Natural killer

Natural killer!Sometimes you see a police officer on the street. It always makes an impression, especially on children. If there’s really something going on, extra officers are often quickly dispatched. If it gets really out of hand, sometimes the army also gets involved. Fortunately, this almost never happens.

Our blood is somewhat similar. If you are healthy, some white blood cells flow through your blood. In case of an infection, or something else nasty, there are many more white blood cells. If it gets really out of hand, special white blood cells come along, the natural killers.

My blood has a significant increase in the number of natural killer cells. It’s as if you see a lot more soldiers walking on the street. They couldn’t find a cause in my case. There is no infection or anything else nasty that the doctors have found. I am fortunately just healthy.

Recently, we discovered that Alan has the same thing. Also a significant increase in his natural killers. It seems to be something genetic. Maybe we are the next step in the slow evolution of humanity, who knows. I think someone took an interest in our slightly different blood makeup, so maybe they will do a few extra tests, and we will find out more in the future.

January ’25

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.

December ’24

This month Alan celebrated his ninth birthday! He is growing up lightning fast. We had a few celebrations and Alan received a huge amount of cool gifts. He got a new tablet, a semi professional metal detector, a bike, various football accessories, and quite a lot of cash. We celebrated his birthday twice, first with a barbecue in the center of the island with family and friends, and the next day playing a laser-game with his schoolmates.

I suffered this December because I made the mistake to take part in the Bestial race. It resulted in a couple of painful days, but I will try and remember it as being a spirit building exercise.

Right before Christmas we got a taste of the real Christmas spirit because we went ice skating. Half an hour on the ice and afterwards a massive amount of rain made me feel like I was almost at the north pole, well, maybe not exactly, but it for sure did not resemble a tropical island. Ice skating was fun. I was amazed I managed to stay on my feet but I did.

We ended this month visiting family in Madrid. During our stay we also visited Mago Pop (Wizard Pop). My kids had seen his performance before, but for me it was the first time, and even being quite skeptical about magic I was pretty amazed.

November ’24

We started this month with a couple of days all-in. Bad for my weight/waist, but good for morale. Once again it was a pretty standard month, with only a few notable events. We had a couple of barbecues. Alan enjoyed a few minutes of fame. We made some homemade yogurt (which I ended up eating myself because nobody liked it) and a couple of very tasty cakes with apple in it. All in all November was a nice and quiet month

Pump & Dump

Pump and Dump!Step 1: Acquire an asset for yourself.
Step 2: Make the asset attractive to others.
Step 3: Wait for others to buy in, and the value goes up.
Step 4: Sell your holdings.
Step 5: Profit for you, losses for others.

It is unethical and illegal to make money through Pump and Dump schemes, but this does not stop the rich and famous from doing it. The world’s richest man has done it at least twice. He mentioned that ‘Dogecoins’ were a great investment, then sold his holdings a couple of weeks later. He also announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin for car payments, causing the value to surge. He then sold his own coins and canceled the acceptance of crypto for payments. A lot of profit was gained by Musk, while the losses were borne by others.

Tips for Identifying Schemes:
– Be cautious of sudden, unexplained price increases. (Like now)
– Verify information from multiple reliable sources.
– Avoid investments that seem too good to be true. (Like now)

Musk seems to favor the ‘Pump and Dump’ approach because, with a large enough following, it is easy money. A lot of money. His now friend Trump has one defining characteristic: for Trump, money is the most important thing. Money is the only thing that matters. Together, they could be preparing the biggest pump and dump the world has ever seen. The richest person in the world, with the most powerful person. Together, they are now pumping crypto a lot. The value is going up like a SpaceX rocket. The question now is simple: when is the dump coming, and how much damage will it do?

Comet spotting

The Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)!Once again we travelled to the center of the island. This time we did not go camping, but we went for a once in a lifetime experience. See the comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) pass by. First we had a bbq, and then we want to a nice viewpoint to stare at the sky. It took a few hours but end the end we were all very happy. We found the comet.

I made a second video and I think it turned out a little bit better than the previous one. The only issue I had was still pretty massive, because the end of the video, and basically the entire purpose of the video was in the dark, and I could not film that correctly. A black screen was the result. Oh well, there is improvement visible, so I can only hope next time will be even better. As the night turned darker and darker we did all get to see the comet. First with binoculars, and later even with the naked eye, so that made the trip extra fun.

In addition to the main feature, the (sadly failed on video) quest for the comet, I also created a ‘behind the scenes’ with some very typical social events.

September ’24

Alex and his first star!We had an easy start of the month. Alex went with his godfather on a city trip to explore Bilbao. A great adventure and a perfect opportunity for Alex and his godfather to strengthen their relationship. It also provided a couple of days of serenity at home. Spending time with only Alan meant there were no more daily/constant fights and it allowed us to get some quality time with Alan.

Alex had a blast with his godfather in Bilbao. They stayed at a very nice hotel, visited museums, the football stadium and even went to a restaurant (Ola) with a Michelin star!

Alan also had a good first week because he spend three days camping with his friends in the south of the island. They had a nice apartment with a pool, the beach nearby and they had lots of fun in the Holiday World attraction park.

Both kids should be ready and fully relaxed to start the new school season. With the new school year the ‘old’ routine also started working again. School days were all similar, weekends similar. Maybe it is boring, but at the same time it is a very easy routine to follow. Soccer, tennis, (still no) English, Bandama, La Laja, a weekend camping trip, birthdays, etc. Once again our routine where everything everyday is almost the same as always.

Camping and filming – Lessons learned

Camping, llanos de la pez!Well, my first video that was basically centered around me got me quite a bit of comments. It also taught me quite a bit. First the lessons I learned myself:

– Batteries. Lots of video means you need some way to charge a battery, or have a replacement ready. In the two days camping I spend the battery of my good camera the first day. My phone was empty around noon the second day, and the two gopro clones I had did last a bit longer, but had a terrible image and sound quality.
– Interaction. It was difficult to film people I did not know. It felt like I would invade their privacy, so I did not film anything while I talked to others. People in our group also showed some restraint when appearing, so I also kept these interactions to a minimum. The result was a movie where I am almost the only person to appear.
– Clean. The video needs to be ‘cleaner’. I don’t know the correct word, but a lot of my sentences end in gibberish no-one can understand. I need to speak clearer. Some parts of the video show the ground, or my feet, or my shirt, and are not focused correctly. I needed to keep some of these parts to avoid breaking the monologue I was having.
– Information. I need a bit more of background information, so I have something to say when there is a dull moment.
– Editing. Cutting away boring parts is not so easy. I was talking a lot, and sometimes I had to leave bad parts to not cut my sentence in half. Sometimes I had to remove big clips, because I repeated things I had already said. Shorter sentences and a small pause before changing topic might help a lot to do the editing afterwards.

My family also had some comments. Quite a lot of comments actually, but most are covered my the issues I found myself.

– Focus. There is no clear goal for the movie. I was told nobody would be interested in seeing only me talk (and drink). It the focus is a family movie we see to little family. If the focus is transmitting interesting facts, I need to include more information.
– No interaction. The same as I already stated, but my family told me it was not all on me. The participants to the video should participate more, without being scared of the camera. This will probably be hard to achieve, because I told everyone I would be making a video, and everybody thought it was a good idea, but still almost nobody wanted to be filmed.

Conclusion: I liked filming and thought the video was not so bad, and maybe even a bit funny, but after all the criticism I have changed my mind. It is not a good video, and it would take a lot of effort to make it better. Will there be a next video… I´m not sure. We don’t normally go camping, so maybe I can make a video when we do something more often, and I need something to talk about. I’ll see, but for now my motivation is a bit low.

August ’24

Witte kerk!The month started easy for me, while the kids were celebrating their holidays in Torrevieja and later in London I was back home, working. The second week of the month it all started for me. My official holiday finally started and I went to the Netherlands with the kids. We spend two weeks there staying with grandma Nel. We did all the usual stuff. Playing with Grandma, beach, lake, bitterballen, frikandellen, Alex’ birthday, niece, nephew, uncle and aunt, friends. Avifauna, the juliana toren, a kid oriented attraction park, the flower corso on the boulevard of Noordwijk. De kinderboerderij, an illegal trip at 22 meters from the ground. BBQ’s, Indonesian food. A soft-ice sprint, Gijs and the list goes on.

For me it was a very nice holiday, and for the kids it was again a big contrast with their partyweeks with around 40 neighborhood kids in Torrevieja, or their week of discovery in Londen, but still they were happy with their Holland adventure.