Hiii ♥ ♥ ♥

I have such interesting fun to share with you today! And also one thing that is a lot less fun. I’ll start with the non-fun. Let’s get that over with:

It was my first time seeing the sluice tunnel in action

To many this might sound crazy, but now I have proof that the tunnel(s) in the dyke around my neighborhood will function as sluices to protect Rotterdam when the IJssel floods. (I explained this in practice on August 2 and have plenty of posts in which I express my worry about this.) When I was young, in primary school, I have learnt to accept this fate that comes with living in a sort of human sacrifice neighborhood. But I still don’t want to die unnoticed, in case it happens: a new watersnoodramp. There are water management strategies in the case of flood, as you can see on the above image (…[I expected a more massive type of door instead of a garage door…]), but there are no people management/evacuation strategies. (I know saving everyone is impossible, but to at least prevent the loss of Dutch (and Surinamese) intellectual heritage that lives forth in people, by saving some people…) That’s why I’m sharing this (and the powerless paranoia it causes) with my international audience of blog readers.

That was the non-fun. I wanted to show you this door on the day I went to Egmond, because that was the first day they were doing tunnel maintenance, but then it was still open. When I was on my way to have dinner with a friend in Rotterdam yesterday evening, though I already took my bike in case of a detour, I was hoping the tunnel would still be open, because that would save me a detour of over 10 minutes. But if it weren’t closed, I wouldn’t have had the chance to share this with you. 🙂

Which brings me to the yays: yesterday was so much fun! I’ve been lucky to have met such a kind soul. I’m so happy to have met someone who is also an intelligent and ambitious, creative and independent thinker. I feel like we’re a genuine inspiration to each other. And she has proposed such great growth opportunities! Of the exact details I don’t want to reveal too much, especially because my little web-empire is not finished yet and want it to be an asset to our names when it is brought forward officially, but [confirmed rumor] I might get the chance to speak for a professional audience [my idea to speak of “Evolving individualism in the 9 – 5 economy” would then be a (then published) essay based on which I’ll speech has to be approved higher up first] and D.O.C.I.S. International might function as official research publisher of work written by her. Many yays for D.O.C.I.S. if it can finally start to function as an international medium for other people as well instead of just me! 😀 ♥

I’ve had such fun my meowww. Laughing and sharing ideas as well. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures and don’t have any other physical reminders of this memorable fun moment, but I know this will be stored as a happy memory and I have the memory written down in my paper diary as well. (Spontaneous idea I just got: if we’d do a research book campaign internationally, we should do a photo shoot for it. 😀 ) Haha I asked her if she still wants to be associated with me after Facebook and Instagram marked my content as “too controversial to publicly show”, and she didn’t even say “no” ahahahaha yay. 😀 I thought she didn’t want to be friends with me, when I didn’t hear from her after I sent her a message. But I understand replying later meow I do that very often myself. Now she has moved to Rotterdam for her 4th year academic internship, which is awesome. 🙂 I’ve mentioned when I first met her, at the HBR Executive Event in Amsterdam in April.

I was quite nervous about making a new friend, because I have been living in isolation for 3 years hahaha… I was afraid that nerves from not knowing how to have friendship-like conversation anymore would make me act weird – I just worry about leaving a good impression a lot – or that it might become awkward, or that I’d get lost in explaining why I’m not a schizophrenic (ahahahahahahahaha I’m happy I succeeded in completely avoiding the topic haha yay milestone), or that I would have to adapt and end up talking about things that don’t interest me, but none of this happened! Absolutely none meow I’m so happy I could just be myself without any worries about the way I behave. 😀 What made me even happier is that she has so many creative ideas and also takes action for it. I appreciate this so much that I seriously almost wanted to cry out of happiness when I was on my way home. Not often do I experience situations in which I can be myself and someone understands me when I explain myself, and then be able to see that person more than just once. And then also recognize thoughts and traits of myself in her. 😮 (In most situations I keep re-explaining myself in different words and at some point just give up and not talk about myself at all anymore, but with her I didn’t have to do any of that.)

Hopefully this blog post isn’t creepy or attached-sounding to her… Though to long-term growth and friendship yays. 😀

In other news… I’ve improved my recipe for pancakes by using both cow milk and coconut milk, along with vanilla sugar, vanilla essence, cinnamon, raisins and skinned apples.

More yaysss

And another yay is that I’ll be in Berchem on Friday to check out a potential apartment.

For the rest of today – for my D.O.C.I.S. renovation progress is a day-to-day thing – I’ll be:

• Fixing The D.O.C.I.S. Store logo
• Updating The Store’s product catalog and payment gateways (iDeal payment support will be there from around September though…)
• (Start with) personalizing Terms & Conditions, the Return Policy and the Privacy Policy

And then later up will be the book club page and the home page. When the store is finished, I’ll update the links on the D.O.C.I.S. International website and the content of the website itself (and try to make it look a little less plain HTML-ish). After that I’ll be working on Wikipedia pages for my endeavor and I. 😀 (And after that will be Curaçao!)

May we all have another day of yays. ♥

– xxx –

Photo by Irina Iriser from Pexels