Arnaud de Klerk
Tiny House

My personal year:

2024 was a very very busy and very interesting year.
As most of you know, the housing market in The Netherlands is crap. It's near impossible, especially for starters on the housing market to rent something. We ended up buying a Tiny House for our daughter Marieke. A small adventure, but... we're in the lucky situation that we can afford to do this.
And when it comes down to our own house, we did a large redecoration of the ground floor. It's like you're in another house when you look at our kitchen and living room compared to a few years ago.
Furthermore we were finally able to handle the last practical stuff regarding the passing of my father. It's almost 18 months ago now, but I still think about him on a regular basis. It's weird not to be able to discuss things with him anymore.
On a very positive note: Booked the largest order ever in my life: Over 3 Million USD with ASML. That's one for the books!
And: this year I got to see Abraham. Thanks to John for the very nice Abraham picture (NSFW), TFH style.

MSX TurboR - Puzzle Mania - Arnaud de Klerk Toshiba HX-10

My MSX year:

2024 also brought some nice MSX-related stuff for me:

* I entered the MSXdev24 competition with Puzzle Mania MSXdev Edition.
* Got my hands on an MSX TurboR
* Got my hands on a Toshiba HX-10, my first computer ever!
* Started visiting the MSX Club West Friesland. A nice group of people playing with the MSX machines. Feel free to visit us as well!
* Got back in touch with all FONY members!
* Started a very nice MSX Whatsapp group.
* Got my 40 year old (!!) MSX hooked up to the Internet through WiFi!
* And there is something magical in the works for 2025! It's Pico, and it's big!!
Bestek bij Restaurant O&O Stephanie de Klerk

My culinary year:

As you all know, Stephanie and I like to go out for dinner. And not only for a quick lunch or an all-you-can-eat. No, we also like to enjoy to visit Fine Dining restaurants.
We've already visited quite a lot of restaurants with a Michelin star (or two), but this year we went "all out" for a lunch at the only restaurant in The Netherlands with 3 Michelin stars: De Librije. You can read about our experience in my review (Dutch) on eet.nu.

There are two other nice highlights:

* Eet.nu started to publish a Top 100, which I helped to create.
* I got a nice blog post on eet.nu.

In 2025 we hope to experience a lot of new restaurants and hopefully get to be positivily surprised with what they have created.

Final thoughts...

All in all I can say 2024 was quite a good year, especially compared to 2023. I can't see it went by without any difficulty, but they were pretty minor compared to 2023. But that is all on a personal level. Looking at the bigger picture and to what is happening in the world recently, I am a little bit scared about what 2025 is going to bring us. Geopolitical tension is growing everywhere and also the industry I work in has its challenges. Hopefully we can all just stay nice to each others. I wish you all the best for 2025!
Stephanie de Klerk & Arnaud de Klerk in De Librije