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Yay! My second city trip in a couple of months; I am leaving for Marrakesh today! Really looking forward; different culture, nice weather (20+ degrees 😉 ), food, drinks, dancing, early mosque wake-up calls, uhhh…good life! 😉

Tips are welcome, so if you know about a great restaurant, a nice bar, club, ‘must see’, must do (and don’t)…bring ‘m on!

It is pretty amazing when you realize what the brain can do: letters or numbers can be interchanged without a problem…interesting!

So, can you read this?? 😉

W00t, the tickets for Lowlands 2013 are IN!

As usual, getting tickets is a tad stressy as too many people access the ticketservice website at the same time, so it hangs and connections break…luckily I got through (three times actually 😉 ) and got the tickets just in time; the festival got sold out in 45 minutes! That is 55000 tickets, over 10 million Euro revenue, in less than an hour, wow! Pretty amazing considering the fact that hardly any bands are confirmed yet…people obviously come for the Lowlands festival experience and know that the huge variety of acts will always give them something of their liking. 😉

The full name for the festival is ‘A Campflight to Lowlands Paradise‘…well, camping is what we’re gonna do, and it is up to us to turn it into paradise!

It’ll be my fifth Lowlands festival, so this summer August 16-18 in Biddinghuizen, NL I’ll be there…hell YEAHHH!!

Ha, just in case you are not consciously aware of it; People are Awesome! And, they like to show it: the YouTube video below is a compilation of some amazing sports/daredevil/body control action, pretty cool.

(btw. it is the official sequel to the original ‘People are Awesome’ video from 2010)

Drawing lesson nr. 1, ‘How to draw an owl’.

Try it yourself, it’s easy! 😉

Misha turned 16 today…uhh, 16 months that is! 😉

A happy little boy, making everybody smile, including the doctor yesterday at his 15 months check-up; she was pleased with his progress, no surprises and all is very very well! At 16 months Misha’s world is getting bigger and bigger, walking completely replaced crawling and everything…*everything* is interesting and needs to be touched, eaten or thrown on the floor! Ha, and that includes a champagne bottle, though empty still a 16 months old boy best toy! (eyes closed when you open a bottle!! 😉 )

It all worked out today; I made my flight back from sunny Curacao (oh how I miss thee 😉 ), saw my friend of friends (and even had time for one GFO), spent some quality time with the biggest little angel of all and am able to see my sis and nephew who celebrate their Birthdays today! Oh, and I just ignore the existence of any jetlag, which uhhh becomes tougher and tougher… 😉

If all goes well I will high up in the air on only way back to NL in a few hours! *If* all goes well…I am flying on a standby ticket and while the flight ain’t full, there are many fellow staff-travelers listed on this flight…actually, too many. My ‘crew seniority’ and the captain following the procedure should make it all work though, so fingers crossed!
A little over two weeks of sun, sea, beach,

I never travel without my balls…uhh, *JUGGLE* balls I meant! 😉

And nothing beats juggling in the sun on the beach: earbuds in, Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ dictating the rhythm, all systems GO…I love it! 😉

P.S. picture was taken some days ago, when I still had my ring…

So, today is Blue Monday, a day which is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year according to the following formula:

W = weather, d=debt, T=time since Christmas, Q=time since failing our new year’s resolutions, M=low motivational levels, N_a=the feeling of a need to take action and ’D’ is not defined.

I am not so sure what the outcome of the formula should be in order to declare today Blue Monday, all I know is that I am having many ‘Blue days’ here in sunny Curaçao, not only this particular Monday, and…not at all depressing!

Hehe, I don’t really get this Blue Monday thingy. 😉

Sunday=Funday, so I decided to book a dive trip to ‘Klein Curaçao’ (Little Curaçao), a small island along the coast. I had to wake up terribly early at 5:50h, *way* too early on a vacation Sunday (though I could have been woken up by the church bells next to the hotel which started ringing for the early service at 6am…hehe, for some reason I missed that *completely* last week Sunday! 😉 ).
We arrived at the island bright and early and right in time for breakfast…by thwn the sun already started to roast skin. 😉
It was my first dive since Bonaire in 2009, so I took it relatively easy. It was very nice to see a BIG turtle within 5 minutes…welcome to the ocean, fantastic! We had a nice BBQ lunch on the beach (fish for Ray 😉 ), and I took a second dive in the afternoon…beautiful, beautiful, beautiful…there is a whole world down there ready to be explored and, it is beautiful! 😉 Thanks to my dive master Patrick I am hooked on diving again. Pictures might follow (if they turned out nice).
The only BIG bummer of this trip; I lost my thumb ring 🙁 , it is probably somewhere on the bottom of the ocean…

For cheese heads longing back to the guilder era or, if you are really old, the Florin (stone)age 😉 , Curaçao is a good place for a trip down memory lane. The official currency on the island is the Netherlands Antillean guilder (to be replaced by the Caribbean Guilder somehwere in 2013) while the currency symbol, NAF, is derived from Netherlands Antilles Florin.

Most of the NAF bank notes have a similar color as what the Dutch guilder bank notes used to look like, giving the nostalgic feeling an even bigger boost…quite special to have guilders in my pocket again. 😉

(oh, I couldn’t get hold of the 50 cent coin which is hardly used in everyday money, quite a pity as it quite a special one being square shaped)

Ask yourself. What would you do with your life if money was no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Below a very inspirational video narrated by Allan Watts (what a voice!) and created by tragedyandhopeproductions.org.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” – Ghandi

Happy weekend y’all!

Once a year, mostly during a vacation in the sun, I completely shave off the small trimmed beard that is with me since March 2007, allowing the sun full access to my ‘whole’ face! 😉

The returning meme after shaving becomes: a beard or not a beard, to shave or not to shave, to Be(ard) or not to Be(ard)…that *is* the question…

I’d say: you vote!

So:

  or   ??

(oh, I do keep the majority vote… 😉 )

It is quite surreal to open Facebook this morning and see almost everyone in NL posting pictures and/or giving their opinion of the fresh fallen snow in the Lowlands. Living in Norway, snow is a winters guarantee and I am pretty sure to find a nice 1 meter of the white stuff waiting for me when I come back by the end of this month…grrrroovy!! 😉

Quite surreal, snow covering NL (and in the process causing the biggest traffic ever, over 1000km this morning!) while the lowest temperature *ever* measured in Curaçao is 20.3C…snow is nowhere near and ice is found exclusively in the freezer! 😉

Time to balance the Facebook pictures of snowy NL with some sunny pictures of Curaçao…life is good!

 (click to enlarge)

A year ago I posted a fantastic picture of the Milky Way (Look up, it is beautiful!), only to be seen when you LOOK UP…well, it seems as if the mobile age causes us to hardly do so 🙁 …a pity as it is beautiful up there!! (lack of a decent camera, and some clouds, prevent me from taking pictures of the sky here in Curacao 😉 )

You know what? Perhaps, halfway while looking up, you might see something interesting called a fellow human being…CONNECT! 😉

(via We Never Look Up)

(the site is now providing stunning picture of the universe btw)

The first book in my Vacation Reading List is Vladimir Megré‘s ‘Anastasia‘; a more than brilliant book in which the readers are taken on a life-changing, personal journey into truths of Nature, sexuality, spirituality, child-rearing, education, planting a personal healing garden, the power of each human being, and more.

I am halfway, and I already consider this as the best and most important book of all time…!!

Then today I stumble upon a YouTube clip which is showing the projected threat of our technological advancements described in the book…no coincidence and a wake-up call for all!

Check it out:

Drinking enough water is important, especially while sunbathing in sunny Curacao! 😉

If there is no water at hand, one should not be fooled by the glass with water in the YouTube clip below…it is just a drawing, in 3D, yet *very* real!

Wow, this one is GOOD! Please take 10 minutes to watch Kathleen Taylor and her TEDx talk ‘Rethinking the Bucket List’…it might just change your view on what really matters in life.

She found that “people at the end of their lives are incapable of bullshit”, and the number 1 regret of those who are dying (as per Bronnie Ware’s ‘The Top Five Regrets of the Dying‘) is: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Some more quotes:

“Dying people teach us that it is never to late to shed what is false and to become who we really are, I’d like to hope that it is never to soon.”

The big existential question “What am I supposed to be doing with my life?” is actually the wrong question…the better question is “Who am I being with my life?”

“Stop bullshitting and make your life story about how you truly are, because I believe the world needs you to!”

Verrrry interesting…Njoy!

Having a ‘Vacation Reading List’ becomes a yearly tradition (and I love it!) and once again, it is diverse and longggg! I hope that I have enough time to read all the books I brought with me, or else…well, then I might need to book some more days here in paradise! 😉

The books on the table are (in no particular order):

– Vladimir Megré – Anastasia

– Neale Donald Walsch – When Everything Changes, Change Everything

– René van der Gijp – Gijp

– Macworld January 2013 edition

– Ken Robinson – The Element

– Steve Jobs – The Biography

– Robert A. Pullen – Uitzicht door Inzicht

– Go Dive – PADI Open Water Dive Manual

– Paulo Coelho – Aleph

Yeah, these books will keep me ‘busy’ for a while…well, as long as the sun is shining, the temperature warm and the cocktails cold I will be fine! 😉