july was a slower month, a month spent catching up with friends, feeding deers, buying a house… a month to remind us to take a break and enjoy it. :)
Tag: friends
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the green up plant shop
so why were we on the mall? because our friend joy runs a network of plant vending machines which are super cool!
she and her partner started the whole thing a few years ago, and it’s been a wild success. they have several of them set up around bangkok and can barely keep them stocked, as there’s always people around, admiring the plants or buying them. thai people love plants, so these make the perfect gift.
i also like the fact that they’re on a mall, in a format where you don’t have to interact with (or dodge) the salesperson just to buy something simple. and as is now common in asia, the payment interaction is 100% phone-based: just scan a QR code, door opens and you can collect your plant. convenience is the keyword here.
besides, it’s just so cool, and in a way, so very “joy”!
it’s hard to believe we hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years. time goes by so fast, and we’re both different people now from when we first met in erasmus, back in 2005. her hair got shorter as mine got longer, and these days we’re both running around trying to keep a business going while living our lives. but some things stay the same too, and we slipped back into easy conversation as soon as we saw each other.
it’s so comforting to see old friends, and to know they’re doing ok. we should do this more often!
november was a quiet month, spent mostly at home.
we worked and did all the mundane little things that life is made of. william-the-black-cat slowly lost his fear of humans. the first rains came, but they were short-lived. our friend lynda came to visit too, and helped us test the new travel mode in postcrossing. i finally put some order on my photo backups. we helped neighbours move. and then, the battery on my phone went kaputt towards the end of the month… so we skipped a few days here and there.
august! this is definitely the best part of the year in northern europe, with long sunny days that aren’t quite as sticky hot or packed with people as in the south. so we made a sort of escape plan and said goodbye to algarve, bribed the neighbours to water our plants, and left on a mission to catch up with friends we don’t get to see that often.
and it worked! we’ve had the best august i can remember, spent reconnecting with some of the people and places we miss the most. it was so hard to select the seconds for this video because the month was just overflowing with good memories.
the dodgy back threw me into bed for a few days, but after some rest with pablo-the-cat‘s company, i was back in business! :) too many highlights to mention — just happiness all around!
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the new year’s get-together
organising a new year’s get-together for friends was on the new 101 list, and 2016 was the year it got done! new years are usually a bit of a dread for us… by the time the end of the year rolls around, we’re still recovering from the xmas family extravaganza, and craving peace and quiet. so this year, we poked a few friends spread around europe and decided to find a quiet place where we could all stay for a few days. we found a cozy airbnb in a tiny town in south germany which seemed perfect for our needs (somewhere central in europe, quiet, near cheap airports, dogs allowed)… so we put on our winter jackets, loaded the suitcases with board games, and off we went!
turns out, we lucked out big time! lienzingen is a charming little place, the kind that you imagine from brothers grimm’s fairy tales. it’s full of half-timbered houses hundreds of years old, carefully restored with love and german precision. we stayed in one of them, and boy, was it pretty!
the weather was chilly but mostly dry, with soft rime on trees and even a bit of snow on the last days. together we chatted, cooked, played games, explored a unesco monastery, cuddled dogs, munched on warm laugenwecken, stoked the fireplace and discovered the local maultaschen.
it was the perfect start to the new year: low-key, unrushed and in great company. here’s hoping it’ll become a new tradition! :)