Yannani

A normal outing turned into a workout session

This Sunday my boyfriend and I went to Technopolis in Mechelen for the first time (at leas for me). What was going to be a nice relaxing outing ended up feeling like a full on work out session!

We woke up at around noon since we knew it would take us at leas 1.5h of travel time and they closed at 5pm. We rode our electric bikes into the city which we usually do. My bike only had 33% left so I was trying my best to save as much as I could and it thankfully lasted the entire way in. Then we took the train to Mechelen. The last part was a 30 min walk, which was kind of nice since it was REALLY quite there. It almost felt like walking in a ghost city.

We arrived at Technopolis at around 2 pm which was perfectly according to plan. After putting our things away, we started exploring the place. They had a lot of fun things to try out which I really enjoyed. Even though it was all tailored towards kids, I had such a fun blast just checking everything out. There was everything from learning how sound waves and electrical current work to more physical activates such as running and climbing.

One of the activates was to test your speed against various animals. You select your anime such as; human, turtle, cheeta etc. I picked a snake and got ready for my sprint. I ran so fast that I wasn’t able to stop at the finish line and almost ran into the wall. Since I had to break so much, my toes were hurting for the rest of that day.

My favorite thing was one where you would have to lead a ring through a pipe thing without hitting the walls. I was doing so well until I flopped and got like 3 hits in. I ended with 5 in total. Nathan managed to do it with only 2 hits. My other favorite was one where you stood in front of a green background and then had a very strong shin on you for a second and could see your shadow being cast upon the wall as an after image.

Here are some photos of the things we did:

We were there for about 2h before we decided that we had seen it all. It was a warm walk back since the sun was still quite high on the sky. When we arrived back to Antwerpen we went to eat some delicious ramen and I ended up with a nice Tonkotsu ramen with pork and karage (fried chicken bites). Then it was the biking back.

I told you that I had enough battery for getting into the city, BUT I didn’t have enough for the back home. So I had to ride most of the distance in 2nd gear on an electric bike, which if you don’t know is a lot heavier to do compared to a normal bike, because of the battery inside.

When I got home I felt like I had done a whole workout session with the biking, walking, sprinting + other physical stuff that I did at Techno. My entire body felt so exhausted, so It was really nice just relaxing for the rest of the evening. Despite ended up feeling really tired, I still had an amazing and fun day. It was really nice to go out and do something and all the activates were really fun.

A night with delicious foods and fun games.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I headed out into town for the first time in a long time, but we ended up changing plans last minute.

Our evening plan was to try out a smash burger place because I have never had a proper smash burger before. After that, we would head to a place called “Gamestate,” which is like an arcade with a lot of machines that give you different amounts of tickets.

Since it was raining on and off all day yesterday, we decided to head out at 6 PM. We took our bikes and rode into town. We parked outside of the arcade and were about to walk toward the restaurant when we spotted a new place called “Gyojasang Korean Kitchen & Bar,” which we quickly figured out was owned by the same people from the Korean Clubhouse we visited last year. We started talking about going there instead and ended up swapping since it also looked interesting.

I ordered something called “Beef Steak Soulout,” and Nathan ordered some fried chicken. For drinks I had a Lychee Soda and he went with Yuzu Lemonade. The food and drinks were really delicious. I loved both the veggies and the meat in my dish, and I even got to have some of Nathan’s chicken since he wasn’t able to finish everything.

After dinner, we headed to the arcade. We filled our card with 60 credits and went around the different machines to see what we wanted to do. One of them was about pulling back a pin and releasing it to move a ball forward, and depending on where it landed, you got a certain amount of tickets. I did it, and I managed to get the big bonus, which was 300 tickets. Then I tried DDR for the first time and managed to injure myself by overstepping and stepping off the platform. I now have a small scratch on my foot. We also managed to get another 100 tickets for stacking 50 blocks on top of each other. We ended the night with a total of around 850 tickets. It was very satisfying to insert them into the machine. Then we headed home since it was past 9 PM already.

The rest of the evening was just spent playing some more REPO with friends. I had a really fun time. This was our second time at the arcade, but the first time we didn’t have a lot of credits to play around with. My favorite was the DDR and that I got the big 300 ticket bonus xD I definitely would love to go there again with perhaps a group of friends.

First time attending a motorcycle meetup

Yesterday the boys had their first concert of this year but it was NOT what I expected at all. Regardless it was a lot of fun both for the band members and for the crowd.

The only thing we knew before arriving was that it was an Portugese event. We arrived at around 8:30 pm to set everything up and the first thing we realized driving up to the event was that there were a lot of bikers. This was apparently a meetup for “A.M.A” (Amigos Motards Antwerpen). It’s my first time attending such a meetup. The boys had a bit a trouble communicating without the singer present due to most of them communicated better in Portugese, but he arrived shortly after. Since the lead singer is part Portugese and it was primarily because of him that they accepted the gig. The guy that was in charge of the audio setup and such was very sweet. He tried his best to communicate in English when needed. It was quite funny to see the boys in my shoes aka not knowing what was going on due to the language barrier.

After the setup and the small sound check we sat down for some foods. They were serving BBQ and the guitarist ordered stuff on our behalf. We got a baguette with meet in it. Quite simple, but I didn’t mind it. When they had eaten the show began. I was planning on streaming it over on my Twitch channel like I usually do, but since it was in a remote area the internet was too bad.

They started with a new song which sounded really good. They had did the rest of the setlist with some covers in the middle. I did my usual job of taking photo’s but it was a bit difficult due to the bad lighting. The crowd seemed to be having a fun time, one of them kept wanting to dance with me which made me a bit uncomfortable. Towards the end they even asked for an encore which is the bands first time. They even got one of the guys up on stage singing to one of their songs with his own lyrics. We might not have understood what he was saying, but he did perform a lovely harmonica solo. Since they started their performance quite late, it was already past 11 when they finished. So we just packed everything and headed home. Listening to a lot of AI country music in the car.

I was feeling a bit under the weather prior to the concert, but the time there was so fun that it made me feel much better. Next concert is already next Thursday, which will be held much closer to home. As always, looking forward to it.

As always, head over to this link if you wish to check out the band -> https://linktr.ee/weareonhold

Hope you all have a lovely rest of your weekend and I’ll speak to you next time ^^

A week filled with dogs and fun

Good day friends! I know it’s been a while. A lot of things happened between last post and now, but I won’t get into it at the moment. For now I’ll be talking about my week visiting my best friend.

I traveled out on the 19th. My bus left at 5 am and took around 8h to arrive. I don’t really mind the hours since I was sleeping for most of the trip anyways. When I arrived my friend picked me up and we went back to her place. Then we chilled about and started on her evening routine that involves: walking and feeding her 4 dogs and then making dinner. So that’s what we did the first day.

Next day aka Thursday was the day that our friend would arrive with their dog that we were going to baby sit for the weekend. Thankfully all the dogs got along good enough for it to work out. We spent the next couple of days just taking care of all the dogs until the owner came back on Sunday and picked her up. We did play some games and watched anime in the evenings.

I decided to stay longer than Sunday so that my friend and I could do something together. We planned: Haircut, Escape room, mini golf, shopping and sushi.

Monday a friend of my friend came over to cut an color my hair. Since they are friends it’s way cheaper than at the hairdressers. I picked a bit too short cut, but I think the style suits me. We also colored my head purple again, but only bleaching some parts instead of the whole head. It ended up looking really cool and felt really nice and refreshing

On Wednesday we did the Escape room and mini golf a place called “Fun park”. We started with the escape room which was based around Dracula. We only got hard stuck once, but that was due to the equipment not working as intended, which happened a couple of times xD. The lady did say that we did really well on time. After that we played some mini golf which they also had there. Some of the courses were quite hard since you need put the ball with some force. All in all we had a lot of fun and would defiantly come back again to try out the other stuff. They had bowling and lazer tag. Then there was back to do the evening stuff

Thursday was our last day so we just drove into the city did a bit of shopping for hair products and clothes and then we found a place to eat. It had 4.8 stars on google and was called HARU. It was amazing. The food there definitely deserved the good reviews. The fish just melted in your mouth and everything was just so tasty. My bestie even claimed it to be her new favorite place. So if you’re ever in Aschaffenburg and looking for an asian cousin place, then check out HARU.

Yesterday was mostly spent on driving me to the bust stop again and just travel back. I met up with my boyfriend and we went for some ramen and then went home and I did a small stream to try out the new life simulation game called “Inzoi”

I had a really fun week, but it’s also nice to be home with my bf and my pc. Hope you all have had a nice week and I’ll talk to you next time.

Christmas market

First of all, I hope everyone had had a lovely holidays regardless of if you celebrate it or not ^^

This weekend Nathan and I took our bikes into the city to take a look at the Christmas market that has been going on for the past two weeks.

There were a lot of people and also a small kermis. We started at the “Grote Markt” where we got some potato on a stick and I had some hot coco. Then we moved over to “Hendrik Conscienceplein” which was a place we saw on the news. After that we got some bubble tea at our regular spot, since it’s almost been 6 months since we’ve been there. I also got some new shoes since my current ones had a hole in them. Then we went back over “Groenplaats”, were i got a hot dog. We stopped by KFC to get some food for today, since we are having a friend over.

After all that we headed home. All in all it was a nice evening. It’s always fun going out this time of year to see all the random people.

The year is almost over and all though things didn’t go quite as I had hope. I can’t really complain.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your year.

Road trip to Gent with some nice tunes.

This Friday my boyfriend’s band some doing another concert, but this time in a different city and even though ended well we did run into a few problems which made the experience a tad more stressful xD

The concert was being performed in a city named Gent, which is about 1.5h away with car. Neither my boyfriend or I have a license so unless could catch a ride with someone we would have to take the train, which would make the entire traveling time at least 2h. Thankfully the drummer had space for us in his car due some plans being changed on his end. According to the schedule they boys were suppose to be there at 6 pm to set up everything, then sound check at 7 and the concert would start at 9 pm. Unfortunately the stuck in hard traffic on his way from work and picked us up almost 1h later than he originally planned, which already set us back quite a bit. On top of that, on our way to the other city there had been a car crash with a lot of cars involved which made the whole motorway slow for another 20 min. Because of all this, we didn’t arrive in the city until a bit after 7pm. Then we had to park across the water and with help from all 3 of us carry all the stuff for 350m. Even though we were 3 people, everything was still very heavy. but we made it in good enough time for everything to work out.

Despite everything, the concert it self went really well. They even performed 2 new songs which even I hadn’t heard. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show including themself. I was okay their photographer and tried my best to take as many photos as possible. I think they turned out okay. The concert lasted for about 1h with total of 11 songs. We stayed a bit afterwards, but not too long since we still had a long ride home. Thankfully the were no crash on our way home, so just smooth sailing.

When we got home we were quite exhausted and just eat something and then headed straight to bed. I’m looking forward to next time which will happen next Saturday.

Check out the band here -> https://linktr.ee/weareonhold

I hope you all had a nice weekend and a wonderful start of December. I will update this post with pictures when I get them.

Halloween Performance at KMSKA!

Happy Halloween friends. I know this goes up on the day after, but that’s okay. I was busy for most of yesterday evening so didn’t have to time post this before midnight. I will tell you all what I was doing.

So the day started quite early. Nathan had taken free from work because he had to head to band practice at at around noon and then it was off to the city for their performance later that night. For those who doesn’t know this, Nathan’s band aka On Hold used to have a female singer, but she left to focus more on her solo career. They have stayed in contact as good friends and about a month ago she hits them up asking if they would be down to play with her on one of her shows that she was doing in the city. So the boys have been practicing 7 of her songs together with her and yesterday was their big performance. Perhaps their biggest one yet in terms of audience.

The even was held a the museum for fine art called KMSKA. The event started at 6pm and lasted till 9:30pm with multiple performances from different singers. KARO and On Hold (Aka my boyfriend’s band their friend) was main act of the evening and therefor was scheduled last. Despite this they had to be there from 2 pm to setup, do soundcheck etc…, so I didn’t see him or the other until later when I arrived at the event.

I had also invited two of my friends to come to the event. They both live 1h+ away from me, so it was really nice of them to take the time to join the show and keep me company. We met up at around 7:30pm and decided to head for dinner before entering the event. We went to a close by pizzeria and their pizza’s were really delicious. They had a special Pumpkin pizza with cheese, pancetta and a nice sauce. It tasted really nice and for dessert I decided to give the Tiramisu a second chance, but I still didn’t like the taste so my friend finished it off for me.

After we had eaten we headed to the venue and met up with my boyfriend. I introduced him to my friends and then we just enjoyed our evening listening to the other people performing before it was their turn.

I managed to have a small chat with the singer and asked if she was nervous to which she responded with “I feel like dying”. I told her that if anything went wrong she could just blame the boys for no support xD She entered the stage and gave an incredible performance. Before every song she had some small talking points which were nice. We got to know a bit about her backstory and the backstory to her songs, which I always appreciate. They did a really good job and everyone else at the event seem to agree as well.

After the performances it was just packing down all the equipment and then head home. I said goodbye to my friends and thanked them for coming and was happy that they seemed to enjoy the show and would like to come again, when the boys are actually playing some of their songs. Rest of the night was just chilling with some games before heading to bed. Nathan had after all been up and in full swing since 11 am.

PS! If you want to check them both out I’ll leave links to their music. Keep in mind that one of them are in Dutch, but it should be easy to navigate to their songs if you just want to take a listen.

ON HOLD -> https://linktr.ee/weareonhold

Another year, another birthday month

We are back in October aka the month of celebrations. We started with my birthday which was on the 8th and then we just recently celebrated my boyfriend’s birthday on the 19th.

My birthday was really nice. I had an event over at my twitch channel (twitch.tv/yannani) that I called “Subtemberthon”. It was to take advantage of the platform’s Subtember event.

Subtember is an event that Twitch does every year for the month of September. During that event one can save up 30% on subs and gifted subscriptions. So it’s the prime to give your favourite stream a bit of extra support.

Since the event lasted until Oct 1st and my birthday is on the 8th I decided to have a 3 week long subathon so that people could contribute while the discounts were active and still have it count towards my birthday stream.

So the day started of really nice. I did a nice 6h stream where I was even wearing a cute little birthday hat while playing games. Then at around 6 pm I got ready to head out since boyfriend and I had made dinner reservation at a place in the city called “Seoul club house”. We arrived just in time and got seated at our table. We already knew what we wanted since we had already looked at the menu. They sadly did not have the drinks that we wanted so we had to pick something else. When it came to the food, everything looked and tasted really good. We happily enjoyed our meal and when we were finished we headed upstairs to play some pool. Boyfriend told me beforehand that he was really bad, but I guess it must have been his lucky day, because he won against me 3-0. Despite the fact that I felt a bit annoyed to have lost we still had a really fun time.

Fast forwards to the 19th aka boyfriend’s birthday. We had a normal start to our day, woke up and played some games. At around 4:30pm we got ready to ride our bikes to the bowling place and meet up with the rest of the family. We played two rounds of bowling where the nephew got total 2 strikes and Nathan’s brother got 3 strikes in a row. I only got 1 spare and so did Nathan, but at least we weren’t last (I was for the first round, but we don’t talk about that xD). After we had played it was time for dinner. We had raclette with a variety of meat, some champions, coleslaw and potatoes and then we had a small chocolate pudding for dessert. When we came home we continued the celebration with some Piña colada and some lemon merengue pie.

All in all, both birthday were a success. I also got an amazing present for my birthday. I got my very own violin. For those who doesn’t know, I used to play the violin back when I was growing up and I have always wanted to return, but since those instruments are usually quite expensive I have never been able to afford one. Together we my boyfriend we found some really nice ones for just above €100 and he said I could get one for my birthday this year. I have been practicing and having a lot of fun with it.

My next post will be in around 1 week time, because that’s when boyfriend is doing a new concert together with a friend of theirs which means more photo jobs for me 😀

Hope you all have a great rest of your week and get ready for Halloween if you’re celebrate that ^^

Sunny walks, ramen and shrimp sandwich.

The past two days we have had really nice weather and therefor decided to head out during the afternoon to get some more walking in before I head home on Sunday.

Yesterday we went to place called “Fornebu” which isn’t too far from where we live. We had a nice walk in a park called “Nansenparken” which is named after the famous Norwegian polar explorer Fritoff Nansen. The park wasn’t that big, but we don’t walk that fast so it still takes some time before we made a full circle. The park also used to be an old airport and the main path we walked down used to be the run way. After the walk we headed into a small restaurant which was located right beneath the flight tower. It was a small Korean cuisine place and they had all kinds of Korean dishes included chicken ramen.

My father tried a bibimbap while my mother and I had a chicken ramen. When the food arrived I will admit that it didn’t look as astatically pleasing as the ones back home in Belgium. It was also served in a metal bowl which always feels a bit off for me. The broth wasn’t too bad, but the noodles tasted really like the instant ones you get from the store and they were a bit undercooked. Chicken was alright and so were the rest of the veggies. There were no Bok choy which was unfortunate, because I prefer it over green onions. Overall I would rate the ramen a 4/10. It’s sadly the worse one I have had so far in my life, but the rest of the day was nice. Didn’t do much other than watch some TV in the evening with my parents and hang out with my friends.

Today we headed on a bit longer trip. Took the car and drove to a place called “Jeløya” which is a small island outside a city called “Moss”. We started having a nice small lunch at the café and I had a tradition shrimp sandwich served with lettuce, mayo and dill. It was really good and defiantly topped yesterday’s ramen. After we had eaten we had a really nice and long walk along the sea side in lovely sunshine. There were some tough places especially for my dad, but fine for the most part. It was also A LOT of birds just chilling by the waterside. When we had made a full circle we saw a small art exhibit before heading home.

Tonight my sister is planning on cooking us some chicken and broccoli for dinner and we will see if my parents and I will watch some TV in the evening. Tomorrow is my last day and we are planning going down in the city and walk by the harbour. Then on Sunday morning it’s off to the airport.

Shopping, food and sculptures

These past days have been chill, with some nice weather and some tasty food.

Yesterday I started the day with having lunch with one of my mother’s friend. We ate at a nice café not too far from where we live. Since the weather was so nice, we decided to sit outside. We talked about my school plans and just generally catching up. We have known each other since I was little so it was nice to see her again. After our lunch my mother and I headed down into the city, because she had to exchange some clothes at “Zara” and I tagged along to do some light shopping. I got 3 new t-shirts and 1 new pair of black pants. Back at home it was just some chill until dinner and then we continued watching our tv series together.

Today we had plans to visit a sculpture park. My father and I took the taxi, but since we could only be 2 my mother had to take the bus by herself, but she didn’t mind. We took the taxi to a place called “Ekeberg Camping” and then we waited for my mother to arrive. When she arrived we walked into the foods and a really nice afternoon walk.

At around 4:30 pm, we arrived at the restaurant where we were planning to have our dinner. I went with the “Main course of the day” which was lamb with peas, mushroom and potato. It was quite tasty, but quite expensive. We talked more about my school, especially since I got in. So now I just have to wait for them to give me the school materials and then I can start studying.

The rest of the evening was just spent hanging out with friends and not much more. I did have a fun day walking around and seeing the different sculptures. Tomorrow is still unknown. We will see how the weather is, but I’m already feeling ready to go home soon. I miss my pc, stream and boyfriend xD