I can’t be the first one to see Jonathan Banks' character Mike in the Breaking Bad universe is strongly reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s Lester in American Beauty.

New Year’s Eve is sweet. I spent the morning at Coffee Company Oosterdok working on my website. The girl barista and the guy who came to take over her shift are apparently dating. He’s got a full mullet and a geeky mustache. It’s that season of fashion again. He was the type of soft masculine only Gen Z-ers can be. At 36, I seem to be developing a habit of noticing how much I’m no longer an 18-year-old. Everyone who seems my age addresses me with the formal “u”. I also saw S in the street. It’s the first anniversary of her father’s passing and she was wondering out loud what could properly trigger an ugly cry. She offered me a red velvet “oliebol”, which looked like a fried dog treat. No thank you, ma’am. A friendly face in the neighborhood knocks on our window and tells me she has enjoyed getting to know us a little more, and that she hopes to be in touch more in 2024. 6pm and pizzas enter the oven. It took only 15 minutes for us to finally get into Better Call Saul. I expect I won’t even make it until midnight. Happy New Year!

• Updated the general UI of this website by adding a softer background color
• Added a splice method I used earlier to photo posts, which allows me to alter the size of the images served through Cloudinary
• Merged _notes contents into my _posts folder so that my dated content is organized in a single place (this is convenient for pagination purposes)
• Styled the tags page
• Updated layout of an individual tag page so that short notes and posts are grouped accordingly

In one way or another, the number 36 has felt like a milestone birthday for a long time. As a tween, I imagined the glamorous autonomy that came with being 36 because I was hooked on watching the televised adventures of a foursome of privileged White women in Manhattan. Now, finally at 36, it feels important that I could’ve had a child as an …

My friend and I reunite after 18 months. I missed him dearly, but once we sit down for ramen we can both tell it’s like we were there yesterday. I talk about him often. He’s the person who was so discombobulated by Dutch white innocence, that he felt more comfortable going back to the Middle East to live in the closet. …

Knowing I’m at home in Amsterdam is getting on the tram, seeing the same conductor as a few hours ago, spotting various people whose faces I know. A city as a village, but in a non-insular way.

The split personality trend was… a moment!