• Goodbye Airtrade, hello Leeruniek

    After five years of learning, falling on my face, making friends, and getting to know the travel industry, the time has come for me to say goodbye to Airtrade. This year, the travel industry took a huge blow, with many of the small and big clients we’ve acquired over the years in serious heavy water. What’s more, five …

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  • The benefit of discontent

    If you are at all involved in queer Catholic Twitter, you know that last week was a riot. Cause célèbre was an unexpected shout-out from Pope Francis:

    “Pope Francis told a group of parents of L.G.B.T. children yesterday that “God loves your children as they are” and “the church loves your children as they are because they are children of …

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  • That time we were the first to get Covid

    Amsterdam’s patient zero is a woman who just happens to have spent early 2020 in the north of Italy. She has a son who attends the high school which just happens to be Anja’s place of employment. Anja is the first person I know to be infected with Covid 19. I am the second.

    Working in travel technology, my experience of the outbreak of …

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  • Clobber

    This was originally published as part of the Vine & Fig “Pray Tell” project.

    She sounds quite chipper once she makes it to the telephone. ‘Hey dear!’ it sounds. ‘Happy Mother’s Day', I go. A few years ago, when I decided that I was going to transition into low contact mode with my mother, I couldn’t have imagined …

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  • Welcoming Eleanor

    Our friends gave birth to their first child, Eleanor! She was born on a trip east, and had to spend some time at the hospital. They sent us a wonderful photograph of her reaching out from her hospital crib. I simply had to commemorate.

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  • How to be Black

    Steer clear of Adidas; obtain a degree in Dutch language and literature; wear my aunt’s glasses until I eventually need my own prescription; don’t eat fried chicken; proclaim I’m a fan of Michel Houellebecq; don’t go to a black hair salon; enrol in theological seminary; don’t listen to RnB; date a person blacker than me; …

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  • Coconut

    Upon opening the jar of coconut oil (for cooking, hair, and skin care), right when my finger makes contact with what is too solid for comfort, I think of Iris and her graduation party, which was an utter calamity. Iris and I had attended kindergarten together, but it was by the grace of my cousin’s status as a pretty blonde girl that I even …

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