Thursday, March 16, 2006

My Belgian Identity Card

I have my Identity card which didn't excite me as much as I imagined it would ... contrary creature that I am.

This is only my 'certificate of inclusion in the aliens register' ... valid for 6 months, to be reapplied for after 5 months and I just read 'this document does not permit the holder to engage in any gainful occupation' which I knew but you know how it is when you become so focused on one permission that you forget the rest of the process. Now relearn all that is possible ... we did have a plan that we filed as the process dragged on.

Meanwhile I've started work on two ideas ... they're not unlike the half-finished climbing interviews manuscript I have with me, and similar to the series of interviews I wanted to do while living and working too hard in Turkey. I've begun to feel comfortable in this Belgian world, I can find my way round and have made interesting contacts ... and so it is, if 'gainful occupation' is prohibited for now then clearly it is time to write.

1 comment:

Cup'oCofi said...

Dude! You FINALLY got your residence card??? I didn't read the year wrong, did I?? And you still cannot work?

BTW, how about driver's license? It took me a month to get mine sorted out (and actually I heard I was lucky because I carried a US license ... the only problem was I had US license but no US passport ... otherwise many including Canadians must do like a 9 months "student driver" and can't drive without supervision)

I've given up on the de and the het ... nobody cared. I've given up on trying to make some sense out of this unstructured language. Well ... I am an engineer ... so I do still have my cheat sheat on the Subject-Verb-Object order (i.e., time-V-S-O, maar-S-O-V, omdat-S-O-V, als-V-S-O, etc ...).

I've also given up on understanding Belgian's immigration policy. My company had 2 opening that took 6 months to fill (both are left by retiring workers) ...

Sometimes things just don't have to make sense ...

Sorry I never got the chance to respond because of heavy workload (and travel! :)) ... and I have even abandoned blogging for 3 months or so. But I finally know enough Dutch to surf the NL-only websites, and so yes I finally found people to go climbing with here. Turned out it's a pretty popular sport in this flat land. Why ... you interested? We climb indoors weekdays and some usually go to Ardennes and Fontainebleau during the weekends. I was supposed to go on the beautiful day yesterday ...