Abigail

I've named my Belgian bicycle ... meet Abigail.

She's tall and makes me feel both serious and silly, I can't believe I neglected her through the winter although that's probably more to do with bikes having seriously stunning right-of-way and the fact that they use the wrong side of the road over here.

We're still sitting on 30+ degrees celsius and have been since Friday, it's stunning. The temperature went from 15 to 30 in a couple of days.

It's time for my bicycle.

"If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter', then by all means paint...and that voice will be silenced."

Vincent Van Gogh

A funny little cottage with a really nice view ...

Homesickness ...

I spent some time living in a funny little cottage on the edge of the harbour. Looking through photographs and I remembered this 'dinner party' and wondered ... can it really be a dinner party if the surroundings are humble?

Old Friends, New Zealand

An ABC Of Me

accent: I have a New Zealand accent, there are only 4 million of us, so it's a bit special and if I relax I'm rumoured to pronounce 'pen' as 'pin' and so on.

booze: red wine, red wine and more red wine.

chore I hate: one chore? But I hate ironing, washing dishes, cleaning windows (unless I'm in the mood) and cleaning toilets. Unforuntately I don't like a mess and as I'm the at-home-in-process-immigrant, I'm the manual labourer by default.

dogs/cats: none ... just now.

essential electronics: laptop and camera, incredibly essential.

favorite perfume: 212 Carolina Herrera

gold/silver: I wear a small silver St Christopher medal (patron saint of travellers - thanks Sandra) and I was gifted an unusually shaped piece of greenstone/jade from New Zealand (thanks Julie) on leather.

hometown: born and raised in Mosgiel, New Zealand. Present 'hometown' Belgium, last 'hometown' Istanbul, wished for 'hometown' Rome.

insomnia: only an occasional night at the moment, after a lifetime of reading incredibly late.

job title: ahhhhhhhhh a mystery to be solved before Christmas, all going well with my paperwork.

kids: one magnificent daughter.

living arrangements: living with my Belgian guy.

most admired trait: people tell me I'm empathetic, even strangers ...

number of sexual partners: a little personal.

overnight hospital stays: a couple of days when I was 2 (tonsils), a couple of weeks when I gave birth to my daughter.

phobia: nothing much.

quotes:'If Cinderella's mother had been around, she might have reminded her daughter that just because the glass slipper fit, she should not have felt obligated to wear it.' It's brilliant.

religion: I just believe what I believe.

siblings: one sister, 2 brothers and a half-brother.

time I usually wake up: the alarm goes at 6.30am through the week, no alarm and 9am-ish weekends.

unusual talent: I can make my pupils wiggle, best not shared really.

vegetables I refuse to eat: I used to despise brussel sprouts but can be convinced by a good chef.

worst habit: it might be biting my fingernails, if I cared to admit to it.

x-rays: hmmm broken navicular bone, and then x-rayed after the motorbike accident, ankles, spine ... stuff, dental ... now I'm eating Northern Hemisphere fish ... I'll surely glow-in-the-dark.

yummy foods I make: venison steaks, peach muffins, chocolate cake, sultana cake, cheese rolls and sundry boring domestic-type stuff ... I prefer to let the culinary abilities of others shine (and then eat the results).

zodiac sign: in the cusp of Libra/Scorpio ... imagine! And was impressed by a Vedic reading that made me an Aries.

I found this over on Susannah's , ink on my fingers blog.

Misguided's Musings

I loved misguided's post on Estienne de La Boetie's essay, “Slaves By Choice”.

Written around 1548, La Boetie begins with: “My sole aim on this occasion is to discover how it can happen that a vast number of individuals, of towns, cities and nations can allow one man to tyrannize them, a man who has no power except what they themselves give him, who could do them no harm were they not willing to suffer harm, and who could never wrong them were they not more ready to endure it than to stand in his way. It is a grievous matter — and yet so commonplace that our sorrow is the greater and our surprise the less — to see a million men in abject servitude, their necks bound to the yoke, and in that state not because they have had to yield to some greater force but, it seems, because they have been mesmerized by the mere name of a single man, a man they ought neither to fear (for he is just one man) nor love (as he is inhuman and barbaric towards them).”

Misguided writes: … So begins one of my favorite essays. Written around 1548 by Estienne de La Boetie, “Slaves By Choice” reveals the intricate way in which tyranny takes hold of a nation, and citizens give up their freedoms. Like the writer, I am amazed at how an entire nation can be held in abject servitude to one man… I am puzzled as to why any man would wish such an existence upon himself or his human brethren.

The View from Fez

Samir has written a delicious post about life in Fez ...

Note to self: Must get permission to work, must get an income, MUST travel.

A Kiwi's Day Out in Brussels.

Brussels ... 30 C, nothing prepared me for this.

One moment I'm complaining about grey skies and an absentee summer, next moment I'm realising that my wardrobe has suffered some during this period of arriving-in-Belgium and that I'm down to black clothing ... supremely useless clothing on a hot day.

To Brussels went well, all connections caught and a laugh with the bus driver. He didn't quite roll his eyes when I asked for a ticket to my destination in my 'special' accented Nederlands so I flashed him the paper with the address and said, 'Foreigners eh'.

We both laughed, I guess he gets a few of us on his bus every day.

A lovely lunch with two Kiwis, good conversation, a farewell, then a brisk walk back to Centraal Station and onto the slowest of slow rattly old un-airconditioned trains home. Seventy-nine stops and I arrived ... okay, perhaps it was 8 or 9 stops but it was hot and we stopped in places I'd never heard of.

And then ... this princess from the South Pacific decided not to get on the over-crowded tram home and thought those boarding were idiots, until she studied the tram route again and realised that the lit lights signaling tram location were all a long way away from her stop.

Twenty minutes later, another crowded tram pulled up, I got on.

I left Brussels at 3.15 and walked in the door around 5pm ... a hot little bunny.

So ... the news, summer seems to be here, we've been told to expect 30 C on Sunday, clearly someone forgot to let Mother Nature know because she turned it all on today.

I found this quote over on Jen's blog

"If Cinderella's mother had been around, she might have reminded her daughter that just because the glass slipper fit, she should not have felt obligated to wear it."

Jen has two sites, the other is A Garden Carried in the Pocket .

Freedom of the Press and Right of Reply in the NYT's

Over at FYI blog, the author writes I’ve spent much of the past week trying to get a letter to the editor published in The New York Times in response to the recent Tom Friedman rant (subscription required) against GM (see “Hyperbole and Defamation at The New York Times,” June 1).

I failed. This is my story.'

Riverbend writes

An extract from Riverbend's June 26th post : 'There’s an ethnic cleansing in progress and it’s impossible to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card. Extremists on both sides are making life impossible. Some of them work for ‘Zarqawi’, and the others work for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. We hear about Shia being killed in the ‘Sunni triangle’ and corpses of Sunnis named ‘Omar’ (a Sunni name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue. I never thought I’d actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb is indiscriminate. It doesn’t seek you out because you’re Sunni or Shia.'

She ends this post: Emily Dickinson wrote, “hope is a thing with feathers”. If what she wrote is true, then hope has flown far- very far- from Iraq…

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

—Henry David Thoreau

Brussels-bound

I'm off to Brussels today ... sunshine, blue skies and some pollution.

When I first arrived here, I asked Gert about pollution ... having just left Istanbul, where pollution was as stunning as big city pollution anywhere and then some.

He assured me that Belgium had done all that she could to lower pollution levels and meet greenhouse gas emission cutback requirements.

I was impressed however he did fail to mention that we are situated on the crossroads of Europe ... that one of the busiest sections of road over here has 120,000 vehicles pass through it daily.

Sitting here now, windows open, I can hear what would be the sound of the sea back home in New Zealand ... in actuality it's one of the motorways away in the distance.

It's a different life but not such a bad life really.

Antwerp Calling

I wandered over to Peter's Antwerp Calling blog and read an interesting post about the recent racially motivated murders here.

Peter introduces himself as 'a Belgian, native Dutch speaking gay author, living on the Antwerp City (Belgium, Europe) riverbanks. Well known for my risque comments on the everyday lives of not so everyday people on several local blogs. I Majored in Dutch literature, speak 4 languages and I'm a strong believer in the "forever 30" concept.'

Fascists and Football Hit the Stage

Der Spiegel writes of a new stage play ...

His secret weapon never materialized, but would Hitler have won World War II if he had staged a World Cup? That's the premise of a new comedy now playing in a Hamburg theater. The play breaks through taboos, but it has a serious side as well.

...Indeed, the play, called "Mein Ball: A German Dream," has stirred up a measure of controversy. Some theatergoers have stomped out of Hamburg's Schauspielhaus, where it is playing through the end of June. Others have booed throughout the production. Hardly surprising perhaps. After all, "Mein Ball" tramples on some big taboos. Not only is it among the first German theater productions to turn Hitler into comedy, something that would have been unthinkable until a few years ago. But it also pokes fun at football, a sport that enjoys near-sacred status in Germany. The play's very plot -- Hitler planning a World Cup tournament to salvage his empire -- is a dig at the hopes Germans have pinned on this year's World Cup tournament, which kicks off on Friday.

Poetry Thursday

Michael Ondaatje is one of my favourite poets ...

This week's Poetry Thursday suggestion was a challenge to go out into the world and listen to what people are saying and I remembered this poem ... it seems like something overheard.

Bearhug

Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son's room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.

Why do I give my emotion an animal's name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against me.
The thin tough body under the pyjamas
locks to me like a magnet of blood.

How long was he standing there
like that, before I came?

Michael Ondaatje

Some friendly Belgian cows

A Journey

If you catch the tram after the workers have left for the day then you might glimpse another side of the city ...

Pre-departure you watch, holding your breath, as an old man with crutches scales the steps of the tram as if they are Everest, his hand on the arm of the man standing below.

You might wonder what drives him to get out of bed and dress in his suit and the tie ... where he is going and will someone else help him off when he reaches 'there', if you leave before him.

Two stops on you see a man pushing two bikes and wonder why.

There's the old woman at the top of the stairs to her house, framed in her doorway wearing an apron, she carries a metal kettle in her right hand ... she watches the man pushing the bicycles pass by. I don't know if they greeted each other ...

Further on there was a younger woman scrubbing her doorstep.

A young mother wearing a headscarf is helped by a blonde wearing jeans, who reaches down with a smile and lifts the baby's pushchair up the steps of the tram.

What defines them, who are they to themselves ...

I'm curious because I have been in this strange limbo land for almost a year, not quite arriving ... having left other places.

Perhaps it's like cleansing your palate; a break between countries, between times, between selves ... and then you begin again.

Centraal Station, Antwerpen

The 'railway cathedral' is the name given to Antwerpen's central train station in my '12 Adventures in Antwerp' guidebook ...

In the book it is described as one of the city's major landmarks ... true enough, I can see its rooftop dome from my desk, across the city and through the heat haze of today.

It was built at the turn of the century, showcasing both Belgian architecture and building materials. Today commuters and tourists still arrive and depart beneath this 'masterpiece of steel and glass'.