Wow, I've made it. This is the last day of the A to Z blogging challenge. 26 mad days of posting every day, visiting tons of other blogs, commenting and connecting.
What a ride it has been. I've met a bunch of people, who feel like they've become friends. I've discovered a number of blogs that inform me, entertain me, make me think or put a smile on my face.
My blog has grown and become more lively, with a lot more visitors dropping by and adding to the party. It feels like it's got more of a soul now, and will continue to thrive.
Over the course of 1 month, I've gone from a wonderful 10 followers (I owe you all at least one of those legendary caipirinhas!), to an even more fabulous 72.
And what I like most, is that those 72 followers all have a face to me, an identity of their own - even those I've never met in person. I've read pieces of their writing, I've exchanged ideas and information, and I feel like I know them a little bit - enough to want to learn more.
The Web is a huge place, where it's easy to feel tiny, insignificant or intimidated. What initiatives like the A to Z challenge do, is to fence off a piece of that vast universe and define the borders of a (temporary) playground.
All of a sudden the blogosphere doesn't seem so big any more. Even though there were over a thousand participants, the challenge we all had in common made it more manageable and accessible.
At first, you see just names and profile pictures, but soon, those names start looking familiar and turn into people. Then they become individuals you respect and appreciate.
With some, I feel I've connected on a more personal level, because we think alike or because we're complementary and can teach each other a lot; because we're all writers or because we share a love for particular books or genres; because we've been through similar experiences, or because we're drawn to the same people.
Whatever the future brings, I'm happy and grateful for this experience.
I would like to express my special thanks to Lee (Arlee Bird), word and idea juggler extraordinaire, for coming up with the A to Z challenge, and to science fiction guru Alex J. Cavanaugh, whose tweets informed me about the challenge in the first place.
And now it's time to relax, take a weekend off, catch up on some sleep, and then I'll be back with a whole list of topics, dealing with writing, life, love and my quest for authentic and worthwhile experiences.
See you around!
Funky fact: at a given point I had 666 unread messages in Google Reader, ànd 66 followers. I'm sure it was a sign, but of what?
During this A to Z month, I've written about what I'm interested in and what makes me happy. Now, towards the end, I want to devote this post to 'you'.
Caring about yourself and caring for yourself are not selfish acts. You are the most important person in your life, and the better you do and feel, the more you can give to others - whether it's love, friendship, time, attention or even money.
Therefore, I want to encourage you to take some you-time this weekend. I'm sure you deserve it.
Here are a few suggestions:
Plan a trip. It doesn't have to be long, far, or expensive. Alone, if you prefer, or with the people you would most like to spend time with.
Read a book you've wanted to read for a long time. Switch off your phone & computer and let everyone around you know you're not to be disturbed. If your home is too busy, take your book to a coffee house, tearoom, bar or park.
Do something that makes you laugh.
(Watching Blackadder episodes works for me.)
Take a walk to a nice spot nearby and spend some time there, enjoying the view.
Open a good bottle of wine or champagne and savour every sip.
Get your hair done, enjoy a massage, a pedicure if you're on your feet all day, or a couple of hours of pampering at a spa.
Sign up for yoga, cooking or foreign language classes, learn to paint, or join a choir or a book club.
Call a friend and arrange to meet up for dinner.
Make a list of what you'd want to do if you had no 'have-tos'. Then do at least one of the items on your list.
Put on a cd you love, sit or lie down, close your eyes and listen. (Or dance.)
If you have pets, play with them. If you have a dog, take him/her out for a walk and pretend it's the other way round.
Think about what you most dislike about your life and think up all kinds of crazy and creative ways to solve that problem. Who knows, you might come up with a real solution, and if not, you'll at least have smiled.
Remind yourself that you don't have to wait until later to live the life you want.
In between being a reader and a writer, I used to play computer games. I loved roleplaying games in fantasy or science fiction settings (no surprise there).
My absolute favourite game was Everquest. I played it for several years and met an amazing group of people because of it.
Everquest was an MMORPG, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, in which hundreds of thousands of players took control of their elf, dwarf, ogre, ... character to overcome challenges in an elaborate fantasy world.
I played a dark-elf enchanter called Triksi, and for the bigger part of her virtual life, Triksi was a member of a great guild called 'Xanadu'.
Playing this game and being in Xanadu taught me a lot of skills that have proven useful in other areas of my life.
You don't play MMORPGs on your own. You need others to get ahead in the game, sometimes smaller groups, sometimes a raid party of 50 or more.
When any group of that size gets together to accomplish a task - whether that's slaying a dragon, organising an event or creating a product - you inevitably learn about organisation, multitasking, communication, perseverance, offering and accepting help, applying strategies, problem-solving, human interaction and putting individual differences to good use.
Along the way, we became friends. Online friends at first, but many of us met up in real life. Our first big gathering took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it was interesting to see how close those online friendships came to real-life friendships: the people I got along with in-game were the same people I connected with when we met up.
Several of them have stayed good friends up to this day, even after we stopped playing Everquest.
Others have disappeared in the cracks of time and distance, some to reappear on Facebook or other social networks in recent years.
To this day, the word 'Xanadu' still makes me smile. It rings of friendship and great accomplishments - against all odds.
It also reminds me of the temporary nature of many friendships. Some friends are there for life, others will cross your path, walk with you for a while and disappear - quietly, or with a bang.
Does that make those friendships less valuable? I don't think so. Duration and longevity aren't the only ways of measuring quality. We don't judge the beauty of a rose or the flavour of a dish by how long they linger, do we?
So this post is dedicated to my Xanadu friends, past and present. Wherever you are now and whatever you're doing, I hope you're well, and I think a reunion is due.
To regular visitors of my blog, it should come as no surprise that my 'W' post is about wine, especially because this whole A to Z series is dedicated to things that bring me joy and make life more interesting.
I love good wines. Over the past years, I've taken a few wine tasting courses, but I'm still more an aficionado than a connoisseur. However, next time I can free up a larger chunk of time, I am planning to go through the full sommelier training.
Until that time, I'll settle for sampling and enjoying wines, attending wine fairs and tastings, and visiting wine regions and vineyards when I'm on holiday. An alternative I can live with, for sure.
In this post, for those of you who are interested, I want to share some basic information about what makes a good wine, and about wine tasting in general. I suggest you pour a glass and savour it while you read on. Cheers!
Wine Quality
The most important thing about wine, apart from the health benefits (when drunk in moderation), is that the person who drinks it, enjoys it.
All too often, people act snobbish about wine, often to disguise that they don't know much about it. It's true: wine tasting is an art and a skill, but that's not necessarily the only - or the best - way to enjoy wine.
If you love the taste of a particular wine, don't let anybody tell you that's bad. Personal enjoyment isn't linked to price or critics' opinions, and a wine doesn't have to be expensive to be pleasant, interesting or exciting.
On the most basic level of enjoying wine, reviews and ratings are irrelevant. However, as is the case with many aspects of life, when you learn more about a product or a process, you discover new layers of enjoyment, fascination and respect.
By studying wine and training your palate, you open yourself up to new levels of appreciation, not just for the product, but also for the craftmanship of the people who grew the grapes, harvested them, composed and produced the wine.
Compare this to an experienced musician, who would notice more intricacies of a piece of music; a basketball player who detects hidden strategies and opportunities when watching a game; or a writer, who can admire a good example of 'showing rather than telling' where other readers just see a sentence.
Winemaking truly is an art, which requires expertise in many areas.
The main factors that determine the quality of a wine are: the climate in which the grapes are grown, the soil, the grape itself, how the grapes are harvested, the winemaking process and the treatment / conservation of the finished product.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but to give an idea, I'll point out a few aspects that affect the taste and quality of a wine:
whether grapes are harvested by hand or not. Machines rip the grapes off the vine, but they're not selective: they take parts of leaves, branches, insects, unripe or overripe grapes along. All this ends up in the mixture of which the wine is made. A wine made of hand-picked grapes will usually have a more elegant, deep and complex flavour. (It will also be more expensive, as it was more labour intensive to produce.)
the type of soil and age of the vines affect the flavours present in the grape. Old vines (or vines in particular types of soil) tend to have deeper roots, which means that they can take in nutrients and water from more layers of soil. Each layer adds a nuance to the final taste, i.e. more depth and complexity.
the climate and microclimate in which the grapes grow. Temperature, the conditions and the length of the growing season, all affect the quality and sugar content of the grapes. The greatest wines tend to come from vineyards with the best location, due to temperature, orientation towards the sun, the presence of a river that reflects sunlight, surrounding vegetation, ...
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it should give an idea of the complexity of the process, and of the fact that in many cases, a wine's price is an indication of quality, at least in the definition of craftsmanship, human energy that's gone into the process, complexity and depth of flavours.
Wine Tasting
I have chosen a video here to replace the 1,000 words I would need to convey the same information. I like how it summarises the most important basics:
Are you a wine person? Do you have a favourite wine?
For our honeymoon, we took a wine and gastronomy-themed road trip to Venice.
It was a fabulous vacation. We stayed in beautiful boutique hotels in the French Bourgogne region and the Italian Alps on the way over. On the way back, we spent a couple of days at the Lago Maggiore and in the French Alsace.
As a bonus, the journey gave us an opportunity - and the perfect excuse - to try out different sparkling wines: crémant de Bourgogne, several Italian spumanti, prosecco, and the crémant d'alsace. But I digress - 'W for Wine' is tomorrow's topic.
My post today is about Venice, possibly the most romantic city in the world. Also a very hot city, in early July, but we survived.
It's hard to say which were my favourite sights in Venice, because there were so many, but I'll disclose one treat that might not be in the standard tourist package: the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.
The scuola was, like other scuole in the area, a kind of guild hall for wealthy citizens, built in the 16th century. Now it's a museum.
It consists of 2 floors, each decorated with lavish paintings by artists like Tintoretto and Titian. The upper hall also has amazing wood sculptures by Francesco Pianta.
It's such an inspiring place. I'll just have to use it in a novel one day!
