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November 16, 2023 in life

Netherlands life

First things first, yes, I am staying in the Netherlands for longer now. Fiancee and I decided that we really loved it here, so we’re commiting to staying for the near-future. No idea what comes after that. We’ll probably go back to the US again eventually, but it’s hard to imagine going back now.

We went back to the US a couple of months ago to straighten our things out (since we’re staying here longer), and it felt like California was just falling apart compared to what we’re used to over here. Everything was insanely expensive, infrastructure was crumbling, people seemed unhappy, and the cities so poorly designed.

It felt like the poor design and inefficiency was acting like dirt caught in the gears of the country’s engine, making it harder and harder to transfer work into useful output, but nobody cared to stop and clean it. Or even to stop the inflow of grime.

We didn’t initially have access to a car, and that made it almost impossible to exist. We moved to the Netherlands earlier this year, and have gotten used to being able to go anywhere with public transit. What a shock when we needed to walk from our hotel to get food, and had to walk down a loud, busy (with cars), sparsely populated (with humans) road. It felt so.. eerie.. having car traffic and buildings around, but no people. Every time we wanted to do anything, we had to take steps to figure out how to even get there. It was crazy.

So, yeah, we’ve gotten really spoiled by well-designed cities. Transportation is only one aspect of it (albeit important!).

New bike!

Since we’re staying here longer, I want to fully make use of the insane network of long-distance cycling paths. I bought a new Trek race bike, and this thing is a beauty. It is black-on-black, and I fully leaned into that color scheme getting all-black water bottles and accents.

This is something I struggled with for so long. I thought that €1500 would be plenty for a super-nice bike, but I was wrong! I ended up spending €2,000 for an on-sale brand new (aluminum) bike, which feels like too much, but is apparently still on the fairly cheap end for “nice new bike”.

My last bike was a 2002 Trek OCLV carbon bike, which I bought in rough shape and did my best to restore. So buying a new one was a crazy treat. I know it’s a bad financial decision, but I wanted to do it anyways.

Expect to hear more about the “Gears” side of this blog in the near future!

Music

Some albums that I’ve been loving recently:

  • Imploding the Mirage by The Killers
    • I used to love The Killers, but haven’t listened to them in a while. This album is great in a future-y rock sort of way.
  • It’s The End Of The World But It’s A Beautiful Day by Thirty Seconds to Mars
    • Also used to love TSTM, but this album is a really interesting new sound. It keeps their essence but also gets some fun future-y sounds.
  • The Resistance by Muse
    • OK yeah this is an older one but damn it is good. Had it on queue a lot these last couple weeks.

Also, last month, Fiancee and I made it to ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event). This is an annual “festival” sort of thing, across the whole city of Amsterdam, where there are a huge number of EDM/electronic concerts and events around the city for 5 days. It was a great experience, but I wish we had walked around the city more to see the madness. We went to one concert, stayed until almost 2AM, and were just absolutely exhausted.

Maybe I’m getting too old to stay up late at a club, but it will NOT stop me from trying. :D