Tag: lists

Categories
foooood

golden kiwis and yellow watermelons

when i entered the goal “taste 30 new fruits” on my list, I didn’t know it would be so hard for new fruits to come by… in retrospect, i think it was probably naïve of me to think that i’d have a huge variety available within reach – i mean europe isn’t exactly known for having a lot of native fruits…

so i’ve decided to change the goal to “taste 30 different fruits or vegetables”, which should be somewhat more feasible. i’ve been getting a lot of unknown vegetables on our ökokiste, and it’s been a pleasure to discover and try them out. now, they count too!

meanwhile, he’s a couple of fruits i’ve found, that i hadn’t tried before:

golden kiwis. they taste a lot like the normal kiwis, but i seem smoother than their green counterparts.

and yellow watermelons… well, if we were to do a blind taste test, i don’t think i would have been able to tell a yellow watermelon from a red one – they taste exactly the same to me!

Categories
just life links and ideas

101 things in 1001 days – second edition

it’s been over 1001 days since i made version one of my 101 things list… which didn’t go all that well. i did about 40% of the tasks, and reached some conclusions.
1001 days seemed like a lifetime 3 years ago, and so i sprinkled the list with wishful thinking and lots of travelling adventures… which ended up not happening (e.g. roadtrip coast-to-coast in the US). it turns out, our big travels are not conditioned by items in a list, but rather by whims and opportunities. it’s not that we travelled less, we just ended up choosing different places to go to – and that’s ok.
another thing i’ve learned is that things… change. i’ve lost interest on a lot of items (e.g. be better at iceskating) while others turned out not to be so compatible to our current circumstances (e.g. starting a compost pile). other things turned out better than i expected (e.g. instead of going 100% freelance, i work remotely).

all in all though, i liked the idea of having this big list with a set deadline – it didn’t shape my future, but it did focus me on certain goals. the second list took me a lot more time to draft, as i’ve struggled to remain more practical and make sure all the items are all “doable”. i really want to do better this time.

so, 101 fresh things for the next 1001 days:

  • Do the HSK intermediate
  • Make a pinhole & take some photos with it
  • Take calligraphy/handwriting lessons
  • Draw a font
  • Read 50 new books (half of which in portuguese)
  • Write 750 words for a month
  • Spend a week offline
  • Reach my goal weight
  • Be ok in snowboarding
  • Write 20 letters
  • Write/draw a small guide to Ljubljana/Slovenia
  • Research about Slovenia/Balkans history
  • Identify 10 different trees
  • Taste 30 different fruits
  • Taste 20 different cheeses
  • Try a autocaravan holiday
  • Visit a volcano
  • Fly on a glider
  • Learn how to scuba dive
  • Visit a mail sorting facility
  • Draw and get a tattoo
  • Visit a theme park
  • Volunteer
  • Do a photobook of our time in Slovenia
  • Try 25 different teas
  • Do a medical checkup
  • Go to the dentist
  • Draw a comic strip
  • Write 20 lists
  • Find 150 geocaches
  • Apply to the green card lottery november 2010
  • Visit 20 Unesco sites: historic areas of istanbul, october 2010
  • Fly a kite
  • Visit 15 different museums
  • Do 5 videos
  • Go to 20 concerts
  • Watch a sport event live
  • Climb 10 Slovenian mountains: tromeja, ratitovec
  • Hot air balloon ride
  • Go rafting/canoeing
  • Roadtrip in the EU: slovenia-austria-germany-netherlands, september 2010
  • Be halfway through our house goal fund
  • Move again
  • Do 20 surprises: bday parcel
  • Find out what I want to do related with stationery
  • Sponsor an artist on Kickstart
  • Make ice cream from scratch
  • Buy some Christmas lights to decorate
  • Do a secret art project in the city
  • Go see an opera
  • Go see a ballet
  • Sell something on etsy and use the money to buy something there
  • Go an entire month without eating out
  • Go an entire month without using a car (not even friend’s cars)
  • View all of Star Wars movies october 2010
  • Donate five dollars to wikipedia for each goal failed
  • Track the progress of every item on the blog
  • Fill my recipes notebook with recipes
  • Get a Fuji Instax and start documenting our life
  • Feel a baby kick inside a friend’s belly
  • Try to eat local for a week
  • Start laser hair removal
  • Take a cooking class
  • Use all the yarn I have
  • Design and print a postcard
  • Write something for a newspaper
  • Review 25 pieces of stationery
  • Lose the jumping habit
  • Try 20 different sodas
  • Go karting
  • Blog at least 3 times a week for 3 months
  • Put 200 meals on Foodspotting
  • Go see the sea organ in Zadar
  • Make 5 surprise breakfasts
  • Drastically reduce the amount of coffee I drink
  • Ride a ferris wheel
  • Carve a rubber stamp
  • Try sledding
  • Create an herb garden
  • Redesign meiadeleite.com
  • Host 10 people through Couchsurfing
  • Write a letter to someone once a week for 10 weeks
  • Learn to cook 10 new soups: mushroom soup
  • Design a tshirt
  • Fill a notebook with notes from books/articles
  • Straighten up the SS details + get EU health card
  • Get the surgery done
  • Do NaNowriMo (for the blog) once
  • Learn how to do sushi
  • Fix hanzillion and plan half a year of posts
  • Cook pad thai
  • Organize a tea swap
  • Track our calories for a month
  • Pick a holiday and go overboard on the celebrations
  • Make a cute bento box
  • Shoot only in black and white for a month
  • Ride a scooter
  • Buy a Dr. Seuss book
  • Try 10 different types of film
  • Buy something on a flea market
  • Try currywurst in Berlin

some of the things i’ve already completed while the list was still a draft, like watching the whole set of star wars movie (pfeeew!), but i’ve only started the official countdown a few days ago, so the new deadline is set for jul 30, 2013. wish me luck! :)

ps – if you’re thinking of doing one, head over to dayzeroproject.com for inspiration from other people’s lists!

Categories
in china

the 3rd of september.

funny how life changes. 2 years ago this day, i was landing in the netherlands. 1 year ago, precisely, i was stepping out of a plane in denver, usa.

today i’m not landing anywhere, i’m already settled in shanghai, china. but i know there is more, much more to come.

taking part of the 101 things in 1001 days project made me realize that while making my list, i was outlining a future version of me, along with a certain path to get there.
these are the things that define me better, the objectives, the challenges and the dreams. actually writing them down, giving them a deadline and making them public made me more focused in making them happen (and i’m not one to be easily taken away by gtd speeches and methods).

some of the tasks are easy and have been long postponed, some are dreamy, some are eventually going to happen, some require a lot of planning and/or money. oh! and 2 of them have already been taken care of, only 99 left (to be done in 991 days) :)

what about you… do you have a list too?