The Bland Truth: A Critique of Portuguese Cuisine

Portuguese don’t really appreciate critique. Especially not from a foreigner! So here you go, their responses on various social media and my replies.

“You clearly don’t understand Portuguese food.”

It won’t go on about the reasoning for this question, which will equally be countered if you have an opinion on politics, or even football. On the contrary, on Portuguese food again, I understand it so well that I could probably prepare bacalhau in at least 50 of its 365 variations. My critique isn’t about ignorance—it’s about potential. Portugal has incredible ingredients, but tradition sometimes holds back what could be an even more exciting cuisine.

“Typical foreigner who only eats in tourist traps.”

If only it was that simple. I’ve eaten in many local tasquinhas, hidden grandma-run kitchens, and home-cooked meals. The common thread? A deep love for boiling things. There are exceptions, of course, but you have to admit: Portuguese seasoning is often just salt and nostalgia.

“Our food is simple and doesn’t need to be covered in spices to be good.”

You folks are famtastic at this, yes. Simplicity is great—when it enhances ingredients rather than stripping them of flavor. A beautifully grilled fish with just olive oil? Unbelievable. But boiled bacalhau with a side of boiled potatoes, followed by a boiled dessert? At some point, you have to wonder if it’s simplicity or just stubbornness.

“You forgot about [insert dish name here]! That has tons of flavor!”

I didn’t forget—there are some fantastic, flavorful dishes. Pica-pau, leitão, and chanfana all bring the excitement. But let’s be honest: they stand out because they contrast so sharply with the rest.

“British food is worse, so you have no right to criticize.”

If we’re ranking cuisines, I fully admit British food has its own crimes against taste. Trust me, it must have been already been reported to the International Tribunal in The Hague. But ‘we’re better than fried beef’ is hardly a strong defense. Wouldn’t you rather aim higher?

“If you don’t like it, leave.”

Oh, I like Portugal very much—that’s why I cared to write this post. It’s precisely because I see so much potential in its cuisine that I wish it would step up and rediscover its lost spice-loving soul. And don’t worry, I am leaving!

“You just have an unrefined palate.”

I appreciate subtle flavors, but there’s a difference between ‘subtle’ and ‘nonexistent.’ One is intentional; the other feels like something went missing in the kitchen.

“You don’t get it—Portuguese food is about tradition.”

Tradition is beautiful, but so is evolution. If Portuguese cuisine embraced the spirit of its explorers, it wouldn’t just preserve the past—it would create an even more exciting future.

“You should try real homemade food.”

I have! And homemade dishes often highlight the best of Portuguese cooking. But even at home, the ‘boil everything’ approach is alive and well. Surely we can agree that a little extra seasoning wouldn’t hurt?

“This is offensive.”

It’s not meant to offend—it’s meant to spark conversation and the comments on this post on my social media proves this. Portugal’s cuisine has all the right ingredients to be even better. A little self-reflection never hurt anyone.

“We don’t need to change our cuisine just to please foreigners.”

Absolutely not! But wouldn’t it be ironic if a country famous for global exploration refused to explore new flavors itself?

“You clearly haven’t tried our cheeses, sausages, or seafood.”

Oh, I have, and they’re fantastic! Which is exactly why it’s so frustrating that they often end up in dishes that don’t let them shine.

“If it’s so bad, why do millions of tourists love it?”

Tourists also love pastel de nata and port wine — two of Portugal’s greatest hits. But even the best albums have some filler tracks, and let’s be honest: boiled bacalhau is the ‘skip’ button on the menu.

“You just don’t appreciate real, authentic flavors.”

I do! That’s why I’m asking — where did all the spices go? Portugal used to bring the world flavor, but somewhere along the way, it seems to have misplaced its own.

“Maybe your taste buds are broken.”

Possibly! Or maybe they’re just desperately searching for something beyond salt and boiled potatoes. Either way, I promise to keep investigating — preferably somewhere with paprika.

After a lifetime in Cambodia (11 years!) I moved to Georgia in August 2021, ready for another lifetime in Tbilisi doing other adventurous and absolutely Ramon-like stuff. But it didn’t work out and I have moved country again.

Cambodia had me blessed as long as people would visit my movie theaters, so besides a few pandemic months of closure in Phnom Penh, that actually worked out very well. Cambodia had me spoiled. And add the fine weather, the cheap life and the enormous bubbles of foreigners that keep that country going – which also makes it a warm bath for anybody going there.

Life plans, ideas for the future, craving for seasons and changes in landscape and a little desire to be a little bit closer to my aging parents; those were reasons for me that I would not stay in Cambodia and end up as that old man that asks if you want popcorn with your movie.

While trying to sell the movie theaters (3 locations in 2017), I studied new locations for life. I had great interests for Buenos Aires and Mexico, but that would have been a continent too far. I studied Spain and Portugal, looked at the Baltic countries and even Finland. Language would be no problem; I would just have to learn it.

Georgia was on my mind for years too. A magical country, with its lush green valleys and snowcapped mountains, where they made wine before the French even knew how to pour it, the food is a hidden gem and the chacha only for those who actually dare to participate in a traditional supra. It has more history than I could ever experience in Cambodia! It was also located nicely near the EU and had a handful of low-budget airlines allowing me to fly into Europe without breaking the bank.

And one major reason why Georgia was on top of my list: life would be 40% cheaper than Cambodia. Remember, I am Dutch, right?

The pandemic made it impossible for me to sell the movie theaters. The last possibility was canceled in late 2020, when a future with tourists and a rather normal life in Phnom Penh was still a rather impossible sight. I stayed until August 2021 and put every dollar in my savings. These savings would make me survive at my next location, while I would set up something amazing and life would be great again. You should know I am a dreamer.

And Tbilisi is amazing. Its cobblestoned old town with mostly German architecture reflects a long, complicated history, with periods under Persian and Russian rule. Its diverse architecture encompasses Eastern Orthodox churches, ornate art nouveau buildings and Soviet Modernist structures. Looming over it the city are the Narikala, a reconstructed 4th-century fortress, and Kartlis Deda, the iconic statue of the “Mother of Georgia” which welcomes visitors with a warning.

Mother of Georgia symbolizes the Georgian national character: in her left hand she holds a bowl of wine to greet those who come as friends, and in her right hand is a sword for those who come as enemies.

You can understand that I spent these late-summer days exploring the city and the country with ultimate joy. The honeymoon months in a new city where every corner exposed another beautiful photo opportunity, or a café or restaurant to remember. And every street had a story.

I had set my mind to find out if this city could use a movie theater, a community movie theater, the coziest place in town where you just want to go and watch movies on a big screen. Which was fun to explain to the foreigners I met, which understood my dream partially. “You should have a movie night at this or that bar on Thursday!” was for me a no-go. Georgians would ramble with their English and point to the top floors of the malls that has the multiplex cinemas with their 2D, 3D and 4D options. And ask if my movies would be in Georgian, please?

Knowing exactly what I would need location-wise, I set out for location scouting. It took me a few months to figure out which neighborhoods would work, which are out of reach, or too residential. I had to find a hub and found that in the neighborhood right next to the Old Town, in Sololaki. With its wine bars, coffeeshops and restaurants lining pretty much every street, this area looked promising.

I found a $400pm 2-bedroom apartment there with ease and only had to find this business location to set out my dreams and show the people here what a good life with great movies is.

But that’s where I struggled.

I met the most friendly and enthusiastic real estate agents that would totally promise me exactly that what I was looking for, but they came with flooded dungeons with pillars (“these pillars might be a problem”), oversized former gym halls (“how can I heat this up in winter months?”) to class rooms of an elementary school (“you mean, there will still be classes given here in day time, but I can use it in the evening?”). One guy even took me to a secret underground and never-used metro station, where I walked around the platform and asked out loud: “what can ever happen here?”.

The few places that would fit my plans, were boarded up. Probably for years. Phone numbers stayed unanswered or the location was owned by four owners and they all want to have a cut on the rent. It was not weird to hear $4,000 rent on a 100m2 basement. And goodbye.

In the meantime I started a side hustle. I discovered nobody was selling cupcakes in this city and that opened a chance for me to jump in and see how it goes if I would be that somebody. I even added alcohol to my cakes and went commercial with my Shotcakes. Shotcakes received raving reviews, had enthusiastic crowds and was a big hit at parties. But I would have to sell 12 cakes (one box) per day to even get even on my rent and very slowly I realized that was not actually happening. Perhaps if I threw in a giant marketing campaign to get the entire city involved, but I had no budget for that.

It was in December when that budget had shrunk that much that I actually saw the bottom. Finding a business location and starting a crowdfunding to begin something magical was getting less and less of a feasible chance. I could easily start the 5th wine bar in my street, or start neighborhood bar number 11 on the same street, like everybody else seem to do – while I see them barely survive financially.

Stress on the money side, not finding what I was looking for, lack of decent sleep (oh, while living above a noisy club), not caring about myself that much ended up in an unexpected epileptic seizure right on the street on my way to the bakery. With bloody scabs on my hands and face I realized I had to change my priorities – and perhaps my dreams.

I became a remote worker, trying to find paid hours of work that can be done for an employer anywhere in the world, as long as they get done. I can write, I can translate, I can copywrite, I can do marketing, I can do social media management, I can do publishing, I can do proofreading and editing.

But I am not alone in that world. I had already figured out that most foreigners that I had met in Tbilisi are remote workers. And they had been for a while and came all the way from Chiang Mai or Da Nang as visa-issues made their easy life there difficult, while Georgia just lets everybody enter for a one-year-free visa period.

Where in Cambodia foreigners can be teachers, work at NGO’s, volunteers, artists, entrepreneurs or even gold diggers, in Georgia I met remote workers. Only remote workers. Of which 50% can only talk about crypto and trading coins and I loose all my enthusiasm at the beer table. I even met a young lady that was bored and was asking around what she could do with her $2,500 of money she made monthly. (Her 5,000 friends on Facebook weren’t helpful enough, she stated)

While making my online hours every day and Georgia got colder and colder, I would sit in my sweater next to the heating elements in my living room, looking up to the sky where sunrays would pass my house. My remote jobs would pay my rent. Barely.

And I am just going to be honest about it. If nothing would change big time, I would be in trouble. Financially.

When my most necessary piece of equipment here was about to die on me, friends abroad bought me a brand new laptop! My parents chipped in on the rent. Others would offer my support, too. Even though I am historically known as that traveling freeloader, I knew that could be not be the rest of my life. I made it to getting 45 years old and I am not done yet!

I made a few foreign friends here (my Shotcakes came in handy), but it was difficult to enter the local market in anyway. Georgians prefer to speak Russian better than English and then there were the cultural differences. Forget about dating, because Georgian women are very conservative and the foreigners would talk my head off about crypto trading and their weird remote work hours in different time zones.

I realized Cambodia was amazing when it came to meeting random people, and Georgia was not going to be that way.

I realized also that if I can survive doing online remote jobs, I don’t have to do them in a barely heating apartment, wearing a sweater and sitting next to the heating elements. Heck, I don’t have to be in Georgia to do that.

I had to move on again, that was clear. But with an almost insufficient bank account and a minimal income, I could not just see myself move off to a country where I could do all my daily jobs under a palm tree.

That’s where other friends jumped in. Young folks around my age that knew me from Cambodia. Who know how my clock ticks and what exactly makes my heart beat. They noticed it wasn’t working out for me in Georgia too. I wasn’t happy anymore.

“Come stay with us for a while?” was their invite. We’ll see what I could do there. They know people there. To get myself on my feet again. Knowing them I would be surrounded by happy and positive people, whose life had been a rollercoaster from time to time too, and I can relate to a lot.

So that’s where I ended up. In Casablanca, Morocco. It took a while though, because when I was ready to leave Georgia in December last year, Morocco closed its borders due to the omicron fears and I had to stay put and simply get through every day in the most possible boring ways. When Morocco announced to open again from February 7, I booked the flights out of Georgia with whatever funds my credit card allowed me. Together with Shady, my weird Cambodian cat.

It’s time to explore a new country, a new HUGE city, but be more focused on my health, on opportunities and perhaps dream a little bit less. But be more happy. I am very thankful for these friends here to put me up, in their house, and adopt me as their goofy half-brother. Perhaps I should bake them some Shotcakes.

You can now continue on my blog on my time in Morocco, right here.

The story below is the English translation of the original story, written by Janske Mollen, for De Stentor, a Dutch national newspaper. (click here for the original Dutch story)

Conceived on the back of a beer coaster in a pub in Zwolle, since today it has been labeled ‘UNESCO Digital World Heritage’ by the Dutch Royal Library. The website Letmestayforaday.com of the Zwolle former journalism student Ramon Stoppelenburg will be saved forever for posterity.

The Royal Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), sees it as its task to preserve websites in a sustainable way and to keep them accessible and to protect them from loss. That is why the KB archives websites that as a collection provide a ‘representative picture of Dutch culture, history and society on the internet’.

“Many of those websites contain unique information,” says collection specialist Peter de Bode of the web archive of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. “Sometimes those websites disappear when the owner no longer has the money to keep it up. Or because the technology is outdated. .”

Stoppelenburg’s website has been selected for the construction of a special KB collection of blogs. “Very special”, Stoppelenburg says. He responds via Skype from Phnomh Penh in Cambodia, where he has lived for several years. “Who would have thought, that when I was with my friends at the bar of student café, Iscribbled a few words on a coaster? I can still hear a friend wonder out loud ‘Who’s ever going to invite you to their home?’.”

International
The idea behind letmestayforaday.com was to see more of the world. At the time, Stoppelenburg studied journalism at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. But he got the idea through the American website sendmeadollar.com. “But I didn’t want money, I wanted to travel.” In exchange for an overnight stay or a lift from address A to B, he would write about his adventures on his website, one of the first weblogs. After the launch of letmestayforaday.com in 2001, he received offered airfare and lodging from all over the world, he was closely followed by the international media and traveled for two years without spending a dime.

“I thought I would travel around Europe for a few years,” Stoppelenburg looks back. “But that I was allowed to travel halfway around the world?” With the help of tourism agencies and generous donors (a lady from Canada offered him Airmiles: ‘Otherwise you’ll never come to Canada’) he also traveled from address to address through South Africa, Australia and Canada. His experiences were followed worldwide and as soon as it was clear that he would visit a country, the invitations poured in.

Unique
Stoppelenburg finds it particularly special that his website is now ‘digital heritage’, because his website is in English. According to De Bode, that does not matter: “The criteria for being selected are that the information on the website should preferably be unique, that the site should be under Dutch management and that it should say something about culture, history and society. on the internet.” De Bode was also intrigued by the Stoppelenburg website: “Two years of free travel, that is so unique.”

10 million websites
KB has been working on a web archive since 2007. “In the meantime, 13,400 websites have been selected, says De Bode. “Every year, 1,000 to 1,500 are added. In total there are 10 million Dutch websites. This also includes websites with the extensions .com .eu .info. There are 5.8 million of the .nl extensions.” Archiving is not very fast, says the archivist. “That is because the selection is done manually, then the owners have to be emailed, they have four weeks to decline. Then we start archiving automatically.”

Vlogs
And not every website is archivable. Vlogs are mainly visual material that cannot be archived. Also because they are often on YouTube and we cannot archive that.”

Incidentally, archiving is sometimes also delayed by the archivists themselves. ,,I must honestly say that I did linger on the Stoppelenburg website for a while, yes. That does happen every now and then, when we come across something special to review.”

World Heritage
The fact that websites are ‘digital heritage’ is internationally recognized in the Unesco Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage from 2003. “They call it world heritage”, says De Bode. “We regard it as digital heritage”. interest in websites that threaten to go offline. If that happens, we’ll lose them, and the information on them too.”

My mother was born in 1939 and survived through the World War II in Rotterdam with her entire family. At times when the country is remembering the dead and fallen on May 4 and celebrating liberation and freedom on May 5, she will always have problems with these times from the past. For the newspaper the Old Rotterdammer she wrote her story “Hope to never experience it again”.

Here some excerpts:

“I can remember that we had to leave our house on the advice of the municipality, to the air-raid shelter on the East Square in Rotterdam. I don’t remember how long we’ve been there. At one moment we we were taken out of the shelter and loaded on a cart to the town of Bergschenhoek. We were brought to a farm for a few days and returned back to Rotterdam when it was safe again. The shelter had been bombed. According to my parents, our house had been emptied out nicely too.”

“One day, all men between 20 and 40 years old, had to report for the Arbeitseinsatz, to work in Germany. My mother and me brought my father to the Beursgebouw on the Coolsingel in Rotterdan. He was transferred to Germany where he had to work in a bakery. With the help of his German boss there, he managed to escape and he walked all the way back to Rotterdam. The Red Cross came to the house to tell my mum that my dad had probably died. But a few weeks later he was suddenly standing at the door.”

“I have experienced the liberation of the country more or less consciously and saw the airplanes flying over our heads, they were that big and close. My parents were cheering happily, I remember. My dad got his hands on a parachute. Years later I had made a dress from it.”

“Too bad I asked very little about the war from my parents. We didn’t talk much about that at home, or we were at an age that we were probably not interested in that either.”

From 2001 to 2003  I traveled the world for free, thanks to my own social network www.letmestayforaday.com and the thousands of people from all over the world who invited me over through that website. In return, my compensation for free accommodation for one night, I published a daily travel diary on the website. The entire diary of over two years of traveling is still online and was published as a Dutch travel book in 2004. Below is an English translation from a chapter in this book, which became relevant after the release of the movie The Grizzlies, filmed in Kugluktuk one year after my visit in 2003.

First, some background on the location. Yellowknife is situated at the North end of the Great Slave Lake and came to being after the gold rush of 1934. Yellowknife consists of the Old Town, built on a small island, and New Town, spread out over the bare, frozen tundra’s of the North. During the long and dark winter days, the Great Slave Lake becomes a ring road for Yellowknife and people drive over the vast ice pack. After the slow decline of the gold findings, pure diamonds were found decades ago and the city quickly developed into one of the most important diamond supplier worldwide. Read More

I did not expect that a country as Sri Lanka would take me by surprise THAT much! I had been here before as a little kid in 1989, but so much has changed that it wasn’t really a reunion, but a re-connection with a truly paradise island.

Read More

Because that was technically what it was. After living in Cambodia for over 7 years now, I had never left the country for the Christmas holidays.

I had escaped to beaches, or just hide out, while pretty much everybody else leaves the country to “go back home” for a few weeks. And I would be jealous. And all the social media channels would show photos of these friends with families and friend back home, mostly involving lots of food and, of course, snow.

It was in September last year that I got an invite to come to France this winter.

The invite had come from the French mademoiselle Mathilde, who I had met on Otres Beach in Sihanoukville (Cambodia) last summer. Add a bit of financial luck on my side and I had simply booked the tickets. I told my family I would spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with them in The Netherlands and then spend another 10 days in France.

After training hard for the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon (Dec 3) and the Chiang Mai Throwdown in Thailand (Dec 9-10) and working (perhaps a bit too) hard on a short literary story.

And what a beautiful escape that was.

And as I want to add: COLD. I had forgotten how cold could be.

I went shopping in Rotterdam with my dad and after parking the car we just had a 1km walk and my toes had become numb. I had him figure out which speaker system he had to buy for his personal computer as I was still crawling up the stairs of the MediaMarkt in agony and with the anxious desperation of getting a sense of feeling back in my feet.

The escape from Cambodia to Europe for the Christmas holidays was a necessary one, too.

Once in a while you have to leave home (Phnom Penh for me) to empty the head, defragment certain damaged brain cells, get loose, let things go and experience something else before returning back and gain a way fresher start.

And loose I got and went in France!

On New Year’s day I arrived by train from Rotterdam in the small city of Valenciennes, in the northern departments of France, where I was welcomed by the lovely Mathilde in the warm and historic castle of her mum’s. And Mathilde had all her lovely friends still-left-over from the previous day New Year’s Eve party. A house full of fun and welcoming people, added with plates of cheese and Belgian Kasteel Rouge beer (what a joy) followed.

In Valanciennes we spent the days walking around (strangely zhe French love walking and I seriously wondered why they don’t have bicycles to get around faster – or even tuktuks!?) and even climbing up a nearby terril, a man-made stone mountain from the region’s former glory coal mining days. And did I add already that it was cold? My Cambodian body was slowly getting used to below 10 degrees Celsius temperatures.

Then followed a week in Paris, where I lived with Mathilde in her small student studio near the Université Paris Nanterre, just west of the city of lights (and cheese). Thanks to a mocked-up student pass with my pass photo on it for the regional train, Paris was within 10 minutes of public transport distance at all time.

Start the accordion music by Yann Tiersen now – and see us wandering the streets of Montmartre and up the Sacre Coeur, see me go selfie crazy at the Arc de Triomphe, The Louvre museum, the Notre Dame and of course the Eiffel Tower (which gets lit up like crazy for 5 minutes every hour after sunset!), walk down the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, crossing the Seine and get lost in the most existing book store on earth: Shakespeare & Company.

We ate French raclette (think lots of melted cheese!), stick bread, cheeses, Italian pasta and pizza, Mexican burritos, at Burger King or at Amélie’s Les Deux Moulins and croissants. Lots of croissants – however I learned it’s a crime in France to have croissants at anytime after breakfast! We had the best hot chocolate ever (in my life!) at Angelina’s, a super fancy lunch room where we simply jumped the 30-minutes queue outside.

If you think I returned to Cambodia quite fattened up, these were the reasons. I also thought I needed some fat to warm up a bit more.

Trying out one CrossFit class at the Reebok CrossFit Louvre was a great excessive workout that included a 4x 400m run through the streets of Paris. Yes, cold, but I can’t complain about that, I was trying hard to get sweaty!

In the evening we went to the movies and I utterly enjoyed Le Brio (with English subtitles at the French cinema night for expatriates in town!) and we went to see what the fuss was all about with the upcoming-awards-winner All The Money in the World.

My digital step counter on my watch went crazy these days and even recorded an all-time record over 24,000 steps made on the last day in Paris. As a late birthday gift to me the lovely Mathilde treated me on a day at the Disneyland Park and the Walt Disney Studios of Paris!

What an utter joy that was. Had I already mentioned anything about the cold? So with extra layers of clothing we took the train and fought the weather at these amazing theme parks.

It was fun, thrilling and pretty exciting (my latest visit to a Disney park dates back to 1980 if I remember well) and I thoroughly enjoyed The Twilight Zone’s Hotel Tower of Terror and the various indoor and massive roller coasters, but melted with the attractions of Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean.

As in every Disney park there was a big fluffy parade through Main Street – but the light show at the end of the day, every day at 7pm, was where Disney gave all of itself. The stunning Chateau de la Belle au Bois Domant (Sleeping Beauty’s Castle) became fully illuminated with a spectacular 20-minutes light show that blew me (and a few thousand other spectators) away, including the fire works show that came with it.

This video is just an impression of that…

Talk about a closing act! Now this all became a birthday present not to forget very easy!

The only downside to the theme park business is that I don’t see much value in waiting in 45 minutes queues for a less than 4 minutes attraction, but –hey– I must be getting old. It also had to do something with the cold – which I might have mentioned before. It was cold outside!

And then it was January 10 and it was time to head back home again.

My escape from Cambodia worked pretty well for me.

I am thankful for the volunteers that stayed behind at The Flicks in Phnom Penh for keeping the business running in my absence (and not burning the place down) and feed the five cats that were dearly missed.

But I am most thankful for Mathilde for inviting me over and taking me in after meeting up only shortly in Cambodia!

Thanks for surviving me that long so far and perhaps our paths might cross again in the future! <3

Now let’s get back to the ordinary hassle in the city, back to eating healthy food (I need to get rid of that extra built-up layer of fat now) and a sportive regime in life.

I can say that 2018 started pretty good and I want to keep it that way. Just keep the cold, it’s all yours.

Success is an obsession.

Many people want it more than anything else. And they’ll sacrifice everything to have it – which is often the cost of admission.

I know sport coaches who consider themselves the ultimate beast and they want to beat anybody in the region. They ask me if I will participate in the CrossFit Open (The CrossFit Games Open is the world’s premier test of fitness. Since 2011, the five-week five-workout online competition has accurately ranked the fitness of millions of competitors), and I’ll answer that I will participate at my local gym, but I don’t really care about my ranking with the world. I do CrossFit to keep my General Physical Preparedness “for anything in life”, not to become stronger, fitter, badasser – all the time. It’s Training, not a Sport. It keeps me fit, strong and happy in life.

I know business owners here in Phnom Penh who are having a daily struggle to come out as the best with their business, trying to beat the competition wherever they can. Seriously, every day!

I know local athletic runners, who love doing marathons (seriously, the full 42 km) every few months. They need to run three times a week and they need to “make better times” every time. Anything less than last week’s time on the track field is seen as a failure.

And then you are the beast. And then you are the most profitable business man. And you win all marathons.

You don’t have to.

I made that big, bold and italic and larger for a reason.

There is the problem. Sustaining success, and going beyond success is nearly impossible for most people. Hence Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, questions, “Why don’t successful people and organizations automatically become very successful?”

McKeown’s answer is succinct: Success is a catalyst for failure.

Being invisible is easy. When you make mistakes, you’re the only one who notices. Even being the underdog is easy. If you fail, you’re justified in doing so.

But when the spotlight is on you, everyone is waiting for you to fail. The external pressure often becomes too overpowering, smothering the values and vision it took to become successful in the first place.

Which is why success is often a short-lived experience. People come and go. Very few remain on top for long.

It is true in all domains of life. If you succeed in business, life doesn’t get easier. It gets harder.

This is where I throw in achievement.

The difference between success and achievement is subtle but crucial. Success is a subjective feeling about how you’re doing relative to why you’re doing it. Achievement is an objective measure about what you’ve actually done.

Yet, success is far more important than achievement. Indeed, you could have all the achievements in the world and not be successful.

You see this all the time, people who have many external indicators of success, yet inwardly, they are a wreck. They’ve lost their why, and thus, no longer remember the reason they are pursuing their goals in the first place.

What once was a genuine passion has now become a need for more external validation. An endless need to acquire and achieve more. Thus, rather than focusing on why, the focus becomes on what will work, and doing as much of that as possible, most likely at the expense of your values.

Interestingly, many successful entrepreneurs admit to being happier before they were “successful,” back when their motivations were congruent with their values. Achievement poisoned them, and their motivation changed.

If “success” is your primary objective, you probably won’t get it. Chasing success is like chasing happiness. You can’t pursue it directly. Both success and happiness ensue from something far more fundamental — who you are.

Don’t let your ego inflate and forget who you really are. This happened to me in the past year when I pursued dreams that didn’t come out in the end. I had to be better, faster and more successful – no matter what. If I had abandoned all my own values I would also loose the most important people in my life. And I almost lost them all.

With whatever you do in life. Don’t forget your “why.” That may be the hardest thing you do as you seek to improve your life.

I realized I am most happy when I do what I do because I enjoy it. I am compelled to create, experiment and improve, because that’s who I am.

My name is Ramon Stoppelenburg.
I break mold.
After a workout.
And before dinner.

Before Snapchat, Whatsapp, Messenger, before MSN and ICQ and way before Browsing, Email and Internet, people send Letters by postal mail.

If you were far away and had to leave an urgent message, you used a Telegram.

This is one from my father, sending love from Indonesia to my mum and my brother, in 1974.

Every few weeks I head out to my local Drink & Draw session, at the top floor of Show Box bar in Phnom Penh. You get yourself a drink at the bar and head upstairs with your drawing materials.

There, a model (often a nude male or female from the Drink & Draw community itself) is available for an evening of drawing. Great therapy to clear the head and open the mind. More info here.

Living in the tropics is like… well, I don’t want to bore you with the clichés, but it’s wonderful. It’s charming, it’s relaxing (even though the traffic might not give you that sensation), it’s HOT, and you’ll always hear that the people are nice and the FOOD is great.

There are only a few things with life in the tropics that you have absolutely no control about. Read More

I wrote a book about the unprecedented adventures of me traveling around the world without spending any money. For almost three years, from 2001. I used my website to gather invitations of people who would www.letmestayforaday.com. Read More

Recently, someone wrote me about how jealous he was at my life in Cambodia. I felt highly honored. But his writing also made me reflect on this life of mine again, in this remote, tropical warm East-Asian country. Read More

My landlord came to visit to collect the money for my last month’s electricity bill. He asked me how my illness was going.
“Oh, very good,” I said while sweating abundantly.
“What was it again?” he asked.
“Typhoid. Typhoid fever.”
And with these words he took a few steps back. “Oh. That’s not fun. Not so good. You get better soon. You can also pay next month, no problem for me.” He already opened my door. “Hey, no problem. Good night.” And he was gone. Read More

Yesterday I let myself indulge in a 90-minute massage at a nearby spa. Mrs. Sokha looks probably like a little girl, but her fingers are strong and I felt myself really molded to mush after that massage. And that was also what was needed. Read More

You probably once stumbled on my previous blog post, in which I wrote about waking up early to write.

Waking up early to write – so that meant 4.30am – ended up to be quite an effort. And to be honest with you, I managed to do it for about one month. The first week of this year, in which I allowed myself to finally start writing, were all about that early alarm. Interrupted by a necessary trip through neighboring Viet Nam, I continued with the scheme as soon as I got back home again.

And then I had to stop it.

I discovered two significant reasons to immediately stop with the early rising stuff. Firstly, my writing got out of control. I was writing that much that I lost the direction where I was supposed to go, characters got to do and say their own thing and it was hard to stay on track with the story.

And that track was missing. I have the initial idea for the novel in my head, but that did not seem to be enough as a base. What I was missing was The Outline. The life line for writing.

“Hey character, where are you going? That’s not where you are supposed to go. Here is a buoy. Let me pull you back.”

Yes, I was naive enough to think I could just start off with the story I had to tell.

Secondly, not only was I knackered at 11pm at night. I also became Mr Oh-I-really-need-a-nap, preferably at 5pm. If I could not have that nap of about one hour, I would become cranky. I was tired all evening. I wasn’t fun. I wasn’t exactly nice company for others either.

Of course it’s great to be able to talk with friends about my writing at the dining table and how cool it is to wake up early. But they saw it too: the tiredness in my eyes.

So BANG. There was the second reason. I want to stay socially human. I don’t have to wake that early to write.

What I needed the most was The Outline. Again, that safety net. That thin red line that should connect everything that will happen with which characters and at what time in a novel is totally unmissable. And with that awesome story in my head, even plotting down that necessary outline isn’t that easy.

But it will serve as a blue print. It has to be fixed from the beginning, otherwise I loose control – and I just learned that.

And what happens with the stuff that I did write that early?

Yes, that was quite a lot. About 15,000 words. But it ain’t all quality stuff and I think most of that material might not even enter the novel. Ever.

Perhaps in other words, though.

She was really beautiful.
Stunning.

But you can’t just say that to a girl nowadays, so I asked if she cared for a drink. Well, first I found out her name by peeking into her passport as she appeared next me as I just walked through customs and she was browsing through it. Sarah. From the UK. Read More

Date a man who treasures experiences over material possessions, a hand-woven bracelet over a Rolex. Date the man who scoffs at the words “vacation,” “all-inclusive,” or “resort.” Date a man who travels because he’s driven by a multitude of goals, not just one.

You might find him in an airport or at a bookstore browsing travel guides, though he “only uses them for reference.” Read More

It happens quite often. It’s when people find out what I do with my life, what I do for a living. They checked me out on Facebook, read this blog and – bang – they see that I do a lot of things. Read More

What would I wish I had known when I first moved to Cambodia?

Well, the answer became my submission to the popular blog of Move To Cambodia (which is a great book too, by the way!).

When I decided to move to Cambodia for the obvious reasons of the tropical temperature, great food, fascinating, friendly people and less hard work for less necessary bucks, I didn’t know about the giant black hole I would fall into within the first few months. Read More

When you get to a certain age there is something terrible that starts happening to you. And it happens over and over again. It’s called “a birthday”.

Of course turning 36 isn’t the end of the world—it’s just a giant step towards it. Read More

I moved from Amsterdam (The Netherlands) to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) in September 2010. So let me start this update right there. Read More

So you click to see what that first post is about, hey? Well, true, it’s The Fascination for The First Post that got you here.

I guess you are interested in the beginning of the story. Where it all started on this website. And you expect the reason for its existence. And the explanation of the name HereIGoAgainOnMyOwn. Read More