I'm IN!

I've moved! I've unpacked!! ...But the house is a MESS and I'm still organizing. No internet connection there yet (it takes FOUR WEEKS for internet installation?!?) So... the pictures will come later.

BUT... I have SATELLITE TV!! Apparently the previous tenant installed a satellite. Unfortunately, it's only beaming programs from Italy and the Middle East (and the occasional CCTV Chinese program and Arirang Korean program). W.E.I.R.D.

The new place is 3 streets away from Beige Heaven, so it was one of those easy-but-difficult moves... Y'know, no point getting a mover or getting help coz you can just traipse up and down the street with your stuff. I spent Friday doing just that, with my ear glued to the phone, diffusing crisis bombs that were going off at work.

To add to the drama, it started raining too.

And on top of this, one of my cousins whom I haven't seen in YEARS stopped by Amsterdam on her way to the airport from Utrecht and was only here for a few hours... so I spent part of the afternoon catching up with her as well.

How about that - producing a commercial while moving house while entertaining. BAM!

I dunno why I do this to myself sometimes... Suffice to say that I seriously NEEDED some yoga so this led to more spontaneous Midnight Yoga sessions in the midst of the move and unpacking. (I might think of copyrighting Midnight Yoga© sequences!)

All my boxes arrived from Cape Town (when we left Sydney, we shipped all our stuff back to Cape Town, so Kelly had to unpack all my stuff and freight it back to me here in Amsterdam). It was exciting and sad at the same time to see all my old familiar things. It's just in a completely different context now, hence the sadness. Still... there was loads of work to be done so I had no time to stay nostalgic for long.

And then I realized: I HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF. Before leaving Sydney, we'd given bags and bags of stuff away already. But since living with much less in the past 6 months, you realize you really don't need THAT much. So now, I've got yet another suitcase worth of stuff to give away. Clearing out stuff is GOOD. It just clears the energy and creates more space. And NO, I don't mean this just in a physical sense of clearing space so I can obtain more stuff... Coz that would just defeat the purpose, right? I mean that when you give away old stuff, it clears things energetically even on an emotional and mental level. At least for me it does. Don't hang onto things and get too attached to them. It's JUST STUFF. (Maybe this is also the effect of growing up in a pack-rat family of HOARDERS. What's the point in stuffing your cupboards full of things which you never use?!)

In between unpacking and organizing, yesterday I thought it would be nice to go for another vinyasa class. Just to break the monotony of running up and down the stairs and figuring out what goes where. I'm glad I went. We did HANDSTANDS! Against the wall of course, but can't remember when the last handstand I did was... probably in Sydney with my old teacher, when she let me do handstands and drop over to backbends. :)

And the other thing we did in vinyasa class: Kurmasana followed by Yoganidrasana (which is essentially an upside down Supta Kurmasana). And guess what? I BOUND IN YOGANIDRASANA!! (minus the bedroom eyes and head-tilt like this very funny, UNSEXY posed-pose)


It reminds me of the turtle in Super Mario Bros, when it dies. An upside down version of it.

HAHAHA!

So... OK, my body must remember the Supta Kurmasana bind. I just need to keep practising to get it back. Couldn't wake up this morning to practice coz I had a restless night of sleep again last night... Funny story: the bed in my new apartment looks like a Queen bed. But... Once you throw off the covers, it's actually 2 single beds joined side by side (they don't even have a queen sheet over them - they're literally 2 single beds side by side). The bed bases are on wheels and move around easily even when locked. So... I guess I'm not used to sleeping on a single bed (TINY!) and have been rolling around and kicking the beds apart and even landing on the floor in the middle of the night! So long story short: No, couldn't wake up to practice this morning.

On the up side, my landlord is a really sweet old grandfatherly type who has since got a builder to join the bed bases together, and his wife has gone out and bought a thick mattress pad to put on the top. So hopefully when I get back tonight, I'll have a version of a bed like they do in hotels (y'know... they usually join 2 singles together as a queen in hotels).

I have no idea how I have digressed so far in this story. It's 8.25pm and work is winding up. I am headed to London on Wednesday this week.

Wow. My life has been pretty busy. Sorry for the boring post.