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I’m having a particularly “European moment” this evening, counting down the former-Russian-state entrants for this years Junior Eurovision, anxiously waiting for the appearance of the Belgian entrant.
Somehow in the past week there has been enough publicity behind the Belgian entrant that my girlfriend even knows the words to the song.
What makes this evening all the more interesting is that of the 13 entrants, only 6 are actually in the European Union. And of those six, both Netherlands *and* Belgium are eager entrants, televising the event at primetime on channel 1 (een).
The children in the studio-audience have been dancing in synchronization with the movements of my stomach. What an evening.
This evening whilst watching a bottle of wine empty before me, I couldn’t help but notice the above semen stain live on television.
Thanks Pieter Embrechts, you made my evening!
When I was a child I remember seeing short ten second clips of ‘domino record attempts’ at the end of television news broadcasts, in the light-hearted segment reserved for post-sports news filler. However here in Belgium, this ten-second clip is reserved for an entire day.
This Friday was ‘The Domino Day’, where teams from Belgium and Netherlands try to out-do each other with plastic blocks and their wacky ways of knocking them over.
Apparently this spectacle has been held annually since 1974, with every year tonne of falling plastic added to the record books. To save you a trip to wikipedia, I graphed the number of dominoes fallen per year. Now you know that by 2012 there will be one fallen domino for every person on the planet.
End of times prophesy? WHO CAN SAY!
WHO CAN SAY!
Kakadu, not Kaka doen
I handed my dear Flemmish girlfriend a brochure on all things Australia, in an attempt to try and sell the idea of a holiday this Christmas. She was impressed by the idea of a “Yarrah Valley’ with its 50 wineries and many tasty restaurants, though she couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of a “Kakadu”, which roughly translates into “Do a poo” in Dutch.
Funny times.
Annelies, Kaka-doen?
In Flanders, Lemonade does not necessarily mean Lemonade.
In the classical sense, the word typically indicates a mixture of water and lemon juice. In the delightfully bland industrial sense, it may indicate sugar and carbonated water.
However in Flanders, Lemonade can be anything from Coke, to Orange Syrup.
AMAZING DISCOVERY.
Everytime I come back to my dear office in Belgium, I am confronted by a painful argument between my computer and my keyboard. It usually goes like this:
Keyboard: “CTRL+ALT+DELETE plz”
Computer: “aight. Login!”
Keyboard: “Username is ‘Be326753′”
Computer: “What? Be”é§è(“?”
Keyboard: NO. NO. NO. NO.
Repeat process, though blinded, for the password. At least twice. On the third attempt, passwords are blocked.
The frightening truth, is that this has been the highlight of my day. It’s now 2pm I have been back in Belgium (working) for nearly six hours now, and have yet to actually have any reason to be here. I have a list of random Dutch messages for me to ignore/badly-translate, though ultimately it comes down to me sitting at a desk, waiting to find out why I am actually sitting here.
I have a post covering my previous week in Switzerland, I should probably work on that!
I started this blog in the opening hours (days) of 2008 with one intention: To blog my path from ‘Australian-Living-in-Belgium-But-Really-Living-In-Italy‘ to ‘Australian-Living-In-Belgium-And-Sometimes-Holidaying-In-Italy -Or-Going-There-For-A-Meeting-Or-Something’.
Unfortunately though, my plans of personal transformation came unstuck, as I have already spent a half of what has already been 2008 working my way through dear Italia.
Alas.
I have worked on a few draft posts, most of which revolve around the ‘would-have-if-I-could-have‘ theme of the amazing things here in Belgium, such as:
- Skiing: I went snowboarding! I was Bitchen
- Stoofvlees met
FrijesFrietjes: an amazinglyFlemmishFlemish variation on a simple ‘Stew’ - Belgian Beer of the Day: There is a bottleshop within vomiting distance of my apartment that sells 2001 Belgian Beers. It is currently my mission to consume every last bottle.
- Road trips: Music required for, food required for, and methods to handle a 2000km road trip once a week
- Live Gigs in Belgium: I saw Enon a few weeks ago, and was absolutely amazed at how different live shows are here in Belgium. The doors opened at 8, the band walked on at 8:30, and by 9:30 they’d finished and the venue was closed. There wasn’t even a bar in the venue – I saw a pseudo post-punk band in the LAND of beer, and didn’t even manage to have one. Madness.
- Hitz o’ 2007: It’s already 3/24ths through the year and I haven’t uploaded my obligatory “I Listened to More Obscure Music Than You Last Year” post. Yee gads.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll keep you informed. I’m going back to Italy tomorrow, so there’s a chance I won’t.
