Persoonlijke aantekeningen door Niek de Greef over cultuur, politiek, media en maatschappij. Doorleefde essays over het hedendaagse leven.

… o shit

Sometimes, you are telling your story so confidently. How elegantly you solved that solution. Then you get that one question that silences you for a couple of seconds, you look around the room, everybody is staring at you and wondering what is happening. All you can say is “… o shit”.

We can become so blind to the omissions in our stories that we overlook the most obvious shortcoming, that question that we overlooked and we should have an answer for.

Today was one of these days. We worked on this for a year and a half, and then this person in the audience asked, “And what if this XYZ widget in your thing here fails?”

… Silence … o shit!

Compliant by nature

From Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls:

Zijn moeder was van nature meegaand en ze rekende het tot haar voornaamste plicht om geen moeilijkheden te veroorzaken.

His mother was compliant by nature, and she considered it her first duty not to cause trouble.

Such a Murakami sentence.

Why Cats like boxes

cat in box
Our cat Stanley in a box

I caught our cat jumping in one of the boxes under my desk. Why do cats do this?

One theory is that they feel safe in a box. But just the image of a square on the ground seems to also attract them.

All recent articles on the topic seem to refer to the same study.

More research is required.

Oh, they jump in other boxes and crates, too.

cat in crate
cat in crate