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# The Dream the night before    03'08'29 08:49

This was the dream I had the night before I decided to change the name.

I leave my house to find out that the city centre has been towed across the water so I'm right in it. It is familiar Amsterdam, yet it is not: there are alleys and squares, Italian-style.
I walk to a square, and men with orange overcoats are taking down a statue in the middle.
Another square. Another pedestal. This one is already empty. All around lies rubble.
A big square, surrounded by tall buildings. Police are keeping a crowd away from one side, where a monumental building dominates. It looks a bit like the Sonesta hotel, with a big dome on top of it. Funnily enough, the building seems to have its front side to the back. Then some quiet demolition blasts, and the dome falls down in a rain of rubble. The rest of the building stays as it is, but it's hardly visible anymore in the dust cloud.
I walk on. Again a small square - a horse-riding statue just crumbles as I see it.


The dream changes theme. I am watching television. It takes me a while to figure out what it is I'm watching, though there are images from the walk as footage in the program. It turns out to be a kind of this is your life show, though it's supposed to be an edition of Zomergasten.
The theme of the show is melancholic: the main character has always shown a lot of promise, but he accomplished much less than his potential.
As the show ends, I realize that it is actually about me. That I am the guest. And then it comes to me that it's a repeat - put on as a tribute after the untimely passing of this person. Which is me. Which I know while I am watching the show. Dream ends.

# Gitanes    03'08'28 12:43    link

"Coronary heart disease is the biggest killer in the US, but not in France. Yet the French smoke Gitanes, breakfast on buttery brioche, lunch and dine off confit of duck, sausage, fat goose livers and camembert. They drink wine, round off their meals with cognac, and while away the afternoon with strong coffee and mouthwatering pastries. " [The Guardian]

This passage makes my mouth water. It makes me want to get a chocolate croissant and a coffee now.
And a smoke, and that's more alarming. You see, on tuesday morning, having decided that my name was going out of the window I felt like celebrating it with something outrageous. I was already treated as my friend had taken me to a real Italian bar in Ostbahnhof to have a decent cappuccino - and what the heck, I had a puff of her Marlboro Light.
Twelve years of not smoking, one puff and two days later I am thinking of having one... this is one illusion to keep firmly in check.

# more on Driek    03'08'28 08:35

So what, after all, made be drop the name I've used exclusively since 1997?
I've known for a while that Sakaama was on its way out - every now and then I would think about it, and I would 'try on' other names, and they never felt right. Especially with Driek. I had many dislikes about that name; the harsh sound, it being associated with backward farmers from the south, but most of all that it had come from the family tradition - that my parents had not searched for the name they wanted for their first child, but that they went with naming the oldest after the grandfather as tradition prescribes it. From fear. I found how big this grudge was in myself this weekend - and it transformed as I let it go.
And I also feel strongly that, despite a name change being very outward-oriented, this is primarily is an inner thing, and I shouldn't blast it out to the world. Keep it low-key. I want to let go a big attachment to being special, to being not just another guy, but far superior. I really want to let that go. It is standing inbetween me and who I can really be.
Thank you so much dear friends nearby and distant, for all your loving help and support. You know who you are.
Love,
Driek

# Driek again    03'08'26 12:52

Calling myself Driek again
Finally!
Problems into opportunities.
 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.
[and something completely different: ssh'ing into my shellaccount from a Munich internet cafe, thanks to http://www.cip.ei.uni-stuttgart.de/hilfe/Unix/mindterm/mindterm.html - one to remember.]

# I am what I wear    03'08'18 16:54

Feeling too lazy to cook, I grabbed my last euros and set out to the snack-shack on the waterfront. Waiting for my plain chips and baja, one of the guys who runs it asks me where I bought my t-shirt. It's a tee I bought in Spain a while ago. It takes a moment before I connect that they are two brothers from India, and that my SPF-shirt has some hindi text on it. Above a line that looks to my lay eyes like thai.

Years ago, on a sunny morning, I was leisurely making my way to the Westermarkt along the prinsengracht canal. No clouds in sight, too warm for a coat, happy, whistling gently to myself. Three japanese women come from the other side, young tourists in their early twenties, chattering and giggling at high speed. And suddenly they fall dead silent. On seeing me. Well, my t-shirt. Bought in a small gallery in the Jordaan, nice design, a hand-printed collage of found footage.
I realize it's got some japanese on it. It takes me a few moments to realize that I would actually like to know what it says, as I'm walking around with it. Hell, what is it? Was this piece of the design taken from a poster advertising the Issuikai? A bukkake-party? Or does it just pronounce, "gajin and proud of it"? Too late, I've passed them now. But the shirt never felt the same since. I walked in the gallery later, and asked the artist if she knew what it meant. She didn't, either.

Back to my chips. "Hey guys, you can read hindi, right? I would really like to know what it says." And I told them the story of the japanese shirt.
"No worries, mate, I think I know what it says. Well, I think at least my brother knows."
(fetches brother from the deep frier)
"It's a medicine, isn't it?"
He says. "Yes, yes, a medicine. For the head!" (rubs head)
"Good for the head!" (makes circling movements with his thumb on his forhead).
"Good medicine!" "And it's called daiga boum!" "Yes, Taiga boom!"
I chime in, "Tiger balm?" We are a happy choir now.
"Yes, yes! Tiger balm! Good for the head! Good for the head!"

They get a nice tip, and I'm all grins as I walk back to my house. It's nice to know what it says on a t-shirt. Just one question nagging me now though. Rubbing tiger balm on your forehead when you've got a headache?

# Speccyness    03'08'04 13:28    link

Oh dear... now listening to MJ Hibbett and the Validators... Atic Atac galore!
We bought it to help with for your homework...
[via NTK]

# Change, trust and changing    03'08'01 15:00    link

Business lessons from the donut and coffee guy on kottke.org is an interesting read. it's about change, trust and changing.
Trusting and changing - it's an area I'm working on (or shall I say, let myself be worked on?). And here it is from a totally different perspective. But the essence is the same: When an environment of trust is created, good things start happening. 'nuff said.