Nostalgia

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That big warehouse-like building is where I grew up. For twenty and one years I lived there with my parents and my little sister. The building may not look like much right now, and even when we still lived there it didn’t look very cozy, but the inside was a whole different world. Large, spacious and warm. That’s how I remember it. Well, only some rooms were warm because there was no central heating and there were only heaters in some of the rooms, but we were young and we didn’t know any better! Thanks to Google Street View I spent the last two hours looking around the area where I used to live. Call me old but I am still very impressed that I’m able to do a thing like this from the other side of the world.

I really enjoy walking, cycling or driving around the area I live in. It’s something that I’ve learned from my father, who used to go out driving with me when I was little. He would always show me a new road that I hadn’t seen before. After I got my drivers license I did the same thing by myself for a while, before I moved to Japan. I never owned a car here in Japan, but as you can see from this blog I do go around on foot and by bicycle a lot.

I used street view to follow the route from my parents’ home to work, to my old house, my old school, and so on. On the way I saw a lot of people. Young people, who were probably not even born when I went to school there. Yup, I’m getting older, but I’m still young enough to make enthousiastic “vroom vroom” noises while following the road in street view

I do miss Holland. I miss my family of course, and the scenery, and I miss how relaxed I used to feel when I lived there. I realized that it’s not impossible to go back, if I wanted to. I have two homes to choose from. It’s a luxury not many people have.

Thank you Google! This is a service I would gladly pay for, and you’re offering it for free. Google will save the world one day, mark my words.

Mensen…

Bakboter smeert niet!!!

More windmills

Whenever I’m back in Holland to visit my parents I go to this place. It’s a natural area with at the end a bird-watching tower that has a great view over the lake that my parents live next to. On the way to the birdwatching tower there’s this strange ‘American-style’ windmill that I like to take pictures of. This time I gave the hand-held HDR trick a try. As you can see it’s quite tricky, even with 1/4000s shutter time, to take three pictures of the same thing. Oh well.

I remember this particular excursion very well because I hurt my head while climbing the tower. The top area of the tower is shut off by a wooden hatch that you need to flip open to enter. I flipped it open, climbed up the ladder a bit more, and the very heavy hatch suddenly decided to come crashing down on my head Fortunately there was no serious damage, but my psychopath level has risen slightly since the incident. Here’s a pic of the path to the tower (clickable):

Obligatory

My neighbor is back. The cockroach is back too. I wonder if there’s a connection..

On an unrelated note, it’s happened to me four times in the last week that I was surfing wikipedia for some random thing, clicking on links, and ended up on this page: Ego Death. It’s almost like a compass that’s becoming more and more consistent..

Old home

Sister help!

Help a sister in need! Go see my sisters website here. She takes photos of animals.

Also, she’s selling her car. Go click on this and buy it. Thank you.