Goofballsworld

Hang on

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:42:00 +0000

Just hang on one more second....I'm back but still a bit too busy with loads of laundry and sorting/loading/gazing at pictures of dives, boats, octopuses, sangria & chips & chorizo, mountains & beaches, rocks, board games, the other club members...

Well just still in vacation mood I guess.

E-mail etiquette: what not to do

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Just imagine that a colleagues asks for a service supplier's phone number just in case something urgent needs to be done while you might be absent. So imagine you promise your colleague to e-mail the phone number.

Just imagine this hypothetical situation.
According to the e-mail etiquette you should not in that case e-mail the phone number in the body of an e-mail without further explanation....to that service supplier himself.

If you would do so, you might receive a polite but very confused e-mail in return from your supplier after which you might start to laugh out loud into tears after which you might need to explain your error to everyone around you in the office.
...in that hypothetical situation of course.

Sorry I can't come online right now

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:00:00 +0000

......because I am listening to this and so much more.......LIVE at the moment

update:

man man man...oh boy that was good.
Now I can go to bed with sore hands from clapping and images of 4 floors of waving people, little Otto and his pacifier and elephant drawing, a hairdresser on Sunday night in the Carré, garden tools perfectly used as music instruments, curtains flying over the piano player, 'krakkemikige krukken uit Krakau' (which is also near Kalmthout in case you wondered)......and the sound of Algerian percussion, the intimate impression of Jacques Brel, mambo, folk, brilliant mucisians, etc...

One of those (summer?) days

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:41:00 +0000

This was my mood most of the day, although a lot less cheerful than Lily Allen.
But don't worry, I'm unwinding now and now I can sing along the cheerful song instead of wanting to type a long rant that I should not want/dare to publish on the internet anyway.

And now I start looking forward to tomorrow evening when we'll go to see a concert of Bart Peeters in Leuven. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

A autumn walk around Spa

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:39:00 +0000

Spa is a historic city in the middle of the Belgian Ardennes, well known for the many sources , its mineral water brands , its wellness hotels popular among nobility throughout past centuries making the word spa a synonym for thermal treatment resorts in different languages.

The beauty & the proximity of the region combined with quiet fall weather made us head out to the south-east of Belgium this afternoon for a walk. And on our drive back home through the valleys, along the meanders of a little rushing creek with view on the woods with turning leaves, I thought for a moment that I was in North America, I felt on vacation...

Some boglands just south of the city of Spa

Fall colours...Yes Lilacspecs , we do have fall colours here and there :p. Not red, but some yellow & orange

Walking

Source the Géronstère

Wow what a beauty. It moved me.

Fateless

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:48:00 +0000

Over the summer I read some books I owned myself (among other the good detective "The Poet" from Michael Connelly!), but 3 weeks ago I quickly went into the library. Due to time restrictions, both for the wandering around the many isles full of treasures as for the reading time before I had to return the books, I dutifully restricted myself to selecting 2 books. Books with a historic icon have an advantage to get chosen and I quickly walked out with a holocaust book and a book about the Armenian/Turkish conflict at the beginning of last century.

First I started reading "Fateless" by Imre Kertesz. Totally unknown to me, I was a bit shocked & ashamed that I had apparently obliviously picked a well-known controversial book by 2002 Nobel price winner.

Anyway....Fateless

It's one of the rare books where I reread the ending to try to understand. Kertesz describes his own experiences as a deported Hungarian Jew to the camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald & Zeitz which he barely survived. He describes all events and although his person is steadily dehumanizing due to the horrible circumstances, he manages to live through it all while rationalizing, taking distance of the linked morality & injustice.
The end reasoning is truly thought provoking and quite shocking as Kertesz returns to Budapest claiming he had not seen the hell in Auschwitz...on the contrary due to the extreme circumstances he had experienced there his strongest moments of happiness. He refuses to be a victim because we are all partially responsible for the holocaust: in a totalitarian regime you must choose to collaborate to some degree if you want to survive. He doesn't seem to state anywhere that holocaust was not evil & horrible but never points an accusation to anybody for what happened and by doing so he accuses us all including himself.

Euh....yes....as I said, shocking and thought provoking and in a way refreshing to read about the holocaust without the usual sentimentality & sadness& evilisation that we are used to. I totally don't get him though. I think I'm gonna put "Kaddosh for the unborn child" on my to read list where he deals with a man who doesn't want to father a child in a society that allowed the holocaust to happen.

Nightly logic

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:42:00 +0000

I had already been struggling for more than an hour to fall asleep after trying & failing for 90 minutes to get a printer functioning just before I went to bed (much too late) and after getting all frustrated & wound up over it.

While laying still in a semi-concious state and trying way too hard to driff off asleep in vain, I feel all of a sudden a finger poking firmly in my side.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"Huh? Trying to sleep"

"Are you still in the basement?"

"??? ...No, I'm in bed next to you"

"Ah ok" after which he turns around and sleeps on.

And then he mocks me for inviting him at night to watch flowers on the terrace.

Crossing people

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:30:00 +0000

"Is this the way to the train station?"
"euh....euh yes, continue strait ahead in that direction"

The lady from the butcher is washing the windows after the shop has been closed for the day.

A couple walks by the bookstore. When they've just walked by, the girl pulls his arm resulting in a big turn of them both when she points to one of the books in the window.

"Pfff il fait chaud ici dans le bureau"
"oui, c'est vrai, très chaud"

"It's not busy right now, I can help you until I get a new customer" says the post office employee while she sits down at the desk next to me and starts sticking stamps to part of my pile of envelops.
"Oh wow, thank you that's so nice of you"
"Those sticker stamps are quite fast to use huh"
"euh, yes yes, easy"
...
"I think there's somebody at your desk now"
"oh yes, bye"

"We have to search the family name marked on this statue" says the girl holding the quiz book to her husband who's already staring at the the big sitting posture of the former local industrial Rémy.

A big group of KSA youth (a well known youth organization) is gathered in a big circle on the square chanting songs to each other while being observed at some distance by a group of tourists.

2 families with little children sit down at the park for a pick-nick.

Another group of people arrives at a woman on a bench who welcomes them and starts explaining them a game in which they seem involved for the next 2 hours and that will use boules.

**************

So many people on their way, each with their own story, goal, direction, .... Amazing when you start to think about how many paths you cross on a simple walk through the city.

Googlies October

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:22:00 +0000

It's becoming a monthly tradition to check in the statistics which search terms have been used to land on my blog. Check out Brillig's blog to see more funny results.

As usual most key words were pretty obvious: if you are looking for my blog I suggest to type in "Goofball" or "goofballsworld"....those might be helpful.
But the following were a bit more remarkable:

* Several people in the Netherlands seem to be planning a trip to Deventer with some special interest when they googled the following variations
=> "deventer red light" / "red light district deventer" / "Red lamp district deventer"

* "goose parade vlanderen" : May I suggest you post yourself at the entrance of our parliament building? Lots of empty headed quacking and tail wobbling guaranteed.

* "I got the mexican flu" : Tough luck for you. If you would have had it a few months ago, it would have been special and you might have been announced in the news. Now you just have to sweat it out. Maybe check the WHO 11 steps to wash your hands guidelines for next time.

* "tallpeopleparty" => see september googlies...apparently Scheveningen is the place to be.

* "How to make rubber limbs?": First boil up a lot of elastics...When I say " a lot", I truly mean a lot of them. Boil them all until they become one smooth fluid substance. Then you take the limb that you want to transform, break the bone inside and pull it out. You can pour the fluid rubber in the created void. That should do it, I think.

* "is it mandatory go to school in Belgium?" : no it's mandatory to study (& to take exams? and to be registered to be a homeschooler??), not to attend school.

* "snacks for friendship": chips, lots of chips....definitely chips!

The summer of 2009 in music: Rex by Customs

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:39:00 +0000

Yesterday morning I had to scratch ice from my windshield for the first time....Time for another song from this summer. A promising newly discovered Belgian group "Customs" with there first succesfull single.

Very pulsing, energising and sticking.

Clusters

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:49:00 +0000

Has anyone noticed also that famous people always seem to die in clusters? One big name is announced in the news with an unexpected dramatic death....and you can bet there will follow a couple more in the coming days:

Princess Diana and mother Teresa at the aug/sept 2007
Karel Van Miert (Belgian politician, minister, EU commissioner), Yasmine (singer-songwriter, tv presentor), Michael Jackson, Sarah Fawcett at the end of june 2009
Felice (tv presentor), Stephan Gately, Frank Vandenbroucke (Belgian cyclist) this week

or do I imagine that kind of stuff?

Jef

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:46:00 +0000

Ninde was just a small rural settlement in Werchter (long before the village became a famous rock festival scene) which is currently part of Tremelo, with a stretch of more furtile soil along the Dijle which soothened the life of the farmers despite the harsh economic situation in 1840. There was one stone house owned by Frans De Veuster and his wife Anna Katrien who was known as Cato. Little Joseph, "Jef" as they said, was the 7th child out of 8 children, their fourth son.

Frans was a farmer and grain trader but when income was low he took his oldest sons to go to Austria where they got leeches to be sold to Belgian hospitals who still used them in medical therapies. When Jef is 7, tragedy struck as the youngest girl in the family, Melanie, dies from cholera.
The children of the family all went to the elementary school of the nearby village in Tremelo but from the age of 14 Jef starts helping at the family farm. He's a hard worker and enjoyed the outside work. 2 of his sister's joined a convent and his favourite brother August joined the order of the Holy Heart in Leuven. When his sister Euginie passes away in the convent, his other sister Pauline takes her place.

Frans envisioned Jef as his successor on the farm and decided to send his youngest son to a boarding school in Wallonia at the age of 17 in order to learn French. His study and the transition to this environment wasn't easy for him and he corresponded a lot with his brother in Leuven who invites him over the summer. His return to school wasn't very successful and he writes his brother to plea his entrance in the order of the Holy Heart. His parents weren't happy to loose yet another child to the religious world but they gave in and Jef joined the Holy Heart convent in Leuven as novice in the winter of 1859. His brother teaches him Latin and helps him to catch up the base education he needs to start his priest study. His strong perseverence was succesfull and he was sent to Paris to study Latin, Greek, French & theology and to finish his noviate. He takes his religious vows in 1861.

When his brother is too ill to leave on his intended missionary to Hawaii in 1963, Jef quickly convinces his hierarchy to send him instead his brother. After a quick visit to his parents to say good-bye, he boards a ship in Antwerp and travels to the other side of the world to set foot in a totally new world near Honolulu together with 15 fellow missionaries. The local French bisshop Maigret is rather annoyed that they've sent him fathers who hadn't finished his priest study yet and Jef receives the sacrament of priesthood in 1864.

For several years he works on the big island where he is responsible for a large parish. During this time he's confronted with leprocy and the social exclusion the patients had to deal with. He heard about the existance of the leprocy colony where patients were left behind to rot away.
When the bishop Maigret wants to send a volunteering priest to the island for a period of 3 months, the Belgian missionary volunteers right away. With the instructions to never touch anyone he sets foot on land where he's greeted by a group of deformed people. The smell of rotting flesh was all around.

Jef stays among those left without hope and learns to accept them as fellow people. Together with them he organises the small community of about 1000 (always changing) parishers, builds a church & a hospital & an orphanage, sets-up a graveyard, nurses the ill, baptises, marries and burries people, he organises a music band etc...He chooses to give everyone respect & hope despite their religion. He continously asks for funding at his clerical hierarchy while disobeying their rules and those of the administrative health council stubbornly until he was considered a real pain in the ass....probably quite correctly. But his work did get the attention of local media and he got support from Protestant & Anglican churches in the USA and UK....which made his relationship with his own order even harder.

In 1876 he notices the well-known leprocy symptoms on his own body. When he addressed his parish as usual "We lepers", it now had a new dimension. Since at that time leprocy was considered to be caused by syfillis, his illness feeded rumours about forbidden sexual contacts nicely spread by his opponents.
Until the end he continues to fight for his cause, while new lepers get simply dumped in the water in front of the shores of Molokai because "currents would be too strong" and when he requests confession from another priest at the end of his life, he needs to shout it from a little boat to another for everyone to hear as an ultimate humiliation.

But in the mean time his PR had done its work and his cause had caught the attention of the world press. When he died from leprocy in 1889 in Molokai among his community of lepers, his message and work is not forgotten.

***************************

Joseph De Veuster, better known as father Damien, was canonized by the Vatican this morning and is now called Saint Damien from Molokai.

The catholic canonization process can be easily criticized for its weird "miracle" prerequisites, the hidden agenda's and potential hypocricy of the clerical hierarchy, the many unrecognized & forgotten saints, .... Father Damien would have probably hated the pomp & circumstance of such big catholic events, he would have hated labels, ... He'd gone mad when he knew parts of his body are now travelling the world as relics.

And yet it was a huge event for the Belgian/Hawaiian/global church today.

When you grow up in Belgium, you grow up with Father Damien. There's schools, hospitals, restaurants for the homeless, ... named after him. His life story is taught to us in schools. One of the biggest yearly recurring charity events Damiaanactie (against leprocy & TBC) (part of the global ILEP) inspires every year a lot of volunteers to set-up fundraising activities and gets yearly coverage in the news. Father Damien is the only statue of a non-American in the US Capitol.

Much to my surprise the (secular) press has covered massively this canonisation in Belgium with live blogging from the festivities in Tremolo last weekend and from Rome this weekend with special news editions, extra news emissions etc... Thousands of Belgians have travelled to Rome to be there.

"Damien inspires" say the banners hanging in most of the Belgian churches at the moment. I guess that's true. He does inspire us to overcome prejudices and labels we put on people, to reach out to the excluded, to never give up hope, to fight for the right cause, ... Pope John Paul II has canonized a record number of people because he wanted to give our modern generation examples in this world, people that inspire us.
And that's what today was all about. That's why he's a saint to us.

Let's go swimming in the pool, let's go swimming in the water

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:39:00 +0000

This weekend Aquatec, a promising new Belgian diving equipment company came to present its roadshow during our training.

And the best thing is that we all got to try their prime quality products and do a wet test....

SpLAsh!

Floating with wing BCD's....Nice stuff, nice buoyancy...

The swim training is quite interesting to watch from down below :p

The summer of 2009 in music: House am see by Peter Fox

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:24:00 +0000

German music in the hit parade....it's rare. And those that did so in the past are usually now only in the "wrong" hit parades again eg Matthias Reim or Nicole.
This summer there was a refreshing German song constantly on our radio's though. Too bad Peter Fox is already tired of the success and attention this hit gave him and he's stopping his solo career after one hit (I think he has a band though?? not sure).

So what do you think? Catchy huh? Do you want a house at a lake?

You have to fry it very hard so you get a korstje

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:50:00 +0000

and you need no sticky pan"

Jan and I love to watch "SOS Piet" and see how he comes in Flemish families to watch them cook day-to-day dishes, see what they do wrong and then intervene and teach them in his typical way with his heavy accent from West-Vlaanderen.

Oh today we both cracked up in laughter so often when he was trying to teach someone in English. He sure was trying his best and most of it was excellent but his English sounded now and then like the Jean-Marie Pfaff's German. Check out an extract here. In the end his Flenglish was clear enough and they got what they wanted "in fact, ne fajitas must be een opgerold pannenkoekske". Ok got it ;)

Oh VTM must do this more often: it's a educational cooking program and a comedy at the same time. I still feel my belly from laughing.

The summer of 2009 in music: Diggy Dex ft. Eva de Roovere: Slaap lekker

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:56:00 +0000

The exceptionally mild & sunny September is now in the past and all last traces of summer are gone. Fortunately there's still good music to listen to in order to relive that summer feeling.

This song always made me turn up the radio each time. It's such a beautiful mixture of the soft warm delicate voice from Eva De Roovere and the energetic mix of DJ Diggy Dex. A fun contrast between the Flemish accent and Dutch one, the folky pop song and the rap.

(background: Eva De Roovere is a well known flemish singer-song writer with a folk background known for her pure simple songs. Yet she doesn't frequent the hitparade. The song "Fantastig toch" was written while watching her sleeping boyfriend. It got picked up by the Dutch DJ last year and became a hit in the early summer in the Netherlands and Belgium afterwards).

Do you want a pet?

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Warning- this post contains important information. Please read carefully!

As of tomorrow morning, only 42 mammals are allowed as pet anymore in Belgium. At least that's what I read in the newspaper who announces at the start of each month the most remarkable legal changes in Belgium. Hugh...a law that regulates the mammals as pet.....sure, I guess it makes sense to avoid abuse...but still ...

so let me see what we get to choose from:

bennet wallaby
dog
cat
fret
donkey
mule
horse
mule again (ok which politician fell asleep when making up this list)
pig (does that include some humans?)
lama,
guanaco (sorry I can't translate animals I don't even know in dutch) (ah found it....well it's a guanaco in English too, there you go)
alpaca
axishert (a type of deer)
edelhert (another type of deer)
sikahert (another type of deer.... hey "42" mammals is cheating if you list all types of deer, right!?)
damhert (yeah yeah another type of deer - the bambi type fallow deer?)
a domestic cow
Asian buffalo
domestic goat
wild goat
wild sheep
domestic sheep
black-tailed prairie dog
Asian striped ground squirrel,
Eastern chipmunk,
Chinese dwarf hamster (haha you wouldn't tell I am totally making some translations up , do you?)
gold hamster,
Campbell dwarf hamster,
Roborovski dwarf hamster,
Dzjoengarian dwarf hamster (geez, do these really exist?)
the real gerbil (yep, we wouldn't want to allow the fake ones, do we?)
desert mouse
spiny mouse
dwarf mouse,
African dwarf mouse
house mouse
brown rat (so no other colors allowed?? ....some people will need to spray paint their rats, I believe)
chinchilla
cavia/guinea pig
the patagonian mara or hare
degu
rabbit

It's been stated explicitly that monkeys and raccoons are from now on forbidden.
Great, glad that's been sorted out: if you meet any monkey inside your house, you can consider it illegal.

I'm also relieved that after a long period of political stability, our government is now stable enough to tackle the priority problems in our country.

Indian Summer in Scheveningen

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:27:00 +0000

Anyone who knows us a little bit, know that Scheveningen holds a special place in our heart and we don't need much excuses to drive up north.

This time we had the joy to meet our good friend's little baby daughter. We enjoyed their family and a walk along the beach that always brings back a lot of memories. Aaaaaah pleasant fall days :)

Cars, bikinis, tennis and other thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:11:00 +0000

Huh it's Friday? where did this week go? help I lost a couple of days on the way here!

Here's a round of quick random babbling. Care to join in in the comments? What's happening in your life?

*******
My car is almost 4 years old so it had to go to the vehicle inspection. I had never done this before so just before I intended to go I researched the internet what it was all about. I didn't want to look like a girl that shows up not having a clue what it's really about...while in fact I am truly just a girl that has no clue what that inspection is about.

"Car needs to be in business temperature" Huh? Yeah sure.
"Seat belts need to be clicked in"...ok, can do that. But why?
"Car tires need to be the correct pressure"....oh darn, never checked that myself before. My tires were one year old...would they still have the correct pressure? I already pictured getting a lecture for driving around with wrong tire pressure. Shoot.
But what was that little gadget thingie laying in my glove compartment? Ha a Bridgestone gadget to check your tire pressure. I'm sure my employer has given that to us one time.
So after some staring at the gadget, some staring at my tires, I figured it out and it was dead dead simple to check the tire pressure. Wooot woot, I rock
At the inspection I was the only woman around....the only one! And I must have stuck out while standing waiting while eating a sandwich as 4 people walked up to me to wish me a tastefull lunch....Belgians usually don't comment to strangers very easily so I thought it was remarkable.
Then I figured I had to add some more femininity to the place and I started vigorously filing my nails while waiting.

******
I need to choose a new car which causes a lot of dilemmas. I hate dilemmas of choice.

******

My bikini closing broke last night. Fortunately we were setting up for a night dive at dusk: lots of privacy in the darkness :).
Now I wonder if it is worthwhile buying a new plastic closure and trying to sew it myself or whether that is choosing failure since I am totally sewing illiterate?

******

Don't let someone navigate who forgot to put his lenzes in unless you're up for some turning around :).

******

Did you hear the news that Justine Henin is returning to professional tennis again? So after Kim Clijsters's successful comeback we are now looking forward to a new healthy competition between the 2 Belgian ex-number one players. :)

******

I wonder if we look weird if we all walk into the pub/restaurant late at night each with wet hair and black binders in which we enthousiastically start scribbling as soon as we sit down after which we pass them around for signatures and stamps?

******

After last year's tirade why I hate fall (which is getting googled so often!), I can add to it that I don't hate fall as much if it's a nice Indian summer that we are living after an already good summer ;). Although it is rather chilly in the mornings but that can be solved by a good cup of coffee.

*****

Michael Connely's "The Poet" is a good detective to read!

*****
A bird has flown into the window at my office this week leaving a big shit trail on the window. Darn the window washers won't come by in the first couple of months I fear and I can't reach myself. Maybe I should wish for some strong rain with northern wind? At night if I can choose.

Food memories: More vacations and camps

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Inspired by Jen from A2eatwrite who'll share her 50 top food memories with us this year, some of mine can be found here, here and here too. But I still have more :)

When I was 12 my parents wanted a change from the many vacations to Spain and we drove to Yugoslavia. After a long drive through Austria where my sister and I took bets to guess the length of the tunnels and where I manually gave my sister's legs an epilation with a pincet in order to fight boredom (The first was fairly effective but the latter was just extremely boring and cannot get recommended), we arrived in our rented apartment along the Adriatic coast of the current Croatia. It was located above a restaurant ran by a family, with 3 more apartments next to us that were occupied with Italian twenty-somethings.

The diners in the restaurant downstairs were rather uneventful and the grilled meat got a bit repetitive but we got to know the owning family. They introduced the local nightcap to my parents: Slivovitch which is a plum based brandy.

One of the evenings the group of Italians walked in totally waisted, stumbling cheerfully in between the tables. The last bold one stopped briefly at our table with a big grin pointing to our glasses. "Slivovitcha - Sliiiivooovitcha - slivovitch - slivov..." His improvised ode that would not appeal any marketeer echoed up the staircase and continued for a while in the above apartment.

Whenever I see a liquor bottle of Slivovitch or even any liquor with a plum on the label, I can hear him again.
A few years later we were in Portugal. Although the Portuguese cuisine can surely be recommended, I do not remember the trip mostly for its meals.

But I do remember walking around in some historic harbour somewhere (there's some to choose from if you're there) and there were some barbecues outside grilling fresh sardines. A little further was a reception going on where we could distinguish the purple pileolus of some bishop but the barbecues were temporarily deserted.

Before any of us realized my cousin had taken an unattended fish and had eaten it with much pleasure. Our shock for his swift little theft was overruled by our grumbling stomach and the craving for a little fish for our own. It should be no surprise that only a short while later we were all sitting on an outdoor terrace of one the many little fishermen restaurants where the smell of the many barbecues at their entrance had been like a siren's call to us.

A grilled fresh sardine with a few big flakes of salt and a bun....Delicacies can be so pure and simple!
Once I had turned 16 I was no longer interested to go on vacation with my parents. My summer holidays were quickly filled with summer camps and student jobs that conveniently didn't leave time anymore to join my parents on their vacations.

Summer camps traditionally stand for big scale tasteless food, but I also have memories about
=> lack of food stress
=> the joy of cold fresh water, something I never liked to drink at home or school but on a camp after a long hike or tiring game....oh gosh water, I could all of a sudden drink & enjoy multiple glasses of it.
=> A deep dislike for yoghurt and other fluid foods that took a long time to wear off again.
=> eating cold pork chops on hikes...something I thought would be disgusting but turned out quit enjoyable to have a decent piece of meat instead of some bruised little sandwiches.
Belgian students traditionally make a one week long foreign school trip in grade 12. The most conventional schools travel through the historic sites in Italy or Rome during the Easter vacation (zoom in on the St Peter's Square during the Urbi et Orbi by the pope and you'll always distinguish some Flemish school flags waving in the crowd) but my school had always considered that option too expensive and they choose to go to Eastern Europe in the 80ies and in the 90ies Turkey was economically priced enough to head southeast.

And so the plane was filled with approximately 90 girls with racing hormones who discovered immediately that a school of boys was on the same plane for a tour through Turkey as well. The boys would cross our path 3 more times that week which always resulted in a lot of waving, screaming, hanging through the windows and anything else that could help attract attention.
Soon enough we were playing card games on the plane where the loser had to take a dare challenge which was usually something like "go kiss the person in seat 45B". It caused quite some surprised looks from the few adults that were on the flight when we had wrongly guessed a seat and we ended up asking an adult man whether he could be kissed on the cheek for the sake of winning a game. Fortunately Belgians are not afraid of kissing people as a greeting so not much of a challenge there...

The food on the flight was a bigger challenge: sheep meat is a taste you need to acquire and most of us decided not to take that effort. They'd be hungry most of the trip though :p. On the desert we were all unanimous: gross. The little cake looked fine at first sight laying on some sort of sugery syrup. But as soon as we touched it, it seemed to suck up all the syrup like a little sponge releasing it again as soon as we lifted our fork again. In my memory it even made a gargling sound. "Eeek, it's 'sop cake' " (a soap suds cake?) someone yelled and all our appetite was gone.

I kid you not but we received sop cake every single day on our trip and we've never touched it. I got a dare in the card game near the end of our trip to go and ask the Turkish guide the recipe for sop cake in a flattering way without giving away that we were mocking the cuisine he was so proud off. I don't think I could shake off all his suspicion & surprise with my question but I got away with it and gathered the so hated recipe. It's been conventiently lost since.
Several years ago there was a nightly repetitive scene to be watched at a Cypriot hotel restaurant in the evening: 2 girls laughing and giggling to tears while making suspicious movements on their glass. It turns out they kept receiving night after night "Died coke" according to their bill so they specialized in Coke CPR, which was apparently a hilarious activity.

A morning in Zeeland

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:29:00 +0000

8:30 on a dike at the Oosterschelde : life is peaceful and quiet ....only fishing birds looking for some birdy delicacies at the uncovered shore at low-tide, can be heard.

9:00 - 9:30 AM: some cars stop and park along the dike....The majority of the cars are Belgian. By 9:45 the dike is full of activity : Divers set-up their gear and take a briefing about the dive

10 - 10:15 AM: Different groups of divers head to the water and go in.

10:15-10-45 AM: the piece returns and the land ruled by the fishing birds and rabbits...and 3 horses coming by.

10:45-11 As if they have trained in synchronous swimming, most of the divers start popping up along the shore again within 15 minutes time and head out

11:20: Most are packed and the cars disappear.

Drift dives in The Netherlands are tidal dives in the tidal Oosterschelde river, that need to be timed at the turn of the tides to avoid strong currents, resulting in an unorganized yet almost synchronous activity. Funny to watch.

Can you believe it?

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Remember my pictures on the Hoge Veluwe and the art in the museum....dating from 06/09/09??
Check out the pictures from Betsy on her picture update : the biking ones are dating from 06/09/09.....taken ....do you notice? Yep indeed taken in the Hoge Veluwe park in the afternoon, also on bike route 2 that we were biking.

Can you believe it? We read each others blogs for 4 years now, we live in Belgium and in Germany but we were biking the same 25 km bike route on the same afternoon in The Netherlands. Darn why don't I play the lotto??

And no we did not see each other in case you wonder. That would be too much coincidence right. Let's not exaggerate, ok?

September googlies award

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:38:00 +0000

Brillig is organizing her monthly Googlie Awards again, so I dove into my blog statistics and checked out which crazy search words made you all land on my blog pages.
Wow you sure were all planning weddings. So yes you can have 2 wedding ceremonies on one day, what to say in each of them is entirely of your choice and in some countries you cannot take your husband's name. Click on the label "wedding" if you want to read it all over again :)

Oh and Leuven kermis is ongoing again and if you don't know what kermis is, just google it and you'll find my 2 year old explanation as well.

So which search words made me giggle?

* what if the garbage bags not picked kortrijk:
oh gosh....let's not get into that. I sure know that I'd not want to be in Kortrijk if the garbage bags do not get picked. Don't worry, garbage rounds in Leuven are still pretty stable so I suggest you come to check out this pretty city!

* i dont like the seasons:
oh that's sad....I know I hate the changing between summer and fall and have been pretty explicit about it but all seasons? I suggest you lock yourself up in a dark room....no seasons there.

* you looked so beautiful at the wedding:
Thank you sweeties :)

* you not a goofball anymore:
oh yes I am , trust me. Sometimes I'm just incognito.

* tall people party scheveningen:
Let me tell you this: if you are not Dutch you can consider any Dutch party a "tall people" party :p. But shorties are always welcome.

* confused answering machine:
Oops, don't you hate it when the machines get confused :)

* vampire flies:
one advice: Get out....run...run forrest run!

What are your funniest search words??

Annoying paparazzo

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Karakterkoppen

noreply@blogger.com (Goofball) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:22:00 +0000

...or people we just had to get on picture