Tonight in Brussels

Cold. Wet.
Half-snowing, half-raining.

Please let it be Spring soon......!

Carnival of movies

My plan for today, Mardi Gras, was to get the train to Binche, about an hour to the South of Brussels. But as it has been alternately snowing, sleeting and raining all day, I decided to do without my own carnival photos for yet another year and to report instead on the fact that, thanks to the Winter Olympics, I've now seen 15 movies in 2 weeks, namely:

1. El Crimen Ferpecto (the Ferpect Crime), silly Spanish farce in which the Don Juan manager of the womenswear section of a department store accidentally kills his rival for the position of floor manager and is blackmailed by ugly shop assistant into marrying her;

2. Broken Flowers, Jim Jarmusch movie starring Bill Murray;

3. Viva Zapatero, Italian documentary about media censorship in Berlusconi's Italy;

4. Untold Scandal, Korean version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses;
5. The Constant Gardener, movie of the John Le Carré book with Ralph Fiennes;

6. Toute la Beauté du Monde (All the beauty of the world - to see trailer, first click "passer la publicité" to skip ad, then "voir la bande-annonce"), French movie about 2 people mostly riding around on motorbikes in Bali, should have been paid for by the Indonesian tourist industry (or the tobacco industry, as both main characters use smoking as a form of communication...);

7. Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, fascinating documentary about accounting fraud;

8. Mori-no gakko (The School in the Forest), Japanese movie about an animal-mad boy growing up in rural Japan;

9. Three Times (Zui hao de shi guang), Taiwanese movie about love in 1911, 1966 and 2005;

10 Brokeback Mountain - gorgeous scenery and highly original love story set in a brutal milieu;

11. Le Temps qui Reste (official English title is "Time to leave"), French movie about a 30-year old gay man who finds out he has a brain tumour, and how he lives his last months of life;

12. Le Petit Lieutenant, French movie about a young policeman who goes to work in Paris, with Nathalie Baye;

13. Vas, Vis, et Deviens (Go, live and become - and not, as I have seen it given in English, "Go, SEE and become"!), excellent French movie about an Ethiopian boy sent by his mother to Israel pretending to be a Jew, in order to survive the famine;

14. Planta 4a (Fourth Floor), Spanish movie set in a hospital, about adolescent boys with cancer;

15. Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé (I'm not here to be loved), sort of a French version of "Shall we Dance?".

And my personal Oscar goes to... Brokeback Mountain, very unoriginal of me I know!

What colour is your brain?

What colour is your brain? It seems mine's green!


GREEN:
At work or in school: I work best by myself. I like to focus on my ideas until my desire for understanding is satisfied. I am easily bored if the subject holds no interest to me. Sometimes, it is hard for me to set priorities because so many things are of interest. (This bit, at least, is TRUE!!)
With friends: I may seem reserved. Although my thoughts and feelings run deep, I am uneasy with frequent displays of emotion. I enjoy people who are interesting and of high integrity.
With family: I am probably seen as a loner because I like a lot of private time to think. Sometimes, I find family activities boring and have difficulty following family rules that don't make sense to me. I show love by spending time with my family and sharing ideas and interests.

A walk in the winter woods

Although it's still very cold, as it was bright today I went for a walk in the Forêt de Soignes with Dog-lady and her two dogs, Tina (the one trying to pick up a log) and Cédric (the one standing on the tree trunk, pretending to be obedient). The forest isn't really at its best at this time of year, but I still like it a lot and feel very lucky to be living within easy reach of spaces like this.

The Man from Atlantis

This statue is called L'Homme de l'Atlantide, the Man from Atlantis - but looks nothing like Patrick Duffy to me! (I think that must date me somewhat..) Detractors know it as Donald Duck with a rucksack.

Scottish writers' series

Scotland House in Brussels (together with the British Council) has been organising a series of lunchtime meetings with Scottish writers and I was lucky enough to attend the St. Andrew's Day opening lecture last year, given by Alexander McCall Smith of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency fame. Today I went to see, or rather hear, Anne Donovan, who writes short stories and novels, largely in the Glaswegian dialect. She had some fascinating things to say about getting into/under the skin of the male protagonist of her novel, "Buddha Da", who is a painter and decorator who gets into meditation and becomes a Buddhist - it seems she redecorated her home in the process of writing the novel! Originally he was going to be an electrician so that she could make jokes about sparks and enlightenment, but she changed it to something she could do herself precisely so that she could think herself into his life. As she had to ask herself what music he would have listened to in his youth, she also found herself making him a punk, and listening to a lot of punk rock while driving around pretending to be Jim driving his van. In response to a question about how well novels in dialect "travel", she pointed out that "Buddha Da" had won the Prince Maurice literary price, despite the fact that 3 of the judges were French-speakers. Apparently the 3 short-listed authors get a 1-week trip to Mauritius, and the winner a 2-week trip, and she noted that it was the only literary prize that has no difficulties recruiting judges as they also get a free trip to Mauritius! Not all authors read aloud well, but I enjoyed her readings of her own work so much that I didn't buy any of her books as I would prefer audio-books to get the full flavour of the lovely way of speaking she and her characters have. My friend D therefore asked her whether she has recorded anything herself, and she said the rights to "Buddha Da" had been sold and the recording was by someone else, but she is in discussion with someone about recording her own short stories. I will certainly look out for that tape.

I gather that I may be one of those who may be incapable of being speedily Turkicized

My Turkish grammar book ("Turkish Grammar" by Geoffrey Lewis, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2000) gives this wonderful word: 'avrupalılaştırıverilemeyebilenlerdenmişsiniz' meaning (apparently) 'I gather that you may be one of those who may be incapable of being speedily Europeanized'. It goes on to explain, "Our English sentences are like drystone walls, with one chunk of meaning dropped into place after another. The Turk's ideas are laid in place like bricks, each cemented to the next. Unwieldy though we may find his massive 'çalıştırılmamalıymış', we must remember that he/she finds equally unwieldy our fragmented and mono-syllabic 'they say that he/she ought not to be made to work'."
I am reminded of an English grammar book I was once shown by someone who was trying to learn English from it, which laid out the following conjugation:
I would have been being beaten
You would have been being beaten
He/she/it would have been being beaten.. (and so on),
together with examples like "Mary would have been being beaten by John if John had not been being beaten by George."
I can't remember what this tense was called - conditional past passive continuous?! - but I don't think I can have ever needed to use it in my life. Sometimes I'm glad I never had to try to learn English as a foreign language - however hard it may be to learn the ones I've studied!

Men in black (hats)

I'm in a cinema-going phase at the moment, today it was a movie recommended by a friend who lives in Seoul, called "Untold Scandal" - a Korean version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". I kept trying to identify locations that looked very like some of the palaces I visited in Seoul, but they all look quite similar anyway, and it's quite likely they built their own for the set. The (18th century, Chosun dynasty) costumes were superb, but the men's hats struck me as very funny.

The men were mostly in white, with even taller black hats than the one shown here, which is worn by a guard outside Changgyeonggung Palace (interesting choice of colour for a military uniform!). They were also worn with a strange black under-cap, pictures of both can be seen here. Apart from the stunning visuals, the acting is also superb, but of course the story is not the most uplifting in the world, and I felt there was an unresolved issue concerning the fate of the young girl who is debauched by the "hero". Or maybe I wasn't paying attention...

"Viva Zapatero"

Went to see the documentary film "Viva Zapatero", which is about the trials and tribulations of a very funny Italian comedienne and satirist called Sabina Guzzanti. Her TV show RAIot (pronounced "riot") was taken off the air after ridiculing Silvio Berlusconi, who just happens to own half of the Italian media and control the rest. She got her own back by interviewing various politicians and journalists for this film, as well as putting her satirical sketches on in theatres all over Italy, which are also shown in the film. It starts with a sketch, pictured here, between her, as Berlusconi (amazing make-up job!) and Rory Bremner, a British impressionist, as Tony Blair: RB is also in one of my favourite current BBC TV shows, "Mock the Week"- which would certainly be pulled off the air in Italy! The film contains extracts from some quite ferocious satirical TV shows from England, France ("Peuple Fiction", a take-off of Pulp Fiction in which Chirac gets shot), the Netherlands and the U.S. (take-off of "We are the World", which can be seen on the official site of the film) - but not Spain, despite the film's title, which refers to the Spanish prime minister maintaining the independence of Spanish TV. I can only agree with this review, and nominate Sabina Guzzanti as woman of the year, she's a very courageous lady as well as a great comedienne or as she puts it, "buffone".

"Icland" not to be 51st U.S. State..

... in the FOREseeable future, anyway. What a surprise. Does no-one employ proof-readers any more?

Valentine Man strikes again

In Brussels, every 14 February, the Valentine Vigilantes (that's not what they call themselves, they claim it is Cupid that does it) put stickers on traffic lights to make the red lights heart-shaped. I think it's charming. (If you're wondering about the white triangular light, it's for trams.)



My local bakery was selling heart-shaped rolls today, I hadn't even noticed the shape when I bought my usual ones with seeds on. Had carrot soup for lunch.



But this is what I would have really liked!

Picking up the pieces

If I had a heart it would be red:

Not velvet; red-raw, bleeding, bled.

If I had a heart it would be green -

You know what I mean.

If I had a heart it would be blue,

Like glass. And you

would shatter it.

I *heart* "The Economist"

I rarely read newspapers (in general, only on airplanes!), but I do love my weekly Economist! Among the many interesting things in last Friday's (non-exhaustive list, these are just highlights!):

- a letter complaining about a previous letter asserting that "Most French officials speak English and studied in British or American colleges". The writer states that "The political world in France is mainly monolingual and parliamentarians do not travel or work abroad much. Apart from the prime minister, the trilingual Dominique de Villepin, you will have trouble finding any French politician who can speak decent English." But, Mr. Guy de Dampierre from Paris, the previous letter was about OFFICIALS, not politicians! My experience is also that there has been an incredible increase in the last 10 years in English-speaking among French officials (fonctionnaires) I have come into contact with - I wouldn't know about French politicians, I have no dealings with those in any language.

- a discussion of low birth rates in Europe (The fertility bust): apparently Germans used to claim their ideal family was 2 children, even though this was not born out by the statistics of what they actually did (fertility rate fell below 2 in 1971 and is now just above 1.3); now, "a quarter of young German men and a fifth of young women say they have no intention of having children and think that this is fine". I wonder whether there has been a change in the questions asked or the way in which these were asked, rather than a change in attitude, as it seems to me that little has changed in terms of actual practice over the last 30 years.

- an interesting comment on the Danish cartoons fiasco, attributed to a royal advisor to King Abdullah of Jordan: "It's sleazy and dangerous for politicians to be scoring points against Islam in a continent where Bosnian Muslims were being put in concentration camps until America intervened." Hmmm.

- a wonderful new (to me) word: "blogorrhea" referring to the 27m blogs that are apparently online and need to be sifted by businesses looking for reports of weaknesses in their products or in products/companies they are thinking of buying (in article "The blog in the corporate machine").

- slightly scary, for me, article about scheduled airlines looking seriously at introducing the sort of charges for check-in bags currently operated by cheap airlines Ryanair and Flybe, which are differentiated depending on whether booked in advance or arriving unannounced at check-in!

- reviews of a couple of books I will have to put on my reading list ("Hunger: An Unnatural History" by Sharman Apt Russell, and "Seven Lies" by E. German writer James Lasdun) and of an exhibition I would have liked to go to, if it wasn't being held in S. Africa, on African influence on Picasso, and finally

- a wonderful obituary of Betty Friedan, which ends "When Mrs Friedan died, that Utopia (equal work, worth and incomes) was still distant. But at least she had made sure that post-war America's Ideal Woman was buried at some suburban crossroads, her hair still unmussed, and with a stake through her perfectly calibrated heart."

Notice that I don't mention any of the articles about politics or economics!

Balls on the horizon

The murky weather cleared up just a little yesterday so I can prove that I can see the Atomium from my apartment - just about, I must admit it is necessary to hang out of my bedroom window sideways, to look toward the North!


Brussels has an endearing habit of handing spaces that are due for renovation/reconstruction over to artists for temporary use. Yesterday I passed by a building downtown that used to be a department store, and found it is currently showing an art installation in the old shop windows. I thought the coloured lights were fun, not so sure about the use of bits of animals like the elephant's trunk - there was also a window with chimpanzees running amok in a classroom, lit in red. The funny thing is that the artist's name, "Fourtou" could be taken to mean "cram everything in" (fourre-tout), which almost describes his style.

A weighty problem

Dakota's post about handbags and a link from 43 folders (yesterday) to a Washington Times article about the amount of stuff modern man/woman carries around got me thinking. I just turned out my backpack (Hedgren Urban Bags, dark brown, somewhat the worse for wear), here are the contents:
- Belgian ID card (it's obligatory to carry this at all times - I've often wondered where one is supposed to put it when swimming!)
- British passport, which I needed for my holiday booking for Libya (yay!)
- bus pass, in a holder tied to a loop on the bag so I don't lose it (again....)
- mobile phone
- purse/wallet
- digital camera (more usually in jacket pocket)
- folding hairbrush
- packet of tissues
- small tube of handcream
- small tupperware container containing non-caffeinated teabags (Rooibos, green tea)
- 1 "reading book" (The Devil's Feather by Minette Walters, lent by M)
- Turkish verb book in case I get stuck somewhere without anything to do...
- The Bulletin, English-language weekly magazine about Belgium
- Zone 02, free French-language weekly about Brussels
- 2 holiday brochures
- envelope containing print-out of internet booking for an exhibition in London next month
- notebook for writing down any good ideas that happen to strike me
- 3 felt-tip pens, 2 ballpoints, 2 pencils and an eraser
- "Euromillions" lottery ticket bought on 27 January with La Carioca, for a laugh - but it seems that none of the winners live in Belgium!
- bank card, supermarket card and healthfood store card (I don't keep cards in my purse any more!)
Mind you, this is nothing compared to the loads local schoolchildren carry. I often see them bent double under backpacks almost as big as they are, or struggling to lift their satchel-trolleys up onto the bus!
I suppose we just have too much stuff. What burdens are YOU carrying?

How to get a free cat

Seeing red

I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be some sort of art installation, it's actually the entrance hall to the offices of a trade union...









































Left over from the 2003 "art on cows" extravaganza.











Now you can see how small he really is!




And of course ...

Balls in Brussels

The other symbol of Brussels, the Atomium, was built for the 1958 World Fair, and is currently being renovated, having the aluminium plates on the spheres replaced by shiny new ones. From my apartment I can see it shining on the horizon, on a clear day - although at the moment we aren't having many clear days, the continuing cold weather is causing pollution to be trapped in the city.

I once read a fascinating article about one of the specialist workers who does this sort of high-rise work, crawling all over the structure on ropes. It's a very athletic activity, and apparently there aren't that many of these people around.

The renovation work was supposed to be finished by "early 2006" but the Atomium doesn't exactly look likely to be re-opening any time soon!










Stop press: it re-opened on 18 February!

More fun with numbers

According to World 66, "The Swiss are the most travel savvy people in the world... We have compared the home country of our users with the number of countries they have visited. It appears that the Swiss have visited an average of 23 different countries followed by the Greeks and the Belgians with 22.The least traveled people? The Americans. The average US World66 user visited just 11 different countries. But of course, the US is big."

Here are the top 10 countries in World 66's Globetrotter Index:

1. Switzerland 24 2. Greece 23 3. Belgium 23 4. United Arab Emirates 22 5. Thailand 21

6. South Africa 21 7. Egypt 21 8. Denmark 21 9. Netherlands 21 10. Austria 21

Well, it is probably easier to visit more countries when merely driving a couple of hours in any direction lands you in a different country. But it is interesting that even a travel website equates "home country of our users" with their NATIONALITY! Both Switzerland and Belgium are home to international organisations (UN, NATO, EU..) and therefore to large populations of expatriates, who are particularly prone to international travel. However, I don't know why a particularly large proportion of residents in Greece would be inclined to travel to a large number of countries (perhaps the relatively recent creation of so many Balkan countries might have something to do with it?) and also to register with the World 66 website!
Interesting.