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The Rooms, Roads and Relationships That Keep Us Human

One of the pleasures of putting together The Pineapple is that we never quite know what the finished issue will become.

We start with a theme.

This month it was Balance.

Then the articles begin to arrive.

A table conversation here.

A member story there.

A walk through a forest.

A challenge.

A recipe.

A friendship.

A lost wallet.

A caravan.

A stubborn decision to keep going when stopping would be easier.

And slowly, usually sometime on Thursday evening or Friday morning, the issue reveals what it has really been about all along.

This week, the answer surprised me.

What emerged was not simply a collection of articles about balance.

It became a collection of stories about the rooms, roads and relationships that help people remain human.

Some of those rooms are workplaces.

Some are kitchens.

Some are forests.

Some are friendship groups.

Some are Brida tables.

Some are places on wheels parked on a camping site.

Along the way, we meet people finding balance through work, through movement, through family, through food, through challenge, through friendship, and sometimes through a stubborn refusal to quit.

This issue also introduces something new.

From Ralf’s Kitchen

For the first time, we open a regular member column built around something a member genuinely knows and loves.

Ralf is many things: traveller, walker, husband, barbecue enthusiast, future mobile-home explorer and occasional hedgehog landlord.

Now he also becomes The Pineapple’s first resident food columnist.

The idea behind the new section is simple.

Brida is not only a place where people talk.

It is a place where people bring something.

Knowledge.

Experience.

Skills.

Stories.

Recipes.

Passions.

A good community should make those visible.

Ralf’s spare ribs are merely the beginning.

Elsewhere in this issue, we discover that work is often about much more than work, that energy is not always comfort, that friendships sometimes arrive disguised as hot chocolate and panic, and that maintaining a middle-aged human being may be considerably more complicated than originally advertised.

As always, some articles may make you think.

Some may make you laugh.

A few may do both at the same time.

And somewhere between work, forests, cherries, cocktails, alarm clocks, caravans and barbecue smoke, you may find a story that feels surprisingly familiar.

Welcome to Pineapple 16.

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The Pineapple

When Work Stops Being Only Work

By Ismar; Ritesh

We began with a simple question, but it did not stay simple for very long.

Ritesh had just come home from work, so it felt natural to begin with him. Before we even entered the topic properly, there was a small interruption of ordinary life. Did he get the promotion? Did he get the new job? That was where the conversation opened, not with theory, but with the practical uncertainty of modern work. He explained that his role was transitioning. It was not exactly a promotion, at least not in the clean sense. It was a different opportunity, a different responsibility, something he had wanted, but the question of money had not yet been discussed. They would not reduce his salary, he said, but whether there would be a higher band or extra money was still unclear. He had already checked with colleagues who had made similar transitions three or four years earlier. They had asked and had not received extra money immediately. Perhaps at the year-end review cycle, things would be considered.

Already, work was not just work. It was role, money, recognition, uncertainty, calculation, hope, and the quiet knowledge that systems rarely move as cleanly as people would like.

When we asked what came first to mind when thinking about work — money, usefulness, routine, people, tiredness — Ritesh did not choose only one. He said that nowadays, if he was not thinking about this new role, work meant routine, money, and connection. Sometimes it was not even about the work itself. It was about going somewhere, being somewhere, doing something, feeling useful. It kept a person busy, almost keeping them “off the street,” as we joked. But underneath the joke was something serious. He said that if people working now were suddenly told they were fired, the main hurt would not only be money. It would be loneliness. It would be the feeling that one is no longer useful, no longer contributing anything.

That was the first real door of the conversation. Work gives us money, yes, but it also gives us a place in the day. It tells us where to go, whom to speak to, what to complain about, what to feel tired from. It gives us evidence that we are still part of something.

Then Ismar entered from the other end of life. He has been retired for twelve years. When asked what work had meant to him — money, usefulness, routine, people, tiredness — he gave one of those answers that only he gives, direct and a little severe, but also logically consistent in his own way. In his opinion, even if some people do not like work, and even if nobody should become a workaholic, work is necessary. He said it may sound radical, but if someone does not work to maintain himself, then what is the reason to be alive?

We challenged that, because life is more complicated. What about people who are financially independent? What about someone who owns a penthouse or apartments and lives from rent? Ismar thought about it and said that even this is a kind of work. If someone has apartments, even by inheritance, they still have to maintain them, administer them, renovate, paint, manage tenants. So for him, work was not only salary. Work was the effort required to sustain one’s life.

And then, somehow, Elon Musk entered the room.

The Mayor brought in a mental exercise from a comparison he had made: if Elon Musk’s wealth were treated like the GDP of a country, where would he rank among the countries of the world? Ritesh began calculating from India. India is trying to reach a five-trillion-dollar economy, he said, and had briefly surpassed Japan to become fourth. If Musk had around 1.8 trillion dollars, he guessed Musk might be somewhere between tenth and fifteenth. Ismar thought of Brazil, estimating its GDP in the trillions, and also guessed around fifteenth. The answer given was twentieth, just above Switzerland.

That changed the emotional temperature. Suddenly we were not only talking about social balance through work. We were talking about systems, wealth, taxation, fairness, and what kind of world work belongs to.

Ritesh said that if one person could stand as the twentieth largest “country,” then this showed a failure of the system. The system, in his view, is designed to place certain people at the top and most people at the bottom. He looked at Musk’s style of work, his companies, and the way people are treated, and he saw everything becoming tradable, even relationships. He connected it to older systems like feudalism, where most people were subjects and everything belonged to a few. Capitalism, he said, had replaced feudalism, but perhaps these extreme billionaires were products of the new system in the same way feudal lords were products of the old.

He did not speak hopelessly, exactly. He said he was personally hopeful that not in his generation, maybe not in his lifetime, but eventually a different system would be designed. He had been reading Erich Fromm, the German philosopher who moved to the United States, and he brought in the idea that some people behave like sheep who need a leader. People are afraid to take charge of themselves. They follow figures. They are made to feel inferior. Unless people rebel against authority, he said, the system will not change.

Ismar saw it differently. He said he personally would not want that much money because it would give him too much work, and with his current abilities he would not be able to manage it. His main question was whether the wealth was honestly acquired or not. If it was honest, then he did not see the problem in the same way. He did not think one rich person was responsible for poverty around the world. Life is hard for everyone, he said. He also did not fully believe the system alone had facilitated such wealth, because otherwise there would be many trillionaires, not only one.

This is where Ritesh pushed back. His point was not only whether the money looked legal on the surface. It was about the structure underneath. Ordinary people earn, spend, and pay taxes. But billionaires can hold assets, borrow against them, spend borrowed money, and avoid selling assets that would trigger taxes. He gave the example of buying X by placing Tesla shares as security rather than simply selling assets in the ordinary way. The system allows some people to leverage debt in a way normal salaried workers cannot. Ordinary workers pay taxes at source. The very wealthy move through loopholes and structures. Even data centers, he said, use water that belongs to everyone. If a company consumes shared resources and makes private profit, where is the compensation?

Then taxation opened another wound.

Ismar said he did not know exactly how Musk’s taxes worked, but in Brazil the question of taxation felt unfair because people pay and do not receive proportionally. Bad schools, bad roads, bad streets, poor transportation, corruption in the police and public services, universities becoming places of political indoctrination, education getting worse and worse. What is the reason to pay taxes, he asked, if the state does not pay back with good services?

Ismar said he did not know exactly how Musk’s taxes worked, but in Brazil the question of taxation felt unfair because people pay and do not receive proportionally.

Ritesh, coming from India, understood the frustration but rejected the premise that therefore one should not pay taxes. He said that for people at a certain level, a good road or a good school looks like the expected return on taxes. But some people do not have food. Some tax money may be feeding people who are dying without food. A person with a house, food, land, air, and water already stands on a ground that belongs to everyone. So one cannot simply say, “I did not get my road, therefore I do not owe anything.” If money meant for roads is stolen through corruption, that is another problem, and people must fight for accountability. He spoke about public interest litigation and the Right to Information in India, ways citizens can ask where money has gone. His position was balanced but firm: corruption must be challenged, but responsibility toward weaker people cannot be rejected.

Ismar did not pretend to have a solution. Brazil, he said, is not the only country with bad conditions. Corruption is connected to human beings. Change the president, governor, mayor, and corruption may continue. He gave the example of the city budget where more than one billion in local currency was suspected of deviation out of around four billion, and still the mayor remained in office. We sat with that. Some questions have no neat Brida ending. Sometimes the table only gives the problem a place to be spoken.

And then we deliberately moved back to the bright side: can people make friends at work?

Ritesh said yes. Some friends from his previous organization are still in touch. Some became almost like family. They invite each other home. At his current workplace too, there is a sense of collaboration, even community. But he was careful again. Every workplace has dynamics. Some people are friends only for work. Some are human contacts, nothing more. Some become real friends because of character, nature, time, or because one friend introduces another. Work can create friendship, but not automatically.

He made a point that stayed with us: we often spend more waking time with colleagues than with a spouse. In the morning there may be only a few hours together at home, then work, then evening, then sleep. If the workplace environment is bad, then one-third of life is damaged.

We asked whether his wife had become connected to the wives or families of his work friends. That was more complicated. One reason he had taken the flat where he lives was to be near friends, so that she could meet people too. But in seven or eight months, the closeness had not fully happened. They had met occasionally, spoken, been polite, but not yet become real friends. Sometimes, he said, they are almost forced to meet because the men are friends. They may cook, speak, behave politely, but they have different mindsets and different ways of presenting things. He remained hopeful that perhaps in the future it would grow.

Then we returned to Ismar and retirement. Was he prepared? How did the week change after full-time work stopped?

He said he had prepared himself because he had plans for retirement. Still, many people become depressed after retirement. In his own case, he is single and has lived alone for most of his years, but even then he recognised the risk. Most Brazilian men, he said, play soccer, play cards, play snooker, drink beer, watch soccer. He does none of those things. If he had only stayed home watching sitcoms or films, perhaps life would have become difficult. But he thinks he is doing well. He has no problem with depression or similar illness. Still, he said, people need social company. It may come from neighbours, the gym, colleagues, activities, or extended family. We were not made to live alone.

And yet his retirement has not been empty. For the past six years, he has been the primary caregiver for his mother. Before that, he studied, finished a graduate course, went regularly to the gym, travelled, and attended lectures at the university and cultural places in Curitiba. Now he is in Campo Grande because his mother needs most of his time. He did not present this as tragedy. It is simply the shape of his life.

There was also good news. His apartment in Curitiba, which he had considered selling, had been rented two weeks earlier to an acquaintance. He hoped she would pay properly and not cause problems. In Brazil, he said, renting property is not always a good business because tenants often destroy the house. Even this small detail returned us to his earlier idea: property may look like passive income from the outside, but in real life it is still work.

From there we moved into Ritesh’s world of hierarchy. How do people address each other at work in India? Is it first name, sir, madam?

He said India is very hierarchical. From school and college, people are trained to call teachers sir or madam. Freshers entering the corporate world often carry the same habit into the office. But modern corporate workplaces, especially in big cities like Bengaluru, try to create flatter hierarchies. He now calls his boss by name. People call directors and CEOs by name too. Still, the culture remains underneath. He has seen developers calling senior developers sir, sometimes perhaps jokingly, but the instinct is there.

Recently he had noticed something new. Younger colleagues had joined his team and treated him with great respect. It made him feel older. He recognised himself in them, remembering how he once approached seniors with the same careful respect. There was something funny and slightly uncomfortable in becoming the person others treat as senior.

He also compared sectors. In hospitals and medical care, where his wife works, hierarchy is much stronger. Doctors, heads of departments, and superiors are addressed as sir and madam. Manufacturing also carries more hierarchy. Big-city corporate technology spaces have flattened some of it, but India does not become non-hierarchical overnight.

When asked whether this affects decision-making, Ritesh said the problem often appears more at lower levels. At the higher level, directors and CEOs may listen if someone stands up and says something, at least publicly. They may not take the advice, but they do not usually humiliate the person. At lower levels — team lead to developer, reporting manager to employee — people may cut others off, dismiss them, or make them afraid of bad reviews. He had seen colleagues crying because of such pressure.

We compared this to other cultures. In Australia, teachers were called sir. In Germany and France, respect is built into the formal “you,” with German “Sie” and French “vous,” while children are addressed informally until they become older and are then given the formal form. Different cultures solve hierarchy through different grammar.

Then Ismar gave us one of the clearest lines of the day. We asked whether people at work wear a mask, becoming polite and social in one place and different outside. He said we all use many masks: father mask, husband mask, worker mask. Some people’s masks are not so different from one place to another. Other people change greatly depending on the environment.

We also asked about farewell parties in Brazilian workplaces. He said they are common. When he left, there was a general farewell with another colleague in front of around 200 people. His direct boss shook his hand and said some words. He was not disappointed. In fact, he would have preferred not to have that kind of emotional ending. A small moment with his direct boss, with whom he had a good relationship, would have been nice. The big general ceremony could have been suppressed. That was very Ismar: not rude, not sentimental, simply honest about what kind of social ritual fits him and what kind does not.

Finally, we came to remote work.

Ritesh had spent the previous month working from his native place, far from Bengaluru. Did he miss his colleagues? Not really. For one month, it felt fine. He wanted to spend more time with family, sit with them, talk to them. His grandfather was ill, his aunts visited, and he was busy with home life. He did the routine work, but he was not missing the office. If it were six months, perhaps he would want to go occasionally to the office, chat, have coffee, brainstorm, and collaborate in person. But daily office travel is exhausting. In Bengaluru, even a short commute can take one and a half to two hours a day, and that drains energy.

When asked whether he would like long-term remote work from his native place, even for less money, he said yes. Earlier in his career, he wanted to enjoy the office culture, the big buildings, the colleagues. Now work has become more transactional: a means of putting food on the plate. In big organizations, one is part of a machine, building one small part. He could do much of that from home. What matters is being able to be with parents not only on the phone, but in the same room. If his native place were only 200 kilometres away, he would happily go home every weekend.

He was also clear that companies should not be confused with family. During COVID and after, many people said workplace is home and colleagues are family. Ritesh rejected that. If he and his wife were ill, his parents, brother, or family would find a way to come and rescue them. His organization could deliver a laptop for work. That is not the same thing.

Then we turned the question back on ourselves. In Brida, English is part of the process, but often the real thing is simply having a place for a decent conversation. Does a table like this replace something that work used to provide?

Ismar said it is similar, but different. Face to face, we can know more about the other person. Online conversation is not a complete replacement for the real environment. He had read that productivity may be higher at home than in the office, but he does not think working from home should be adopted forever for everything. It depends on the activity.

Ritesh saw more future in it. He said many people now work from home and need different conversations, different points of view, someone experienced to speak with. He compared it, carefully, to therapy or group conversation — a place where people talk, express, and receive something from the environment. He imagined immersive conferencing becoming more real, where it feels as if people are in the same room. For him, this kind of table gives opportunity. He cannot simply travel to meet us, but here he can see us and express himself. He thought it may be especially good for older people, retired people, and people who need some social time. He imagined his grandfather, if alone, having a place to say that his grandsons never visit, that the young are busy with their own lives. He also connected it to village life, where people sit together, sip coffee, and discuss everything — even international affairs, even wars, even leaders from other countries.

What we discovered was that work is not only work. It is a room where society happens. It can be unfair, hierarchical, exhausting, corrupt, transactional, and even cruel. But it also gives routine, contact, friendship, usefulness, and a reason to be seen. When that room changes — through retirement, remote work, caregiving, or disillusionment — social life has to find another room.

Maybe that room is family. Maybe it is a gym, a lecture hall, a neighbour, a coffee break, a village bench, or a screen. Maybe it is not a perfect replacement for face-to-face life. But for now, across Brazil, India, and France, we had one small room open between us.

And for an hour, it was enough.

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The Pineapple

The Paradox Department

By Mayor

This month, The Pineapple is about balance.

Unfortunately, balance appears to have left the building.

The day began with good intentions. Those are often dangerous.

I was working on the Brida ecosystem, specifically trying to automate part of our member-care process. The task itself seemed simple enough. If we could automate the Spud Toss, we could save time. Less repetition. Less administration. More continuity. More efficiency.

A sensible objective.

What could possibly go wrong?

Several hours later, I was staring at the uncomfortable evidence that the time spent designing the automation had already exceeded the time required to simply do the work manually.

This was not part of the plan.

The paradox was impossible to ignore. I was building a system to save time, and the system was consuming more time than the task itself.

At this point, sensible people would probably stop. Instead, I did what many curious people do when faced with a contradiction.

I kept digging.

The deeper I went, the stranger things became. The more I worked on the automation, the more I discovered that the real problem was not the Spud Toss. The real problem was how I was thinking about the Spud Toss.

That is an uncomfortable discovery.

We often assume that if something is not working, the system is wrong. Sometimes the system is fine. The thinking is wrong.

After several hours of wrestling with prompts, workflows, project folders, memory limitations and architecture, I eventually abandoned the automation entirely.

On paper, this looks like failure.

In reality, it was one of the most productive days I have had in weeks.

The failed automation revealed the shape of a much better solution. It forced me to rethink Spuddy. It clarified the role of the Humming Board. It exposed weaknesses in the way information was being organised. Most importantly, it showed me that I had been solving the wrong problem.

The irony is delightful.

The work that produced nothing produced the most valuable result.

Understanding.

But there was another reason I kept pushing.

This was never only about saving my own time.

It was about Fruitloop.

Fruitloop lives 9,000 kilometres away, in a world of laundry mountains, Grade 1 maths homework, family rhythms, interruptions, tiredness, humour, and the kind of daily life we are lucky enough to glimpse in her Reflections.

Underneath the potato jokes and the slightly ridiculous names sits a serious question for me as Mayor.

How do we build Brida in a way that respects her life?

It is easy to say that we need better member care, stronger follow-up, richer harvests, clearer workflows, more preparation, more continuity, more attention.

It is easy to say that we need better member care, stronger follow-up, richer harvests, clearer workflows, more preparation, more continuity, more attention.

All of that is true.

But every “more” lands somewhere.

Often it lands on a person.

And if that person is already standing somewhere between laundry, homework, children, meals, fatigue and ordinary life, then efficiency becomes a moral question.

Not just a technical one.

The point of automating the Spud Toss was never simply to make Brida cleverer. It was to ask whether some of the load could be carried by the system instead of by Fruitloop.

Could Brida remember more, prepare better, organise itself more clearly, so that she can spend her energy where it matters most?

With people.

That is the real balance question.

Not how do we get more work out of someone who lives 9,000 kilometres away.

But how do we build a community structure that honours the life happening around the work?

Naturally, the paradoxes did not stop there.

Later in the day, I was working on a promotional video for The Pineapple. The finished video would be about two or three minutes long.

The prompt required to create it was sixteen pages.

Sixteen pages.

For a two-minute video.

Somewhere, a medieval monk is laughing.

For centuries, humanity dreamed of machines that could reduce effort. We finally built them. Now we spend sixteen pages explaining what we want.

And then, of course, the sixteen-page prompt did not produce the result I wanted.

This is where the modern creator pauses, not in peaceful reflection, but in front of a subscription wall.

I could wait twenty-four hours and try again.

I could find another way to make the video.

Or I could upgrade, pay more, and continue immediately.

This is presented as choice, but it does not always feel like choice. It feels like a new kind of pressure. Not the old pressure of lacking tools, but the new pressure of being surrounded by tools that almost do what you want, provided you have enough time, patience, credits, subscriptions, and emotional stability.

The output is shorter than the instructions.

The result is not quite right.

The correction must wait.

Unless, of course, you pay.

Welcome to the future.

Please select your plan.

Again, the paradox appears. AI promises speed, but often introduces waiting. It promises access, but often leads to tiers. It promises simplicity, but rewards those who can describe complexity in exactly the right way.

The work did not disappear.

It moved.

We are told that AI will make everything faster. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it simply changes where the thinking happens.

The machine can generate the video.

The human still has to understand what the video is supposed to say.

And understanding remains stubbornly resistant to automation.

Then there is the language problem.

At Brida, we use strange words.

This is not an accident.

We have Spuddy, the Spud Toss, the Humming Board, Chippy, Sweety, Fruitloop, Pineapple, and a whole potato culture that probably makes perfect sense if you live inside it and looks mildly alarming if you arrive from the outside.

These words matter.

They are not decoration.

They carry memory, humour, affection, continuity and identity. They make the work ours. They turn systems into characters. They make admin slightly less dead.

But AI does not always know what to do with them.

It tries to interpret them too literally, or too generally, or not at all. It wants clean categories. It wants standard terms. It prefers “member-care workflow” to “Spud Toss.”

And that raises an uncomfortable question.

If AI struggles with quirky language, will we slowly stop using quirky language?

Will we flatten our vocabulary to make ourselves more machine-readable?

Will the future reward those who speak in clean, standardised, prompt-friendly phrases?

The jury is out on that one.

But it is worth noticing.

Because language is not only how we communicate. It is how we belong.

If the tool quietly pressures us to abandon the words that make a culture feel alive, then the cost is not merely technical.

It is human.

Of course, I could join the modern trend and go off grid.

No AI.

No subscriptions.

No prompts.

No sixteen-page instructions for a two-minute video.

No Spud Toss automation attempting to eat its own tail.

Just silence, trees, notebooks, and possibly a suspicious goat.

Tempting.

But would that be balance?

I am not sure.

Going off grid may remove one set of pressures, but it also removes one set of possibilities. The question is not whether technology is good or bad. That is too easy. The harder question is how to live with powerful tools without letting them quietly redesign our language, our attention, our patience, our relationships, and our sense of what a useful day looks like.

By this stage, the day had already escaped the boundaries of anything resembling balance.

My wife had her own expectations for the day. Reasonable expectations. After all, I had confidently announced that this little project would only take a couple of hours.

Several hours later, I was still mentally wandering through a maze of prompts, workflows and half-finished ideas.

At the same time, my mother asked me a question.

The same question she had asked the day before.

And the day before that.

She lives with short-term memory loss. For her, it was a new question. For me, it was the third repetition.

Neither of us was wrong.

We were simply living in different realities.

That may be the biggest lesson of all.

The modern world talks endlessly about balance as though it were some achievable state. Get the right app. Create the right system. Build the right routine. Find equilibrium.

I am becoming increasingly sceptical.

Life does not seem to operate that way.

Instead, life appears to consist of competing realities.

A project demanding attention.

A wife demanding presence.

A mother demanding patience.

A colleague 9,000 kilometres away needing Brida to be structured enough not to become another mountain in her day.

A mind demanding understanding.

Each reality is legitimate. Each reality believes it should come first.

The challenge is not balancing them perfectly.

The challenge is surviving the collision without forgetting the people inside it.

What struck me most about the day was how often the accepted wisdom turned out to be backwards.

The automation that was supposed to save time wasted time.

The failed experiment produced success.

The machine designed to reduce thinking demanded more thinking.

The efficient tool created a subscription decision.

The language of culture became a possible obstacle.

The attempt to help someone far away disrupted the people nearby.

The inefficient path generated the most valuable insights.

And the moment I abandoned the original plan was the moment I finally understood the problem.

People sometimes claim that AI will stop us from thinking critically.

My experience suggests the opposite.

Had I not thought critically, I would still be building the wrong system.

Critical thinking was not replaced.

It was required.

The machine did not tell me my assumptions were wrong. The machine gave me enough resistance to discover it for myself.

Perhaps that is where balance really lives.

Not online or offline.

Not human or AI.

Not efficient or slow.

Not in productivity.

Not in perfectly organised calendars.

But in the willingness to stop, look at the evidence, and admit that the path you started on may not be the path you should continue walking.

That takes time.

It takes patience.

Occasionally it takes seven hours.

And apparently, if you want a two-minute video, it may also require sixteen pages of instructions, a twenty-four-hour pause, and a small conversation with your subscription settings.

Welcome to the Paradox Department.

We appear to be hiring.

Payment plans available.

Laundry experience preferred.

source

The Pineapple

I Sent The Mayor to Fruit loop University and Accidentally Invented a City

By The Duo

I closed the door because my husband was prancing around on the outskirts of my office.

Well, technically, he was sweeping the floor and doing laundry, but in Fruitloop language that is still prancing. Domestic ballet with a broom. Laundry choreography. The Mayor heard the noise, of course, because The Mayor hears everything that can be turned into a headline.

And there it was.

Confessions from Fruitloop: my husband does the laundry better than I do.

I did not say better in the beginning. I said different. His process is different. His specifications are different. His laundry universe does not run on the same clock as mine. But I had to admit, sometimes his process is more effective. Same-day service, apparently. The Mayor was deeply impressed. Possibly shaken. Somewhere in Europe, a domestic worldview wobbled.

Of course, there was still a bunch of socks that I had washed and not folded, but that was on me. I accepted responsibility for the sock mountain. A leader must know when the socks are her own.

Then The Mayor started asking about my four-day weekend, and I explained that my son had been begging to watch The Meg. Not Meg 2. We had already watched Meg 2. He liked it. Now he wanted the first one, because apparently shark-infested waters are a family bonding activity.

The Mayor, very bravely, mentioned that he had watched trailers for some of my movie recommendations and that they had taken him out of his comfort zone. This is why I told him very clearly not to follow recommendations from my husband and my son. That would be dangerous. That would be a whole other department. That is the Fruitloop Bureau of Censure, and I stand by its work.

We drifted into Ryan Gosling, The Fall Guy, The Notebook, Barbie, Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Notting Hill, and The Mayor trying to remember things through the misty fog of his own cinematic filing cabinet. I told him we watched Barbie because it was Fruit Loopy. Obviously. Pink, strange, unexpected, and better than people thought. That is practically a curriculum category.

And then we arrived at the real business of the day.

The Mayor had told me he was off the planet, under the weather, beside himself, and in no space. So I had full control of Peeling Potatoes 51.

This is not a responsibility one takes lightly.

Two weeks before, I had sent him somewhere uncomfortable. He was still afraid to go back there. Fair enough. I decided today would not be beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

Today was Level Fun.

There are no levels in Level Fun. That is the point.

I sent The Mayor back to Fruitloop University.

I asked him: if a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon were trapped on a spaceship, who would stay calm?

He immediately tried to make it complicated because he is The Mayor and The Mayor cannot see a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon without asking for the wider political, emotional, and aeronautical context. Why are they on the spaceship? Were they trained? Is it a sequential process? What is the bigger picture?

In Fruitloop World, it is perfectly normal that a dragon, a toaster, and a watermelon are trapped on a spaceship. No additional documentation needed.

Eventually, The Mayor decided the dragon would get excited and probably destroy the spaceship by huffing and puffing and spitting fire. The toaster would heat up and go pop. The watermelon, being a big heavy lump of peaceful fruit, would remain calm.

Then I had to point out that the watermelon would not sit there. It would float. There is no gravity.

He accepted the correction with dignity, because this is why he is enrolled and I am the faculty.

The watermelon became the calm one. The dragon became dangerous. The toaster became lonely because there was no bread to toast. Already, without meaning to, we had the start of a story.

Then I asked him what vegetable would sell out first if his emotions were vegetables in a supermarket.

He went straight for the potato.

Of course he did.

The potato is the staple. The base vegetable. The thing that goes with everything. Meat, meals, life, Brida, Peeling Potatoes, Potato Moose, Potato Land, all of it. The potato is not glamorous, but it is reliable. It holds the whole strange architecture together.

Then I broke the laws of childhood by informing him that my son does not like potatoes. Not even fries. He eats broccoli. He eats beans. He eats mushrooms. He eats dodgy vegetables. But fries go to waste.

The Mayor found this deeply suspicious.

I cannot explain it. My son orders a burger with no garnish, no tomato, no salad, no pickles, nothing. Then he eats mushrooms. Children are not systems. They are plot twists.

I cannot explain it. My son orders a burger with no garnish, no tomato, no salad, no pickles, nothing. Then he eats mushrooms. Children are not systems. They are plot twists.

We wandered through the price of potatoes, supermarkets, the Portuguese guy, rand, euros, and the emotional economy of vegetables. Somewhere in that potato aisle, The Mayor announced a new process he wants to introduce: The Spud Toss.

Apparently, I do not have to do anything.

Even more fun.

Then I brought out the worried unicorn.

If a worried unicorn met a confident cabbage, what would they talk about?

I had my unicorn mug with me, so the academic conditions were perfect.

The Mayor decided that the unicorn was worried because nobody believes it exists. This is rude, because unicorns clearly exist. They exist on mugs, in imagination, and in the parts of the world where ordinary logic has not taken over completely.

The confident cabbage became a motivational speaker. A cabbage guru. A green leafy life coach with perfect English.

This happened because my husband had watched a video that morning where a famous South African man said, “for the last couple of five years,” and now that sentence was etched into my brain forever. The last couple of five years. Beautiful. Tragic. Linguistically pineapple.

So the cabbage spoke perfect English, not “last couple of five years” English, and tried to encourage the unicorn. But the unicorn did not understand the cabbage properly. The cabbage became more confident because it was on a roll, and the unicorn stayed worried.

Then The Mayor rescued the unicorn by sending it to me.

The cabbage mentioned Fruitloop, and the unicorn immediately wanted to know how to get to me, because I was apparently its guru, savior, and the only human — or thing, depending on The Mayor’s temporary vocabulary malfunction — who could understand it.

So the unicorn broke through my security system, stood at my front door, and said, “Hi, I’m the worried unicorn. Can you help me, please?”

Of course I would help.

I would open the door, open my arms, and the worried unicorn would become a happy unicorn. Eventually it would live on my coffee mug, where all emotionally restored unicorns belong.

This is how the Unicorn Faculty of Fruitloop University was born.

Then I asked him what animal would follow his happiness around.

The Mayor went back to Australia.

This is one of the things I love about these conversations. I ask a question about happiness, and suddenly he is a child in Australia, eyeballing a kookaburra with a camera. A kookaburra does not sing like a polite bird. It laughs. It sits there looking cheeky, as if the world is ridiculous and it has known this the entire time.

So happiness, for The Mayor, would be followed by a kookaburra.

A laughing bird.

That made sense. His happiness would not be followed by something graceful and silent. It would be followed by a bird that laughs at him from a gum tree.

Then came Fruitloop City.

If a banana became mayor ofFruitloop City, what new rules would it make?

The Mayor immediately said, “Don’t slip on the banana peel.”

This is the sort of law one expects from a banana administration.

The national colour would be yellow. Life would be sweet. Bananas would stand upright and proud. The banana mayor would tell everyone not to shrivel in the corner, not to be prickly, not to hide. Stand your ground. Be proud to be a banana.

This sounded good for Fruitloop City.

We discovered that Fruitloop City already has a university, unicorns, dragons, aliens, robots, watermelons, talking fruit, talking vegetables, and definitely no Elon Musk. The aliens may have arrived there with spaceship technology, which would explain how the dragon, toaster, and watermelon ended up in space in the first place.

They probably climbed into the alien spaceship out of curiosity. The spaceship mistook them for aliens and took off. The dragon panicked, the toaster popped, and the watermelon floated through the crisis like a philosophical fruit.

Now we had a story.

Not just a story. A magical fantastical story.

The Mayor does not want ordinary fantasy. Fantasy makes him think of Harry Potter and such things. He wanted magical fantastical. So we created a genre on the spot, because that is what happens when potatoes are peeled properly.

Then I asked him how he would explain a feeling to an alien.

He said you cannot explain a feeling. You have to demonstrate it.

His first idea was to hit the alien with a stick.

This is where I paused internally and made a note that human-alien diplomacy may not be The Mayor’s strongest department.

He did say he would ask permission first. In the interest of science. The alien, being logical and mathematical and probably built on binary code, would need practical experience. The stick would make contact with the alien’s body, fur, skin, or whatever aliens have, and then the alien would report the sensation.

Then, in the name of balance, the alien would hit The Mayor back.

The Mayor would react. Pain. Red mark. Screaming. Feeling.

That covers one category.

For affection, however, the process becomes more complicated. He might have to hug the alien. Or kiss the alien. This is where I thought about Predator and asked him to imagine kissing an alien that looks like that.

We left that one there.

Some thoughts deserve to be placed carefully on a shelf and not poked again.

We discussed pets and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, because apparently this is where alien affection leads. I said I would do it if I had to, but it would be very, very gross. There would be toothpaste after. And mouthwash. A lot of mouthwash.

Then came the talking cactus.

If your friend was a talking cactus, how would you know when they were happy?

The Mayor first objected to the sadness of a life where one’s only friend is a cactus. I told him at least it was talking. He felt this made it worse.

But then he found the answer.

A happy cactus lowers its guard.

People do this too. Some people wave. Some shake hands. Some hug. Some kiss cheeks. Some families kiss each other on the mouth, which we once discussed with Rosie and Monica, and which remains a whole cultural cactus patch of its own.

The cactus, when happy, would lower its prickles. It would allow closeness without stabbing the human. It would stop defending itself for a moment. That is how you know.

There it was again. Soft profundity, sneaking in through the side door wearing a cactus costume.

Then I asked him what advice a rainbow-coloured potato would give him if it became his life coach.

The answer was beautiful.

The rainbow potato would ask, “What colour would you like me to be today for you?”

If it was red, it would signal emotion and uncertainty. If it was green, confidence. Yellow, radiance. Blue, floating and happy-go-lucky. Violet, something mysterious that neither of us fully pinned down. The potato would either change colour to help you, or remind you to match the colour it was showing.

A potato life coach.

Do what I do, but not what I say.

Finally, I asked him whether his emotions today were sunshine, a rainbow tornado, or chocolate snow.

He said the day had started as a rainbow tornado. His brain had been fuzzy. He could not get things together. But after being led through my questions and the whole Peeling Potatoes feeling, it had become sunshine.

That made me happy.

Then we debated chocolate snow.

I wondered if chocolate snow was good or bad. The Mayor said bad, because snow melts and chocolate melts, and I added that chocolate is sticky. Then I thought of a chocolate waterfall, because obviously I did. I am a chocoholic. This is known. The Mayor said too much of a good thing makes it less valuable, which is probably true, although I still think a chocolate waterfall deserves further research.

By the end, The Mayor had given me dragons, toasters, watermelons, worried unicorns, confident cabbages, alien feelings, cactus friendships, rainbow potatoes, banana politics, and a laughing kookaburra.

I asked him if he had fun.

He had fun.

I had fun too.

And somewhere between the laundry ballet, the shark movie, the socks, the potato prices, the alien kissing problem, and the cactus lowering its prickles, we accidentally built Fruitloop City.

It has a university. It has a banana mayor. It has aliens with questionable spaceship security. It has a watermelon with emotional stability. It has a toaster in need of purpose. It has a dragon with impulse-control issues. It has a worried unicorn looking for my front door. It has a confident cabbage giving motivational speeches in perfect English. It has a kookaburra laughing at the whole thing.

And now, apparently, it has a story waiting to be written.

This is what happens in Peeling Potatoes.

You start with a closed door and laundry in the background.

You end with a magical fantastical city.

And The Mayor, somehow, gets sunshine.

source

The Pineapple

The Maintenance Manual for a Sun-Shiny Human Being

By Ralf the Grillmeister

Health and lifestyle balance, this sounds first a little bit like a leaflet in the doctor’s waiting room. You sit there, you look at the paper, and it says eat salad, make steps, drink water, don’t smoke, don’t eat this, don’t eat that. And yes, okay, this is maybe right. But for me health is not only this. For me health is much more connected with living with my wife, travelling, cooking, laughing, meeting friends, standing at the barbecue machine, seeing nice animals in the garden, and having the possibility to say in the morning, “Yes, today is a fine day.”

The Mayor started with my wife, because she had done one of these totally unhealthy healthy things again. On Sunday we were driving to Bremervörde, because there was a triathlon. My wife is preparing for a half Ironman near Flensburg, and for this she makes different competitions in different places. I am the driver, the supporter, and the cameraman. This is enough sport for me.

When we came to the parking place, they called us and said the water in the lake was very, very cold. So the triathlon became a duathlon. No swimming. Instead they made ten kilometres running, forty-one kilometres bicycling, and five kilometres running. This was the Olympic distance for the duathlon.

And my wife did very well. In her age class, she was first place. And from all the women who started, she was fifth overall. This is very good. I said to The Mayor, she has one problem. She is fifty-four years old, but in her thinking she is twenty-five. He laughed and said, okay, then in 2048 she can go to the Olympic Games, because then she will be seventy-six and still thinking like a fifty-four-year-old woman. That is maybe the dream.

I do not want to train for a half Ironman. I do not like running. Swimming, yes, a little bit, but not in action. Bicycling is okay, but my bicycle has a battery and a motor. This is my style. My wife has her style. She is the athlete, and I am the driver, the supporter, the cameraman, and sometimes the man who makes the food afterwards.

She analyses the videos I make. She looks at her swimming style, her running style, her bicycling style. In the moment, bicycling is her very, very best discipline. When she is on tour with her light racing bicycle, she drives thirty-four or thirty-five kilometres per hour. This is very good. When she was younger, running was her best. Now it is bicycling, then swimming, then running. Running is maybe blocked a little bit in the moment, but she gets older and older and her bicycle gets better and better. This is also a nice kind of crazy.

For me, when I think about health, I think first: I want to live with my wife. This is the first thing. Then I want to see many different countries. We want to buy a mobile home and drive through Europe and Germany. For this I want my health. Not for medals. Not for winning something. For living. For travelling. For sitting somewhere with coffee, looking at a new place, and saying, “Ah, this is nice.”

The Mayor asked me when I felt really alive in my body, not because of sport, but because life was good. And for me this was on Friday. We had two visitors, and I made a nice barbecue. They said it was fantastic what I created on the barbecue machine. This is for me a point where I say, yes, that was good for my life and good for my balance.

Also when we come together with our friends from Bremervörde and around the country, this gives me balance. We have fun, we have action, we make grilling, we make barbecue, we talk, we laugh. For me, the best place for balance is when I can cook for people or for my wife. This is a good feeling. It is nice for my body to live with this.

On Friday I made rib fingers, ribeye steaks, spare ribs, and a warm potato salad with olive oil, herbs, garlic, and sweet onions. The full cooking details belong in my Pineapple Recipe section, because otherwise I start with health and suddenly we are inside the barbecue machine for two days.

The best critic is always in the family. When my wife came into the kitchen, she smelled the potato salad and said, “Oh, what a nice smell.” Then she tasted it and said, “Wow, what is this?” And then I thought, yes, I made a good job.

The Mayor asked me about the battle between sensible Ralf and barbecue Ralf. This is a good question, because people always think barbecue means meat only. But this is not true. We only eat meat one time in the week. Other times we eat fish or vegetables. When I cook or barbecue, I use olive oil, garlic, good ingredients. I drink beetroot juice for my body. I try to do good things.

The Mayor asked me about the battle between sensible Ralf and barbecue Ralf. This is a good question, because people always think barbecue means meat only. But this is not true. We only eat meat one time in the week. Oth

Barbecue can be vegetables. It can be fish. It can be many different things. I have a special cutter, and with this you can make potato steaks, with a crinkle cut. You put a little olive oil and garlic on top, put them on the barbecue machine, and it is fantastic. So sensible Ralf and barbecue Ralf are not always enemies. Sometimes they work together.

The Mayor also asked me about my version of strength, because my wife has this triathlon world. I said, for me, my strength is in the head. In the moment, physically, not so much. My work changed, and I sit too much in the office now. This is not really me. I am a salesman by nature; I like to drive, to move, to be with people. In an earlier part of my working life, I drove around seventy-five thousand kilometres per year. Now it is much less, and I feel this. It is not so good for my body.

But my wife says something true. When I have bad action in my life, I eat. This is actually my problem. So now she said we must make some different things and reduce my eating. A good friend told us about a special nutrition reset programme after she went on a spa holiday. It uses tablets with omega-3 and vitamins A, B, C, D, and so on. There is also a list of what you can eat and what you cannot eat.

It is interesting. You can eat many vegetables. You can eat some meat, but not pork. You can eat chicken, but not with the skin. You can eat cauliflower, but not broccoli, because they say broccoli has too much sugar inside. You can eat kale, but not Brussels sprouts.

I wanted to start immediately, but my wife said no, not this week, because I had to travel and I had to eat in the morning and evening outside. So we decided I would start on the next Monday morning.

The breakfast recipe with low-fat quark, sparkling water, blueberries, protein powder, and stevia also belongs in my Pineapple Recipe section, because even my healthy food somehow becomes a small kitchen experiment.

Before the programme begins, there are two loading days. You take the tablets, but for two days you must eat many fatty meals. I do not really know why, but when somebody says pork belly for health, I say, yes, no problem.

The Mayor asked me what I would say if another Brida member said health is boring, only salad and steps. I think health is not boring. It is nice to meet friends, drink a cup of coffee with them, talk, and laugh. Health is also the social people around your body. This is very good for you. When you talk with people, when you laugh, when you go into life and meet people, when you go on holiday together and have fun, this is also healthy.

For me, health is fire, music, coffee, love, and freedom. It is cooking. It is working in the garden. It is cleaning the house. It is movement, yes, but not only sport movement. It is life movement.

If I made a maintenance manual for a sun-shiny human being, the chapters would be dancing, laughing, eating with friends, good meals, coming together with friends, talking, and thinking positive. Not every time thinking, “Oh, what is with Mr Trump? What is with Mr Putin?” No. You must also say, “I stand up, and it is a fine day.”

You go outside. You make a small or a big turn around your country. You go for a walk. You find nice things in the world. A nice flower. Nice animals in the garden. Nice hedgehogs.

And we have hedgehogs. Oh yes.

On Friday evening, the two visitors saw the garden and said, “What is this?” Because it was like the hedgehogs had talked to each other and said, “You go to Ralf’s place. There is a big meal.”

The day before, my wife had made chicken on the barbecue, and we had some chicken breast left. She had read that hedgehogs love chicken breast, so she cut it into small pieces and put it outside. And then the hedgehogs came. On this evening we had six hedgehogs in the garden. In the hedgehog box, four hedgehogs were standing inside, but there were only three feeding stations, so they had to queue. This is very funny.

We have one station in front of the house, three stations in the box, and under my smoker, because it is raised from the ground, my wife put two more stations for the hedgehogs. We also have an old pan in the garden with water inside. The hedgehogs drink there, and the birds make a bath.

The visitors said, “It is like a zoo here.” And yes, it is a little bit like a zoo. But it is fantastic. We did not see so many hedgehogs in the garden before. It was very, very good.

This is also health for me. To see life. To feed a small animal. To stand in the garden and laugh because four hedgehogs are waiting for three feeding places. To make food for people and then see that even the animals think there is a good restaurant here.

So when I think about health and lifestyle balance, I do not think only about sport. My wife has her triathlon, and this is wonderful. I am proud of her. But my health is also for being with her, supporting her, travelling with her, cooking for her, and one day driving through Europe with a mobile home.

My strength is maybe not running. My bicycle has a battery and a motor. But I have strength in my head, in my humour, in my hands, in the way I cook, in the way I try to think positive, in the way I stand up and say, yes, today there is still sunshine somewhere.

Some things need oil. Some things need rest. Some things need fire. Some things need music. And some things should never be repaired, because they are already perfectly crazy.

source

The Pineapple

Seven Kilometres, Snickers Ice Cream, and the Question of Balance

By Sylvie

It was close to thirty degrees, and I was sitting outside with the good weather around me. There was a little music in the background because my daughter had a friend over, and honestly, it felt right. She had finished her last written exam that day, four hours of economics and law, after four hours of philosophy on Monday and four hours of management business the day before. So yes, I thought, she deserved a little party.

She still has the big oral exam in two weeks. Two topics to present, and then, after that, freedom until September. I hope she can work a little in July, maybe in a restaurant at lunch, serving the daily plates. In France we have these lunch plates, and she would prefer that to working evenings or weekends. But we wait for the answer. With young people, there is always waiting. Waiting for exams, waiting for jobs, waiting for them to put the car somewhere safe.

My weekend had already been full enough. On Thursday I went to the restaurant with my husband. Friday, nothing special, which is sometimes very nice. Saturday we went with friends to the fire station celebration. The firemen in the village were celebrating seventy years, and during the day there were activities to learn how to help someone in an emergency. In the evening there was barbecue, people outside, the big parking area near my house, and then fireworks in front of the church. The church stands a little higher, not on the same level, so the lights were there against it, and it was very nice. Really nice.

After that, we finished the evening at home with friends and watched the football match, Brazil against Morocco. Then on Sunday evening I took my daughter to the train station for Strasbourg, and because my husband was not at home, I went to the restaurant with my boss’s daughter. So yes, busy, but fine.

Here, the next weekend would be the music celebration in the whole of France, the beginning of summer. Every city, every small village, there is music. In the tennis group we prepare homemade food, and there would be gospel music during the day, and barbecues, and people from the village. But they were speaking about forty degrees, so I was not sure people would come for lunch. Too hot is too hot. Even for food.

My daughters, of course, would not stay in the village. They are young. They want the bigger city, where there are many groups and many people. I understood that. But I also worried about the car. That is the part that is not funny. In France, when people celebrate sometimes, some crazy people burn cars. Two weeks before, after a football match against England, cars burned in the parking where my daughter normally leaves her car. Luckily, that weekend she was at home and the car was with her. She sent me photos and videos. Completely burned. No reason. Just stupid, unstable people.

Fruitloop was shocked. I told her she could ask Frank — this is France. When PSG won, people broke shop windows. Cars, roads, shops, everything. And then the insurance prices go up. Every first of January, it is the same story. You know already that cars will burn. Some people are caught, many are not, and even when they are caught, the punishment is not really what it should be. So yes, maybe the car must go to a paid parking with cameras. It is not perfect, but perhaps better.

After all that, we came to health and lifestyle balance, which sounds calm after burned cars, but maybe it is the same question in another way. How do we not burn everything? How do we keep something steady?

For me, balance is between work, the mind, eating, sleeping, not being too stressed, and doing something with the body. Good eating habits. Maybe eight hours of sleep. Some sport. Or even an activity that makes you happy, like music. It does not have to be extreme. It must fit your life.

I like running the most, depending on the situation. That morning, before I started working, I ran seven kilometres. The weather was nice, sunny, not cold, and I had to motivate myself at the beginning. That is always the hardest part. Starting. But after I finished, even if the last kilometres were not so easy, I felt relaxed. The day could start. I felt light, proud, a little calmer inside.

I also like cycling, especially with the e-bike because then you can see new landscapes without suffering too much. And the garden helps too. Working there makes the mind free. You think about other things. Also, the garden does not wait for you. Nobody will do it in your place. It is the same with cleaning the house. Nobody else comes magically to do that.

Fruitloop and I laughed about this, because a clean house is a nice feeling, but it is never really finished. You clean the kitchen, then it is time to cook, and suddenly the kitchen is not clean anymore. Her husband had just cleaned, and then she started dinner. He came in and said, “But I just cleaned. What happened?” Yes. That is the house. You clean, you cook, you clean again.

Fruitloop and I laughed about this, because a clean house is a nice feeling, but it is never really finished.

Sleep is another part of balance, and I know very well when I do not sleep, I hate it. Sometimes my husband breathes too loudly in the night, especially when we have gone out. He falls asleep in one second, and I lie there, unable to concentrate on myself, unable to sleep. And when you go out late but know you must do something the next day, that is also hard. But if the evening was good, if there are good memories, then you can find a balance between being tired and being happy that you went.

Still, when we get older, recovery is not the same. Our daughters can go through the night and be fine the next day. We cannot. Not really.

With food and exercise, I try to keep both in my mind. I like eating. I like chocolate. I like ice cream. I like good things. So I eat them. But I know I must also move. At lunch, we always have vegetables or something like that. I like sugar, but I do not eat bars of chocolate all day. I prefer to appreciate the sweet thing, not overdo it.

The evening before, I had wanted a Snickers ice cream. It was late, and once I started thinking about it, that was it. I could not replace it with a salad. If the mind wants ice cream, salad is not the answer. So I ate it. Afterwards, I felt guilty because it was just before bed and there would be no movement after. But also, it does not happen every day. And if I move during the day, if I run, walk, clean, take the stairs at work, then the body has a better metabolism. It finds its balance.

Fruitloop reminded me of Belgium and the chocolate factory, where I also felt guilty. I think she knows me now. Chocolate appears, guilt comes also, but not for long.

Exercise helps me with more than the body. It helps me sleep. It helps my mind. If my daughters make me nervous or angry in the morning after I have run, I can stay more quiet. I have already taken some stress out of myself. I am proud because I did it. That is also important. Not proud like, look at me, I am a champion. Just proud because I did what I said I would do.

I do not run every day. My plan was not to run again the next morning, but on Friday. I try two or three times a week, and I organize it in my mind. It is not good for me to run one day and then again the next. I need a break. Seven kilometres is not much for some people, I know. Sometimes I even say it is a shame. But for me it is enough, and I am happy with it.

Fruitloop told me about her Color Run, five kilometres, last November. She finished it and realized she needed to exercise more. Then life happened. And then winter came, rain came, the place where she ran was muddy and underwater, and after that it was too cold in the mornings. So she said after winter she would start again. I understood that very well. It is always easy to say, “I will start on Monday.” She has an inside joke with her husband – “We will start on Monday, but we do not know which Monday”.

She prefers to run alone because with groups, the times and dates do not always fit. I agree. Running is easy like that. You need nobody. Only motivation, which is already difficult enough. Tennis is different. For tennis you always need someone else.

Then we started speaking about people who do not stop at seven kilometres. Fruitloop told me about the Comrades Marathon in South Africa, about ninety kilometres of running. I could not imagine it. Ninety kilometres. And then I thought about my brother-in-law. He is fifty-seven, and he runs extreme mountain races. Last year he did the Swiss Peaks, more than seven hundred kilometres. Seven hundred. In the mountains, with snow sometimes even in summer, sleeping one hour here and one hour there. Before, it was “only” three hundred and sixty kilometres in one week. Now it is seven hundred in two weeks. Only. We laughed at that word. Only.

He has no wife, no children. Running is his passion. He trains every weekend and does many competitions. He has a very strong mind, that is true. But when I speak about children, he is not really interested. Only his competitions. So when I say I ran seven kilometres, I cannot speak with him about sport. Seven kilometres next to seven hundred feels like nothing. But also, maybe my seven kilometres belong to my life, and his seven hundred belong to his.

Fruitloop told me about long cycling events in South Africa too, from Johannesburg to Cape Town, something like one thousand two hundred kilometres, with people carrying their own things and sleeping a little in open places. No assistance. Then mountain bike races, gravel bikes, e-bikes in different categories, men, women, age groups. My nephews have bike shops, so I know about gravel bikes. They put publicity everywhere now. It is very fashionable.

We spoke about Iron Man too. Swimming, cycling, running, cut-off times, all in one day. I had the feeling more and more people are interested in extreme sports now. I do not know why. I would be interested to understand it, but I am not interested to do it. I do sport for myself. I do not need to prove anything to anyone.

And I am not sure all this extreme sport is really balance. If you ask those people, they will probably say yes. But from outside, I am not sure. There is so much pressure. Special food, training, selection races, proving you can do the next one. My brother-in-law has almost nothing else in his life. If he broke a leg, or had a health problem, what would happen in his mind? That worries me a little. If everything is built on one thing, what happens when that one thing stops?

Fruitloop follows a South African runner on Instagram, Gerda Steyn, a woman who wins the Comrades again and again. She lives in Switzerland and trains there, in the mountains, then comes back and wins. She has won Comrades five times and Two Oceans seven times. She runs three times a day sometimes. Twenty kilometres, thirty kilometres, ten kilometres. Rain, sun, snow, she runs. She even quit her job. That is her life now.

It is impressive. Really. But also, I wonder. What if she loses? What if she is injured? What is left then? Maybe that is my question about balance. Not whether you can do something amazing, but whether you are still okay if you cannot do it tomorrow.

Once, more than ten years ago, my husband and I went running after work. It was not planned, but we ended up doing twenty kilometres in the forest, up and down. Usually we did ten at most. At the end I could not walk properly. I had pain everywhere and needed medicine. The next day we went on holiday, and I still remember my body saying, no, this was too much. It was one time and the last time. Now I am happy with seven.

Fruitloop remembered her first big cycling surprise. She was used to ten or fifteen kilometres, and a friend invited her for twenty. They rode far, took shortcuts through farms, reached a coffee shop, and by the time they came home it was seventy kilometres. It was summer, hot, dusty, with sunburn and wind that was sometimes not even cool, just warm. She came home, showered, and went straight to bed in the middle of the day. Her mother had to wake her to eat. She was finished. But later she recovered and did longer rides, even ninety kilometres, because the group was good and nobody left anyone behind.

That is also balance, I think. Not only the kilometres, but who is with you, whether you are cared for, whether you can stop, whether you come home still yourself.

At the end, the music outside had become quiet. My daughter and her friend were eating ice cream, and I said I would eat some too. Fruitloop told me to enjoy it, not feel guilty. And I thought, yes, it is a good time. I ran this morning. I have the balance.

So I ate the ice cream.

Not as a reward, exactly. Not as a failure either.

Just because sometimes the body runs seven kilometres, the sun is warm, the daughter has finished her exams, the house is full of small sounds, and an ice cream is simply there.

source

The Pineapple

Puzzles, and Malibu: Finding My Balance in a Busy Life

By Babette

Some days begin with coffee and a clear plan. Other days begin with stress.

When Fruitloop asked me how I was doing, my answer came quickly: stressed. Work had been particularly challenging. The number of orders wasn’t the problem. It was everything else. Customer questions, complaints, declarations of conformity, customs paperwork, and all the little tasks that seem to arrive at exactly the wrong moment.

To make things even more complicated, I still had customs declarations to complete for two customers in Switzerland. One shipment looked simple enough, but the second could easily turn into several pages of paperwork. Everything had to be entered into the customs portal before two o’clock so that I could receive the export documents the following morning and hand the shipment over to the freight forwarder. As I explained all this, Fruitloop simply listened while I tried to untangle the mess in my head.

Luckily, not everything in life is customs declarations and customer complaints.

A few days earlier, Fruitloop had sent a list of future discussion topics. As I looked through them, a few immediately stood out. Active rest appealed to me because it perfectly described one of my favourite hobbies: building puzzles. In fact, my next puzzle is already waiting for me. Another topic focused on finding rest in a busy life, something that feels especially relevant when balancing work, children, household responsibilities, and everything else that fills a calendar.

The day’s discussion focused on relationship balance. Fruitloop reminded me that relationships aren’t only about marriage. They include family, friends, colleagues, children, and everyone we interact with.

When she asked who was easiest to talk to in my family, the answer was simple: my middle sister.

I have two sisters and two brothers. Although I am usually considered the middle child, both of my sisters are older than me. My middle sister and I speak almost every Sunday. We talk about everything. Looking back, I probably shared more with her than I ever did with my mother. Boyfriends, problems, worries, life decisions—she was always the person I turned to.

The conversation then moved to family life at home. When Fruitloop asked who makes me laugh the most, I thought about it for a moment. When the children were younger and learning to speak, they often said hilarious things without meaning to. Today, however, I would probably say my daughter. Sometimes it’s something she says, and sometimes it’s something she does. Either way, she can still make me laugh.

When the children were younger and learning to speak, they often said hilarious things without meaning to.

Work relationships can be just as important as family ones.

For me, the easiest colleagues to work with are those who listen carefully, take notes, and don’t require the same explanation ten times. I appreciate people who actively look for ways to help, answer the phone when it rings, and take initiative.

Fortunately, life is not all about work.

One of my closest friends and I enjoy sitting together in our open-plan dining area, talking about life. She usually starts with coffee, while I limit myself to one coffee in the morning and try to drink two litres of tea throughout the day. Later, we might switch to Malibu with pineapple juice, sparkling wine, or something equally relaxing.

We don’t have a fixed schedule for meeting. In fact, we recently spent part of our holiday in France with her family. I saw her again two weeks ago, but most of our visits happen whenever our calendars somehow line up. Her daughter and my son attended the same primary school class years ago, which helped create our friendship.

Interestingly, she is usually the one who makes the plans.

When Fruitloop asked why I rarely organise the meetings myself, my answer was simple: I don’t have time.

Still, she is a wonderful motivator. Recently she suggested that I call her whenever I go for a walk. I promised I would, although my motivation for walking hasn’t been very strong lately.

One thing that definitely motivates me is playing darts.

This week I attended a tournament that started at one o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t finish until after nine in the evening. It was pure me time.

Twenty-eight players competed, divided into several groups. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it beyond the qualifying round. I lost several matches and won one. My very first game was against a player from my own team, which wasn’t ideal. However, the story improved during training the following day.

About thirty minutes before training ended, one of the stronger players announced that he needed a “victim” for a practice match. To my surprise, he pointed directly at me.

I accepted the challenge.

And then I won.

That made everyone laugh, including me.

Although I dream of reaching the semi-finals or even a final one day, I know I still have a lot of work to do before I reach that level. For now, simply improving and enjoying the game is enough. League matches will start again in September, and the tournament schedule should arrive in July.

One part of the conversation made me smile.

Fruitloop asked what I would do if the children wanted to attend a tournament with me.

I told her I would explain that it would be boring for them. Sitting for hours watching people playing dart matches isn’t exactly every child’s dream day out. In fact, my daughter asked recently if she could come along, and I told her no.

That tournament was my me time.

Fruitloop agreed completely. She reminded me that relationship balance also means knowing when to step away for a while. Taking a few hours for yourself doesn’t make you selfish. It allows you to recharge, return with more energy, and be fully present for the people you care about.

By the end of our conversation, I felt a little lighter.

The workload was still waiting for me. The customs declarations still had to be completed. The customers would still have questions. But there would also be puzzles waiting to be built, dart matches to play, friends to meet, and perhaps even a glass of Malibu with pineapple juice on the terrace.

And sometimes, finding balance is simply remembering that all those things matter too.

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The Pineapple

I Am Not the Loudest Person in the Room

By Alexander

The first picture in my head was not the training room.

It was the flight.

That sounds simple, maybe a little strange, but it is true. When The Mayor asked me what I saw first when I thought about the training in Belgium, I did not see the trainer, the schedule, the people, or the room. I saw myself travelling with hand luggage and my laptop. I saw the airport, the plane, the feeling of being on a business trip.

For me, this is still special.

Normally, when I fly somewhere, I fly with my family. Then the feeling is different. The laptop stays at home. Work is not in my head in the same way. You go on holiday, you look after your family, you have your bags, maybe toys, maybe snacks, maybe all the small things you need when you travel with a child. It is more relaxed, but also full in another way.

A business flight is different. You have your hand luggage, your laptop, your documents, your thoughts. You sit in the airplane and maybe you work a little. I did this before on a trip to England, and I remember thinking: this is interesting. Maybe from the outside it is nothing special. A flight is a flight. But for me it was special because I was travelling for work. Somebody was paying me to fly to another place because I had a task there.

Yes, right. That still feels a little special.

This time I fly from Prague to Brussels. Munich would also be possible, and the driving time is almost the same, around two hours. But Prague is cheaper, the parking is cheaper, the airport is smaller, and the departure time is better. There are also no roadworks on the way, or at least this is not the problem. So I choose Prague. It is practical. It makes sense.

The Mayor asked if I was prepared for the training. And here I had to smile a little, because the honest answer was: not really.

I had the information. It was not that nobody sent it to me. I had emails. I just had not looked at everything yet. I knew I would fly to Brussels. I knew someone would pick me up. I knew we would drive to the hotel. I guessed that maybe the next day there would be a visit somewhere. But I did not know exactly where the training was. In a company building? In a hotel? I had to check.

The Mayor became a little worried. I could hear it.

He knows that normally I prepare myself before I go somewhere. When I visit customers, I look at the company. I make notes. I think about the person. I try to understand how they tick. I do not like to arrive empty. For me, preparation is part of respect.

But this felt different.

For the training, we were told that we did not have to prepare anything special. We should come, listen, and give our full attention. We were also told not to use mobile phones or laptops during the training. I understand this. Full attention is important. But no, I do not think I will give my phone to somebody before I enter a room. I can leave it in my pocket. I can be disciplined.

The training is about a new CRM system. In simple words, it is a program we have to feed with information when we travel to customers. I already know CRM from an earlier job, and there it was very easy. So in my head I already had one question: are we making this bigger than it is?

Maybe I am wrong. I am open to that. But sometimes systems are introduced like they are the solution for everything, and then in real life you still need your Excel files because the system does not have all the features you need. Then the work does not become less. It becomes more. You work in the CRM, and you work in your own lists, because that is the only way you can work really well.

I hope this system helps me. I really do. I hope we have fewer lists, not more. I hope it is easy. For me, a good system must be clear in the first few seconds. Where can I find the customers? Where can I write my customer report? Where is the information I need when I am on the road? If it is too complicated, it is not good.

I hope this system helps me. I really do. I hope we have fewer lists, not more. I hope it is easy. For me, a good system must be clear in the first few seconds. Where can I find the customers? Where can I write my custom

Salespeople do not need a system that looks impressive in a meeting. We need a system that works on a normal day.

Still, when I thought about the trip, the training itself was not the most important thing for me. The most important thing was meeting the other salespeople.

I am happy to see people from other countries. I hope there is time to speak with them, maybe in the evening, maybe with a beer. I want to know how they work. What are their customers like? What priorities do they have? What routines do they use? Maybe someone from Italy works in a very different way from someone in Germany. The mentality is different. The market is different. The way people talk, decide, trust, and sell can be different.

This interests me.

Not because I want to copy everything. I do not think like this. But maybe somebody has a good idea. Maybe somebody has a good routine. Maybe I hear one sentence and six months later I understand why it was useful.

In sales, you learn every day. I have done this job for five years now, and I still think there are always points you can do better. You never finish learning people. You never finish learning situations.

The Mayor asked me if there was pressure in the room, maybe competition, because I would meet other salespeople. I do not feel it like this. I am quite relaxed. I am not going there to be the loudest person in the room.

I am an observer.

When I enter a room, I see very fast who is loud, who asks many questions, who likes to be present. That is easy to see. But the quiet people, you have to look more closely. Sometimes they are quiet because their English is not so good. Sometimes they need more time. Sometimes they are thinking. Sometimes they understand more than everybody thinks.

I know this because I am also more on the quieter side. When I have a question, I ask it. I am not afraid of that. But I am not the energy bundle in the room. I am not the main clown. I do not need to fill every silence.

Maybe this is also emotional balance for me. To know where I stand in a room. To not force myself to be someone else. To listen first, to watch, and then to speak when there is something to say.

The Mayor provoked me a little. He said the picture he got was: I will go to Belgium and wait and see what happens.

And yes, that was right.

He did not like it completely. He could not say exactly why, but he felt I could be more proactive. Maybe write someone before. Maybe say, I hope we can have a beer or an espresso together. Maybe use the chance more actively.

I understood what he meant. And maybe he was right. But I also know myself. At this moment, before the trip, I was not so deep in the training yet. When the training starts, I am focused. Then I am there. Then I listen. Then I ask questions if I have them.

Before that, I was relaxed.

Maybe too relaxed? I do not know.

I had a plan for Wednesday. In the morning, I wanted to start with a workout, a one-hour run, because in the evening I would miss football training. Football is part of my rhythm, and when I cannot go, I like to replace it with something. After that, I would prepare my luggage, have a coffee, check my mails, maybe start my laptop. I wanted to finish most of my work the day before so Wednesday could be calm. I could not visit customers on the way to Prague because after thirty or forty kilometres I am already near the border, and on that side I have no customers.

So yes, maybe it was almost like a day off. A little work, a little sport, coffee, luggage, then the drive to the airport.

This is how I like to start a trip. Not with stress. Not with last-minute chaos. Calm.

We also talked about trainings from the past. Some parts I really do not like. Role plays, for example. I know they can help, but I do not like them. In one training, we were about twenty people, and we had to present ourselves. There was a camera. They filmed us. After that, we all watched the video together and analyzed what was good and what was bad.

Hearing yourself on video is horrible.

It helps, yes. But it is painful. Both things are true.

When I was new in sales, I was very open to all these trainings. I learned from every person and from every topic. Some people who had worked in sales for twenty or twenty-five years said, “You do not need this in the real job.” They said you do not need role plays. But I think sometimes people say this because they do not like the discomfort.

And maybe this is also something I have learned: discomfort is not always useless. Sometimes it is the place where you see yourself more clearly.

I do not like being filmed. I do not like hearing my own voice. I do not like artificial situations where everybody watches you. But I also know that I can learn from it. The problem is not always the training. Sometimes the problem is that the training shows you something you would rather not see.

With Belgium, I was not nervous. I was not skeptical in a heavy way. I was simply relaxed. I thought, let’s see what comes.

Could the CRM training have been done online? Maybe, yes. The system could probably be explained on Teams. You could sit at home, listen, click, ask questions, and learn by doing. But bringing people together has another purpose. It is not only about the program. It is about the people. It is about the conversations around the training, in the breaks, in the evening, in small moments when you understand how someone else works.

That part cannot really happen in the same way online.

The funny thing is that when The Mayor started with emotional balance, I did not first think about emotions. I thought about airports, roadworks, luggage, CRM, Excel files, beer with other salespeople, and a run before the flight.

But maybe this is exactly where emotional balance lives for me.

It is not always a big feeling. It is not always a deep conversation. Sometimes it is choosing the smaller airport because it makes the day easier. Sometimes it is finishing your work one day earlier so you can travel calmly. Sometimes it is accepting that you are not the loudest person in the room. Sometimes it is knowing that you can be relaxed now and focused later.

And sometimes it is trusting that even when you do not know exactly what will happen, you will arrive, look around, listen carefully, and find your place.

source

The Pineapple

Energy Is Not Always Comfort

By Fabrice

We began with a simple question.

On a normal morning, what gives us the first little push of energy?

Fabrice did not begin with poetry. He began with reality.

The alarm clock.

At 4:45 in the morning, the alarm clock does not give him energy. It attacks him. He hates it. He needs it, of course, because without it he does not know where the day will go, but love is not the word. The Mayor immediately decided that the alarm clock needed therapy. If an object is hated by almost everybody, perhaps the problem is not with us. Perhaps the alarm clock itself has serious issues.

So we added a new Brida idea to the list: therapy for alarm clocks.

After the alarm clock comes the real energy.

Coffee.

Then silence.

Fabrice needs that order. First the terrible sound. Then the coffee. Then silence. And after that, when he is in his lorry, he needs music. Not soft, romantic music about houses and the good life. He needs real energy. His panel is wide, but his favourites come from the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Creedence Clearwater Revival. AC/DC. Last year he went to an AC/DC concert, and it was very good.

That made perfect sense to us. Of course AC/DC gives him energy. A man who walks 100 kilometres does not begin his day with sleepy piano music. He begins with coffee, silence, and then the road.

We asked him about young Fabrice in Cleebourg, running around outside. Where did that energy come from?

He said it was yesterday.

Not really yesterday, of course. More like fifty years ago. But in his mind the boy is still close. The energy came from friends, games, nature, freedom, curiosity, and adventure. We were curious, he said. Curiosity became adventure. Adventure became freedom. Freedom happened outside, in nature, with friends.

They played football and other games. They built little wooden houses from whatever they could find. The Mayor explained that in Australia such a thing might be called a cubby house. In England, perhaps a Wendy house. In South Africa, Janita said it depends. If it is in a tree, it is a treehouse. A Wendy house can also be something in the backyard, almost like a second residence for a child after he has destroyed his own room and needs somewhere else to continue the operation.

We stayed with the question of childhood energy.

What part of that young boy is still inside him today?

Adventure, Fabrice said. Curiosity. Freedom. Nature.

The games are a little less now. Not computer games. Those are not his thing. Card games, perhaps, but not poker. What remains strongest is freedom and adventure. And nature.

When he walks in the forest or in the fields, the silence relaxes him. He loves walking in the forest in every season: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Nature rests him. Walking rests him. Silence rests him.

At the moment, after the 100 kilometre walk, he has not started walking again because of the problem with his feet. He has gone swimming instead, and he planned to go swimming again the next evening. He thought perhaps the following week he could begin walking again.

Then came the question none of us could avoid.

Would he do another one?

He is thinking about the Dodentocht, the Death March in Belgium, possibly in August. He was not completely sure of the date, but he was already thinking.

The first 100 kilometres may not be the last.

Fabrice said it clearly. It was the first. He thinks it is not the last.

When we asked what gives energy back to him after a very long working day, he surprised us.

Speaking English, he said.

The English course gives him energy. Walking gives energy. Family gives energy. His wife gives energy. Sleep gives energy. And then, in the evening, there is another kind of energy: going under the cherry tree.

He was going to pick cherries.

Not only to eat them. To put them in a barrel and make schnapps.

This opened a completely new door.

Fabrice has cherry trees. He has mirabelle trees. He has quince. In France, he explained, if you have trees, or even if you rent trees, you can distil. You need the fruit and the equipment. He is not the professional. Someone else may be professional. Fabrice is the amateur. But he knows what he is doing.

The cherries go into a barrel. Later, in winter, when it is cold, the schnaps is ready. He does not drink much, but he tastes it.

Janita, sitting in South Africa, announced that she needed it now. Winter for us, summer for her, but need is need. The Mayor suggested sending a bottle through the internet, which may become the next great Brida technology project.

The Mayor suggested sending a bottle through the internet, which may become the next great Brida technology project.

For Fabrice, picking fruit is work and rest at the same time. It can be hard work: cutting grass, cutting trees, looking after the land. But he loves it. When he picks cherries or other fruit, he feels happy. It gives him energy back.

Then the conversation turned to mirabelles. The Mayor has trees nearby, but they belong to the Power, not to him. Last year Fabrice picked mirabelles there because nobody else wanted them. The Mayor protested that this year he would arrive first, because he makes jam. Fabrice was calm. He has enough. His mother has a tree. His neighbour has more. Altogether, there are many mirabelle trees in his world.

The Mayor became depressed.

Fruitloop pointed out the obvious: now he knows where to get fruit for jam.

We decided that mirabelles must go onto the next Spud Meeting list.

The deeper question was movement.

Fabrice has a life with many roads: Cleebourg, Germany, military places, driving, walking. Does he feel more alive when he is moving?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

He is constantly moving left, right, behind, forward. Sometimes he rests at home, perhaps under the canopy, but most of the time he is in movement. His problem is simple: one day has only 24 hours, and that is too short.

The Mayor took this to its logical conclusion. What will Fabrice do one day at the gate of Saint Peter?

Fabrice said he will not ring the bell.

Perhaps he will simply walk through. Or perhaps he will turn back. The Mayor joked that maybe he wants to go downstairs. Fabrice said his friends are not down there. In the end, we reached a strange theological compromise. If he goes to hell, the day after, they will go to Saint Peter in combination.

And of course, that brought us back to AC/DC.

Highway to Hell.

It had to go on Spotify.

Then we asked whether he thinks better when his body is doing something.

Yes.

When he walks, he thinks better. He thinks about the day, relationships, friends, everything. Walking is therapy for him. When he sits at home in a chair, many thoughts arrive together. They mix. It is not good. But when he walks, the thoughts come one after another, more slowly. Walking makes thinking easier. When he climbs a steep path, when the way is hard, the body and the thinking work together.

It helps him clear the mind.

That led us to tiredness.

What kind of tiredness feels good?

At first the question needed some translation. Was he fit after the 100 kilometres? Of course not. He joked, but the point was clear. Tiredness after driving his lorry is not so good. Tiredness after working with the fruit is good. Tiredness after the 100 kilometre walk was very, very good. Positive tiredness. Hard, yes. Very hard. But positive.

The only real problem was his feet. The pain was in the soles of the feet. Without that problem, he felt the walk was very good.

The smell was another problem.

After 100 kilometres, he smelled intense. Like a rat. Or perhaps like a skunk. Marion said nothing. She knew him.

At the start of the 100 kilometre walk, the strongest feeling was not confidence and not fear. It was more like: let us see what happens. He wanted to test himself. He wanted to know if he could do it. That uncertainty made it exciting. He did not know before the walk whether he could do 100 kilometres. Now he can say that he has done it.

When did the walk become serious?

For Fabrice, it was serious from the start.

Not after 25 kilometres. Not only at the end. From the first kilometre to the last, the whole trail was serious. This told us something important about him. When he does something, he takes it seriously from beginning to end. It is the same with work, with walking, with speaking to Janita, with picking cherries. Everything matters.

But serious does not mean joyless.

We said this together. Serious and fun are not opposites. We can have fun and still take something seriously. Janita had said in the operations meeting that the most important thing is to have fun. Fabrice agreed. Serious fun is possible.

That may be one of the best descriptions of Brida itself.

The difficult moment came between 50 and 60 kilometres.

He was down. Very down. He asked himself why he should not stop. But then he answered himself. He had said he would go from beginning to end. He had already done 50 or 55 kilometres. There were 45 or 50 still ahead. It was around five or six in the morning, the hard time, the military time, the night-shift time, the time when the body wants sleep and the mind must decide.

The Mayor remembered working night shifts in a hotel. Between three and four in the morning, the body says stop. Coffee helps, but the time is hard. Fabrice remembered army guard duty too. Sleeping one or two hours, waking for two hours, sleeping again. It is a strange rhythm.

He also remembered being young in the army. Friday night disco. Saturday night disco. Sunday night disco. Then Monday morning at five or six, going back to the barracks, changing clothes, and jogging eight or ten kilometres. Sometimes there were little souvenirs left along the route from the weekend’s adventures.

No wonder, the Mayor said, that they may not want him upstairs.

Then we asked what his feet would say if they could speak after 100 kilometres.

Fabrice did not need a full sentence.

One word.

A very strong word.

His feet hated him. They would say it in French, German, or English, but it was still only one word. The Mayor suggested that next time the feet could improve their vocabulary and add an adjective: a big one, a small one, something more descriptive. For now, we left the feet with their single-word complaint.

The question of shoes and socks came next. Fabrice does not know yet whether the problem came from the shoes, the socks, or something else. In the next week or two, he planned to go to a shop and buy other trekking shoes. He has good socks, but he will also ask about other socks. He knows he must test them. Maybe by the end of July he will know what works better. New shoes need time. They must be broken in. His feet will need cream. A lot of cream.

Then we returned to training.

He had started training only ten weeks before the walk. What made him continue when training was not easy?

The answer was one word.

Stubbornness.

That is Fabrice. He said it may be the word that describes him. He is stubborn. He also joked that he has two brains in his arms and one muscle in his head. Or perhaps the other way around. In any case, the meaning was clear. He often works with the brain and only a little with the muscle, but stubbornness is part of him.

Curiosity was also there. Adventure was there. He wanted to see whether he could do it or not. Now he knows he can.

We asked what would have happened if he had stopped at 60 kilometres and called Marion to say he was finished and wanted to go home.

Again, stubbornness.

He would have gone back. He knew it was a 100 kilometre challenge. At 60 kilometres, his legs and feet were still more or less okay. It was just a low point. He told himself that if he continued, it would get better. After 70 kilometres, it was better. Later, when Marion was there and he had 83 kilometres behind him, there were only 17 left. At that point, he could have crawled. He had to finish.

When he had the 100 kilometre goal in his head, normal days did change in a practical way. After work he went home, changed clothes, and trained whether he wanted to or not. Four or five days a week he walked. Two or three days he swam. One day he rested. For the last two months before the trail, six days a week had some kind of training.

He would say to himself: you must train.

Stubbornness helped. But it is not always good. It depends on the situation. He knows this too. His muscles are sometimes faster than his brain. He can be stubborn and impulsive. Marion is the opposite. She is diplomatic. The Mayor said she has to be, because she works in human resources. Perhaps one day they should change jobs: she drives the lorry and he works in HR.

Fabrice rejected this immediately.

No, thank you.

Human resources is not for him.

Difficult things give him more energy than easy things because difficult things are a challenge. A difficult thing asks for more energy, more investment, more muscle, more brain. But then the feedback is also energy. When he brings more energy, he gets more energy back. Easy things are normal. Difficult things return something stronger.

He is tired afterwards, yes. But it is good.

Finally, we asked what the 100 kilometres showed him at 59.

It showed him that it is possible.

He made 100 kilometres. Now he wants to make it in less time. His next goal is under 24 hours. The current benchmark he knows is 18 hours and 25 minutes, but that man is 30 years younger than him. So for now, 24 hours is the goal.

After that, who knows?

Maybe 120 kilometres. Maybe something else. He has a small problem with his knee. He hopes to lose many kilos. And why not a little triathlon one day? Not an Ironman. Not even half an Ironman for now, because that would mean 90 kilometres of cycling, swimming, and a half marathon. But perhaps a little triathlon.

Maybe when he is 70.

The Mayor told him he should speak with Ralf. Ralf’s wife is training for a half Ironman, and she is 54. Fabrice replied that he is 59 and has a lot of kilos. The Mayor said kilos come and go out the window. Fabrice said the window is closed and the kilos are still there.

So now we have another task.

Open the window.

By the end, we understood that energy for Fabrice is not one thing.

It is not only coffee, though coffee is essential.

It is not only music, though AC/DC clearly helps.

It is not only silence, though silence gives him peace.

It is not only walking, though walking helps him think.

It is not only nature, though the forest relaxes him.

It is not only stubbornness, though stubbornness carried him through the low point between 50 and 60 kilometres.

It is also fruit trees, schnaps, mirabelles, cherries, Marion, serious fun, speaking English, childhood freedom, the road, the body, the mind, and the strange decision to keep going when stopping would be easier.

We learned that energy is not always comfort.

Sometimes energy is coffee after a hated alarm clock.

Sometimes it is silence before AC/DC.

Sometimes it is picking cherries after a long day.

Sometimes it is a steep path that slows the thoughts down.

Sometimes it is the positive tiredness after honest work.

Sometimes it is a pair of angry feet saying one terrible word in three languages.

And sometimes it is a man of 59, standing beyond 100 kilometres, already thinking about how to do it better next time.

source

Before we knew it, the conversation had already begun.

We arrived at the table carrying more than coffee cups and calendars. Rosii arrived carrying a spinning room.

She described those strange moments when standing up from bed felt like stepping onto a merry-go-round she never agreed to ride. Even lying down could make the room tilt and swirl. Her mobile phone had rung from the far side of the room that morning, forcing her into a rapid rescue mission before she was fully awake, and her head had responded with a firm objection. It wasn’t happening every day, but often enough to become worrying.

Nathalie listened carefully, as she always does. Perhaps it was sugar. Perhaps it was an ear problem. Perhaps it was something entirely different. None of us were doctors, she reminded us, which felt like a wise disclaimer before the unofficial international medical panel could get too enthusiastic. Rosii admitted that her stretching teacher had already delivered a similar verdict. He had become quite concerned when she struggled during exercises that involved lying down and standing up. Driving while dizzy, he pointed out, was not a hobby worth developing.

As the conversation unfolded, another possibility emerged. Perhaps the body sometimes keeps score of things the mind is too busy to notice.

Nathalie reflected on her own experience of headaches that appeared during weekends rather than workdays. During the week she could power through almost anything. Then the weekend arrived, life slowed down, and suddenly her body had opinions. Rosii nodded. In two weeks she would be on holiday. Maybe her body had already seen the calendar and was trying to negotiate an early surrender.

Because beneath the dizziness sat something else: exhaustion.

Alongside her normal work, Rosii is currently completing mandatory training courses. Every Friday brings online classes, endless reading, long videos, and assignments that require recording videos between four and eight minutes long. Not only must she appear in the videos, but another person must appear too. For someone who would happily choose “just doing the job” over “studying how to do the job,” this has become a significant challenge.

Fortunately, she is not carrying it alone. Two colleagues, technology experts and seemingly part-time superheroes, have been helping everyone navigate the technical side of the assignments. Even so, the workload feels relentless. Work. Study. Reading. Videos. Homework. Repeat. As Rosii put it, twenty-four hours no longer feels like enough.

Then, right on cue, the Mayor arrived.

Frank joined the conversation midway through Rosii’s description of her increasingly crowded life, immediately becoming both participant and target audience. Fruitloop cheerfully informed him that today’s topic was relationship balance and that some of his own questions would soon be used against him.

Balance, as it turned out, was already sitting quietly inside the conversation.

When asked which relationships felt most present in our minds, Nathalie spoke about living through her final month in Seoul. After four years in one apartment, she now finds herself in a completely different part of the city, preparing for a major transition. She and Cléa have temporarily moved into a small apartment in a neighbourhood where they are among very few foreigners. The familiar French expatriate community is suddenly distant. The move has left her feeling slightly disconnected, even while she remains in contact through WhatsApp with family and friends scattered across the world.

When asked which relationships felt most present in our minds, Nathalie spoke about living through her final month in Seoul.

June has become a month of birthdays, giving her many reasons to reconnect. Soon she will leave for Tokyo with Cléa before travelling to Geneva to reunite with her sister.

Rosii’s thoughts went somewhere different. She spoke about a friend she had worked with decades ago. Their friendship now stretches back thirty years. They do not see one another often, but the connection remains strong. The previous day her friend had sent an old photograph and reminded her how special their friendship remains. There was something comforting in that story. Some friendships require constant maintenance. Others seem to survive quietly in the background like old trees with very deep roots.

Meanwhile, the Mayor reflected on the three women who currently dominate his life. According to him, they all possess remarkably similar goals and an equally impressive ability to ensure he follows the correct path. His role, apparently, is to absorb the pressure while pretending he has choices.

Balance takes many forms.

When we discussed the small daily signs that tell us a relationship is healthy, Nathalie spoke about something surprisingly simple. After several weeks in her new neighbourhood, local shopkeepers had begun recognising her. Smiles appeared. Greetings were exchanged. Tiny conversations emerged despite language barriers. These moments were not friendships, exactly, but they were connections. Sometimes balance arrives disguised as a smile from somebody who barely shares your language.

Rosii agreed from a different angle. For her, balance often arrives through WhatsApp. A message from a friend. A question from family. Somebody checking in simply because they care. She spoke warmly about her pregnant sister, who is expecting a baby girl named Stella. Even when they cannot see each other often, the messages keep the relationship alive.

The conversation then wandered into a particularly interesting corner: energy.

Who helps us feel most like ourselves?

To our collective surprise, the strongest answer was not a person at all.

It was solitude.

Nathalie spoke about spending an evening alone in Seoul and thoroughly enjoying it. Alone, she could walk where she wanted, see what she wanted, and simply be present without constant discussion. Rosii immediately agreed. Being with ourselves can be surprisingly restorative.

The Mayor agreed too, though with an important footnote.

After speaking with countless people during the week, he enjoys silence. Until he doesn’t. By Saturday afternoon, the quiet can become so complete that he starts wondering whether humanity has quietly disappeared. His cats provide company, although their conversational skills remain limited. They are excellent listeners, however, particularly when food is involved.

The discussion naturally moved toward imperfect relationships.

Had we ever experienced relationships that weren’t perfect but still worked?

Nathalie confessed that she generally distances herself from friendships that become unhealthy. She remembered one friend whose constant negativity eventually became too much to carry. Rosii recalled a similar colleague who seemed capable of finding a problem in every situation. Family, work, marriage—nothing escaped complaint. Sometimes, Rosii observed, we have no choice but to share space with negative people. In those cases, strategy becomes an important survival skill.

The Mayor then took a slightly different approach by identifying perhaps his longest-running imperfect relationship: the one with himself.

As an only child, he is comfortable in his own company. Yet occasionally he finds himself having difficult conversations with the person in the mirror. He and his alter ego do not always agree. Like any long-term relationship, it requires management.

Then came the Fruitloopy question.

What would happen if somebody close to us turned into a giant tree for a week?

Reasonable people might have ignored the question.

We embraced it.

Rosii would water the tree, care for it, and talk to it. Nathalie liked the idea too, particularly because the tree would finally be forced to listen without interrupting. The Mayor, meanwhile, discovered a metaphor hidden inside the absurdity.

A tree, after all, is something we lean against.

And perhaps that is what balance in relationships really means.

Not perfection.

Not agreement.

Not constant happiness.

Simply knowing that when we are weak, somebody else can be strong. Knowing that there is somebody—or perhaps several somebodies—we can lean against without fear of falling. The kind of connection that allows us to rest for a moment until we are ready to stand again.

By the end of the meeting, the spinning rooms, Korean neighbourhoods, old friendships, lonely weekends, negative colleagues, cats, AI management teams, and giant trees somehow all belonged to the same conversation.

Which feels very much like life itself.

Because balance rarely looks balanced while we are living it. It looks more like a collection of people carrying different weights at different times, occasionally leaning on one another when the load becomes too heavy.

And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps the strongest relationships are not the ones where nobody stumbles.

Perhaps they are simply the ones where somebody is there when we do.

source

The Pineapple

Cocktails, Lost Wallets, and the Friendship Loading Bar

By Sarah

When Fruitloop asked me how my weekend was, I didn’t even know where to start because it was so cool. Saturday night, I worked with my friends at a cocktail bar during a party. The deal was amazing: after we worked, we could have free drinks and free food. Of course, that made everything even better. We made cocktails with syrup and sparkling water, and although I wasn’t very good at explaining the ingredients in English, it tasted great anyway.

The party was incredible. I danced, laughed, and stayed out until around three o’clock in the morning. It was really warm, and everyone was having fun. The next day, I slept until two in the afternoon, which sounds terrible, except I had dancing at three. That was the moment I became stressed. I practically threw clothes on, rushed out of the house, grabbed something to eat in the village, and made it to the dance event just in time.

The best part was my outfit. Frank had sent Fruitloop a video, so she had already seen it. She told me she loved my flower headband and hairstyle. I was very proud because I had done my own hair. All the girls had matching hairstyles, and I thought we looked really pretty. It was warm and uncomfortable at times, but it was worth it because the whole day was so much fun.

After talking about my weekend, Fruitloop introduced the topic of relationship balance. At first, I thought it meant balancing time with friends and time alone. She explained that it was much bigger than that. It includes relationships with friends, family, teachers, and even romantic partners. According to her, relationship balance is about sharing support, energy, trust, and effort. Sometimes relationships are easy, and sometimes people fight, but strong relationships can survive disagreements because people work together to solve problems.

When she asked about my social battery, I realized I don’t really notice it running out when I’m with people. I’m very sociable, so I can stay around others for a long time. The real problem comes when I get home. Suddenly, I don’t want to talk to anyone anymore. I just want to go to bed and exist quietly for a while. While I’m with friends, I can simply listen, laugh at jokes, and enjoy being there without talking much.

We also talked about feeling appreciated. For me, one of the biggest signs of friendship is trust. When a friend tells me something personal, I feel honoured because it means they trust me. That makes me feel valued. With my parents, it’s often the small things. My favourite example is when my mom sees a Kinder Bueno in a shop and buys it for me. It isn’t about the chocolate itself. It’s about knowing she thought of me. As for teachers, I appreciate the ones who smile. That sounds simple, but not every teacher does. French teachers have a reputation, and Fruitloop found it very funny when I admitted that some of them are not exactly sunshine and happiness.

The conversation moved to friendship conflicts. I remembered one friend I stopped talking to for a couple of months. We eventually became friends again, and for a while our friendship was even stronger than before. However, later the friendship ended completely. Looking back, I think that experience taught me something important: I don’t want bad friends in my life.

Then I accidentally performed a magic trick by clicking the wrong button and turning off my camera. Fruitloop laughed and said, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” Honestly, that was probably my greatest achievement of the meeting.

When she asked if I had friends who could cheer me up on a bad day, I immediately remembered the disaster with my wallet. A few weeks earlier, I had gone to a fair with friends. Somehow, I lost my wallet, which contained my money, bank card, identity card, and other important documents. It happened around eleven at night, and I completely panicked. I was crying because I was so stressed.

What I remember most is how my friends reacted. Three of them stayed with me while others searched around the fairgrounds. They weren’t experts at comforting people. In fact, they were hilariously bad at it. But they tried. They kept telling me everything would be okay, bought me a hot chocolate, and distracted me from the situation. Eventually, I stopped thinking about the problem for a little while and started laughing again.

They kept telling me everything would be okay, bought me a hot chocolate, and distracted me from the situation.

Unfortunately, I never found the wallet. I had to replace my identification cards and worry about travel documents for my upcoming trip to the Canary Islands. Thankfully, I already had my passport. Looking back, I think the experience taught me several lessons: close your bag properly, keep important documents safe, and maybe don’t carry your entire life around in one small bag.

The discussion about relationships continued when Fruitloop asked what I had learned from working with my mother. That one was easy. At first, my mom didn’t really trust me to handle tasks on my own. Every time I tried to help, she wanted to do everything herself. I kept telling her, “Let me try!” Eventually, I proved that I could manage orders, organize things, and do the work properly. Now she trusts me more and gives me more responsibility.

Of course, there was also the cake incident. One day I ignored her advice while baking. The cake turned out horribly. She looked at me with the expression every mother dreams of making and said, “I told you so.” Unfortunately, she was right, and I had to admit it.

When Fruitloop asked about family members who make me feel loved, I immediately thought of my grandmother. She is absolutely hilarious. She complains about people in the family, but if we suggest speaking directly to them, she suddenly says, “No, no, don’t say anything!” Watching her do this is one of the funniest things ever.

We also talked about feeling misunderstood. That happens a lot during family dinners. Sometimes I share an opinion and immediately hear, “You’re too young to understand.” Apparently, being under eighteen means my thoughts occasionally disappear into another dimension. When that happens, I usually become quiet. Then, when they ask for my opinion later, I jokingly remind them that I’m “too young” to have one.

At the time of the lesson, Father’s Day was coming up. My brothers and I had bought a perfume gift set for our dad. I used part of my monthly allowance to contribute. I was also preparing myself mentally because I would be the only girl spending the day with my father and brothers. I had a feeling I would be asked to make salads and help with things. Fruitloop reminded me that it was Father’s Day, so I should probably behave myself and not unleash my “bad character.”

When the topic turned to stress, I realized my friends usually notice it before my parents do. If I tell my mom I’m stressed, she often says, “Don’t stress, Sarah. It’s okay.” My friends, especially classmates, can actually help with the problem. We compare work, ask questions, and support each other, which usually reduces the stress.

Another lesson came from a friendship experiment. I used to be the person who always suggested activities. One day my mom told me to stop initiating everything and see whether the other person would make an effort. She didn’t. That friendship eventually ended, and I realized that real friendships require effort from both sides.

Fruitloop then asked one of the most difficult questions of the day: would I rather have a fun friend or a reliable friend? At first, I said fun. But after discussing situations like losing my wallet or missing a bus, I changed my answer. Reliable friends are incredibly important. Still, I think the perfect friend is both fun and reliable.

One of my favourite memories came up when I described helping a best friend through a breakup. The moment she told me what happened, I called her and invited her over. We spent time in the swimming pool, watched films, and distracted her from the sadness. Sometimes people don’t need solutions. They just need company and a chance to breathe.

We also discussed whether friendships become easier or harder as people grow older. I think both are true. They become harder because people have jobs, families, responsibilities, and less free time. But they can also become easier because you understand people better and build deeper connections.

At the end of the lesson, Fruitloop introduced a funny idea called the Emotional Bank Account. If relationships were a real bank account, I think I would deposit love, good memories, energy, and advice. In return, I would hope to receive those same things back.

Then she asked what actions would fill a friendship loading bar like a video game. My answer was easy: listening to music together, going out together, having simple but memorable adventures, and enjoying each other’s company even when we’re doing absolutely nothing. Sometimes sitting on a bench in a park can create the best memories.

Finally, we played a game where friends became plants. My childhood best friend Axel was definitely a giant potato plant because he is hilarious and often seems to live on another planet. Josephine became the sunflower because she is bright, cheerful, and blonde. My newest close friend became the cactus. At first, people might think she is tough or distant, but once you get to know her, she is kind, caring, and wonderful inside.

By the end of the lesson, I had learned something important. Relationship balance isn’t about having perfect friendships or never arguing with family. It’s about trust, effort, kindness, support, and being there when someone loses a wallet, burns a cake, gets dumped, or simply needs a hot chocolate and a friend.

And honestly, that’s a pretty good investment.

source

The Pineapple

How to Maintain a Middle- Aged Human. Part 2

By Martin

The Martin Model – A Practical Guide, Written with Some Concern

Please handle with care.

This is the first piece of advice, and probably the most important one. I say this not because I am fragile in a dramatic way, but because the Martin model functions better when it is not rushed, shaken, deprived of coffee, overloaded with seriousness, or expected to behave like a perfectly maintained machine.

The system still works. There is humour, appetite, thought, music, and a reasonable amount of good advice available for other people. But for myself, the advice is sometimes more difficult to follow. That is why this manual is needed.

The first advice is about the morning. Do not create the rush that wakes you up by getting up too late because you were not awake enough to get up earlier. This is a clever but questionable system. It works, unfortunately, but it is not elegant. It creates movement, yes, but mostly through panic. A better solution has not yet been fully developed, but the manual strongly recommends further research.

The second advice is clear: do not allow anyone to deny you the first cup of coffee. Not even the coffee maker. Not even if there is no coffee left. This may sound unreasonable, but the first coffee is not only a drink. It is the official beginning of the day. Before that, I may look present, but I should not yet be considered fully available.

The third advice is to respect the power of delicious coffee and other treats. The word delicious is important. Normal coffee is useful, but delicious coffee brings a little beauty into the system. Treats also have their place. Not all of them will be approved by the stricter departments of the manual, but life cannot only be maintained by correct decisions. Sometimes morale must also be fed.

The fourth advice is to be honest about movement. The craving for treats is one of the most reliable movement programmes currently installed. Of course, this only happens rarely. Sometimes. More than sometimes. Often. Almost always. The manual is still checking the exact numbers, but it has already noticed that the path to something nice is walked with surprising determination.

The craving for treats is one of the most reliable movement programmes currently installed.

The fifth advice is about sitting. When the body sends the signal that it would be good to get up, listen to it. Getting up should happen with caution, yes, but not so much caution that the entire operation is cancelled. This is a known pattern. The body suggests movement, the mind agrees in principle, and then the committee for careful decisions keeps the human seated. This committee should not always win.

The sixth advice is to recognise the low-battery warning. When the head slowly moves towards the keyboard so that it does not fall too hard onto it, the situation is already advanced. This is not a subtle signal. At this point, the system needs rest, air, coffee, food, breathing, or possibly all of them. Continuing as if nothing is happening may lead to unusual typing, poor decisions, or a forehead-shaped contribution to the day.

The seventh advice is to stop ignoring the obvious signs. Get yourself checked out. Go to bed early enough. That is enough chocolate. These messages are not mysterious. They are not written in a difficult language. I know what they mean. The problem is not understanding. The problem is that part of the system treats them as suggestions from a department with limited power.

The eighth advice is to accept that the list of known bugs may be long. My test report is still being printed because the list of errors is endless. This does not mean disaster. It only means there is material. A human who has lived a little will produce a report. The important thing is not to panic when the printer keeps going. It may simply be doing its job.

The ninth advice is the emergency reset procedure, and it is the most beautiful one. As the title of the Garbage song says: the trick is to keep breathing. This is simple advice, but not small advice. When there is too much pressure, when the warning signs have been ignored, when the head is moving toward the keyboard, when the chocolate department has taken control, begin there. Keep breathing. Let the system remember that not everything has to be solved at once.

The tenth advice is to focus on the beautiful things in life whenever possible. This is not decoration. It is maintenance. The model functions better when it notices what is good, not only what is urgent. Beauty is not a luxury item in the manual. It is part of the weekly service plan.

The eleventh advice is more difficult: follow the good advice you like to give others. Giving advice is easy. Following it personally is an advanced function. But the system would probably improve if both operations were connected more often.

The final advice is the same as the first:

Please handle with care.

Give the Martin model coffee. Allow some treats, while pretending the official investigation into frequency is still ongoing. Notice when sitting has lasted too long. Read the warning signs about sleep, health checks, and chocolate before they become louder. Do not confuse caution with never moving. Do not wait until the head reaches the keyboard.

Look for the beautiful things. Use the advice you would kindly give to someone else. And when everything becomes too much, return to the emergency reset.

The trick is to keep breathing.

Please handle with care.

source

The Pineapple

Therapy for the Alarm Clock

By Janita Le Grange

An interesting idea emerged from a meeting we had today: “Therapy for the alarm clock.” Now, you are probably leaning back, sipping your coffee, and wondering why on earth a mechanical object would need a therapist. Well, think about it—everybody hates the alarm clock.

Whether it is set to wake you up at dawn for the school run or to drag you out of bed for work, the dreaded thing always starts its little singing and dancing ritual exactly when you don’t want it to. And the second it goes off, you are forced to ride an immediate, involuntary rollercoaster of emotions.

Anger comes first. Why do I have to get up right now?! I need more sleep! Then comes the regret. I really should have gone to bed earlier last night. Finally, sadness washes over you because you actually have to leave the absolute sanctuary of your warm, comfy bed to “embrace the day.” Honestly, the only thing I want to embrace at 6:00 AM is my pillow and my duvet!

The Daily Body Check

As you finally swing your legs out of bed, the mandatory morning body check begins. You scan from bottom to top, assessing the daily damage:

The Feet: Freezing. Absolute ice blocks. Where are my slippers? You slide them on.
The Knees: Ouch. Stiff. Just walk it off, Janita, just walk it off.
The Back: As you take a step, it hits you. What on earth did I do to my spine yesterday?
The Arms & Elbows: They feel fine… until you try to lift a laundry basket or a heavy kettle, and suddenly a random elbow decides to lock up.
The Neck & Head: Today? Yay! The neck is actually moving and the head doesn’t hurt. But the eyes are burning and probably bloodshot from a lack of sleep.

Other days, it’s the exact reverse—the head hurts, the neck is a brick, but the eyes are perfectly fine. I have officially come to terms with this daily lottery. I call it the “wrong side of 30-something.”

I know, I know, age is just a number. It’s the other lifestyle variables that stack the deck against us—stress, late nights, a chaotic schedule, not enough exercise, and those cozy but entirely disruptive nights sharing a single bed with my husband, a seven-year-old, and two very space-consuming dogs. It is not easy. But even with all of that, the ultimate villain remains the alarm clock.

The Winter Slump

Our school year here in South Africa kicks off in January. The first term is great—it’s peak summer, the sun is blazing by 5:00 AM, and waking up is relatively easy. Then we get that short holiday break in April. But when the second term starts, winter begins slowly crawling into the house.

Cooler mornings and later sunrises are manageable at first. But by late May and June? The sun decides to sleep in, the thermometer plummets, and the morning routine becomes a literal cry for help. The kids start waking up later, the dogs refuse to get out from under the blankets, and I hate my alarm clock with a passion because I dread waking up before the sun has even bothered to show its face!

We push through it all by clinging to one single, glorious thread of hope: the winter school holidays. A whole month with no 6:00 AM alarm. Of course, the clock will still start its little dancing ritual eventually, just a bit later in the morning. It will still be hated, it will still be dreaded, and the daily body check will still happen—we just get to delay the misery by a few hours.

The Evolution of the Beep

Most of us use our smartphones these days, but I distinctly remember having one of those classic, black electronic digital clocks as a child. The aggressive, metallic BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! it emitted was enough to drive any sane human completely insane.

My phone today isn’t as loud or as harsh, and I try to make it more fun by setting an actual song to wake me up. But let’s be real—the second a song becomes your alarm, you grow to absolutely despise that track within a week. It’s still annoying, no matter how melodic it tries to be.

So, I think we have stumbled upon a brand-new career path here, and I am entirely confident that AI wouldn’t be able to take this job over. We need professional Alarm Clock Therapists. Someone needs to stand up for these poor devices, listen to their trauma, and provide the necessary therapy to keep them sane. They spend their entire lives being smacked, cursed at, threatened, and shoved under pillows. If we can just keep the alarm clocks happy and well-adjusted, maybe—just maybe—we would feel a little happier when they start screaming at us in the dark.

Tomorrow is another try. But for now, I’m setting my alarm to a song I already hate, just to save my favorite tracks from the 6:00 AM curse.

source

The Pineapple

Ralf’s Barbecue Spare Ribs

By Ralf the Grillmeister

Ingredients

Pork spare ribs
Your favourite dry rub
A little apple juice
A very small splash of apple vinegar
Barbecue sauce

Equipment

Barbecue or smoker
Cling film or vacuum bags
Vacuum sealer, if available
Closed grill-safe container or foil tray with lid

Preparation

Two days before cooking, cover the pork spare ribs with dry rub.

Wrap the ribs tightly in cling film or place them in vacuum bags and vacuum-seal them.

Put the ribs in the refrigerator for 48 hours so the rub can go into the meat.

Cooking Method

Heat the barbecue or smoker to about 90°C.

Put the ribs on the grill and cook them for 2½ hours.

After 2½ hours, place the ribs into a closed container.

Add a little apple juice and a very small splash of apple vinegar.

Close the container and put it back on the grill.

Increase the temperature to about 120–130°C.

Cook for another 1½ hours.

Take the ribs out of the container. At this point, the meat should be very soft. You should be able to pull the bones out easily. This is the “bone out” moment.

Put the ribs back on the grill at about 120–130°C.

Brush barbecue sauce onto the meat side, not the bone side.

Let them finish on the grill until the sauce is warm and sticky.

Serve immediately.

Ralf’s Test

The ribs are ready when the bones pull out easily and the people eating them say:

“Wow, what is this?”

Ralf’s Warm Potato Salad with Olive Oil, Herbs, and Sweet Onions

Ingredients

Potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Olive oil
Vinegar
A little water
Fresh parsley
Fresh chives
A small amount of thyme
Herb mix, or another savoury herb seasoning
Salt and pepper, if needed

Preparation

Peel the potatoes.

Boil the potatoes until cooked but still firm enough to slice.

Cut the potatoes into slices and place them in a bowl.

Making the Warm Onion Dressing

Slice or chop the onions.

Put the onions in a pan and let them soften slowly.

Add garlic.

Add olive oil.

Add vinegar.

Add parsley, chives, a little thyme, and the herb mix.

Add a little water.

Let everything cook gently and reduce for about one hour, until the onions become soft, sweet, and full of flavour.

Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

Assembling the Salad

Pour the hot onion and herb dressing over the sliced potatoes.

Mix gently so the potatoes do not break too much.

Let the potato salad rest for about six hours.

Serve at room temperature or gently warmed.

Ralf’s Test

The potato salad is ready when someone walks into the kitchen and says:

“Oh, what a nice smell.”

And then takes one bite and says:

“Wow, what is this?”

source

The Pineapple

My Home Is My Castle, Even on a Camping Site

By Manfred

When The Mayor asked me about buying an RV or a caravan, I had to smile a little, because for me this is not only a practical question. It is also a question about what kind of holiday a person really wants.

I have been travelling with a caravan around Europe for about twenty years now, and I would say this first: camping is one of the last bastions of real holiday and freedom. In a hotel, I always feel that I have to conform to someone else’s rhythm. I have to get dressed for breakfast. If I have full board, I have to appear for food at a specific time. There are rules everywhere. Not bad rules, necessarily, but they are not my rhythm.

With camping, I take my home with me. That changes everything. My home is my castle, even when my castle is standing on a camping site and connected to a power socket. Of course, the camping site has local rules, and that is good. It is like at home. There are boundaries, there is structure, and within that structure I can live as I want to live. I can be in nature, but I do not have to give up my own space.

That space is important. The Mayor knows this now, because I made it very clear to him. On a camping site, the space I rent for a period of time is my space. People should not violate it. They should not cross it just because it is a shortcut to somewhere else. This is one of the unwritten rules of camping. Seasoned campers understand this immediately. Some younger campers, I think, have more difficulty with it. They see an empty corner and think they can just walk across. But they are walking through somebody’s temporary home. That is not nothing.

There are many unwritten rules like that. Camping is not lawless freedom. It is freedom with respect. That is what makes it work.

When he asked me about the difference between a caravan and a motorhome, I told The Mayor that this is really about the type of holiday a person wants. A caravan stays put, and this works very well if you want to make a place your base. You arrive, you set it up, you make yourself comfortable, and then the car gives you mobility. You can go shopping, visit a town, drive to the beach, or explore the region without taking your whole house with you.

An RV or motorhome is different. That is more about travelling without resting too much. You drive, you park, you sleep, you move on. Of course, if you have bicycles or very good public transport nearby, you can stay longer in one place. But in general, with a motorhome you have less flexibility once you are parked. Your vehicle is also your home. If you need to go somewhere, you either take everything with you again or you find another solution.

So my first question is always: what do you want to do? Do you want to travel from place to place, or do you want a home away from home?

Driving is also different. Driving with a caravan is not the same as driving with an RV. You have to think differently, especially because of the length and the way it moves behind the car. But when you arrive, the caravan also takes time. You do not simply stop and live. You set it up. You level it. You connect the power. You prepare the space. This is part of the ritual. For some people it is work. For me it is the beginning of the holiday.

The RV world is more “drive and park.” The caravan world is more “arrive and build your small home.” I prefer the second one.

There is also a difference in where people stay. RV staying places are often greater in number than camping sites, and many of them are more transient. But they also come with a certain image. In some places, the motorhome has the image of the traveller, sometimes not in the romantic sense. The media pushes the RV very hard, in my opinion. You see the picture: you and your RV in paradise, completely free, parked somewhere beautiful, nobody around, sunset, freedom. But this is not reality. It is wrong. Parking in the wild is usually illegal. People should know this before they buy into the dream.

With food and cooking, I do not see a big difference between caravan and RV. In both cases, you can be flexible. With an RV, you can park, cook, eat, and move on. With a caravan, you are more tied to the camping site once you are stationary, especially because you normally need an energy connection and a power socket. But the joy of cooking is there in both worlds.

For me, camping and barbecue are almost synonymous. A camping holiday without BBQ is difficult to imagine. I usually buy from my preferred source, and I like to vacuum seal the meat. It makes things easier, cleaner, and more practical. But the holiday is about enjoyment, so I also say: try local produce at the destination. If that is enjoyable, do it. If it becomes stressful, do not do it. There is no need to turn a holiday into a mission.

Outdoor cooking and eating is the best detox. I really believe that. Sitting outside, cooking something simple, eating in the fresh air, not rushing, not pretending — this brings a person back to normal.

Sitting outside, cooking something simple, eating in the fresh air, not rushing, not pretending — this brings a person back to normal.

Route planning depends a little on whether you have an RV or a caravan, but not as much as people think. The main issue is length. You need to know where you can drive, where you can turn, where you can park, and what roads are suitable. Modern satnavs often have special settings for RVs and caravans, and I think that is useful. You put in the dimensions and it helps you avoid unsuitable roads. It is not perfect, but it is better than driving blindly into a village with narrow streets and hoping that optimism will reduce the width of your vehicle.

The Mayor also asked whether camping is cheaper than a hotel or apartment. I told him: not necessarily. It depends on the site and the season. A camping site is a holiday destination, just like a hotel room is a holiday destination. You pay for location, facilities, demand, and the time of year. Some places are not cheap at all.

A “Stellplatz” is something else. That is more like a parking place, more transient. I compare it a little to a McDonald’s drive-through. You drive, you stop, you collect what you need, and then you move on. It serves a purpose, but it is not the same as making yourself comfortable on a camping site.

Over the years I have travelled with the caravan to many countries: Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. Each country has its own flavour.

France is one of my favourites. The French have something called “camping municipales,” and this is a real French speciality. These are municipal camping sites, often managed by local councils. They usually offer good basics, and there is a wide network of them. In France, I always have the feeling that I will find a space somewhere, except of course in the hot spots during high season. These places are also good for hidden gems. You find towns and areas that are not in the glossy brochures, but they are real.

France has been very friendly and hospitable to me. I also learned that even a basic knowledge of French opens more doors. Just a few words make a difference. It shows respect. Be human, be down to earth, and things usually go well.

The South of France is beautiful, but I also told The Mayor to be careful. Do not park on lay-bys. There is a risk of robbery, and an RV or caravan can send a signal that there is something worth taking. People should not be naïve. Freedom does not mean switching off your brain.

The Netherlands is also interesting. There is the old cliché that the Dutch conquer Europe, and Europe conquers the Netherlands. I always enjoy driving there. It is a very small country, but it has many good camping options, including farm camping spots. These are often a side line for the farm, maybe twenty or thirty places, and they can be very nice. Smaller, simpler, more personal.

Croatia is also very enjoyable. German is widely understood and spoken there, which makes things easier for German campers. It is beautiful, practical, and welcoming.

In truth, I have found all these countries to be hospitable in their own ways. Warm, welcoming, and interesting, if you approach them properly.

There is also a camping scene, of course. Today much of it is on the internet. Camping forums can provide good information, tips, and advice. You can learn a lot from people who have already made the mistakes, which is always cheaper than making all of them yourself.

But the camping generation is changing. This is something I feel strongly. Camping sites used to be more communal. You arrived, your neighbours arrived, and people helped each other. There were opportunities to meet people, make acquaintances, even make friends. You saw somebody struggling with the awning and you helped. You shared advice. You talked. Stories developed.

This is changing. I see more self-centred behaviour, especially among some younger campers. There is less awareness of personal space and less understanding of the unwritten rules. I think it reflects modern society, and I find that a shame. Camping used to be a place where the human came first. Not the status. Not the job. Not the lifestyle performance.

On a camping site, people were more level. First you were a camper. Then, slowly, it emerged who you were, where you came from, what your story was. That was part of the beauty. Humanity lives in those small conversations.

There are no typical campers, really. There are only people who enjoy camping. That is what makes it diverse. You meet interesting people, speak with them, hear their stories, and sometimes you are surprised by who is sitting in the chair next to you with a coffee or a beer.

Of course, luxury camping exists too. There are very expensive RVs, and sometimes they reflect a certain lifestyle. Champagne in the morning, elitist attitudes, a little bit of showing what you have. That exists. I do not deny it.

But in general, the camping lifestyle is still a great equalizer. You are closer to nature, closer to the basics, reduced to the essentials. It makes people more normal, more down to earth, more natural, and less pretentious.

That, for me, is the real value. Not the vehicle. Not the equipment. Not the perfect destination photo.

The real value is the feeling that I have taken my home with me, placed it somewhere beautiful, respected the rules, respected my neighbours, and created a small space of freedom.

My home is my castle. Even when the castle has wheels.

The Pineapple

Contents

In This Issue

The Rooms, Roads and Relationships That Keep Us Human

From Ralf’s Kitchen

When Work Stops Being Only Work

The Paradox Department

I Sent The Mayor to Fruit loop University and Accidentally Invented a City

The Maintenance Manual for a Sun-Shiny Human Being

Seven Kilometres, Snickers Ice Cream, and the Question of Balance

Puzzles, and Malibu: Finding My Balance in a Busy Life

I Am Not the Loudest Person in the Room

Energy Is Not Always Comfort

Coffee, Cats, and the Trees We Lean On

Cocktails, Lost Wallets, and the Friendship Loading Bar

How to Maintain a Middle- Aged Human. Part 2

The Martin Model – A Practical Guide, Written with Some Concern

Therapy for the Alarm Clock

The Daily Body Check

The Winter Slump

The Evolution of the Beep

Ralf’s Barbecue Spare Ribs

Ingredients

Equipment

Preparation

Cooking Method

Ralf’s Test

Ralf’s Warm Potato Salad with Olive Oil, Herbs, and Sweet Onions

Ingredients

Preparation

Making the Warm Onion Dressing

Assembling the Salad

Ralf’s Test

My Home Is My Castle, Even on a Camping Site

Next Week in Brida

Rest

Contents

In This Issue

The Rooms, Roads and Relationships That Keep Us Human

From Ralf’s Kitchen

When Work Stops Being Only Work

The Paradox Department

I Sent The Mayor to Fruit loop University and Accidentally Invented a City

The Maintenance Manual for a Sun-Shiny Human Being

Seven Kilometres, Snickers Ice Cream, and the Question of Balance

Puzzles, and Malibu: Finding My Balance in a Busy Life

I Am Not the Loudest Person in the Room

Energy Is Not Always Comfort

Coffee, Cats, and the Trees We Lean On

Cocktails, Lost Wallets, and the Friendship Loading Bar

How to Maintain a Middle- Aged Human. Part 2

The Martin Model – A Practical Guide, Written with Some Concern

Therapy for the Alarm Clock

The Daily Body Check

The Winter Slump

The Evolution of the Beep

Ralf’s Barbecue Spare Ribs

Ingredients

Equipment

Preparation

Cooking Method

Ralf’s Test

Ralf’s Warm Potato Salad with Olive Oil, Herbs, and Sweet Onions

Ingredients

Preparation

Making the Warm Onion Dressing

Assembling the Salad

Ralf’s Test

My Home Is My Castle, Even on a Camping Site

Next Week in Brida

Rest

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