Spin-Off

I'm creating a spin-off blog. Since my main focus lately is on photos, I've created a "photoblog" at aminus3. I'll keep updating this one from time to time, but I'll set up the photo blog to publish every day, with a mix of new and old photos. Check it out!

Hogtown

I've left Toronto. Toronto is a city in the fine tradition of cities with crazy contradictions. It seems so dynamic, and yet stultifyingly conformist and up-tight at the same time. Some areas have a real street presence, rare in Canada, with music, and food, and art and lots and lots of people from every corner of the Earth, all doing different things. But then there's the whole suburban mass, the signs warning of grave consequences for playing hockey in the street, the Eaton Centre, and the boring financial centre. Well, it could be a lot worse. lucky since half the people I know seem to move there at some point. I think I could actually enjoy Toronto quite a bit, especially if I got to know it.

Toronto!

I'm in Toronto, visiting long lost friends and conducting interviews. So far it's been a good trip. Why do I always seem to visit Toronto in winter? It'll be a shock to my system if I ever go in summer.

Winter in Canada

Remember how I said I like travelling in winter? Well I stand by it. Despite all the hoopla surrounding the cross-Canada storms I arrived in Ottawa on time to the minute. But the process was much more interesting than it would otherwise have been. And by more interesting, I simply mean slightly unusual, and therefore more than the droning bore it could be. The ferry ride from Vic was far choppier than usual, and they kept on giving announcements about how we should all sit down as much possible and be good. But I mostly wandered around on deck, watching the waves and acquiring an interesting new hairstyle. They wouldn't even let us go down to the buses before the ferry docked because of the rocking.

Westjet was cheery as usual, and operated exactly as expected. Other than the psychological shock, all that the blizzard meant was that I had to carry my suitcase a couple of blocks from the main road to my house through snow drifts. In fact everything was so punctual, my bags were first off the belt, minutes after arriving, that it really put some of my mid-summer-fair-weather flights to shame. (Remember those made up baggage efficiency stats at Brussels? ~85% on target... and that guy who told us about how they'd made up the targets?!) I'm continuing my record of bringing extreme weather events with me: apparently this was record for snowfall in Ottawa in December.

On the Island

I'm on the island now... a fabled, promised island, beyond the edge of the clouds. Let me tell you Vancouver: It's magical.

Au Revoir Vancouver

I'm getting out of the metropole, and heading out on a trans-Canada tour. First stop: Victoria. Then Ottawa, then Toronto, then Ottawa, and then possibly Montreal. Should be fun. I like traveling in winter for some reason. Even though it's dark and generally frought with delays, there's something very dynamic about the Christmas migrations.

Move: Done and Done

The institute has been moved. The new facilities are a big step up in my opinion; much brighter, lighter, bigger, fancier, and with a better view to boot. Just too bad that there's been so much bitching about it. This move once again proved the old adage that the most stressful events in life are divorce, death, and moving. I personally tried to stay out of it as much as possible, while still pitching in, on the assumption that these things tend to get worse and worse the more people are involved. Also, that recriminations are more or less inevitable no matter what you do, until the end when everyone forgives and forgets anyway.

Me gustó tomates

Pero los tomates cerca de aquí son harinosos. ¡Qué feo!

ludicrous on the drive

This coffee shop in one of the most pretentious places I've ever seen. It has absolutely nothing on the walls, no decor whatsoever. And every person in there is some variant of hipster typing away on an ibook, sipping latte, or at the very least reading the latest Chomsky. I laugh every time I see it. Usually it is the very opposite of cosy, but on this one occasion, when the windows steamed up and the lights came on, I was actually almost tempted to go in.

On hilltop glows winter's charm

As I said, it's winter. And for a while it looked like fun... tomorrow we anticipate a "pineapple express" to destroy it. But at least we have the mountains nearby to bring back the sweet, sweet memories. That and the hope that La Niña will deliver the promised harsh winter.

Winter in Vancouver

It's winter.

A good cause

I went to, I think, my first fundraising dinner last night. All for the excellent cause of de-mining. Apparently it's already been ten years since the Ottawa land mines treaty, (!) and there's still lots of work to be done. Basically it was just the IES crew, most of us anyway, except for the usual suspects, and Lusty L, who was off wooing some new girl or other; we were also joined by various hangers on, romantically affiliated in one way or another with the IES. Anyhoo, it was all very glamarous, but you could really tell that it was organized by the undergrad International Relations society, because of the parade of snafus and awkward moments that interrupted the evening (like when they tried to auction a piano, or the upsetting technical problems, or the breach of diplomatic protocal, mispronounced names, etc...). But I don't want to dump on it, because overall, I, at least, had a good time. Plus I learned that Denmark IS apparently one of the 85 countries afflicted by landmines. (But their telling me that kind of lowered my appreciation for the cause, because if Denmark counts as being "afflicted" by landmines, then it doesn't seem all that bad).

The other wild excitement around here was a lecture by James Scott, talking about Globalization and local vernaculars (not the "Real" vernaculars, but the academic understanding of the term, meaning local eccentricities). He was a good speaker, (he's eminent enough that I think he does this pretty often) and suitably fawned upon by the local polisci grad students. He also told a funny anecdote, that I hadn't heard before, but probably should have, about how in English the closer a word is to the land, or nature, the more likely it is to be of ancient derivation, and that as soon as you move the word into a more civilized, or cooked food related context it is more likely to be of Norman descent, ie. cow v. beef; sheep v. mutton; and various others that I forget.

Work*

I've been blowing off work at the Poker company quite a lot lately. Its getting harder and harder to motivate myself to go in early in the morning to sit around all day in a dingy fluorescent pit. In fact its becoming a bit of a game to see how soon they'll notice.

Other than that I'm in a pretty comfortable routine these days. I've started work on my thesis, focusing initially on the Euro's impact on international politics, and the possible implications in various directions, oil, finance, international conspiracies, the Bilderberg Group, shady neocons, arms dealers, terrorists, and sun soaked tourists.... All very sexy. The IES is moving upstairs soon, and I think that our office will actually be much nicer than our current one. (Actually its been without power for several days now. I'll be curious to see if they've restored it on Monday. The rush with which the maintenance people have come to fix that goes to show where we rate in the overall scheme of things.)

Cambie

They're starting to make real progress on the new transit line to the airport... maybe all of the traffic snarls will be worth it in the end.

Hunters?

Man ceased to be a mere hunter when individuals were born who were very bad hunters. - Karel Çapek

My dear little angle.

Its winter coming on. Well, no actually its pretty much the same as its been for the last two months, which seems to be the real difference between BC fall and eastern fall. In the east there's a relentless, steady progression, and sometimes sudden onset of winter, but here its pretty much just a long droning drear, occasionally punctuated by moments of light and cheer, with little to tell winter and fall apart. The temperature is the same, the light is the same, and the rain is the same. This is all just an observation, I'm not minding it, well it could be better, but at least on the other side, things improve so much faster (knock on wood).

I bought an Afghan pomegranate the other day.

The peril of cell phones

I've lost contact with my cell phone. Last known wherabouts: The Dollar Grocery. I got a friend to call the phone, and some douche answered it and claimed it was his. Great. I'm undecided about whether to send text messages offering money for its return. Its gonna cost me otherwise. Maybe I should hunt him down in a brutal gang style killing, since that seems to be the style right now in these parts.

The photo is from a couple of months ago, with Mt. Baker in the background of Vancouver. One of the highlights of my working days is when Mt. Baker shines in the sunrise seen from the skytrain. Soon though, it will be too dark for this again.

November

I think I wrote that I would go see the Italian ambassador, but it turned out that I was working that day, so I missed that performance. Too bad, because apparently he really strayed from the script, alleging that Catholics are the "real" Christians, and that George Bush is a war monger among other things. All I saw was the Danish ambassador, and he was pretty standard. He actually seemed kind of off-the ball, certainly in terms of his ability to answer questions.

I wrote the government tests, and it really brought me back to my high school days, what with all the math and word problems.

Parade of Ambassadors

When the ambassador was here, we had a good old time. The research team did in fact ask questions. He was good, better than most ambassadors. He came off as less of a toer of the line than most. He semed quite intelligent. Interestingly, he had kind of changed one of the things he said from when we heard him speak in Brussels. He now says that the government's policy toward Europe is non-partisan... whereas earlier he had mentioned a slight slackening of focus since the election, although Harper had been increasing interest. Seems like Harper may have convinced him that he's serious since the summit. There is likely to be movement on Canada-EU issues this next year, presuming the government survives, since most high level talks have been suspended since the Doha round has been underway, but it seems that the Doha Round is likely to offically die within weeks.

Next week: The Italian Ambassador. I'll have to ask him some hard hitting questions about the oppression of the Padanians, or depending on his place of origin, the inherent bias of the state against legitimate businessmen in Sicily.

Poker

The work at the poker establishment is turning out well so far. The main benefit is that no one else speaks Danish, so they can't tell what a butchery of the language I'm conducting. We'll see how long that lasts. Some day I can tell that one of the customers will write back and say I should have just written in English since I can at least spell properly in that language, and they all speak it at a university level. But so far not so. (Actually the poker set seems to be quite challenged at writing in their own language, so that might be my real saving grace)

The main annoyances are the Norwegian tranlator who works every day, so he hogs the easy Danish assignments, translating from Danish TO English. That I can do. But no, I get the Danish FROM English assignments. The other annoyance is that its one of these places that can monitor your activity at all seconds, so they're slowly clamping down on my visits to TSN, the mall, and the drink stand. Fortunately, they can't fire me (who would take care of the huge Danish constituency?), so they can just annoy me by mentioning these transgressions, rather than actually doing anything about it. Also, I have to get up at 6AM two days a week, which is quite a departure for the grad school type. It is gratifying to realise how much I've done by the time I usually get up though.

Tomorrow Ross Hornby is visiting the IES. He's the ambassador or "representative" from Canada to the EU. The research team is going to have to wow him with our incisive questions, since he's totally one of the people involved in the field of EU-Canada relations. We even vaguely knew him back in Brussels, when I talked to him for at least a minute or two along with six other cowed interns. He has a husband (I don't think its a coincidence he got assigned to Brussels and not Kingston) who was a super charmer — everyone was wildly impressed by his command of our names - surprising how little it takes to win people over. Unfortunately he probably won't come to the afternoon lecture for students at UBC.

Sunset

Its funny how these drizzly Vancouver days can turn out fine in the end.

UBC Campus with shipping to the right and the islands to the west.

a fundamental change.

I got a new job... I'm going to be working part time at an online poker company as their Danish language operative. Or at least I'll try.

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.

Udo

This picture was taken pretty much two years ago today, while I was probably about as far from home as I ever have been. It was on Udo island, just off the coast of Jeju Island, just south of the Korean mainland.These ladies were having so much fun racing up and down the beach in their stockings carrying umbrallas and wading in the water. It makes me miss Korea and all of the random stuff like this that you never ever see here.

A bad day...

So far the life of a research assistant is quite trying.

Memories of Brussels

Moi je ne sais pas. C'est quoi l'énigme de Bruxelles? Brussels raises a lot of passions in people.... mostly bad. But at the same time there's an animated counterspin to that, coming mostly from those who have had a real chance to get to know it. But there's still a lot of those who've lived there for years who hate it.



The Royal Palace: I guess its pretty nice.... but not really spectacular enough to keep people interested for long.



The stereotype is obviously that its boring and full of eurocrats. Personally I think that's idiotic, but I guess I'm sympathetic to eurocrats being essentially a eurocrat in training. Eurocrats are actually pretty interesting, educated people and one of the saving graces of the city. They come from all over and make for an unusually dynamic and mixed crowd of people...

Most of the modern EU buildings are quite hideous.





One real problem is the crime level and generally unsavoury attitude of some residents. I've never been to a city in which I knew personally of so many incidents of crime violent and otherwise. I saw several violent incidents first hand. The homeless population is fairly large and aggressive in its panhandling, and in its treatment of each other. Incidentally the police don't always help since they're quite transparently racist, as I can attest from an overheard conversation with a cabbie who they told "to learn the rules, this isn't Marrakesh anymore"...



The city is also very dirty, and run down in many parts. It smells of urine, probably the result of a dire lack of public facilities, and the generally high fees charged for them. The sidewalks are horribly uneven, not in an interesting cobble stone kind of way, but in a run down, we can't be bothered to fix them way. Its generally just not a beautiful place. It rarely grabs people at first sight in the way that many other European cities do.

The weather is terrible. That's about all that needs to be said on that file.

Other annoyances include bureaucracy, pig headedness, and baffling inefficiency on the part of any institution or business. The hospitals give you the run around, the metro closes at midnight, the police are jerks, taxes are high (but services are poor), instituions close at random times, stores and any businesses close at completely random times, officials are unhelpful, etc...

On the other hand, its not a huge city: you can easily walk anywhere in the main parts of the city within 45 minutes at most. Its easy to get to know places; there's a lot of interesting restaurants, bars, pubs, etc...; there's enough intersting parks and monuments and stuff to be fairly interesting in an indolent kind of way, though this is obviously not excellent by european standards. There's music going on all over the place. The city isn't outrageously expensive, certainly by west European standards.



Best of all, are the wide variety of neighbourhoods, that offer a vibrant street life and different things for different people. From immigrant ghettos full of markets and cheap everything, to expensive areas full of fashionable people, they offer a real variety for different moods. I really liked Louise, Étangs d'Ixelles, Most of Ixelles, Etterbeek, St. Catherine, and some of Anderlecht (though a lot of Anderlecht is in more of day trip kind of way).


I'm working on this, but here are some pictures of Belgium, mostly from Brussels.

The pic is of Ry Guy and JBo and their reaction to Brussels after returning from Dubrovnik. In retrospect they're spoiled brats, but it does give an insight to our general attitude to the city at the time. Now we know that despite its annoyances Brussels still a great place. Its is no Dubrovnik, but we all still miss it.

Conjuring

I met all of the first years finally. Hard to tell what to think at this point; everyone is always so enthusiastic and polite to begin with. There's on older student this year. One from Lithuania, although he's lived in Finland for five, an American, and a Belorussian. I guess its the year for the "new Europe" after our solid French and German representation. I have a job interview on Monday morning with a personnel placement service. I'm hoping to be richer than I've ever been.

The Jewel of the Pacific

I am careful to take plenty of exercise. I ride my bicycle and swim and at weekends take long walks by myself; but solitariness is, to me, attractive only in prospect. I find the lonely hours disturbing.

The few remaining students are now being initiated into the lore of academia. I have taken a job with the department, although it remains to be seen how onerous a proposition it will be. The director is confident the project is worthwhile and will soon be of the highest priority in the offices of power, both here and in Europe. For now, myself and a colleague, best referred to as "JBo", will share the task between us, with occasional assistance from more senior colleagues "Big R" and "Kaustik K".

Soon the new recruits will join us. One of them, "Kolorado K" preceded the main group, and has joined us on various outings around the region. The most interesting was to Cypress Mountain, a place I had been once before, but then only in winter; it hardly needs mentioning that the place is much changed. The site is, in fact, much shabbier in summer, as the constant glare of the sun exposes the many years of neglect and poor maintenance. Nonetheless, we all seemed pleased by the outing, and a break from the frantic pace in town. Other days have been consumed by less ambitious visits to the region's many famous beaches: English Bay, Kitsilano, and the infamous Wreck.

Back in Vancouver

A final batch of pictures from Europe.

Done in Europe now. Spent a while in Edmonton getting M and J married, and then houseboating in the BC interior. All good fun, and probably a suitable reintroduction to North America, since we got to really sample Albertan culture. Now I'm tooling around Vancouver getting my life sorted out again.

Denmark

Denmark is enjoying one of the periods that gives it a good name, just in time for my arrival luckily enough. Its been about 25 during the days and sunny. Its funny how it gets an almost Meditterranean atmosphere at this time. I've been down to the beach and around town a bit. Its been fun. A pile of K's hooligan friends visited Mormor yesterday, but they were all very civil and polite and for some reason they seem to quite enjoy the visits, as does she secretly.

Heidelberg seems like an amazing place to study. It suits J perfectly I think. Its full of germanic junk for him to like, cheapish beer, and cozy restaurants. The train down there from Brussels followed the Rhine along its most romantic stretch... the part that we did on the tour, which was wicked to see again but at high speed this time.

I'm off to London ever so briefly tomorrow. Thankfully Denmark has aclamatyzed me to the price levels.

This is the end..

I'm done with Brussels. My internship is officially over, and the interns are all leaving in droves. I haven't written much lately because I haven't done anything overtly exciting other than the usual clap trap of life which is interesting to few other than those who were there, despite the fact that it was quite captivating at the time.

I know Brussels relatively well now, and it is growing on me. Everything is much closer together than it seems initially. I had a good exploratory trip out toward Laeken (where the royal palace is), and found that despite the lengthy metro trip, it was actually quite close by to our area... relatively anyway.

Now I will go to visit J in Heidelberg, and then move on the Copenhagen, and then London, and then Edmonton.

Prague pictures

Pictures from Prague

sorry for the lack of explanations.... but here's a pile of pictures from Praha.

Prague

Another weekend, another trip... Prague.... I am officially going broke in the worst way possible. Nonetheless, Prague was beautiful as always. SUPER hot though. SUpposedly it was 39 degrees in some areas of the Czech republic. So we sampled the generous Czech authorities' provision of water spraying trucks in the street, which actually made a huge difference to our lives. Prague is much pricier than it was... though still not too bad if you stay out of the ultra intense tourist zones. Enjoyed the pear orchard... enjoyed the presidential palace.... stayed in a decent hostel. Back to work tomorrow.

Pix

I uploaded some pics of Dubrovnik...

Tour de France

The internet from the neighbours is very cyclical, so i will take this extremely fast opportunity to write that I went to the tour de France today.... I felt very ferris bueller's day off because I had to skip the end of work,.... it was actually a very good atmosphere and impressive.

Continued: Sorry, but our internet is broken, so we have to steal the neighbours' and it seems to have a very fast on-off cycle in which we can actually use it... strange but true. Anyway, the tour was definetely worth seeing. Such, good atmosphere; everyone was really excited. I climbed a tree and watched the whole proceedings from there. I'll post pics when the internet eventually starts to work again. The reason I could go is because its a parliamentary Strasbourg week, so the Brussels contingent is left with relatively little actual work to do.

Nothing as exciting to report this weekend. We basically stayed around in Brussels. Brussels is starting to scare me a bit. In this past weekend I personally witnessed or knew people who witnessed at least three relatively major crimes. One girl's purse was stolen, along with pretty much everything she has that's important. Another girl who works at CEPS, and who was already attacked in a park earlier in the spring, had her car literally attacked while she was driving it. They smashed the window stole her stuff, realised that she was alone, and then ransacked and vandalized the car. I can't help but feel that is something you would expect from Mexico City or Mogadishu, not so much the supposed show case of the European Union. Her car had Italian plates, and they apparently often target foreign plates. The other incident was just outside our house, and was some sort of fight, we couldn't quite tell what, but it involved a lot of foul language, smashed bottles, and squad cars eventually showing up. This brings the number of violent incidents we have witnessed up toward double digits.

Other than all of that, I went to a conference at CEPS on Friday... good change of pace from work. This week I'm more or less alone in the office, while the rest of the staff decamps to Strasbourg. I think it will be fun.

On the weekend we had curry dinner on Friday, and there was big stagiere football party thing at a stadium in Etterbeek, which was actually much more fun than it sounds. We all had to wear jerseys to get in, so I'm now the proud owner of a knock off Barcelona jersey, which was good for making friends.

Sunday was actually sunny, and we went to the park. Then S had a goodbye, since she's leaving already.

Dubrovnik

it feels kind of useless to blog about this, because I still can't quite get over it. Suffice to say Dubrovnik is utterly spectacular.

Somehow we truly lucked out on the hostel. We booked it completely randomly, and basically on the criteria of as cheap as possible. It turned out to be pretty much the nicest place I've ever stayed. It had views on three angles, including the ocean, a palm tree, a little garden, the roofs of the old town, the mountains, the conservancy of music (whose music would waft up at all hours of the day), and the old city walls. The place itself had lots of room and light, a bathroom with a spectacular view, a kitchen, and was well located. However, I won't reveal any details in the hopes of maintaining it as a well kept secret. THe price was ridiculously low: 16 euros per night. I doubt I will ever stay in such a gem ever again. The only slight problem came on the last morning when they somehow gave the next guests their keys before we'd woken up in the morning. It was a bit of an awkward meeting.

Other than that, we took a day trip to a nearby town whose name escapes me. It was more relaxed, slightly less touristy, and much cheaper than Dubrovnik. I am now planning on becoming a property mogul in the area. Its surprising that tourism is apparently only up to mid 1980s levels, even all these years after the war. A lot of the old communist style hotels are still lying empty and full of shell holes. The local museum dedicated to the resistance is a real piece of work in nationalist writing.

Carbon trading? Not on my watch.

In an effort to cash in on the golden age of buget air travel, before those meddling politicians ruin everything, I have booked a flight to Croatia for this weekend. We found a really really good deal, and since accomodation down there is cheap, and the weather here is utterly terrible, and the weather there is apparently unusually marvellous, it was an easy decision.

Other than that, my main briefs this week have been examining food additives. We had a meeting with officials from Coca-Cola today, and heard their opinions on this topical matter. Very fascinating. I have also participated in a meeting about how factory farmed chickens are causing large numbers of new flu strains to appear, and that this really isn't a good thing. The MEPs are going to ask a question to the commission.

Random events in Belgium

I had a fairly busy weekend. On Friday they suddenly made me do a report on the new Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme for airlines, to brief up JB on Monday. So that kept me busy all day. Then we went out to the festivale de musique on Friday. Back to the Clemenceau market on Saturday. I even managed to score a free flat of Mangoes, and an avocado. Pretty good day after that. We ate at my usual haunt down there, and it was better than usual. More musique that night... next day off to a Shakespeare festivale somewhere in Wallonia with an Italian girl CnM know who drove like a true native. Then to Namur for the evening, which we never realised was so hilly! Then back to Brussels for the St. Jean Baptiste celebrtions held by the Québec mission. Truly a slice of Quebecois culture with poutine and St. Ambroise. Then back to work, where I had to go to a session of the "ENVI" commitee and listen to all the MEPs trying to destroy air travel as we know it.

Security

Brussels is a fortified camp right now, as all of Europe's heads of state have descended on us. Its actually a serious annoyance. They have completely closed off our closest metro station, with barbed wire no less, and we can't cross the street in town, without going on a huge detour. Not only that, the police are proving to be unusually officious, and they criticized my bike riding! Hopefully the Council can get their business over with soon!

Bicycle

Not sure if I wrote that I bought a new bicycle... or a used one anyway. I decided not to buy a stolen one, and had to pay an extra premium for that, but it was still quite cheap. It only has one gear, but it rides quite well. I went out to the outskirts of town yesterday, and then back in to the centre. Brussels seems quite nice for that - it really isn't all that big. Work continues as usual... its been pretty laid back, yet plenty of work to do, so it has been enjoyable. I'm not looking forward to the return of the MEPs next week. They seem to stress everyone out. I will probably go to the Strasbourg session in July. The Canadian interns have started a tradition of meeting at Place du Luxembourg every Thursday, so that is on the program for tonight.

Mid week

Not much going on. I'm pretty busy at work this week, despite, or perhaps because the parliament is meeting in Strasbourg this week. They're kind of letting me do my thing more, which means I don't constantly have to ask what to do next. Here's a pic I took when I randomly woke up at sunrise, and couldn't sleep any more. Brussels weather is really nice for now, although I'm told its not supposed to hold until the weekend.

In Flanders Fields

The best part about Belgium is that its tiny. You can get all over the place in one easy hour from Brussels, and the train tickets are ridiculously cheap. Also, the Trains to everywhere run at least twice an hour. So, yet again we headed out to Flanders, this time a little place called Lier, south of Antwerp. As usual, the town itself was very charming. We also got the bicycle rental deal which involved very cheap bike rentals, and a group of us biked around the fields around Lier. Unfortunately we experienced the worst part of Belgium, its enormously changeable weather, and had several strong downpours, punctuated by beautiful sunshine. Well worthwhile though. This time C and M were on the same train as us, though late for our original train.... some improvement in our coordination.

Bet Ghent

Ghent was the destination of choice this weekend. It is described by the guide book as frequently overlooked on tours of Western Flanders, and that seems like a real shame. It was nicer than Bruges, and more interesting than Delft, which are the two most similar cities that I've visited so far. Like Delft, it seemed as though real human being live there, but like Bruges it was spectacular and old world like. We left on Sunday Morning, A stayed home to do laundry, but Ju and Ry came. Unfortunately we took one of those milk route trains that stops at every little village along the way. It took about an hour, and then it turns out the tracks were broken after that, so we took the round-about bus. Ch and Ma left about two or three hours later, but joined us only shortly after our arrival, due to their use of the "express" train.

The previous night a bunch of us had been to the pan-latin american festivale here in Brussels. Unfortunately Si maintained his record of always going to the wrong place, and by the time all were assembled the metro was about to close ... none the less a good time was had by all.

I am also working quite hard at work now, attempting to make an update to the illustrious www.johnbowis.com. Not exactly sure when we will add the updates. I have also now completed the intern check list of fetching coffee, making photocopies, and running messages.

Working

I've been going to work lately. Mostly I've just been looking around, seeing how things go. Today there was a full session of the parliament, in which they voted on various reports. They got very agitated on at least two occasions: Once when one of the Eurosceptics said that Angela Merkel had lied (big no no) and another time, when the speaker was too perfunctory and missed the fact that someone had objected to the procedure of one of the votes. The chamber is very high tech. They have a giant score board that shows the results of votes like at a sporting event.

Other than that the most interesting things that I've done were attending a press conference on the topic of the cancellation of the Moscow gay pride parade. Several activists and MEPs want the parliament to vote on revoking the mayor's travel rights to the EU. And Desmond Tutu was addressing the parliament earlier in the week on the topic of Darfur. I'm not sure if I'll count my attendance at a session of the fisheries committee as being very interesting, although it had its moments. The major event was the conclusion of an agreement with Sao Tome and Principe.

Delft and the south Dutch

I took advantage of the remnants of constituency week to visit Flanders and the rest of the southern Dutch speaking areas. A few of us [A;J;M] went to Oostende for a beach trip. It was a classic North Sea holiday spot. Very cold water, kind of foggy, lots of people, crying babies, and horse and carriage rides. Nonetheless, it was good to get out of Brussels and enjoy some sea air, expunging the remnants of my cough.

Then I visited Delft and Rotterdam. Delft especially was very pictoresque. It was how I imagine Amsterdam, but the clean living version. In fact it was one of the nmost wholesome places I;ve been. The people were friendly, helpful; spoke super English, rode bikes everywhere, happy children played in the streets, and it was clean and well maintained. Holland seemed much better maintained than Belgium, but it still had a certain hippy chicness about it. Especially in Rotterdam which was a lot less clean living than Delft. Delft was a tiny bit like Bruges, but seemed like less of a tourist trap. People actually seemed to have jobs for example. Rotterdam seemed like a good place to go shopping.

Apartments and Leopold

I thought I would post a few pics of my apartment. Its been treating us well, except for the bathroom renovation thing. HOpefully that will be wrapped pretty soon. Unfortunately whoever cleaned up the communal bathroom threw out all of our soap, towels and toilet paper for some reason, so that's our crisis of the day for now. Unfortunately I'm the only bona fide French speaker living here, so I think our landlord really dislikes me at this point since I'm always calling him up and pestering him about this thing or that thing. Overall i think that our apartment is on the crummier end of the apartments I've seen here, but decent for the money, location, and fact that we saved by moving in a week early.

I went to the museum of Africa the other day. Very cool in a history geek kind of way, since they've hardly changed it since the 1960s, and even that was just a minor update on the 1930s edition. It was built buy King Leopold (not quite as bad as Hitler) the IInd to "showcase the potential of Africa" to the Belgian public. It has all sorts of vaguely horrific statues built in to it, with benevolent white folk reading to African children, the natives' mating rituals and such. THe interesting part is that in all of the oldest school parts, they've up little explanatory plaques talking about the museumology, ethnographic thinking, and so on that explains the forumalation of the displays. Also, all of the taxonomic models are totally falling apart and shedding their fur and scales and so on (there's an animals of Africa hall). They set up a brief display in the middle about the colonial era, which I thought was fairly well done in its explanation of the Belgian activity there, but has still apparently been criticized for whitewashing a bit. I can see that too, although it at least acknowledges a lot of what was going on. I think that most of this is in aid of saving money, not appeasing historians, but I thought it was very interesting.