Born in 1979 in her hometown of Kiangan, Ifugao in the Philippines, Vi has moved homes too many times. Since 2020 before Austria's first lockdown during the pandemic, she moved to Sweden. She is still in Sweden today.
On April 30th, a Saturday, I spent the day with my mommy, Mario and his daddy. I saw my tita V and my tito Mattias shortly when they came to park their car at the hotel where mommy and I were staying. We took the bus into town together, then they got off to meet with lola Margareta who was waiting for them.
We went to watch the boat race in the morning. Everywhere was soooooo crowded.
There were people selling balloons and Mario and I got one each. I got a heart balloon while Mario got a dragon. Of course I wanted the dragon balloon but mommy suggested I take a different one. This is what it looks like right now, the 7th of May.
Afterwards, we went to Mario’s house and played on the PS4 and Xbox. After dinner, we went to watch and play around a giant bonfire. It was so much fun! Please click on a photo below to zoom it out.
The boys I played with that evening came and picked me up the following morning (Sunday) and I spent a few hours with them. We also had lunch together. After that, mommy took me back home to my tita and tito in Östhammar because it was school day for me the following day. Hope you liked my photos.
We intended to leave Östhammar for Uppsala at around 8AM and head straight to the river to watch the rafting first before walking around. We were able to leave on time, however, when we had to turn back to fetch my UP “sablay” that I meant to wear at some point during the trip to match Mattias’ outfit.
Massa folk…
The railings by the river were full of people waiting and cheering whenever a raft was in sight. We could not find a free spot and so we gave up and walked around towards the end of the race where the participants got off their rafts and were helped ashore.
Forsränningen
Scroll down for move videos and photos we took during the day. I ran out of battery before the famous wave at the Carolinabacken, but luckily, Mattias still had enough on his phone which I used for the countdown and the most-awaited moment when the rector waved. I will post my niece Shauna’s fun bonfire souvenir shots on her own page on this site.
An estimated 80,000 people attended this year’s event including myself, Mattias and my mom-in-law Margareta. We ended the day with a buffet dinner at Pong in Gränby before we dropped off mom and headed back to Östhammar. Exhausted from walking all day, but it was all worth it. My first time to witness and take part of the Valborgsmässoafton, Forsränning and Mösspåtagning in Sweden. :))
Walpurgis Night is the year’s largest student festival in Uppsala with rafting, herring lunch, gasques – and much more. Valborg or “Sista april” (last of April) as it is also called, has been celebrated since time immemorial especially in the eastern parts of Sweden. Uppsala students over the past centuries like to celebrate the evening, and there are old bills preserved that indicate a rather intense partying with food and drink.
During the early 19th century, the students in Uppsala during the evening of April 30 began to go up to Slottsbacken to look at the flaming huts of the plain. Those who were able to sing took the opportunity; this was the birthplace of student singing. It is confirmed that in 1823 the song “Spring has come” was performed next to the castle. Eventually it also became customary to bring a living for the king and the motherland and perhaps give a speech in the spring.
At the end of the 19th century, the ceremony was fully developed, the entire student union marched up and it became the rule that the student union’s vice chairman would hold the spring speech . This often highly acclaimed speech has been broadcast on radio since 1926 (with one exception, 1951). Since 1971, the Curator Curatorum, chair of the student nations’ cooperation body, the Curator Convention , has been giving the speech. The Gunilla bell rings and Allmänna Sången still participates. Many have claimed that the Slottsback tribute, which always starts at exactly 9 pm, is one of the finest student ceremonies in Sweden.
The “Mösspåtagning” (that ceremony with the students’ hats) takes place below Carolina Rediviva. Exactly at 3 PM, the Rector raises his/her white hat and this is the signal for everyone to put on their student hats and run down Carolinabacken (backe means slope/hill). Countless times there has been talk of the “white-backed hill”. Balloons rise towards the sky and a general spring cheer erupts in the crowd. At the beginning of the 20th century, people contented themselves with putting on the white hat for the first time after the winter when they went out on the morning of April 30, but then it became customary to gather on Drottninggatan and not put it on until just when the clock struck 15. Over time, they moved further and further up towards the library. Sometime in the 50s, the then Rector Torgny Segerstedt got the idea to raise his hat as a starting point, and so that tradition was created.
A few years later, in 1975, Forsränningen was added , started by students in the current Uppsala Technological and Natural Sciences Corps. A variety of vessels, more or less imaginatively equipped, glide down the Fyrisån. In the same year, the now popular Champagne gallop was added , which was started by two students at Stockholm’s nation. Both of these elements are today as obvious as the spring speech and the Mösspåtagningen.
Note: The above is mainly a Google Translate version of the Swedish text from this post.
Article first posted : September 9, 2015
Article updated: October 19, 2016 Final update: June 14, 2017
The Traveling Cats – Moving again?
Yes! Cats de Block will be traveling again.
So… After making the decision to move once more, we are faced with this new challenge of how to get all of our furry 7 out of Thailand and off to Europe in a few months. When I wrote this post in late 2015 (last year), our options were Holland, Austria, Germany, Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal, etc. We chose Spain and my husband Ronald left for Malaga in September 2015. The cats were supposed to follow soon after; however, their trip was cancelled as I had decided to extend my stay in Thailand.
After a brief holiday in Saigon (last week of January 2016), I arrived back in Bangkok to a new job offer which I decided to accept. After a month at my new workplace, I summoned hubby back and he returned to Thailand albeit reluctantly.
As I am updating this post on October 19, 2016, exactly a week after Thailand’s beloved King Bhumidol Adulyadej passed away, Ronald is scheduled to fly to Vienna. The cats will follow. For sure this time.
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In 2012, back when Ronald, our eight cats and I were still living in Siem Reap, Cambodia, our friend Jan’s organic moringa production was still in its planning stages. He had the land and was waiting to introduce moringa to it.
After a little over a year living in Siem Reap, I got the chance to visit home in mid 2013.
While in Manila, I was amazed to find all sorts of Moringa oleifera products in many shops, also in the malls and online. You can find them in the form of food supplements, tea, ingredients mixed in breads and cakes as well as in cosmetics and many others.
There are some calculators and formula you can find online and use to convert a cat’s age to its equivalent in human years so to speak.
According to Calculator Cat, the first year is equivalent to 15 years. On the cat’s second birthday, add 10 years. Then add 4 years for every birthday that follows.
What this is saying is that when a cat is two years old, she/he has matured to about the same as a 25 year old human.
Let us find out how old our furry babies are in the de Block household.
Here are our eight cats’ actual ages or estimated in the case of their mother, Lucky.
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