This is me, in Chinese.

Two and a half years of learnings. I started in November 2018, but I took a half-year break in 2019 (I should not have done that). In two and a half years, I took 500 class hours, and around a dozen of books. I’m both proud and encouraged by my Chinese progress. By no means it has been easy, but persistent progress accumulates, and after two and a half years, I’m at an upper intermediate level of Chinese.

And of course, the teachers at GoEast Mandarin are fantastic: https://goeastmandarin.com/

I learned:
HSK1, HSK2, GoEast’s Hanzi course, HSK3, HSK4上, HSK4下, GoEast’s China Today Spoken Chinese language course, 发展汉语中级 I, and 发展汉语中级 II.

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Cake and Timepieces

Cake and Timepieces

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A candle in Minnesota

A candle in Minnesota

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m in Saint Paul, Minnesota, attending the morning mass at St. Bernard’s church. It’s about twenty years since I last attended a mass, and the first time I’ve ever done so voluntarily. I’m sure I’m drawn to this church near my Airbnb, compelled to go in, but I find it hard […]
June 14, 2026
Revisiting Columbine

Revisiting Columbine

Growing up in the Netherlands, it’s not immediately obvious (even to myself) that the history of the United States is also partly mine, but through TV series and movies — as well as the news — it’s also a country I lived in and grew up in. And unlike presidential elections or the September 11th […]
June 8, 2026
Rich People Park

Rich People Park

We’re in TaiKoo Li QianTan (前滩太古里), a brand new, high-end shopping mall near the Huangpu River in Pudong. It’s a beautiful complex with four levels, viewing bridges, walls of white steel and vertical gardens (the first I’ve seen that actually look like on an architectural drawing), and paths of bright bricks alternating with patches of […]
June 5, 2026