lo siento, no entiendo

I almost got a job with the bank, but they needed a full timer, and I'm not quite willing to give them that with all of my onerous commitments at the institute. Plus the institute has now honoured me with my very own office. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, I have an office that I share with my colleague. Notice the professional terminology? Oh yeah, I'm moving up. We even have our own phone. Unfortunately I think the whole thing was just a backhanded ploy by the institute to make sure that we actually do some work, since they can now check how often we're in. I also have to attend the dreaded Monday morning staff meetings to help complain about the provost, and comment on how malevolent the University administrators are. (The director's in a bit of a tiff with them because they're moving us and the Pacific Institute to the third floor at considerable expense, in order to make room for some new institute, instead of putting the new institute on the third floor.)

The good news is that the pub next door has vastly improved the food this year, so I will probably actually be able to eat there on my lunch break.

I also noticed that the world press is starting to take much more note of the deteriorating political situation in Belgium. They still haven't been able to form a government after the election which happened back in June, and the country's pretty much split along linguistic lines. After my trip to the Belgian history museum and living there for a while, its my learned opinion that Belgium is going to split up sometime before I'm very old. Its already so decentralized they have almost nowhere to go but finally cutting it up. Really the only thing holding them back is what to do with Brussels. (I heard an interview with a polisci prof from Leuven who said that the real reason was an innate lack of courage and imagination on the part of Belgians... but I prefer to believe the Brussels story) Both sides want it; its mostly french, but its in Flanders really... I guess that's one thing the city is useful for: saving Belgium.