once a driver living in apartment in monaco

Maybe, it was my teens when I watched an hour-long TV documentary program, which focused on a life of a not-so-famous driver for formula one, in short, F1 driver. I'm not a kind of F1 geek, but I think he was not a type of well-known figure that typically had won many trophies with an envious red ferrari, because the program just showed his everyday life as it was, and it seemed to be quite ordinal, not the special, or celebrated one. I do not have any words for it, but just do say it is ordinal.

 

He lived in his home country with his wife, and he bought a small but nice house in the countryside, and he just did his training and necessary duties as a driver routinely in his countryside house, and sometimes went to a big city, maybe capital in his country, and sometimes went abroad. Nothing was special, except he also bought an apartment in Monaco, where always one of F1 grand prixs has been held since mid-50's. Whenever Monaco grand prix was held, always he had stayed in his apartment alone. The apartment was at around 10th floor, maybe, and he had always enjoyed the beautifully shining sea from a wide window, while doing routine training in his apartment.

This is the reason why I came to this small country, sovereign city state, at the middle of April. The breeze was so nice, and always the blue sea was shining with reflecting the warm spring sun. Of course sea gulls flew high. In my teens, I just imagined that when I was enough old to come to this city state, I could buy or rent an apartment like the envious one F1 driver enjoyed. 

Now, still, all I can do was just looking for the window of that apartment I watched on the TV program once, while waking around the uphill and downhill slopes.

Here was the Principality of Monaco.

at a bagle cafe in leuven

It was in autumn when I saw some college students riding their bicycles on the old stone pavement in Leuven city. Their bicycles seemed to be a little bit old fashion, but its silver body was nicely glittering. I just stood at the end of a small alley at the center of the old town, and after the bicycles passing by, I walked across a relatively busy street. Maybe it was around 13:00, and just in time for lunch in here Belgium, so fortunately, I found a nice, casual bagel cafe standing along with the street. 


In front of the cafe, there were several tables which were already occupied by young people enjoying the afternoon sun shining. Inside the cafe, I listened to the mild-sound of jazz-like music running like a favor of coffee. I took a small table, and ordered a salmon sandwich with sesame bagle, a small glass of beer, stella artois, and a cup of espresso. The sandwich was good, since I enjoyed the incredibly fresh salmon. Shipping an espresso, I saw young people, maybe students of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, talking like singing with cups of coffee as if they were holding a seminar in a classroom, though it was Sunday afternoon.


Here was Leuven, this city has an old university.  

a cold day in florida

The sky is so blue and high, and the breeze in Merritt Island is unseasonably chilly. I take an additional shirt and a little bit thick coat to go to this Island, but still feel cold. When walking so-called "LC-39 observation gantry", in short, observation of space-shuttle launch and etc, I hear the birds crying, which sometimes come down to trash boxes to pick up pop-corns around there.

At the fourth floor of the gantry, I also hear the sounds of the chilly breezes, and at the time, I see the launch complex 39s, where astronauts in maybe 70's, 80s, 90s, and 2000s went to their journeys. Their journeys. In here, the space center, it is said as "our" journeys with full of dreams and hopes in future. 

This night, the TV news says that it is an unseasonable cold temperature in here in two years, and farmers are worrying about damages from this chillness to their crops, especially fruits.

Here is Merritt Island, Florida.