Family stronger then Art

Remember I told you about Kan, almost a year ago? He's a Vietnamese guy, working in Bangkok as an artist. I promised him to publish some of his work in a book, and I kept my promise (of course), the book is selling on blurb, on this link. It sells well.

Now what is interesting about Kan's situation? His family in VietNam is quite well off. His family needs someone to take care of the family business.

Now Kan has to decide. He must choose between following his artistic desires (and he's quite a promising artist!) and following the needs of his family.

For the moment, he choose to close down his artistic being in Bangkok, and to return to VietNam to join his family and be at their service. Which means he'll have to forgo every fiber in his body that makes him an artist. I deeply respect his choice. I also think that his artistic genetics will pop up again, sooner or later :-)

Come and see next week (or month, or year, or decade)!

I need new furniture!

The living room in the renovated house needs new furniture. I asked my brother Rafael to make it, a couple of months ago. He promised to work on it, but it might take him a year or so to finish :-)
The final result should be something like the picture above, but then over a whole wall of 6 m width. No doubt it will be amazing, if it ever gets ready!

the Pink Pants Pool

As you know, we love swimming. When on holiday, we swim at least twice a day. And when we are home, we really enjoy a morning swim!

So it was with great pleasure that we learned that a new pool opened in our city Gent: zwembad Rozebroeken (translated: the pink pants pool, although it has nothing to do with pink pants hehehe). You see the picture on top. Their site is http://www.sr-rozebroeken.be/BENL/site/index.aspx .

It's a HUGE state-of-the-art pool, with all the newest thrills and technical gimmicks! We love that pool. Only problem is that it's a bit too far to cycle there in the early morning, so we have to drive by car.

We swim from 8:30 to 9:10 a.m. At 8:30, the pool is almost deserted, very quiet. Around 9 a.m., the schools start to roll in, and it's really a pleasure to see all the youngsters learning to swim, or if they can already swim, perfecting their swimming skills.

So, if you want to visit us in the early morning hours, you know where to find us!

The Guestroom

as you know, we have a guest-room in the newly renovated house next door. Very nice although not extremely big. But it's cozy enough.
Our guest come from all over the world, we love to have them. The first one came from Mainland China, the second and third from Indonesia. I wonder where no. 4 will come from!

We ask our guests also feedback: what can we do to improve the room (apart of making it bigger, which is impossible). We learned that guests like to have a private place to work: a small desk, for papers or computers or tablet. So this week we went to Ikea, and bought a new desk, not too big so that it doesn't take up too much space, an standing open closet to put clothes and other travel stuff in, and a hanging rack to store papers and work.

And really, the guest-room looks much nicer now!