Alan’s soccer season wrapped up this month with a group photo, a fun BBQ next to the footbal field, and a parents versus kids footbal match! He’s grown a lot as a player and really enjoys both training sessions and matches, so it’s very likely he’ll join his team again next season.

A milestone, thats for sure. 50 years already… incredible. This month we also celebrated Ana’s birthday during a combined celebration in the sun, all-in at Mogan Princess & Beach club. We spend four days enjoying the pools, the free food, the free drinks, the activities, just great; a total disconnect from our normal routine.

Besides my birthday, it has been another great month. We joined the club Metropole, the local swimming pool that also has a gym, bar, restaurant, tennis court, squash court, and more. Ana immediately started taking a lot of lessons, so her health will greatly improve. Our kids have quite a few friends who also go to the club, so that should work out well. I started by inspecting the bar, so for me I expect far less health benefits.

Half a century! Amazing. Looking back, something that is almost inevitable when you reach a milestone, gives me a great feeling of victory. Like climbing a mountain, and looking back at the track and seeing the view, the path and combine them with the memories of the climb. Easy parts, hard parts, the falls and mistaken, the shortcuts… together they make the effort valuable.

Looking back at my own path in life I see myself growing up. My street, the little town with the church in the center. My parents and little brother always around. I see fun times digging in the garden, raising rabbits, playing with little chickens and little ducks. Having birds around. Growing beans, unions, chickpeas, carrots, and other plants with my dad. Removing endless amounts of weeds from all the crops. I see us eating fries every weekend, with a kipcorn for me. I see myself making rice every weekend. Terrible rice at first but I get better. I see us making huge Lego villages in the attic. I see fun filled vacations with the family in the sun. I see myself studying and wondering what I’m doing. I see problems at my school. I see myself cleaning the rabbit cages and thinking how could something smell so bad, but feeling pride afterwards. I see myself fighting with my brother a lot. I see myself playing board-games with my mother. Collecting, reviewing and cleaning coins with mom. I can see us biking to grandma in the town nearby through the wind, getting a little (or big) push on my back to help me. I see myself hiding underneath the table, scared of suffocating in the smoke cloud covering the entire living room, where it seems like everyone is smoking. I see myself in my room, in my bed, being scared of the dark. I can see our entire family in the dunes searching for bullets, or collecting blackberries, or getting wild rhubarb. Going to the beach, or to the lake, with our big surf plank. Going for paling. Our first car where we glued a CD on top of the roof. Driving with my brother to meet the ‘paal’ or get a hamburger at the burger king. Getting on the race bike, to drive to Schiphol to see some airplanes land and take off.

Meanwhile observing the start of the digital age. Color TV, the first computers, mobile phones, mobile phones with a screen, smartphones, cars with a ‘choke’, cars without. Seeing the climate change, remembering walking of a frozen sea, frozen rivers. Seeing houses being built everywhere. Travelling getting more and more normal.

Then I see a change. Somehow a turn in the path where I changed my style. I see myself really growing up. The seed that my parents planted in me by getting me an 8086 personal computer is suddenly sprouting. I get direction, and can finally see where I’m going. After studying informatics, I start working right away. I get a house, and change jobs a couple of times. After I left my parents home my relationship with my family improves. For a while I am happy, visiting places with friends, going skiing, indoor climbing, going out drinking and visiting concerts and festivals. After a few years I felt the need for things to change. I take a risky detour, just for the experience. I quit my job, and go to travel. I start this blog to keep my family informed. I go to the US for a couple of months and I travel from New York to San Francisco, visiting Canada and Mexico on the way. The trip changed me, and made me much more confident about myself.

After my trip I returned to my previous path, working as a freelancer, picking up old routines, but it was not enough anymore. I start to travel within Europe. I start meeting people, and after a couple of years I go to Spain to learn the language. I stay in Spain and eventually move together with Ana to Gran Canaria. I big change, my destination turned out to be different to the one I imagined earlier. We get married and we have two sons. I adopt to the Spanish life. A life with lots of emotions, some very good, some really bad. At times it is really difficult and I am afraid I made a wrong choice in life. Eventually even life in Spain turns into another routine, and this time I am able to accept it. I know my climb is not yet done, but the part I already did makes me proud. I’m happy to realize and feel that it is the voyage that is important and not so much the destination. This is a saying I have heard lots of times, but I never felt it like I do now.

Here I am now. I feel good about myself. I have confidence. I understand how things work, I know I can learn new things. I know I have made mistakes, and I have hurt people, but I have always tried to avoid hurting others and avoid conflict, but some conflicts were inevitable. I know that some things require lots of effort and lots of work. I understand what has value for me, and what does not have value. I know the choices I make are the correct choices for me. I know that there is nothing wrong with failure. I know strength is easily confused for weakness by people who just don’t know. I know it is hard to fail and disappoint someone, but it is worse to fail yourself. I aim to be a good teacher for my kids. Teach them how to be happy and how to make the world a bit better. Prepare them as well as I can for their own journey.

That’s where I am now, after 50 years I find myself in a good spot, curious about what else my future will bring.

May is a month full of routine. We started the month with a very nice route over/through the water. I make a video about the route, but I still need to shorten/edit it. A week later, I had to get moving—a 10 km run with a few of my colleagues. The 10 km went surprisingly well; I had a very solid time of 0:49:19, averaging 4:55 per kilometer, just under five minutes which for me personally is a very good result.

Alan has an official celebration! A football friend is celebrating his communion and has invited him. Alan was very happy to go together with his best friend, without his parents. He went pincel perfect, with styled hair, perfume, soft creamed skin, and a classy outfit perfect for the occasion.

A few days later, I went to Don Chuleton with some friends. We’ve been there a couple of times before. It’s a men-only event, no women, no children, where we basically just catch up, eat meat, and drink wine.

Alan finished his first official football competition. His team reached the forth place, out of eight. Very good for his first time. We are all very proud.

This month we also celebrated ‘Semana Santa’, a two day holiday everywhere in Spain. Miguel visited us! Alex’ godfather and Alans pan-godfather. The entire family always enjoys the visits from Miguel and during each visit we try and do something new. I think Alan had the most enjoyment this time. Miguel took the kids to an Argentinian restaurant with a Michelin mention. Alan was extatic for days about the food he ate, and I was told in detail all the plates they ate, and all the things that happened during dinner. A lasting impression for sure. Alex was also very satisfied, but it was not his first culinary adventure, so for him it was less impressive.

For my last post about vitamin C I did some research just to be sure I wasn’t giving any incorrect or unhealthy advice. However, I realized that I was taking a relatively low dose! I was taking a dose much higher than the recommended dosage but it was still much less than the safe maximum. This month I started with a new double dose. 2 Grams a day. As of now I notice very little effect. I had a cold this month, so it did not help in avoiding this. I do notice that sometimes I see things clearer. More clarify then I look around, but also more clarity in my thoughts. All this is hard to prove, and I suspect a lot of this is simply my imagination. I’m going to keep up with my new dosage, to see if something happens.

We have a new housemate! A hamster named ‘Pelucita.’ It’s a Russian hamster, but fortunately not imported. Our hamster was born on Spanish soil. We built her cage ourselves—a nice spacious cage with plenty of toys, a hamster house, a running wheel, and her food and water. I think our hamster is very content; during the day she’s calm and plays cheerfully with the kids, and in the evening she goes completely wild and seems to be running a 10 kilometer marathon in her wheel.

Carnival! A celebration on the island. A few family members from Madrid came to visit, which resulted in two weeks of fun outings, but unfortunately also some extra pounds gained. Luckily, with some extra running sessions, I managed to lose those extra pounds again.

I take a large dose of vitamin C every day. Out of habit because I’ve been taking my pills for over 30 years, every morning. But also because I believe in the benefits. I know that vitamin C dissolves in water, and that whatever your body doesn’t need gets flushed out. The advantage of this is that it’s highly unlikely to take too much vitamin C and face negative consequences. The downside is that many people think the extra vitamin is essentially a waste of money since you just pee it out. I’ve heard that argument several times, but I feel differently.

Water is also something your body can easily get rid of. You simply urinate it out. If you drink a lot of water, you need to go to the bathroom more often, but that’s not the whole story. Drinking lots of water means you might urinate more frequently, but your body can efficiently carry out all functions requiring water. Water is used almost everywhere in your body. All your bodily processes benefit from good water availability.

If you drink only a little bit, water becomes a resource your body must handle more cautiously. Your body is incredibly good at using the resources it has efficiently, but why make it harder on yourself? I like to drink an extra glass of water because I believe in its advantages.

It’s the same with vitamin C. If it’s available, it can be utilized. If there’s an excess, well, then you urinate it out. What the optimal availability is, that’s the question, and the answer varies for everyone. I believe that much more of the vitamin I take is used compared to relying only on eating oranges. I believe my body adopted to a high availability of vitamin C by slowly removing self imposed restrictions it had for its use.

A short but good month. I bought a new laptop. I ordered the laptop in the beginning of this month, but I’m still waiting. It has been lying at the customs office for around a week already, and depending on how busy they are I hope to receive my machine in about a week or so. Maybe I will need to fill out some import papers, but I will probably get notified about that. I don’t know.

Alan won quite a few football matches (thanks in part to intense encouragement from Alex).

The extra weight I had picked up at the end of last year, is slowly going away again. I’ve gone down from 78 kilos to 75. Just a few more kilos off and I’ll be completely healthy again. My target for the end of the year is to weigh around 70 kilos, but luckily I still have quite a few months to go.

The first month of 2025 has already passed by. This month we are back to our usual routine after all the chaos of December. Of course, I am curious about what 2025 will bring. A major event is my personal milestone. This year marks my 50th birthday. That’s something. I still feel reasonably young, but that feeling doesn’t seem to match up with my biological age. A strange sensation. Fortunately, I have a few more months to enjoy myself before I reach this milestone.

We start the year with renewal. Both children received a beautiful display cabinet, to place their trinkets in. Ana has purchased a new Dyson. With the new Dyson v12 vacuum cleaner, even the children are now enthusiastic about cleaning the floors. While the novelty might wear off soon, I must admit that using a green laser to find dust gives an entirely new dimension to vacuuming.

I also started something new this month: a trip with ‘the guys’ to Don Chuleton. Here, together we devoured an enormous portion of meat, accompanied by a delicious bottle of wine. As far as I’m concerned, we have a new tradition.