A Wall in Antwerp

I love the way graffiti appears in unexpected places around Antwerpen.

We found this in an old part of the city.

Yesterday, in the city ...

The Canadians and I before lunch at The Eleventh Commandment.

Note to Self

Sometimes, when the war of permissions is on my mind, I fret about my days without colleagues or wages ... other times, when friends come to town, I have to confess that it's lovely to be free of the obligation of workplace attendance.

Now to remember that on the 'down' days.

And, writes Di with the sun on her as she works at her desk, if I had been working then I couldn't have become involved all the exciting projects I'm becoming involved in ...

There's much to be grateful for and many reasons to say thank you, it's simply a matter of remembering on the grey days.

All is One ... by the Wombat

Andrea posted this ... it amused me, and I thought of a few candidates who might benefit from a continuous 2 week looped viewing of it.

'Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and some pure foolishness.'

May Sarton,
from, Journal of a Solitude

The Shape of a Life

I found this lovely post today, over on my topography

She writes by way of introduction: Mama. Writer. Artist. Picker of wildflowers and clover. Exploring the terrain of home in northern New England. Mud season, maple syrup making, and on-going renovations. Training for a marathon and growing a garden. This is the shape of my life. A pocket full of wonder, a handful of sketches, a mouthful of words.

Meme

I was over at Stepping Stones and traveller one had posted this:

From a meme that's making its way around the blogosphere...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

I had Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces close by: 'It's not the unknown past we're doomed to repeat, but the past we know.'

And now it's your turn ...

Sandie dog

A thought before sleeping ... writes the hopeful Kiwi.

I was a young bride when I moved to small town New Zealand and once there it became clear that a dog was required to fill the vacancy of faithful companion; the one who was always available for walking tours and geographical exploration of the new area.

I mentioned this fact repeatedly over days, a kind of verbal application of that anicent technique known as water torture. Fruit was quickly borne ... Sandie-dog arrived.

She never required a leash or a collar and it might be whispered that she was more obedient than many children I know. Her only rebellion was that she was always torn about whether to stay in the water or come home ... a battle that never became simple and often involved her running after the car as I drove slowly away, forcing choice.

She lived 16 years, the last few were increasingly wobbly. I carried her on and off her beloved beaches during most of her final year.

I was just thinking about how nice it would be to have my old dog around. She used to sleep somewhere close when I read or wrote. She loved a good road trip, was partial to beds when one could be located and she adored a new creek, lake or beach.

I must talk to Gert about dogs ... hmmm 3am, a review of technique and sleep deprivation comes to mind as a possible modus operandi.

Awake in Antwerpen

2am ... why?

I lay down for a while but found myself thinking about my 'rumoured-to-be' final piece of documentation winging its way towards Belgium.

The New Zealand Births, Deaths and Marriage billed the credit card, alerting me to my certificate's flight.

Another birth certificate ...I purchased one a few months ago for my residency (not requiring an attached Apostille). Who can know how it is that one process requires an Apostille when another doesn't.

Apostille this time required to verify that my birth certificate is my birth certificate, and so it goes that they need another birth certificate with attachment for the next step of a New Zealander who has to live here in Belgium for now.

So another birth certificate, with Apostille, to be translated into Dutch again and approved and stamped by the courts, again ...

A profitable business this immigrant business ... for those with ownership rights over my documentation and a few particularly costly rubber stamps.

Sometimes, if I just scratch the surface of me, I find an interesting anger with regard to this process of 'arriving'.

I landed in Belgium almost a year ago.
I've been in process for 9 months however if the timeframe I was given on beginning the process had turned out to be true ... I would have been earning an income and paying taxes for 6 months by now.

It's a crazy old world, writes Awake in Antwerpen.

Yale Global Online

2am ...no sign of sleep but it's a useful hour for research and web-wandering.

I discovered this site: Yale Global Online Magazine .

YaleGlobal Online is the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. The magazine explores the implications of the growing interconnectedness of the world by drawing on the rich intellectual resources of the Yale University community, scholars from other universities, and public- and private-sector experts from around the world.

Immigrants ...

And the UN says that the number of migrants around the world is at an all-time high – there are almost 200 million international immigrants, more than double the 84 million of 30 years ago.

Relative to total world population, one out of every 35 persons on earth is an international migrant. This means that international immigration is a fact of life and it is growing.

Alkman Granitsas

Minister Plassnik of Austria, a letter from Turkey

Austria's extreme right party is active and intent on misinformation ... as posted here

And so when Erkan posted an open letter to Minister Plassnik of Austria, written by Turkish Daily News columnist Yuksel Soylemez, I was intrigued.


Your Excellency,
Dear Minister Plassnik,

We in Turkey owe you sincere thanks for your support and final approval in October 2005 of Turkey's quest to join the European Union. Having said that, I, for one, must tell you in all sincerity that many in Turkey have never understood why the Austrian government, and indeed the Austrian public in general, is negative towards the possibility of Turkey's membership. It would be greatly appreciated if you would care to help remedy the unfortunate situation that Turkey and Austria are in.

Austria's ambassador to Ankara until the end of March this year, and his charming wife Mrs. Mario Calligaris, were good friends of ours as they made friends not only in Ankara but indeed all over Turkey; he traveled extensively to promote Austrian business. It may sound like an exaggeration to you, but it is a true compliment to say that Ambassador Calligaris was one of the most active ambassadors of the Ankara diplomat corps, who are generally hand-picked prominent personalities in their professional careers. Ambassador Calligaris spoke fluent Turkish and knew every person or personality who counted in the establishment, in politics, in the media and in the diplomatic world in Ankara and Istanbul. We therefore presumed that he was one of the best informed about Turkey in the diplomatic corps, and indeed we believe he was.

His friends knew that his mission in Ankara would be over in autumn 2006, but the news of his transfer in March, with immediate effect, came as a questionable shock to all and, I am sure, as an unpleasant surprise, not to say humiliation, to Calligaris and his wife. Perhaps you already know that it became the talk of the town in Ankara as to what the hidden agenda really was, with his sudden departure explained away as being "for health reasons," which convinced no one. We all knew that Mario was in excellent health, playing tennis and looking as fit as ever, even at his farewell party.

Intent Blog.com

There are always things to be found when one goes web-wandering with a mind that won't stop thinking, not even at 1am here in Belgium.

Intent Blog.com was started by Mallika Chopra, Gotham Chopra, Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur as a platform to blog about their life, thoughts, challenges, philosophies, projects, creativity, hopes and dreams. Intentblog features contributors from around the world - friends and family who have interesting things to say and like to interact with a global community.

This post raised a smile or two.

A Small Epiphany

Epiphany: a moment of sudden and great revelation.

Moving countries, travelling ... you experience small losses; the names of things, an ease of knowledge and experience. Simple things like television shows might leap two years into the future, fall two years behind or disappear altogether ... you can lose your language, and you might lose good toast.

Yesterday was a day of epiphany ...

I discovered Bogaerts 10 Grain here in Belgium and it more than makes up for the loss of my beloved Honey and Oatbran bread back home in New Zealand.

It's the small things sometimes.

Despair ...

Rowan had posted this superb picture on idiocy ... reading it put the political situation a little more in perspective for me.

The image comes from a site called despair.com and is hilarious.

They write: For the better part of a decade, Despair, Inc. has been engaged in a fierce battle in the marketplace of ideas with the multi-billion dollar motivation industry.

In 1998, Despair introduced the world to a darkly insightful line of motivational poster parodies known simply as Demotivators®. In April 2005, company co-founder Dr. E.L. Kersten unveiled his landmark management book, "The Art of Demotivation"- a work quickly praised by Financial Times Management Columnist Lucy Kellaway as "the most daring, funny and subversive management book ever written".

With the introduction of Despair Video podcasts , the company opens a new front in the war on motivation- while simultaneously offering a tantalizing glimpse at life inside the company itself.

Tribalcog

I loved this website first time I found it years ago ... I was hunting around when the name Tribalcog came back to me, and I wandered over to see how Beren was doing.

He introduces himself ...I was born in Bristol, England, but my parents wisely moved to New Zealand when I was 7. On the way we stopped in Bali. I remember the warm rain, the smell of the cloves in the cigarettes, the smiles and an amazing variety of fruit. Coming from Thatcher's cold, grey England this was paradise!

At 15, my parents volunteered to do 9 months teaching in Himachal Pradesh, India. I went with them, supposedly to go to school to but shortly after my 16th birthday I was traveling across India by myself taking pictures. I came back to New Zealand to complete high school and finished top of my year.

At 30, I have now spent more than 3 years in Asia photographing, from Japan to Pakistan, Hong Kong to Kalimantan. As I write this I am in Guatemala and have spent a year in the Americas. The more I see the more I want to see; and the more I know I don't know. It is wonderful, especially because I have so much of the world yet to see!

Imagined ownership of place

Sometimes I get lost in observing the misery of countries, and in the things that people are prepared to do to each other in the name of nationalism, God and anything else they can pull out of their hat in an attempt to downgrade their fellow human being to the point where they can carry out all manner of judgements and/or atrocities on him.

I was sent a quote by Bruce Chatwin, and there in the heart of the quote, he said this:

Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it?

Politicians and judges often don't get out much, they are bogged down in the business of running 'their' country, 'their' city, 'their' village ... just as religious zealots have their daily duties in every country in the world and so it goes that people keep shouting threatening and renaming things ... a man fleeing a life of struggle becomes an 'illegal immigrant'; a barrier higher than the Berlin Wall is called 'the fence' ... names are changed and enemies are created.

Sometimes it's difficult not to lose hope ... here in Flanders, I just read that the extreme right still hold second position in the opinion polls, even after I thought it had been proved that both their rhetoric and their newspapers incited racial dysfunction and had created a climate where the recent spate of racial beatings and killings could occur in Belgium.

and that to rediscover his humanity, he must slough off his attachments and take to the road.
Bruce Chatwin
from Songlines

Maybe those who seek to judge a man based on his country of origin, his skin colour, or his beliefs should spend a little time amongst the people he wishes to judge ... to be sure that he isn't condemning someone who laughs, cries, breathes, dreams, gives birth, raises family, celebrates the same god as him and passes his day in much the same way as himself. To test the water of a country where life is cheap and there are those who would kill him ... just to be sure he wouldn't leave all he loved and owned to become one of those 'illegals'... just to be sure

He needs to be sure that he understands his fear, to check that his fear has a real basis, that he hasn't developed neuroses attached to an imagined ownership of place.

The New York Times writes ...

In America the Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so.

The Justice Department is not asking the Internet companies to give it data about users, but rather to retain information that could be subpoenaed through existing laws and procedures, Mr. Roehrkasse said.

It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with, but not the contents of e-mail messages, the executives said. The executives spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they did not want to offend the Justice Department.

The JCB Song.

I was visiting over at Nerd's Eye View and she has linked to the cutest music video I've seen in a while ... have a look if you have a little time.

You can read about the jcb song here.

Thanks Pam.

Would you hire this guy?

Ms Baker just pointed me in the direction of this rather incredible, and yet 'kind of makes sense', advertisement.