Family Pics

We had a family reunion today. Aunties&uncles, direct cousins and their offspring. Too tired to write but will leave you with some pics. All images are clickable to enlarge.

Germs

Time to re-open for business me thinks. So as per my last post, I went off in search of snow & mischief and found myself a good fresh 2 meters of the first and whole bundle of the latter in the form this wee 'un:

-Cute Bundle of Mischief (click to enlarge)-

For the first time since handing in the full thesis draft, I felt like I was on a proper break. Quite naturally my body took this as a cue to finally release all the pent up tiredness & stress and by day 4, I was back in bed with a high fever, feeling utterly miserable.
Ironically, Dr.Jim had left a comment to my last post reminding me to make my way back home in time for his impending visit. That in itself turned out to be no mean feat. By Sunday the fever had gone down only a little bit, but thanks to some expert Austrian care and the provision of countless hot brews, nutricious meals and lots of skilful TLC, I at least felt a whole lot less miserable. So I packed myself into my wee Polo with lots of meds and audiobooks and whizzed my way back to Belgium via a 1200km trip of sheer delirium.

I feel compelled to add: Hurray for German efficiency. 800kms of no legal speed limit, and toilets every five minutes. It was a true blessing ;-)

I made it home in one piece and headed straight for bed with a high dose of painkillers. By the time Dr.Jim and his Miss Lou arrived, I was feeling and looking a lot worse for wear. To allow them time to recover from the shock of having landed in such an extremely flat weird li'l land, and to give myself an extra night of recuperation, we decided to start off the visit with an early night. But if you think 4 days of meds and an early night would have cured me, you'da thunk wrong. When I woke up on Tuesday morning I had entirely lost my voice. My unfortunate (?) guests thus spent the remaining four days in the presence of an excitedly squeaking/whispering host. I did, however, carry a bright orange referee whistle with me at all times, should there have been a need to draw attention to myself where my voice couldn't ;-)

For a full and perhaps more coherent account of the visit, I suggest you await the next edition of LeScientist, but for now, I would just like to mention Dr.Jim's highly amusing tipsy endeavours to consume as much Tierentyn Mustard as humanly possible in one go, without spontaneously combusting. I think he's established that small inputs yield high returns. As for Miss Lou, I would first like to appologise for the fact that one of my walls attacked her in the middle of her sleep. It shall duly be removed. And second, I'd like to thank her for proving that it is physically possible to touch/pick up/evaluate every item of clothing in a store within the space of an hour. I was well impressed and may pull a copy-cat when the spring-shop-bug finally hits.

We've established that pink is a definite no no, confirmed that the brits have trouble adjusting to belgian pub opening hours and that guiness tastes different in flatland. We decided that concepts matter, agreed that bosses who ignore clever ideas ought to be dumped, discovered that all belgians wear trousers of leg-size 36 (male&female) and have proven that is in fact possible to drink a Kwak without spilling it, if you simply skilfully keep turning it round whilst you drink. A very good haul for a 5-day visit, I think you'd agree ;-)

-Dr.Jim and Miss Lou (click to enlarge)-

As of tomorrow I'm off in search of snow and mischief.

Blogging resumes as usual whenever I see fit to return.

(or whenever my car sees fit to return me and my newly purchased tyre-snowchains)

Would much appreciate it if the customary "break-a-leg" wishes could be refrained from.

Social Investments

I've never invested much time in building a "gay" social life here back home. Picking one's friends based on their sexuality is beyond me, and I'm quite averse to the general gay-"scene". Moreover, I left Belgium when I'd just turned 21, so there's a 5-year hiatus in terms of expanding the home-social circle. Though I made many new gay&straight friends during my time in Lisbon, England and Scotland, the temporary return to Belgium this summer pretty much implied a return to a predominantly, if not entirely, straight group of very close friends. That suited me just fine. The post-break-up rebound phase is all too messy, so I'd no pressing urges to "mingle" with potential flings. And as every PhD student knows, the whole write up experience is in essence a time of withdrawing from society and simply directing every bit of focus you can muster, upon completing your thesis.

But now the write up has drawn to a close, the rebound phase has long passed and with the prospect of possibly 2-3 more months of waiting before I can take off travelling, I figured the time would be right to finally invest in some level of "gay" social life. And yesterday was just the ticket. A club in town was holding a gay-women-only DJ night. It was quite an eye-opener. It seemed like the entire cast of the L-word had been -badly- cloned ten times over and descended upon the club. It was hard to keep track of all the Shane, Max, Carmen, and Dana look-a-likes. I wonder if people watch this show with a notepad, writing down all the little accessories that are featured and then attempt to incorporate them into their own wardrobes. Either that, or the L-word casting directors & costume design crew did a hell of a job depicting the general trends that were already there. It's a chicken-or-the-egg type mystery. There were, of course, also the token Alex Parks copy cats and typically a whole army of cringefully butch & dyke punters.

It was all in all a fantastic night. The music was just about right to keep a slightly tipsy clubber on her toes, the drinks were expensive enough not to get entirely wasted, and I'm gradually getting the hang of Flemish flirt-language. Which, it cannot be said enough, is strangely radically different from the English chatting up bussiness. I managed to bump into an old friend, which is always amusing, especially in such "dodgy" locations. And, as luck would have it, just as I've started to teach myself survival spanish, I made an enchanting acquaintance with a pretty Flemish Latino. As a first attempt to socialise "gay-ly", it was a stunner of a night. The phone-number list has been expanded and this evening, I am off out with one of them. It has helped make me ever-so-slightly more confident that walking into clubs and bars on my own during my travelling stint, needn't be such a daunting prospect after all. Growth. ;-)



-Pictures Compiled from the club's "Image of the Night" website-

Sinking

Just press play...

On a completely different note... and this may come as a bit of a shock to those of you who actually know me... I've decided that 10 full days of freedom is quite enough faff&play for the time being. It is highly likely that the final wrap up of the PhD will take a few more weeks (possibly up to two more months) and I need to do something with myself other than just sit around wasting money and space or bothering people that do have real jobs. Moreover, I've started reading through my travel-guides and I've realised I could probably do with a bit more cash to survive Iceland without freezing to death in a wee tent.

So this morning I set off to Ghent, CV at the ready, to try and find myself a wee job. Now, you have to understand that I:
(1) don't take well to authority
(2) would become severly depressed if I had to clock into a shift system
(3) am really quite lazy
(4) am not the most confident individual in the world
(5) get freaked out by the sheer mention of the word: contract
(6) don't have many "usable" or "real world" skills
(6) would LOSE money due to tableware breakage if I worked in any service job. I am just THAT clumsy

But luckily, a mere 16 minutes after walking through the doors of a carefully selected target, I shook hands on a new job which deals perfectly with all of the above. YAY Me!! I've got my orientation-chat on the 20th. This should hopefully keep me off the streets, in the black and out of mischief until I'm ready to board that plane to Oz.

Burocracy... or should that be pedantic procrastination?

I received an important looking letter in the mail this morning, stamped with the university seal. I was absolutely bricking it when tearing it open, dreadful doom-scenarios of scientific inquiries already unfolding in front of my eyes. But here's what it said (click for larger image):


So... not only did it take a Research Committee (3 people!!!) to accept the title, but also an Administrator to type out the letter of warning, a priority seal and envelop AND the services of the Royal Mail, JUST to let me know my title has been approved. Wonder how long it will take them to approve the other 27,183 words?? I'm thinking I'm gonna be here a while yet.

Meanwhile I'm itching to request an alteration of the starting-letter of each word into upper case. Just for fun.

Assez de Frites

I nearly wet my pants when I read this newspaper clipping (click on image for a larger version):



PS: I think, Phil, this fits in rather well with part of our convo last Thursday!! ;)

PPS: For the non-Dutch speakers amongst you, on the left is a letter sent out by a Dutch firm to a Flemish firm in Antwerp, in rather painfully crippled French. On the right is the reply in French (not without sarcasm) by the Flemish firm.

Syriana

Well, sheer elation has indeed set in and I've not had much time to update the blog. But I feel compelled to at least briefly mention "Syriana". A fiction feature so rooted in reality it is ridiculously scary. Well-balanced, well explained. A not so subtle warning. Recommended.