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I got my drivers licence when I was 18 back in 1985. One thing my father told me he never would buy an expensive car, cos it's a waste of money. I always remembered that and mostly I drove in cheap second hand cars. Below in the image is a close representation of the cars I owned over the years. Chronology it's bottom row left to right, then, top row, left to right. Because most of them were used cars, I didn't pick the colors, but it's lots of grey, gold and red. The first car, the Volkswagen Golf was repainted from grey to red after a while. Here's the full history:

1. Volkswagen Golf (1985-1988), this was my fathers old car. When he bought a new one, I got his old car, a first generation Golf. I drove it for three years and it took me all the way the Germany when I was in military service. In the end the head gasket was blown and that was that. Much later I thought it was funny in The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon always complaining to Penny because her check engine light was burning. At the time my car broke down, it was painted red and looked just like Penny's car, but when my check engine light turned on, I wasn't so lucky as Penny, a lot of smoke came from under the hood and it was the end for that car.
2. Volkswagen Polo (1988-1992), this was the first of only two cars I bought new. I drove this car to the coast for a 14 day long holiday both in 1990 en 1991, the only two times I ever went on vacation in my adult life. I bought the car in the year I got married and I said goodbye to it three and a half years later when I got divorced, when the ex took that car with her.
3. Mazda 323 (1992-1995), to drive, it was the best car I ever had. It had a good strong engine and the view out of the windows was excellent. But it had rust, a lot of rust in the end and after three years it was over. I remember there was a small metal plate attached to the drivers door that mentioned: 'made in Hiroshima'.
4. Volkswagen Polo (1995-1998), Basically the same car as my second one, but this time it was a used car. I drove it for three years until a friend decided to buy a new car and asked me to buy his old car, which was way more recent as my car at the time. 
5. Seat Ibiza (1998-2001), So, I bought this car from a 'friend', but it was the most horrible car I ever owned. It stalled every chance it got, it even stalled a couple of times while driving. In hindsight I should have gotten rid of it way sooner.
6. Audi 80 (2001-2002), This was actually my fathers car, I drove it for less than a year when he got a car from the company he worked at the time, but then he was laid off and needed his car back.
7. Honda Jazz (2002-2024), In 2002 I bought for the second time in my life a new car. I drove it 22 years and 14 days, I've written a post about it. 
8. Renault Clio (Since 2024), After my father died in 2024, I decided to keep his car, cos it was only ten years old at the time, twelve years more recent as my previous car. It is getting used to that it has only two doors and not four.

It took a long time before I bought my first laptop, it was in 2011. Only in December 2019 I've swapped my Nokia cell phone for an actual smart phone and a tablet I bought never, but I inherited my fathers Galaxy Tablet last year. However, I always prefer to work, play, read or write on a desktop. I need a big screen and I need a keyboard I can move. In fact, my desktop has two keyboards attached, one remote and one attached. My current desktop is number six, when I count my Amstrad computer from the late eighties. These are the six:

1. Amstrad CPC 464, late 1980's. I had this computer for a short while, I've learned to write some Basic 1.0 but in the end I stopped using it, also because the recorder was failing.
2. Packard Bell 500, 1997-1999. I very much liked this computer, for two years I used it a lot with spreadsheets, input all kinds of data. However, in 1999 'internet connection' came to my street and I immediately took that internet account. But this computer was not suitable for it.
3. Packard Bell Pulsar, 1999-2005. My best memories I had with this computer. I learned to make websites on it and in 2001 I joined a usenet newsgroup which had a very positive impact in my life. 
4. Packard Bell ix-Treme Gold, 2005-2008. The previous two Packard Bell's I had were good computers. But this one was horrible. Very bad start up from the moment I bought it. Never a Packard Bell anymore after that.
5. Dell XPS 420, 2008-2018. A very good computer and with 10 years, the longest in time I had. Only ordering was not easy, after the order, they contacted me from a call center in India. I had to prove I was me and they asked to send me a scan of my ID. I did that and thereafter it went well. But nowadays I wouldn't do that anymore.
6. Medion Akoya i5 Gaming, since 2018. My current computer was rather a cheaper model, but with a NVIDIA card inside. Surprisingly, it has been a very good computer so far. Very fast start-up and I can easily play the games that I play, like Forge of Empires. However, there is a big problem now, the computer cannot upgrade to Windows 11. So I will loose Windows updates at the end of this year. I think it's a shitty move from Microsoft.

469 days ago I posted this entry with a tree of my ancestors lifespan in years. Today I post a chart of the lifespan of my ancestors in days instead of years. From left to right it's me in green, the only one alive, my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. The males are colored in dark blue, the females in light blue. The average lifespan - me not included - is 69 years and 261 days. Although things don't work this way, but would I become exactly as old as my family's average, I would die on Wednesday January 30th, 2036. It's just a fun fact for me.

So, the one game I keep playing is Forge of Empires, already 12 years.


( The Ones Too Many behind this cut.. )

Today I sold my car. It was from a drivers experience the second favorite car I ever owned. The best experience drive was my Mazda 323 which was a used car I had for three years, but my Honda Jazz (also known as Honda Fitt in some parts of the world) was the second best driving experience. However, my Honda was the most reliable I ever owned. Very low cost in maintenance. So I bought this car on 10/24/02 and today I sold the car on 11/07/24. So I owned it for 22 years and 14 days. It was still going strong, but after my father died I kept his 10 years old Renault Clio, so I had to get rid of the Honda Car. But in the end, owning a car for 22 years, it's something. Happily I didn't forget to take some pictures.

This year (2024) has been for me the ultimate year of hell. It has been the second in my life or maybe the third. I will call it the third and will write about numbers one and two later. On March 3, I found my father heavily breathing on his bed. He almost couldn't breath anymore and I called an ambulance, very similar as an 911 call in the US. Because he lived on a third floor without an elevator, they called the firefighters to evacuate him from a window. He stayed for a month in the intensive care unit of a hospital called "Middelheim" in Antwerp. I visited him every day and it was an two hour drive back and forth.

After that month he went to a care home to recuperate. It was in an assistance living facility at the place where in the past a hospital was, where he and I where born. That hospital where at least 40.000 people were born was demolished in the 1980's and was replaced with an elderly home where people die. How odd is that.

After two months at that place (April and May) he went back home. When he was back home I found him again in a bad condition 14 days later. They picked him up again in an ambulance, for the second time he was moved trough a window by firefighters and ended up in the hospital again.

He stayed for a considerable time in AZ Malle, that's also the place he got his kidney dialysis, which he got for the last 5 years. He had also a liver transplant 20 years earlier. There was a history here. Finally he was discharged again. He was ready to go to a final assistance home. Going home wasn't an option anymore. But in the end, getting your place isn't that easy because there aren't many places available. So he went to a temporary home in Zandhoven, which is called "Hooidonk". It was everyday 60 km (37 miles) to visit him. 


The facility in Zandhoven

In July we got the good news. He had a permanent place in Wijnegem, with a luxury room in a assistance home. He finally got his place. He moved in and my priority was to improve the room to his benefits. I went two times to Ikea, first to buy a new TV-stand and the second time to buy a desk for his PC. I installed a bookshelf and moved all the books he wanted. I moved a very large TV-set and I printed 18 of his most beloved pictures, from his parents, late brother, etc and put them all on his wall. I bought a small refrigerator and also a small oven and placed it in his room and also a coffee machine.

Every Saturday I picked him up from the living facility and brought him to the Quick in Schoten. It's like a McDonalds but better. There I would order our food and eat it. He seems to enjoy that food. I always payed for it but the last time we went there he insisted he would pay and gave me a €20 euro note. I decided to keep that note after he died.


The Quick restaurant in our hometown Schoten

After I decorated his room, he realised he had a lot of stuff still in his appartment that he didn't want to loose, he had a big book collection, records collection, cd- and dvd collection, so we rented a self storage. That month I moved everything from the third floor to my car and from there to the self storage. It was a lot of "exercize".

Now we where getting somewhere, but when he went on Monday August 12 for his regular kidney dialysis, he past out on the procedure. He ended up in hospital again. I spoke him that Monday. He said to me: Bring me back to Wijnegem (the assistance home he lived), then everything will be okay, where I replied, you have to gain your strength back before we can do that. That was the last conversation we had. Two days later, on Wednesday 14 August 2024 he died.

Thing is, I knew he wasn't gonna make it. The doctors where very clear about it. So I sit by his side, he's unconsious and I had this experience before with my grandmother in 1994. She was unconscious and it was about 10 days before she died. From the 10 nights being with her, I was 5, my uncle 3 and my father who was busy with work 2. In the end she died when I was there.

So this time I concluded that my father would die in 10 days or perhaps a few days less. So I sat with him on day 1 and 2 for some hours and at day 3 I thought nothing would happen. I arrived in the morning and I watched a few episodes of Grey's Anatomy, I remember the episode Meredith awoke from Covid. In the afternoon I went home to get some sleep. But arriving home I ate somewhat, checking the mail and the moment I was going to turn in the telephone rang. On the other side of the call was the voice of a nurse who said: Your father died...

I immediately returned to the hospital. When I arrived the nurses already dressed him in his best clothes. The only thing I noticed was that he was gone, he was not breathing and his fingernails turned blue. I got a moment alone with him and I apologized I didn't do better with my life. When I walked out the door I turned around to him and said: By dad and I left.

My father was in the first place my father, who took care of me when I was a child, he was also my mentor when I was growing up and most important, he was the only person who understood who I was, being an autistic person. While other people had trouble understanding me, he always understood me. When I got my autism diagnosis in 2002 he was happy for me and mentioned that he understood.
( picture below )

I still buy my Cola beverages at Aldi, the prices from Coca Cola and Pepsi are going to the roof here in Belgium. Today I bought 288 0.5lt bottles of River Cola Zero in Aldi at a cost of €71,5. If I would buy the same amount at the cheapest price (in the Colruyt shop) from the brand Coca Cola, it would cost me €397,4, more then 5 times the cost of Aldi's River Cola. It is insane. What other words have you for that? Thank you Aldi for the affordable refreshments. BTW, Aldi decided to make a new package, for years it was black (see previous post) now it is red, a bit confusing with the sugar cola..

It has been a couple of years since I purchased a music CD, but yesterday I bought one. I'm not that much interested into music, certainly not that much as some other people I know. But I have a few favorites and although I would never call me a "fan" when it comes to music, one of my favorite bands is "Pet Shop Boys". The first song I liked was "Suburbia", it was released in 1986 when I was 20 years old. I own most studio albums, but the CD's I played the most are the compilation albums. The first one, "Discography: The Complete Singles Collection" was released in 1991 and the second, "PopArt: The Hits" was released in 2003, now over 20 years ago. (I was a little in shock realizing it has been 20 years since I bought that CD...) Only this week I discovered that last year a third compilation CD was released, "Smash: The Singles 1985–2020", this time with three discs instead of two in the previous compilation CD's.

In my post of October 1 last year I mentioned I was on a diet and was working towards 77-79 kg (170-175 lbs) on New Years Day from 107 kg (236 lbs) six months earlier than New Year's Day. Sadly enough, I didn't reach that goal, I'm now at 82,5 kg (182 lbs), which means I still have 5 kg (11 lbs) to go. I still eat one meal a day and some soup later in the day, but I think my metabolism came somewhat to a stop and therefore it's now even more difficult to loose weight. Anyway, I'm not gonna stop with dieting now, I just go forward with the same diet I had the past six months.