Recently in August '25

August is now coming to an end, and there is something in the air feeling more and more like the autumn. Days are becoming colder, darker, and the rain is showing up again. That’s good, considering The Netherlands has had one of the driest years so far. Let’s look back and see what I’ve been up to.

🍄 Life

At the beginning of August, I attended the Canal Parade of the Amsterdam Pride. I’m not very assiduous when it comes to pride events. My first pride was in Lisbon, the year before Covid-19, and afterwards I moved to The Netherlands. Since then, I’ve only gone to the pride parade in Utrecht, which is also a canal parade.

It was nice to see the boats - and Sebastiaan on the Boardgayming boat -, but I think I enjoyed the Utrecht canal parade more. The canals in Utrecht are deeper, of a different nature, so you can easily see the boats from up top. In Amsterdam, the boats are at eye level, so if you don’t arrive extremely early, or if you’re not incredibly tall, you’ll just end up not seeing a lot.

Also at the beginning of the month, my daily driver bike got stolen. I’ve reported it to the police and went to the bike shop, where I ordered a new one. It’s been a month and I don’t have a new one yet. Apparently, the bike shop was waiting for the insurance to pay back the money before actually ordering my new bike.

My conclusion: making the insurance through the bike shop is cheaper, but then you’ll have to wait longer to get a new bike. I’d rather have paid a full price up front and then get the money later. That’s better for me than not having a decent bike for so long.

One more thing: I have now lived 5 years in The Netherlands, and I’ve shared a bit of the story coming here. Five years is, for me, a big mark and, at the moment, I have no plans to move elsewhere outside of this country. It’s also a good time to revisit my thoughts about abroad feeling like abroad. I think it doesn’t anymore, it hasn’t for quite some time. But you never quite fit 100% anywhere anymore either.

💪 Health

Running is going fine. Just monitoring for any weird feelings around my knees. I’ve also been focusing on going a bit slower and running at conversational pace. I’ve noticed that I just end up going too fast if I don’t control myself, and then I get extremely tired. Simultaneously, I notice I can go faster with a lower heart rate than before, so that’s good.

I’ve also tried doing a few Yoga workouts, by following some videos on YouTube. I think it’s great, relaxing and good for my flexibility, so chances are that I will keep doing them. I have, however, only done routines that do not put pressure on my hands, since I don’t think it’s a good idea yet to put my full body weight on my wrist, which, despite being much better, is not yet 100%.

🍿 Entertainment

This month, I’ve seen two artists life so far: IDER and Blanks. I say “so far”, because there’s a free music festival here in Eindhoven, “Hit the City”, and there are quite a few nice artists playing today I also want to see. So today I’m still planning on going to Bente and Pommelien Thijs.

When it comes to 🎬 movies, we didn’t watch that many this month. We finally watched Challengers, which was in our list for quite some time, but we sadly missed the screenings at the cinema. And we also watched My Oxford Year and Thursday Murder Club.

When it comes to 📺 series, however, we watched maybe too much: finished the last season of The Buccaneers, watched a few seasons of Acapulco, the latest season of Dertigers and Ghosts, as well as Behind Her Eyes, The Society and Echoes.

Until next time!