On bikes

By:  July 31, 2016 Categories: 

The year I was born, my dad passed his motorcycle license, and for as long as I have memories, my dad — wearing a distinctive grey with blue and red jacket — rode a Yamaha FZR400: a lightweight race bike, which screamed loudly as he revved it on our driveway.

Recently, my dad got onto a more convenient bike, a Moto Guzzi Breva 1100, but still wears the same jacket! Instead, it’s me on the lightweight supersport — a Honda CBR600RR — somewhat the modern day equivelant of the FZR400.

This weekend was a reminiscing mixture of past and present, and perhaps it’s a stark reminder of how quickly time goes by. I still feel like the kid on the driveway, watching my dad get on his bike and go. Only now I step onto my own bike to follow.

Vakantie 2016 083

Latest

Degrees of wealth

Degrees of wealth

In eight years of living in China, taxi drivers or older colleagues loved to ask, “Which is better, the Netherlands or China?”, hoping for a single insightful answer that would explain everything. And now, back as a resident in the Netherlands, people ask the mirrored version: do I miss living in China? Neither question is […]
July 11, 2026
Goodbye to Guanyin

Goodbye to Guanyin

It’s a Saturday morning, and we’re in a taxi on the way to the airport. My clothes cling to my body and already reek of sweat, and that’s even before our 12-hour flight has started. Today I woke up at 5:30 to get up early and throw away the last furniture and items we used […]
June 30, 2026
Half a Jin, Eight Liang

Half a Jin, Eight Liang

Learning Chinese, or any language, makes you more aware of language in general. And one thing that surprised me is that, despite Mandarin being so different from my mother tongue (Dutch), both languages reach for the same units when weighing things: the kilogram (公斤, gōngjīn) and the half-kilogram (斤, jīn). It’s a small thing, but […]
June 24, 2026
Cake and Timepieces

Cake and Timepieces

There are multiple ways to define Shanghai. There’s the more modern version, with beautiful lanes full of expensive yoga studios or artisan coffee shops, lined with the London Plane Tree (法国梧桐) and the Wukang Mansion (武康大楼), and renovated parks like the North Bund (北外滩) and West Bund (西岸). There’s also the Shanghai as the international […]
June 23, 2026