s'aimer ou ne pas s'aimer

I was on my way to work one morning last week when I saw the magazine cover below on the wall of a kiosk.

It's the June 2014 issue of a magazine named "Philosophie" and the main title on the cover is "Faut-il s'aimer soi-même ?"  Those words translate to "Does one have to love oneself ?" in English.

C'mon.  Really?

Is there more than one logical answer to this question?

Well, for the purposes of philosophical debate, there are several answers.  However, as far as the well-being of human beings is concerned, I see only one.

And, in my opinion, choosing to love yourself does not necessarily mean that the sole object of this love is yourself.

survival of the misfit

This is survival of the fittest
This is do or die
This is the winner takes it all
So take it All, A-All, A-All, A-All

...

But I want you to doubt me, I don't want you to buh-lieve
Cause this is something that I must use to succeed
And if you don't like me then fuck you, self-esteem
Must be fuckin' shootin' through the roof cause trust me
My skin is too thick and bullet proof to touch me
I can see why the fuck I disgust you, I must be
Allergic to failure cause every time I come close to it I just sneeze
but I just go achoo then A-chieve!

‒ Eminem, "Survival"

This is the song that I am feeling right now.  Right now meaning at the very moment that I am typing this.



As brilliant as the above video is, it's really all about the song.

It's so lyrical, so aggressive, so raw.  So Eminem.  And so like "'Till I Collapse", which happens to be one of my favorites.

And just like on that track, Eminem delivers a clear message on "Survival", and it is a similar one: when faced with adversity, you survive, or better yet thrive, by using the situation to surpass yourself.  Although this interpretation may fall short compared to the value of this song, it must be nonetheless noted that adversity as it is referenced here is perceived as a necessity, or even as an opportunity.

And the truth is that many of us, if not all, encounter adversity from time to time.  Job loss, breakups, financial issues, and health problems are some common ones.  While I am not immune to these kinds of adversity, the one that I experience on a more durable basis results from the feeling that I do not fit well in society.  The feeling of being a misfit, in short.  Misfit by his point of view, misfit by his ideas, misfit by his interests.  I accept that deep down within myself, this is what I truly yearned to be.  Not necessarily a misfit per se, but someone different.  Special.  Yet the pressures of society have been such that I often settled for a life where I talked and I behaved in the same way as the majority of the people around me.  Talk about conflict.

However, in spite of the external pressure and the internal conflict, the misfit in me refuses to rest.  It was never completely silent in the tough times of the past, so I do not expect it to be so in the uncertain events of the future.  Moreover, it has been by choosing to nourish this misfit that I have been able to give life to my operations.  It has been by choosing to nourish this misfit that I have been able to experience inner peace and plenty of joy.  It has been by choosing to nourish this misfit that I have survived well enough and long enough to write this.

So, in the words of Eminem, who also sees himself as a misfit, this is something that I must use to succeed.  To surpass myself.

But this is not just survival of the fittest, as the chorus of "Survival" says.

This is also survival of the misfit.

I used to be the type of kid that, would always think the sky is fallin'
Now I think the fact that I'm differently wired's awesome

‒ Eminem, "Legacy"

why i love paris (4)

It was December 25, 2013.  I was going to meet up with members of Paris Sketchers group at Musée Jacquemart-André, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.  It would be only my second outing with the group since becoming a member the month before, and I did not know Marie-Christine, who had suggested the outing.  I had found it strange at first that someone would imagine asking people other than family and friends to join her in visiting a museum on Christmas Day.  As such, I had expected to do anything but show up.  But knowing that I would be in Paris as the day drew closer, I found the idea more and more appealing.  In the end, I embraced the strangeness of it.

Passing through the courtyard lying between the ticket booth and the entrance to the museum building, I felt the cold.  I was even surprised to discover two sketchers there, busy at work.  I went over to meet each of these courageous individuals.  There was first Marie-Christine and, a bit farther away, Savath.  They were friendly and showed me their sketches.  It was great knowing that they were around, as if that was the encouragement that I needed to start drawing.  But I was not going to do that outside.  It seemed too much for my body to bear.  So I went inside the building to take a tour.  It was a small museum, but its rooms were pleasantly laid out and well adorned with paintings, sculptures, plants, mirrors, chandeliers, and other fancy objects.  In spite of this richness, I could not settle on a subject to get the drawing juices flowing.  I ended up returning to the courtyard to try my hand (and eyes) at the facade of the building.  If Marie-Christine and Savath could brave the cold, I could too.

I found an empty bench on one end of the courtyard and facing the center of the building that seemed perfect.  The foldable stool that I had brought was no longer necessary, so I placed that on the bench, next to the pouch containing pencils, eraser, and cutter that I kept beside me.  And off I went.  While I drew, visitors kept passing by, either to enter or to leave the building, and as far as I could tell, they did not always notice me.  When they did, their attention was generally held for an instant before they continued along their path as if nothing had happened.  Less discreet were several Asian tourists.  Some of them took pictures of me, sometimes asking for permission, sometimes not.  Others approached to see my sketch and may have given a compliment.  One man even came by and sat on the bench with me for a while.  There were some empty benches nearby, but he made sure to choose mine.  Coincidence?  Who knows.  In any case, I was too focused on my drawing to chase him away.

This focus disappeared as slowly as the rain appeared.  I had made great progress on the sketch, but it was far from finished.  I felt like being at a crossroads.  Having always succeeded in bringing my drawings to a state of completion, I wanted to finish what I had started.  But I feared that the rain would fall down harder than in the light drops that I was feeling.  Besides, I had become aware of the cold.  Ultimately, I aborted ship and went back inside.  I was not particularly satisfied with the sketch, but I believed that I had done what I could given the circumstances.

After scouring the building floor to floor to find a place from where I could sketch without being disturbed by the stream of visitors passing through, I found a corner at a dead end on the top floor that was small enough to discourage a crowd from approaching.  What's more, it provided a superb view of the ground floor and the staircase linking it to the top floor.  It was perfect.  So I unfolded my stool there, sharpened my pencils using the cutter, and started sketching.  Since the corner was partially bordered by a decorative handrail that extended horizontally from the top of the staircase, I spent some time standing in order to capture a clearer plunging view.  From time to time, I caught sight of people coming up the stairs, notably a large group of Italian girls, yet hardly anyone dared to come towards the corner where I was.  The rare ones that did usually asked for permission to look at my sketch and left after saying something kind.  One woman in particular came by and said nothing like the other curious folk before her.  I did not recognize her after she caught my attention and she began to introduce herself, in English for that matter.  Then I figured it out.  It was Kim, the administrator of the Paris Sketchers group, with whom I had corresponded over e-mail when I was trying to become a member.  I had gotten the sense at that time that she was American just by the way she expressed herself in writing. In person, talking to me, she had to be American.  In any case, she had a friendly demeanor and I connected well with her.  She informed me that she had just arrived at the museum and that all the sketchers would be meeting in the cafe on the ground floor around 4:30pm ‒ which I took as the deadline for stopping all sketching work.  And then she left and would later find a bench at the base of the staircase to sit in order to make some sketches of her own.  Knowing that I had a clear deadline motivated me to get into my drawing more, and I began to fill in details wherever I could.  Eventually, I was lost in my work.  The effort and its progressive results were definitely making up for the incomplete sketch of the building facade.  When I decided that there was nothing more that I could enrich, I was very pleased.  I even felt that I had reached a new high in my drawing.  In fact, the high went beyond the drawing, because until then I had never spent a period of more than 4 hours in a museum without appreciating a single work of art put on display ‒ and enjoyed it.

Just before the clock stroke 4:30pm, I packed up and went downstairs to the cafe to join the crew.  Still high on enthusiasm, I walked into the room oblivious to the fact that there was a queue at the entrance.  Someone made sure to let me know, though it did no longer mattered as I had already spotted Kim and Marie-Christine at a table.  I went to take the seat across Kim and began chatting with them.  We ordered some time after that ‒ all that drawing had left me hungry ‒ and then resumed our chatter.  Savath would arrive later.  During our time in the cafe, we showed each other our works du jour, giving and receiving compliments and comments.  I was truly in awe of some of the sketches that I saw, wishing to master the techniques used.  Besides the drawings, I got to learn more about the other sketchers.  I felt relaxed in their company, which was due in large part to Kim.  The both of us got along very well so quickly that I was surprised at how spontaneous and how expressive I was with three people that I had just met.

While we were leaving the museum, I could not help but look forward to future outings to do urban sketching in Paris, whether it was on Christmas Day or not.

the art of saying bonjour (1)

I arrived at the platform of line 14 at the Bercy metro station in Paris on my way to work one morning last year.  The spot where I chose to stand was exactly where I needed to be in order to end up in front of the escalator in the metro station where I was going to get off.  Nearby, a woman who seemed to be in her 40s or 50s waited also.  The metro came shortly, and we both entered through the same sliding doors.  As the doors began to close, I turned towards the lady and said "Bonjour" ("Hello").  She looked at me and said "Bonjour" in return.  Her reply was clear albeit timid, and she had an expression on her face that conveyed a slight confusion.  She took glances at me, and soon enough I started to feel uneasy.  Then she came closer to me and asked, "On se connaît ?" ("We know each other?").  "Non", I replied calmly.  Her confused state remained and I imagined that she was searching for an explanation without wanting to ask me for one.  I could not tolerate the situation any more, so I decided to resolve it by reassuring the lady with a "C'est comme ça" ("It is what it is").  She let out a smile.  I was no longer uncomfortable.  In fact, I was happy.

The good ol' "Bonjour".  Believe me, this word is magic.  Saying it is clearly one of the simplest and most socially acceptable interactions that you can have with just about anyone.  And I think that many people do not realize this.  Sometimes, we tend to wait for others to say bonjour to us before we decide to return the favor.  When they do, we greet them similarly and often become more agreeable towards them.  If they don't fulfil our expectation, we may become resentful, telling ourselves things like "He did not even say bonjour!"  To me, these attitudes reflect the value of saying bonjour, not only to people that we are familiar with, but to anyone around us.  Needless to say, it is an initial step when we want to acknowledge someone or to connect with someone, even if for 30 seconds.  Moreover, I have found it on occasion to be a simple and effective way to disarm or appease people who I might at first perceive as harmful or distrustful.  As result of saying bonjour to these individuals regularly, I have noticed my perception become more neutral, leaving me to conclude that I had judged them because I did not know them well enough.  Indeed, anytime we attempt to reach out to someone, familiar or not, we expose ourselves to the risk of rejection.  But what is the worst that someone can do to you when you greet them bonjour?  I suppose that either she would ignore you or she would make a harmless gesture of disapproval towards you.  In any case, any disappointment felt after this kind of reaction is ephemeral especially if you consider that there is probably someone else not far away who is eager to respond more favorably to your bonjours.  Besides, such experiences of disappointment can be very well tolerated if the bonjours are given out with joy in a generous way, since most people respond to joy with joy.  Along with their joy is the one that you can give yourself by turning the gift of "Bonjour" into an art to be practiced regularly.

For example, you can say "Bonjour":

• to people waiting for the metro
• to people standing inside the metro
• to people in line to enter a boulangerie before you join the line
• to no one in particular when you enter a boulangerie
• to people while you walk down the aisle of a train car
• to people that you encounter in a movie theater while you look for a seat
• to each person at his or her desk when you arrive to work in the morning
• to people that you cross when you walk long corridors at work
• to the pretty girls
• to people in the showers at the swimming pool
• to the first ten people that you cross after you leave home

In my own experience, saying "Bonjour" allows me to open up more.  It's great when the recipient returns the bonjour, since that can take the interaction further.  However, as it is more important for me to become open, I do not depend too much on the reaction of the recipient.  Having given the gift of bonjour in a way that I find interesting is fulfilling enough.  And so, quite naturally, there is an operation dedicated to saying bonjour, appropriately called Bonjour.  Perhaps it was natural also that it would be the precursor of all operations.

I leave you with a brief message below from our friends at the RATP.

Long live bonjour!

"1 bonjour costs next to nothing, it changes everyday living."

fight for my right to write

I have a guilty pleasure.

And it is called writing.

Okay, maybe it is not guilty pleasure material.  Nevertheless, I have enjoyed writing for the longest time.  When I was a teenager, I began exchanging handwritten letters with friends and family, an activity that I carried well into adulthood.  Things then took a drastic turn in college, when I rediscovered the French language.  I started taking a vivid interest in verb conjugation, word gender and other aspects of the grammar, making it all work in every sentence written.  Answering an essay question on a French class exam was a very exciting moment, since it was essentially a creative writing opportunity.  Later on, a few years of my professional experience under my belt, I signed up for evening classes at Alliance française in a quest for fluency, so that I could describe what ever I wanted clearly, richly, and naturally.  In love with French classes again, I was able to develop my writing skills for four years, sometimes even having the instructor review my reports (and this was not homework).  During the same period, I maintained correspondences with Francophile and Francophone friends that would last several years (you can guess who wrote more).  For a time when I was in my twenties, I even got into travel reporting, producing detailed accounts of trips in French and sometimes in English as well.  Filling up 11 pages of a Microsoft Word document with a description of a two-week summer vacation spent in Europe remains one of my favorite memories.  You could say a memory of a memory.  And once I had finally settled in France and fluency in French was no longer a priority, I decided to try my hands at Spanish.  Guess how I started learning the language.  By writing.  While I spent some time improving my listening skills and my pronunciation, it was largely by writing out answers to questions in grammar exercises and by composing e-mails addressed to Spanish-speaking friends that I developed my interest in español for two years.  Also in romantic relationships, writing found a place.  I remember once having a dispute with a former girlfriend.  I had a point of view on the matter being discussed but I had difficulty in making it clear to her vocally.  So I decided to put it in writing.  That gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts together and to make them coherent.  After she saw (or rather read) the fruit of this effort, she was able to grasp a bigger picture and to understand better what was happening.  Or so it seemed.  She had broken up with me a month later.  I tried to get her back a few times by writing lengthy e-mails pleading that she reconsider.  Looking back now, that may not have been the best means, but I could not help it then.  I really wanted to write, so I wrote.

Today, in my thirties, and I am clearly still writing.  In fact, my writing efforts are mostly focused on my blog.  This blog.  It's a lovely thing, to have ideas to explore and express.  It takes a substantial amount of time to develop a idea and to structure the text that presents it, but, at the end of the day, it is a pleasurable activity.

Yet writing is like talking or thinking.  It is so easy to do.  And while one might succeed in giving the most compelling talk or in producing the most insightful thought, that alone would not suffice when it comes to changing a life for the better.  At the least, some action would be necessary.  Actually, a lot of action would be necessary if the exact purpose is change, and perhaps more so than a lot of talk or thought.

But I really enjoy writing and I do not want to give it up.  It is a guilty pleasure after all.  Who gives up guilty pleasures?  Besides, I am trying to liberate my mind, and writing appears to be useful to that end.  So what to do?  Well, you write ... and you act.  Even better ‒ you act and you reward yourself for the actions taken by getting to write.  Talk about a win-win situation.

Roughly speaking, every other article on this blog has been produced this way.  Usually, one article gets out every week.  Every odd-numbered week, I publish an article freely.  But to be able to publish on an even-numbered week, I have to act by completing a certain number of actions, or operations as I prefer to call them.  If this quota is not reached, then that week goes by without a published article.  Sure, I could care less about the number of the operations completed and patiently wait to publish during the odd-numbered weeks.  But I keep having ideas that I would like to explore and express, and I would very much prefer them being out there instead of clogging up my mind.  Also, I want to get stuff done, just because that tends to change a situation more than thinking, talking or writing a blog.  If I am rewarded for having gotten important stuff done with the offer of a guilty pleasure, it is really all good.

With continuous discipline, this relationship between writing and doing gets stronger.  Yet, if the doing remains the same over time like a habit, the level of excitement that was initially there will eventually decrease, the writing will start to lose its meaning, and, in the end, there will be nothing to fight for.  So the doing has to keep evolving, in quantity and in quality.

I do not want the ideas expressed in this blog to lose their meaning to me.  So I choose to keep applying them by doing.  Doing more and doing better.  Fortunately, there is a lot to be done.

Rest assured that I did fight for my right to write this.

difficulty is unfamiliarity

There is no such thing as difficult.  Only things that we are unfamiliar with.


I am going to bet with you that the above statement was inspired from that famous quote from the Stoic philosopher Seneca.  You know, the one that goes "it is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."  Have you ever heard anything so simple yet so great at the same time?

I haven't.

All I ever wanted was to live a satisfying life.  For as long as I can remember, that seemed too difficult to achieve.  Sure, I felt good every now and then, but it was hardly anything fulfilling.  I knew something was missing.  After a long search for a solution, I realized that I needed to start exposing more.  Exposing things like my deepest feelings and my most cherished ideas, and this especially in the face of people that I knew and of those that I did not know.  In short, the very thing I had spent my whole life avoiding by maintaining the image of a person who was reserved and solitary.

Due to this avoidance, I had little experience in letting myself be exposed (and consequently in drawing the attention and judgment of others).  I had long believed that it was the most difficult thing to do, so I never went near there.  But Seneca thought otherwise and his words challenged me.  If I was serious about having a satisfying life, all I needed to do was get familiar with this kind of exposure.  I did not even have to think of daring anything, since the idea of daring is closely linked with that of having fear.  And we all know the effects that fear has on us.  You can find my favorite example here.

So how would you get familiar with a subject that you imagined useful but that you did not know?  Well, you would read about it, write about it, think about it, talk about with other people, try it, and so on.  And then repeat.  If one of these separate tasks seemed difficult, let's say that of trying, it only meant that gaining more familiarity with the task would be necessary.  You have tried one thing before, right?  Well here is another opportunity to try once more.  This time though, it's a new thing.  What makes it seem different to you from what you tried successfully in the past?  Keep asking questions and looking for answers.  You will find that the process of getting familiar becomes more interesting.  You might even become inspired, simply because you made the choice to confront something that you had imagined useful and difficult.

For my part, I decided to expose more in the public eye.  My operations are one proof of that.  The blog that you are reading is another.  The latter could focus on the touristic travels that I have made, on recipes that I have attempted to pull off, on encounters with famous people, or simply on ordinary events from everyday life.  While I do appreciate such things, my true self is not too concerned with them right now.  The things that I value more tend to be less concrete.  They include feelings that are often universal and ideas that have the potential to influence the life of an individual for the better.  My own life for the better.  I had gone searching and it was these feelings and these ideas that I found.  I believe that exposing them is the solution.  And I don't want to reject a solution discovered to a worthwhile problem just because I imagine its implementation being difficult.

So I am going to get familiar.

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times‒although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

‒ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

dare to dream

I recently discovered this gem thanks to Peggy, a young woman passionate about living her dream and creating her reality.

What this video illustrates in less than 8 minutes, this blog has attempted to communicate for a year ... and came up short.

So for once I will not say anything else.  Except that I really liked the fact that the whole thing was drawn.

You can show or hide subtitles by clicking on the rectangular icon to the right of the clock.



The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

‒ Eleanor Roosevelt

why this blog exists

It was on this day a year ago that I launched this blog and that I announced its arrival right after to a select few.  Little did I know what to expect going forward.  Will I be able to keep this up?  Will this make any difference?  Would people be interested in reading this?  Those were but a few of the questions that occupied my mind at the time.

While some questions still lack clear answers, I thought that it would be neat to list the top ten reasons why Operation Blog exists, à la David Letterman.

So here we go!

THE TOP TEN REASONS WHY THIS BLOG EXISTS

10. Because it can.

9. Because I am bored and in need of something to do.

8. Because I am yet another angry black man.

7. Because these are interesting times we live in.  Interesting times get recorded.  Interesting times get recounted.

6. Because I want to live more in the present.  To do so, I must liberate my mind.  For real.

5. Because I do not want to get more drugged up on self-help literature than I already am.  Even though I find these books useful and sometimes influential, they reflect someone else's point of view.  Well, I have one too.

4. Because many people can understand and can feel, but they do not believe.  I understand, I feel, and now, I want to believe.

3. Because people are inspiring.  I can no longer afford to hold back given how much people have contributed to making my life better.

2. Because most of the people that I know have the impression that I am this quiet, nice guy.  Really though, I am crazy.

1. Because I want to find people who see the world the same way that I do.  These people are out there.  Maybe they are not showing themselves because of fear or of some other reason.  Maybe I am not looking the right way or in the right place.  Whatever the case may be, this blog contributes to the effort of meeting more like-minded people.


The goal is not to bend or change ourselves so we fit the norm; the goal is to find the group in which we are the norm. No matter who we are, no matter what our values or beliefs, our tastes or proclivities, there is an entire culture or subculture out there just like us ... instead of expending energy to fit into the group, it's better to expend energy to find the group in which you fit.

‒ Simon Sinek

the loner with social skills

People think that I'm crazy
Just cause I wanna be alone
You can't depend on friends to help you in a squeeze
We all deal with shit on our own

‒ The Roots, "Clock With No Hands"

I am a loner.

In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a loner.  Without surprise, I cherished the few close friendships that I had.  Sharing with friends what I was really going through and sensing that they were receptive to that always made my feelings of loneliness disappear.  However, about two years ago, I started getting the impression that the receptivity was no longer there.  Or maybe it was just not enough.  While far from being an ideal friend by my own standards, I could not avoid feeling resentful towards some people when they were not reaching out to me in the way that I was expecting them to.  I felt like they had disappeared in some sense, and I was disappointed.  In spite of this, I made the effort to look at the matter objectively instead of doing anything dramatic.  I ended up interpreting this disappearance of sorts as the result of changes in my friends' priorities.  I accepted that they were possibly investing more in other areas of their life or perhaps quite simply in new friendships.  And I could not blame them for that.  It was not my place.  They were only doing what they felt was necessary for their well-being.  Something that I would wish for my own well-being in fact.

So I had the responsibility to let go of the resentment and to attend to the social and emotional void that I habitually expected close friends to fill.  This would be my own change in priorities.  I did not know exactly how to proceed, but I was certain that it would be necessary to open up more to others at the least.  And then one day, after an amusing moment shared with a stranger on the street, I realized that I had always enjoyed social interaction.  The more unusual and more unexpected it was, the better in general.  At best, an interaction was like an adventure during which I managed to forget my natural reserve and reveled in expressing myself as I desired, creatively and spontaneously.  This was sometimes the case being a foreigner in Paris.  Today, after seven years in the French capital, I still believe that each encounter with a Parisian or a tourist can be something special.  I always imagined the city as a place ripe for this kind of shared experiences, and I needed to get more than a bite.

To be able to satisfy my appetite, I knew that it was necessary to go beyond the loner persona that I had cultivated since childhood.  More precisely, I felt the need to develop social skills.  Getting straight to the point, I had to become capable of sparking the interaction rather than waiting for someone else to take that step.  Even though I was not particularly withdrawn as far as social situations were concerned, I had long remained in a sort of comfortable corner.  I needed to not only leave that corner more often, but also to remove the barriers that were preventing me from covering the whole floor.  And to make this process so irresistible that I would continue it in the face of the challenges that it posed, I had to act in a way that would be fun for myself and that would potentially be fun for the people that I would interact with.  Over time, operations were conceived and launched, one after the other.

As you can imagine, the market for social interactions is huge.  In addition to meeting a need for survival, we seek the company of others for the enjoyment that can result from such an endeavor.  While being with people can also be a source of pain and discomfort, the rewards derived from interacting with others cannot be underestimated.  Besides, many people want to feel useful to others.  Shouldn't we ourselves feel useful by helping these people?  If each of us was committed to developing his or her social skills in both enjoyable and meaningful ways, dare I say that the world would be a better place.

I would like to believe that someone with improved social skills is capable of reconciling with the people that he used to resent and whose actions or lack thereof motivated his efforts to adopt a more active social life.  Since he is more confident in social settings than before, he depends less on close friends to give him attention.  Besides, he could empathize better with these friends because he is more secure from a social and emotional standpoint.  Finally, given the abundance of opportunities for interaction wherever people are present, he is more capable of fending for his own if there are no familiar faces around.

It is likely that I will feel like a loner for a long time.  Even if I am surrounded by people more often.  Even if I had more loving relationships.  Yet many great moments in my life have occurred when I was alone.  I have even begun to embrace the loner in me.  But I do not want to be a loner who makes do with a quiet life in his small world.

I would rather be a loner with social skills.

souvenirs amstellodamois

Last weekend, I met up with my friend Brian in Amsterdam.  He had thought that it would be interesting if we hung out there before he arrived in the Czech Republic the following week for work.  Having heard so much about the Dutch capital from just about everyone but never having gotten beyond Schiphol Airport, I jumped at this chance to satisfy my curiosity.

From the canals to the bridges to the architecture to the bikes to the Red Light District, visiting Amsterdam was an enchanting experience.  This was due in large part Lee, a young Dutch-Canadian woman and tour guide extraordinaire from the SANDEMANs New Europe company.  She gave a free tour of the city to the gathering of people that Brian and I had joined at the National Monument, taking us to several remarkable sites before we arrived at our destination, near the Anne Frank House.  It was a three-hour period very well spent.  In fact, we had enjoyed it so much that we decided without hesitating to accompany Lee on the Red Light District tour that she was leading that evening.  That was just as fun.  In all, we learned a lot and we saw a lot.  My own eyes were opened wider than usual, over and over again.

The icing on the cake was the weather.  It was gorgeous!  Just what one would hope for from spring.  Sunshine, a cool breeze, lively cafe terraces, and no rain.  Things got a little chilly in the evening though, but nothing dangerous.

The following are a few souvenirs from the trip.

At Korte Niezel + Oudezijds Voorburgwal with Sint-Nicolaasbasiliek in background

Near Grimburgwal + Oudezijds Voorburgwal

At Grimburgwal + Oudezijds Voorburgwal

At Torensluis + Singel

It's rouge all right, but where's the moulin?

Look! They serve top-notch coffee and offer free Wi-Fi!

You can try before you buy

At Herenstraat + Keizersgracht

At Rozengracht/Westermarkt + Prinsengracht

Stamppot ‒ mashed potatoes mixed with green cabbage, meatball, sausage, bacon

View from Café Kalkhoven