A mistake everyone makes, at some point

Last Sunday I made a mistake. I went to Ikea in Haarlem to buy a piece of furniture.

As this was not enough, I went there without a car. I thought: "There is a railway station there, I just have to walk through the parking lot to the station". I did not think that the object weighed 21 or 23 kg (different signs in different parts of the shop said different things), and that's a lot to carry, even for a few metres. I struggled to the train, I was helped by four kind ladies to put the object in the train, and out of it at the arrival, then I was helped by two girls carry it from the platform to the station's main hall (the two girls missed their train because of this). I was helped by a station worker who collected something I lost and gave it back to me. I went to the bus station outside and it started raining. I thought "Not bad, the box will protect it". The box, being made of cardboard, nearly dissolved when wet: every attempt at moving the box caused a hole in it, and consequent falling off of the content. In the bus, I was helped by a boy who happened to have a roll of sticky tape, and donated it to me. With the sticky tape, it was barely possible to keep the box together in the last metres of my way home.

That was the closest thing to a Mr.Bean sketch that happened to me.

On a different story, yesterday I met my neighbour for the first time. After more than three months, that's a record. She's been very kind, anyway.

Awake all night

Living at a northern latitude has some side effects. In winter, daylight time is shorter. It's something you barely notice: when you stay from 9 to 5 (6, 7...) in an office, you do not really care if it's daylight or not, and, when you come out, the dark sky make you feel you have wasted the entire day in the office. Which is depressing, in Italy and in Holland. Well, you barely notice in the evening, but waking up at 8 am and seeing it's still night is weird, I never experienced such a thing in Italy.

In summer, it's the opposite. These days there is still quite a lot of daylight at 22.00.

So, yesterday a colleague organized a party in a bar in the centre. The occasion was his graduation, his birthday and his new house. Events which happened in different times, but are celebrated only now all at once. He invited quite a lot of friends, who mostly studied in Groningen. Many of them live close to Groningen, that is quite far from Amsterdam, yet they did the journey nevertheless, despite the inconvinient return trip, or the inconvinient night at some friend's home. Dutch people would do anything for some free beer.

The epilogue. I came back home very late, at about 3.30 am, and I ended up going to bed after 4am. And I looked out of the window: there was already some daylight.I stayed awake all night. Well, I slept later (not much, as usual these days), yet it was a really weird experience.