I walk slowly from home to the work in the morning, and do the same path in the oposite direction most days. Somedays my steps take a detour from this usual path, getting me to the coffee across the street from the office and I stay there for a couple hours after work, other days I walk to the supermarket or to some other place that the pratical things of the daily live don’t allow me to avoid.

I usually walk slowly. And I usually like to see what is around me – the places, the plants, the things, but the people most of all. Amsterdam is a city specially good to look around. Not only the city is very beautiful – I think, at least – as it is always full of tourists and non-native people, looking around for places. And even those who are here for longer – or native – are very interesting to observe.

For me, it’s mostly about the differences, specially the differences on simple, usual settings. For instance, the way people sit on a coffee terrace… Usually, in Portugal, people sits in oposite sides of the table, facing each other – In Amsterdam, on the other hand, you mostly see people sitted side-by-side facing the place where more people walk by.

It’s even fun to see how people look at maps all the time, and the corner of building, looking for street names, always trying to find out here they are, which path they should use to get somewhere.

And even fall. This is the first time for me where I really see leaves falling.

I don’t have everything I would like to have, and I don’t have everything most people would want. There are things in my live that are not as I would like to be, there are some that I don’t know how I want them to progress. It’s, I think, a consequency of the fact that no man is an island. I think that includes me.

But, most of all, I usually remind myself that live is still my lover, that live keeps providing me with what I really need. And that is my most profund wish – to have the opportunity to do a job I like, have the things I really need, and keep doing some of the things I really love to do.

And, for all that I’m grateful.