When I’m not working
Cats, games, films, guitar, coffee and too many plants.
This is Maria. She has one eye, likes the radiator, and runs the house. Three other cats and a dog also live here.
Fetching Maria.
- Four cats and a dog
- Too many plants for one flat
- Almost every film gets four stars
- Guitar most days
- Achievement runs in strategy games
- Cooking something too ambitious
Where I have been so far
19 countries, 2 continents
Four cats and a dog
Maria has one eye and likes to sit on the radiator. She is the one in the model above. There are three more cats and a dog at home, and yes, I still want to open a cat café one day.
Films, mostly horror
I watch a lot of films and rate almost all of them four stars. Horror is what I come back to most. I’ll also defend James Cameron every time, especially Aliens, Terminator 2 and The Abyss.
Guitar and live music
I play guitar most days, mostly at home. Live music is better when somebody else is playing.
Travel, logged as I go
I go somewhere else whenever I can, and I keep a log of it so the trips stop blurring into one another. The good parts are rarely the planned ones: a wrong turn, a train I should not have caught, a town nobody recommended.
Scripts I cannot read
Dutch, English and French I can actually use. The rest is admiration from a distance. A writing system is a whole set of decisions about how a sound becomes a shape, and Japanese, Korean, Russian and Arabic each answer that differently.
Plants and getting outside
I have too many plants for the flat and still bring home more. For actual greenery, I like long walks and hiking. Belgium is not much help with the mountain part, so I travel for that.
Games and achievement hunting
Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis for the achievement runs. Phasmophobia with friends. Marvel Rivals and Rocket League when I want something quicker. I’ve played Magic for years, and Wingspan is the board game I talk everyone into.
Coffee and cooking
A long walk with a coffee is usually enough to get me unstuck. If not, I cook something far too ambitious for a Tuesday.