Autumn is coming 🍁 You can smell it in the air, you can feel it in the cool mornings and evenings. At the beginning of this month, school came back in full force for my 11yo daughter 👧🏼, my 6yo youngster 👦🏼 was already back in kindergarten last month. On top of that, on Saturday the 5th Kate left for her trip to South Korea 🇰🇷 I've been solo-parenting this whole week. It's been OK, they're big kids now, so they can fend for themselves. Still, there's a lot to do around them, errands, and, oh yeah, work as well 😅 On Saturday morning when my wife went to the airport by cab, I revealed my master plan: the Nintendo Switch 2. This bought me quite a bit of time and kept the kiddos occupied, so they could focus on Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza instead of missing their mum. Let's see how this holds up for the remaining two weeks... 🙂
📚 Reading
“The Plague” by Albert Camus (Laura Marris translation)
After I finished “The Odyssey” (full review here), I had been planning for a long time to get back to Camus. I read “The Plague” many years ago—during my high school years, I believe. I wanted to revisit Oran, so to speak, and check whether it lands any differently now that I'm much older. And it sure does. It's such a good story, and we lived through something similar during COVID-19, so it's easier to relate to some of the situations it depicts and the feelings of separation.
“Vinland Saga” by Makoto Yukimura
I'm back to reading manga and comics, so I decided to add it to the reading list because why not? I'm reading “Bone” with the kids before sleep (both of them love it), and I'm reading “Vinland Saga” myself. I'm 4 volumes in and I can't believe I didn't reach for it earlier on. My understanding is that I've reached exactly the point at which the tone of the entire story is about to change dramatically, but I’m so hooked I can’t see myself not finishing it...
🎮 Playing
Nintendo Switch 2
As I mentioned in the top section, NS2 has landed in our household. For once, I'm not extremely late to the party (as was the case with NS and 3DS earlier on). There are two reasons behind it: number one, I needed a distraction for the kids and I'd been planning this for a long time; number two, I treat NS2 more like a revision than a completely new kind of console (closer to 3DS → New 3DS in feel). Anyway, gaming made a comeback on the menu. The Switch itself arrived with Mario Kart World out-of-the-box, we’ve added two more games on top of it: Donkey Kong Bananza and Super Mario Wonder + Meetup in Bellabel Park (we had the base game and we just grabbed the DLC + NS2 compatibility pack). Every single one of these would justify that purchase on its own, and there's more to come. I don’t want to go bankrupt, but there are still Pokémon Pokopia and the upcoming Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave on my list...
📺 Watching
The Pitt
Well, Stranger Things turned out to be mostly disappointing. I really need to rewatch the first season, because it feels like a completely different show. It’s always a bit sad to watch something good lose its plot and depth as it goes on, I’m looking at you, Lost and GoT. Kate and I switched gears and picked up The Pitt and... holy shit, this is so good! I’ve been sitting on the edge of the couch through every episode. I’m not even sure why exactly, but it feels incredibly immersive. Each episode is so packed I start reconsidering my entire life, it genuinely seems like these characters have more happening in a single hour than I do in a whole week 😂 We flew through season one in no time, and season two is already queued up!
🎧 Listening
The Who
I'm a Beatles-head. Not a sixties head, not a rock’n’roll head—specifically a Beatles-head. It's not that I don't know the other bands, it's more that none of the other bands really clicked for me. I never got to like the Stones, as for the Animals I like maybe one or two songs. But there’s been a band that I tolerated but never got to properly explore—The Who. It came as a bit of a surprise but "A Quick One," performed in The Rolling Stones R&R Circus TV special, got me hooked, and then I just spiraled all over them... My top discovery by far remains Live at Leeds (40th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) with their two awesome shows (Leeds & Hull). They were unstoppable live and are now second only to The Beatles on the list of my most beloved bands of the sixties. More...