2018

In no particular order, here’s a list of notable facts of 2018 in the insignificant little life of mine:

  1. After 3.5 years in Zurich, 2018 is the first year I’m back in the French speaking part of Switzerland. My ears thank me for that.

  2. Because my landlord screwed me over the day before I moved in, I was supposed to change apartments after 6 months. Thankfully things got sorted out, and that didn’t happen. I nevertheless kept on getting rid of books, furniture, magazines, my iPad, etc. Also, Internet providers suck! It’s really nothing new. After many back and forths between UPC and Swisscom, I got a working Internet connection at home after 1 month.

  3. I have been at my new job for 1 year now. I am still enjoying myself. There’s a little less to learn than at the beginning, and I’m not doing as many visual things as I would like, but we got our first client actively managing vehicles via our platform. I also got to my first conference ever, at State of the Map in Milano. It was super interesting, but I haven’t made anything of it :-/

  4. I participated in a lettering workshop organized at Liip Lausanne by Francis Chouquet. It was tricky, but I had loads of fun!

  5. After last year’s disappointment over my meat consumption reduction, I turned full vegetarian. It was completely effortless. I’m now trying to reduce cheese consumption. The next hard step will be to tackle my sugar addiction.

  6. I am still a patron for kottke.org, my long-time favorite website. In 2018, I also donated to Wikipedia for the first time.

  7. With the amount of TV shows I’m watching, I should seriously consider starting to pay for them as well. Here’s a list of shows I watched:

    Funnily enough, many of those shows were recommended by Tinder dates.

  8. The year started crazily, regarding Tinder dates. I suggested to Antoinette to meet at Bains de Lavey on January 1st. It was a bold move, but she accepted. It was cool, but apparently not cool enough for her, as my subsequent tries to meet were ignored. She will likely stay the prettiest woman I will ever have been on a date with. Way out of my league[1]. Which is also why I didn’t insist much. The 4 other dates I had in 2018, with Florence, Emilie, Katia and Gabi, followed the usual scheme: chat a bit online, meet exactly once, barely or not at all talk again. My feelings range from very very very disappointed, down to complete indifference. I’m probably doing something wrong. No. I’m most likely doing something wrong. After 6 years on Tinder, 14 dates I think, nothing ever happened.

  9. I also properly fucked up the one and only chance to get laid since Summer 2012. At a friend’s housewarming party, a girl suggested we’d go to her place spend the night. I was taken completely off-guard and rejected the proposal. I internally facepalmed a fraction of a second later. Oh, well.

  10. While on the topic, I should definitely stop fantasizing about years long acquaintances that never showed any interest in me.

  11. In 2018, I have been getting really better at being a normal person: be late to appointments, not keeping promises I make (sorry Nin), paying bills late, etc.

  12. As a continuing theme to last year, I traveled as little as possible: a flight to Málaga, a train trip to Milano.

  13. I’m also still trying to buy less shit. To compensate for buying a mountain bike last year, I sold one this year. I couldn’t resist however to get a new BMX frame. Just a frame. I also got Apple AirPods that I’m quite happy with, a Freitag backpack, a crazy puzzle, 2 pairs of shoes, 1 sweater and a handful of games:

    • Gris on Switch: stunning indie game!
    • Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps And Beans on Switch: I had to laugh so hard when I saw the trailer that I had to get the game. The idea is genius, but I rarely played it.
    • Shu on Switch: cute, but I stopped playing at some point.
    • Prey on PS4: got it on sale, played less than I played the demo…
    • Alto’s Odyssey on iOS: barely played, too similar to the first one. I only got it because of the hype I guess.
    • Bridge Constructor Portal on iOS: fun time killer.
    • Inside on iOS: super weird, but really great.
  14. Since the gym I was used to go to does not exist in Lausanne, I had to try another place. And it sucks. It’s always packed, except after 8pm. It’s the typical gym: annoying music, annoying dudes pumping iron, everyone with his little water bottle, headphones… treadmills, stationary bikes, etc. Please Kieser Training come back to Lausanne!

  15. Health-wise, it was a mediocre year. After a false movement in April, I got knee surgery in May. It was really only mildly annoying, but I will mostly suffer the consequences in 20 or so years. The other knee, that got surgery 19 years ago, is already bothering me when I ride BMX several days in a row.

  16. As soon as I could get back on my BMX bike in August, and every single free minute I could, I spent at our local trails. Due to some asshole filing complaints at the local authorities, we were forced to level the fruit of several years of hard labor by the end of 2018. While I understand that we were legally not allowed to do what we did — which is: building dirt jumps for our bikes out of local dirt using no machinery — it still puzzles me how we could bother anyone. It is sad how one frustrated angry little nobody can ruin the fun and passion of dozens of people. Friends from all over Romandie — Genève, Lausanne, Yverdon, Neuchâtel, Bienne — were coming every weekend to ride their BMX bikes.

    Bastien floating over Walnut Grove
    Bastien floating over Walnut Grove
    R.I.P.
    R.I.P.
  17. While my knee was still healing and I wasn’t allowed to ride yet, I used the time to experiment with the build of a 360º turn, that I then got to ride at the end of the season:

    April 2018
    April 2018
    Same spot, October 2018
    Same spot, October 2018
  18. With all that BMXing, I hardly had time to go mountain biking. Gabriele however invited me to a nice ride past the Becs de Bosson:

    on a trail called The Argentinian
    on a trail called The Argentinian
  19. I miss people from Zurich: Guiom, Jay, Carole, Rico, the whole NT crew, the Doodle people. I am disappointed that Jay did not visit this Summer (Lausanne is really nice that time of year, you slacker!). I got to meet Luis again a couple of times. That was cool. I went biking once with Thibault. And I got to know some BMXers better than before: Fred, Loïc, Bastien, Jéjé, Steven. Good times!

  20. The family grew again, rising the score of nieces to 3. Nephews still 0.

  21. Maybe in 10-15 years I will take some of them to shows. Highlights in 2018:

    • No Fun At All at KIFF in Aarau on April 4th
    • Anti-Flag at Fête de la Musique in Genève on June 23rd
    • no Sick of It All show but there’s one coming end of January 2019 at a venue 10 minutes from where I live!
  22. And finally, a small list of podcast episodes I enjoyed listening to:

Aaaaand here’s onto 2019! Embrace the suck. Move the fuck forward.


  1. which is of course a really dumb thinking, considering that we matched on Tinder, meaning that she found me at least a tiny bit attractive as well ↩︎