46 = 23 * 2

Duh! You knew it right?

But for me this easy mathematical expression means quite a bit more..

First of all this post was supposed to be posted on 30th July 2018 but that summer was quite bummer, and several things, of the bad kind, happened, starting with BBPV. Then followed by other ridiculously depressing news that so far I have refrained from writing about here (I will, eventually). But since I am going through unposted drafts, here we are 🙂 …

Pictures I Love

From mass uploader on flickr, to a recent change, more about quality, I started a new visual project called Dakkar Photography.

What is “Dakkar”?

2019 Aikido seminars

Getting old makes people lazy and since I have already stated more than once that i am in love with photography, I brag about my last year of Aikido seminars in an easy photo-mosaic.. and makes it easier the fact I am traveling not as much as earlier, but I have been again to interesting new places meeting quite a few of super ince new people!

PS The post has been actually published, with a little sadness, in april, when because of corona virus I have already lost count of cancelled seminars and trips.. life’s going on (hopefully) and there will be more practice, eventually (hopefully! 🙂 )..

BPPV: not a Minion language happy birthday!

Yesterday it was my birthday, 46 years spent around this funny world and I was supposed to be in Italy for celebrating the wedding of a special friend Valentina and her partner, Ivano..

4 Uber + 2 Grab equals…

…a very interesting first night in Jakarta, to say it in the most positive possible way… Typical of course of my usual positivity!

That was Sunday night…

After a great seafood dinner in a bit of remote place in Jakarta north I had to get a bike to go back to my hotel, in Jakarta west. 

Amazing seafood

Like in Vietnam I like the motorbike taxis more than the cars, because of the crazy traffic and jams in this overpopulated city! In fact the only Indonesian word I know is “macet”, meaning traffic jam.

On the roads of Saigon

So I sent my request for Uber bike referring to the location given by the Internet signal…

Uber

The first 2 Uber after apparently riding around my position with the time for arrival changing from 2 minutes to 15 than 3 and randomly increasing again cancelled.

I take this as a partly personal mistake since then I realized my position was about 50 meters wrong. So I corrected it and try again..

One of the first 2 Uber driver accepted again but then after 20 minutes he canceled again.. And the same happened with the 4th attempt..

Then I gave up on Uber…

Grab

….and tried my favorite application for my Vietnamese time… but here more expensive than Uber, still… it was time to change!

I must admit that the drivers seemed to get to my location easier than Uber ones, maybe even too easily: the first driver was a little too eager to pick me up, and start drinking.. Maybe he had a hot girlfriend waiting for me at home, or a hot meal or both..

But after not even a minute when I ask him if he was sure of the direction (I know nothing but I can read maps and I know the cardinal points) he showed me his application with the destination and clearly it was not my hotel…
He had picked up the wrong person!!! Bad luck the first 3 digits of the license plate were the same as for my real ride…
…that luckily arrived a few seconds after the wrong one brought me back…
You might think the adventure was over, right? That was my thought.. and of course I was wrong..
I realized that even if all drivers have a special holder for the mobile phone to put on the front of the motorbike, they are not so good at following the GPS! He stopped 4 times to ask indications to other riders until we got to an area I thought to recognize, I took out my phone with my own Google maps and told him where to go…
After about 1.5 hour (instead of 20 minutes max that I took on the way to the restaurant) I was back to the hotel..
FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – Today I noticed my Uber rating is going fast downhill! That is not good: I’ve been rating almost all drivers with a 5, even when they got lost or I had to support with my own maps… And I wonder why hey have been rating me low.. Occasionally I hit my helmet on theirs with the sudden breaks and accelerations (I always think, hypothetically, a Kaya driver turning and punching me in the face) and most of the time I need help to latch/unlatch the helmet straps.. But these are not so negative points I think.. Once I even gave one driver the laugh of the day putting on the helmet from the wrong side (no, I had not the back of the helmet in front of my face, but the latch was not under my chin but over my forehead… I have no idea how I managed..). Today I tip the driver (almost the same amount of the ride,still cheap for us.. but… not common I think) and he gave me a 5 (my rate was higher than before)… I must carry some change for my rating!!!

My Uber rating Sunday

My Uber rating today before tipping the driver (after it was 4.42)

A child of 45!

That is what most of people and myself in primis think when getting to know me!

How could I disagree with that??

always all natural

• all children almost at once like me: we think in the same way, of course!
• I sleep on the floor: futon on a very rough handmade base
• my room has no door, I live with 2 cats and 2 house mates
• I work to maintain my “life hobby”, Aikido.. nah, let’s say it loud and clear: my life, Aikido!
• my savings are not much more than … monthly balance.. no future planning (except for Aikido seminars), living the moment.. totally incapacity to answer the question: “what you want your life being in .. 5 years? 10 years? after retirement?”.. what life?
• I have no girlfriend.. as a matter of fact I almost never had one
• I got no children and already given up on any thought of a traditional family: enjoying every second with my closest friend children
• I have never owned a car, a motorbike, a scooter, a dog or cat, never lived with a partner, never been married (reinforcement to my being weird concept)
• I do not do very well with changes…
• fashion? Sorry, what’s that? I cannot dress properly, not like a 45 y/o man or not even as a 30 something y/o normal person.. I am still a jeans and T-shirt person (like the girls I usually like..). Next week I will go to a wedding in Italy and I am still unsure what I will wear, what I want to wear, where I can buy it, if what I have planned to wear will have the effect to be removed from all contact lists of the people attending the wedding, or just the will not open the door. I hope there is a children table!
• I listen to more or less the same music I have been listening in the past 25 years
• I fall asleep in front of the TV (PC) and then get up in the night to switch off the lights.. or I do it in the morning when I go to work!
• I get grumpy fast like a little child not allowed to do what he wants, that very moment, but also I forget my anger equally fast, most of the times
• I trust people, like a child.. I got burned quite a few times, but I keep trusting people.. maybe I am a stupid child, or just got a shorter memory than most.. or just I do not want to change (see above, not doing well with changes!)

My biggest fear is becoming a child of 50 that talks to himself (and even answers from time to time), unable to be socially acceptable in any ways (I mean, worse than now!) and being content about that or not even realizing it..

Being still a few years of neural degrading for reaching that point, I hope (at least!). I hope Aikido will help to keep some neurons alive!

And just for the final irony, I discovered today is world kissing day… ironic for a guy child, I mean, that has not kissed that much in his life (but enjoying it every time!) and probably has the record speed of being unmatched on Tinder..

..but at least tonight it is time again to fly to an Aikido seminar and especially to many friends I missed a lot lately.. and in particular celebrating 10 years of knowing a crazy fantastic person from Prague..

flying to…everywhere…

The return of a nightmare

This morning, 4 am, I woke up, suddenly, in pain: the weight of the duvet on my right knee was enough to send jolts of pain through my nervous system.. and after a few hours, when it started swelling and the slightest touch was equivalent to deep pain, dark thoughts of “The Return of the Watermelon Knee” jumped in my mind and during the day the thoughts became unfortunately reality.

right knee swelling

Besides being in the Netherlands with almost no access to the Chinese products that cured me last time (yeah, no cure from what I got, RA is the only companion for life I will ever get), and not even the first round of pain killers that had proven very useful at the worst time of the swelling period, I have a very busy week in front of me preparing 3 even busier weeks when I will travel for work around Great Britain to give hands on training to different hospitals.. standing and talking activities.

I wish I could find a laowai friendly hospital that could prescribe me again the Tibetan herbal tablets I got then in China and used for a really long time. The only solution is scavenging among the bags of medicine I brought back from my short life in China and see what I manage to put together for a fast hopefully good effect.

leftovers of the magic Tibetan cure

I consider myself having a pretty high pain threshold but today I cried actually twice. I had forgotten the full inflammation pain and the return of it has been a quite traumatic awakening. 

In the next days I need to contain this pain and manage to control it. From next week I got pretty important work tasks that will require me standing most of the day when not walking pulling heavy cases. 

I wanted challenges right? Here they are… be careful what you wish for…

The first challenges were biking tobanf from work but especially walk three flights of stairs to get to my room at home. 

Habits are also painful. I always step into my hakama first with the left foot and I always mountvmy bike from the left side, therefore passing over the right leg… that is bending my swollen and inflamed right knee: the sudden sharp pain pain was definitively a good call to pay more attention!

my hakama

After the ice and evening rest I try to follow the other two rule of the recommended R.I.C.E. procedure: Rest – Ice – Compression – Elevation. 

knee elevation on the loft ceiling of my room

If I were a bat I’d probably be certainly better tomorrow… since I’m not I’m more curious about my weekend to come in Prague…