00pm” with a homie, “just quit college, bro”, and “move to another country” impulsive. When you embark on a challenge impulsively and without preparation it comes with a set of challenges. When I drove with my homie to Luxembourg it was a time when car navigation wasn’t common, so basically it came down to my excellent sense of direction of where Luxembourg was roughly …

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I don't know how to blog.

December 07, 2023

I’ve had many blogs in the past, but I still don’t know how to blog. After a year or so I get bored, delete my blog, move on with life, until a friend or two begin blogging and the itch for me has to be scratched too. And so now, probably a year or more after Derek and Alan started theirs, here I am again ready to jump on the bandwagon. I have a lot to write about. Or maybe I should say that I have a lot I could write about. On how I moved away from Japan to Abu Dhabi because I felt like it. Lif…

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4017 days.

May 12, 2022

The airplane descended for landing, through the clouds the monotone landscape of small villages, farms, lakes and rivers slowly revealed more and more details. At first only white cars seemed to drive on the highways. Followed by red cars. Until eventually cyclists, of which there are many in Holland, could be made out from the airplane windows. We touched down a few minutes later. The screen in front of me that was displaying flight information such as the direction of flight, the speed, also s…

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Why I dropped out of college.

April 01, 2021

I am a college dropout. But not in the Alicia Keys, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Kat Cole way. For starters, they all went to very respectable universities and colleges. I went to a vocational college. Secondly, they all had a goal and dreams. I did not. The only thing I knew is that I really, really did not like the concept of school. I’ve never been a good student. I went to a vocational high-school where teachers described me as “ambitious, if only he tried”, which I think was the descript…

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I nuke my Twitter account.

August 16, 2018

I’ve deleted my tweets. I’m deleting my favs. I’ve reset my profile. The only thing that makes me not delete my entire account is the single sign-on I have for a few websites, required access to the developer APIs, and the few friends I am contact with now and then via their direct messages. Why? Because Twitter stopped being fun. 8 years and now 65,000 deleted Tweets later I decided to call it quits. All because it stopped being fun. My timeline was overrun with inappropriate ads, news that the…

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