When I came home from work yesterday evening, there was a card in the mailbox, saying that I had to pick up a package at the post office. The day before, my mother had called me and asked me if I ever got the package that my sister had sent me. So she spoiled the surprise a little.
But I was curious about what she had sent me. I was even making Mónica all nervous when we were on our way to the post office. When we saw the size of the package, our curiosity got even bigger.


She sent me 2 big bags of the Haribo candy that I like so much, my favourite Belgian magazine "Humo", the newspaper of the day when the package was sent and a postcard signed by my sister, her boyfriend and the 2 kids.
So when we were watching tv last night, we ate candy until our stomachs hurt. Thanks, Sis!!

On Friday evening, we went to a colleagues house warming party. He moved to his new apartment about a month ago. I had expected that he would have the essential furniture like a couch by now, but he didn't. We entered an empty living room with only a table to present the food and drinks.
So after a few hours the guests got numb from standing and the party finished before it had even begun.

On Saturday we went shopping. First in Oviedo, and later that day in 2 malls. You see, next Thursday I will be living in Spain for exactly 1 year. On december 2nd, 2003 I arrived in Spain, my car loaded with all my stuff. So Mónica and I decided to adopt that date as our official anniversary date. And since anniversaries are synonymous with presents, we went shopping (in different shops).


On Sunday we stayed at home because the weather was bad. We huddled together under the blanket on the couch and watched the movie "50 first dates", a charming romantic comedy.

Comical.

Now, bear in mind that I never ever talked about movies to this person.
A colleague comes up to me and says:

º Did you see the movie 'Office Space'?
- Eum, no, I don't think so.
º No? Oh, it's so great. You have to see it! It gets better everytime I see it. You will laugh your *beep* off.
- Ok, I will look for it. Thanks for the tip.
º You know what? I still have it on my laptop. I will grab it for you now, so you can see it this weekend.
- Oh, ok. Thanks.

So he disappears. 2 minutes later, he passes me again with an external cd-writer under his arm, and he says to me: "You're lucky!"

10 minutes later he shows up again with a CD and says: "here it is, enjoy it. You can give me a recordable CD on Monday. But I only accept CD's of the brand Verbatim!"

I hear that the band U2 surprised New Yorkers with a free concert on a flatbed truck the other day.
Why am I never at the right place at the right time?

A few days ago I heard the much discussed song 'Vertigo' for the first time. Here in Spain they don't play many English songs on the radio. That's why it took so long.
At the beginning of the song, Bono says: "uno, dos, tres, catorce", which is Spanish for: "one, two, three, fourteen". There are many theories about why he says fourteen, because nobody can believe it is just a stupid mistake. It even seems Bono understands some Spanish.
I don't know what the reason is, but it does sound a little strange to me and Spanish people frown their eyebrows when they hear it. And why does he have to say it in Spanish anyway?

By the way, did you ever hear George Bush sing U2's 'Sunday bloody sunday'? Here's a link.

It's time to start thinking about what we are going to do on New Year's Evening.
Last year, we spent New Year's Eve together with Mónica's friends in a rented village house.
We were 4 couples and a bachelor, and we spent 3 fun days and nights at the house. But the group of friends sort of fell apart during the year, so it doesn't seem like they are going to organize anything together again.
In Belgium, we used to have these big gala parties where thousands of people would celebrate New Year together, but it seems those don't exist here in Asturias, and the local clubs get flooded with teenagers.


So I guess we should find a nice restaurant or hotel with dinner and dance.
Do you know already what you will be doing on New Year's Eve?

On friday night we went to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Mónica couldn't wait to see it, as she loved the first Bridget Jones.
The movie was better than I had expected. Well, the story takes some turns that tend to be ridiculous, Bridget seems to be born for bad luck and it is all very predictable, but I didn't hear so much laughter in a movie theater since a long time.

On Saturday night, we went to see a play at the famous theater Campoamor in Oviedo. The play was titled '5mujeres.com' (5women.com), and consisted of 5 comical monologues by 5 different actresses, trying to understand men. It was quite funny. I was afraid I wasn't going to understand much about it, but luckily I did.

In december Mayumana is coming to Gijon, so I should get tickets soon. We don't want to miss that show.

In belgium, a red traffic light means that you have to stop and wait until it turns green. In Spain, I'm not so sure about what it means. It almost seems as if a red traffic light means that you can stop if you want. And if you don't feel like stopping, just speed up a little and maybe you will make it. At least that is what I see every day.

Until I tried it one day, and was immediately stopped by an officer. I tried to act like I didn't speak any Spanish, but he didn't believe me. He just wrote "90 euros" on a piece of paper and said that I had to pay immediately or he would have to confiscate my car.
So I acted like I didn't know why I had to pay anything. And when he said to me in Spanish: "you just passed a red traffic light!", I said: "amarillo!!" (which means yellow in Spanish, by the way). After 10 minutes he got a little desperate and just let me go without a fine.


Other Spanish driving habits I get nervous about: acting like the right lane on the highway doesn't exist, and starting to honk the moment the traffic light turns green. You need a lot of patience on the Spanish roads.

My girlfriend Mónica just called me all excited at work, to let me know that she has been offered her very first job. From what I understood it's only a temporary job for 4 days at a local cosmetics shop, but it's a start and I'm very happy for her.
The poor thing was already getting desperate, and it kept getting harder for me to comfort her.
You see, she has been writing letters for over a year now, but hardly received any feedback at all. she has a University degree and completed a Master, but the lack of experience always seems to be the big problem.
So she has been downgrading her standards over the year, just to be able to find any kind of job and put some experience on her resume. And finally someone called her.

By the way, thanks for all the birthday wishes I received yesterday. It felt very nice.
And for those who were wondering, Mónica managed to make it a day to remember! When I entered our apartment after work, all the lights were turned off and she was standing in the middle of our living room, holding a heart shaped chocolate cake with burning candles. She looked at me with puppy eyes and then she said with a little trembling voice: "I made it myself".
She’s the best.

Well, it's that day of the year again when I get a little older. Yep, it's my birthday today. My first birthday in Spain.

I'm a bit of a melancholic person, and birthdays always make me feel a little down, especially my own. I inherited that from my mother. She always cries all day on her birthday, whining that it will almost be her last. She can be a little theatrical at times.
I'm sure she will be thinking a lot about me today, feeling sad that she can't congratulate me in person. She misses me a lot, because I used to visit her almost every day when I was still living in Belgium, telling her stuff and making her laugh. When I left, she said: 'Now I have nobody left to talk to' (she lives with my father and I have 2 sisters, by the way). Whenever I call her, I hear that she is trying to suppress her tears at the end of the call.


On my birthday, my parents, 2 sisters and their children used to come together to congratulate me and eat some birthday cake. Although I never seemed to care much about those moments, I think I will miss it today. But I'm sure Mónica will do everything within her power to give me a wonderful day, a first Spanish birthday to remember.

Every morning when I go to work, I have to stop at an intersection two blocks from our apartment, to let some young kids on their way to school cross the street. Apparently they are obliged to wear some kind of school uniform, what makes them all look like little angels.
The other day I saw one of the teachers enter the school, and all the kids were waving at him with a big smile.
Now this was an image I had never seen in Belgium.
I thought: it must be a piece of cake to be a teacher in this school! it looked as if teasing, bullying and fighting are things they don't have to deal with.
Now I'm sure I'm wrong about that, but the image was so different than the image that I was used to see at the entrance of any normal school in Belgium.
I personally have known teachers of students not much older than these kids, who were afraid in the classroom, often crying at night because of the intimidations by the brats.

But life in general is much more peaceful in Spain than in Belgium, at least where we are living.
When I just moved here, and we used to walk home through the abandoned streets after going out at night, I used to feel uncomfortable, double checking every strange sound I heard. Mónica reassured me however that it was quite safe to walk along the streets at night, and that she used to make these walks alone.
It is something I still have to get used to.
There is a completely different feeling of security in the streets where I live now. And it affects the way people walk down the street and treat each other incredibly.

I added a new section to the website, called 'Our Story'.
Click on the heart icon in the left icon bar, read our love story and weep.

Well, what I didn't want to happen, happened. By Saturday morning Mónica and I were both sick. Headache, feeling weak and feverish, running nose, you get the picture. So we spent all weekend at home, only leaving the house on Sunday morning to get more medicine.


We slept a lot, watched tv and movies that were so bad that they aren't even worth mentioning, played some games, slept again, felt bored and slept some more.
Of course, by Sunday evening I was feeling better already. So I would have felt guilty not showing up at work today. Now it feels like I didn't have a weekend. I already asked Mónica to bear with me if I start acting cranky this week.
The christmas decoration shopping that I was looking forward to will have to wait until next weekend.

I woke up with a sore throat this morning, and i'm sneezing too.
Last night I already had a feeling like I was going to be sick. I sure hope it will pass soon, because I don't feel like staying home all weekend, feeling lousy.
I went to the drugstore before coming to work, to get something for my throat.
Whenever I have to do something like that, I always practice in my car on how I am going to ask it in Spanish. I'm always afraid to say something stupid, although everybody says I already speak Spanish like a native. Yeah, right.

I put a picture on top of my site, although I'm not sure yet if I will leave it there. Does it look a bit OK to you?

When I was surfing around blogexplosion yesterday, I stumbled upon this little dragon on one of the blogs, watched the video about it (you can click the picture to see it) and was immediately intrigued by it. You see, it's not just a little ugly dragon, it is also quite an amazing optical illusion. I found the instructions to make one, and made one myself yesterday evening. Now it's keeping me company on my desk, and 2 of my colleagues already came to ask me for the instructions.


To all the blogexplosioners who are passing for extra traffic, I have been reading a little about site admission lately, and if you haven't admitted your site to the 'open directory project' yet, it's a good idea to do so. Especially Google rankings seem to be kind to you when your site is listed in the directory.

The place where you live can change your status completely.
Last year I moved from Belgium to Spain (If you had read my profile you would have known that already!).
When I was still living in Belgium, I couldn't find a job. I was without a job for more then a year, and if I had still been living there now, I probably would have been without a job still.
I was a computer programmer like so many, without that extra knowledge or experience to stand out from the rest of them.
I had 2 college degrees in engineering, but that was of no importance in the computer business. I spoke four languages, but in Belgium that is common knowledge. We need experts, not the average programmer. Next!

Then I decided to move to Spain. So the first thing to do was to look for a job there, obviously. In less then 3 weeks time I was offered a job. They asked me how much I wanted to earn, and they gave me some more than I had asked for.
I have been living here for almost a year now, and the people give me respect. I speak a fifth language now (Spanish that is), and in Spain speaking 5 languages is like being supernatural. The 2 college degrees in engineering only seem to confirm that to them.
My boss once said to me: what are you, an infiltrant from the CIA?
To the recruiters here, I am a completely different person than the person that I was to the Belgian recruiters.
That feeling of getting respect helps to build your self confidence and your self esteem, I can tell you that. But I still know that back there in Belgium, I am just like all the rest of them.

It's scary movie Tuesday again.
On my menu today is 'Dark Water': another Japanese movie, from the same director as Ringu (which is the original Japanese version of 'The Ring').
I certainly hope it's better then 'The Ring', because that movie only bored me to death. To me the plot was just too ridiculous.


I just love the feeling of creepiness that you get from watching a good scary movie. When I was much younger, I used to watch them alone at night in a totally dark livingroom, when my parents had already gone to bed.
BBC television used to play scary and horror movies late at night. So I used to sneak down the stairs to go watch them.
I remember there were times that I got myself so scared, that after the movie had finished, I turned off the tv and held my breath in the dark, to be able to hear every sound in the house. I could be there like that for 5 minutes, and then I had to force myself to get moving again and go to bed.
There was the tension of the movie and the tension of getting caught sneaking up the stairs.
One movie that really gave me the creeps back then was 'The Quiet Earth'.

I'm living in Spain less then 1 year, and on Friday I was already on Spanish television!
There was an official inauguration of 2 buildings at work on Friday, with the visit of the Asturian government, and the local television networks. They were filming us while the guests where visiting the buildings. So an hour later, I get a message from Mónica, saying: I saw you on the news on television!!
I saw it too later that evening. Mónica grabbed it on video, and watched it over and over again, to get an idea of where I spend 8 hours every day.

Talking about playing games: I remember that in the early 80's when I was a kid, it was cool to have an Atari console. So I begged my dad to get me one of those. However, when we went to buy one, he found it necessary to ask around about which console was better and had the most and best games. So I ended up with a CBS Colecovision, completely unknown in Europe, with games unknown to any of my friends.

In 1982, partly because of the success of the movie E.T., the BMX bikes became very popular in Europe. So I begged my dad to get me one of those. However, when we went to buy one, he saw this other type of bike that looked so much cooler to him. So I ended up with a Raleigh Chopper, and I must have been the only one in Belgium because I never saw another one in my life. Many people mocked me because of that bike. And I will never get over the fact that I never had a BMX.


Just get your kids whatever all their friends have. All the rest doesn't matter.

Mónica and I have been playing a computergame all evening yesterday. Puzzle Bobble is a game that she used to play many years ago. And now that she is home alone all day, she asked me to install it again for her. I had never played it before, but got hooked on it in 5 minutes.
The game is very simple: You have to aim and fire various coloured bubbles so that you get three or more in a row, and they then disappear.
So we have been playing a few rounds against each other yesterday night: some 100 rounds actually. Because you just can't stop playing it once you start!
There is only one problem: since I moved to Spain, I seem to win every game that we play together. We have been playing videogames, pool, tennis, bowling, air hockey, and I don't remember what else, and I always win! She is already getting a little desperate, the poor thing.


Today, a coworker explained me about MAME: The multiple arcade machine emulator, to play arcade games on the computer. And I just remembered that I must have a copy of 'Revolt' in the basement, a game that I played for hours and hours. It's playtime!

I won't talk too much about politics. Because that's all you hear about today. I just hope that whoever wins doesn't make too big a mess of it in the next 4 years, and at least tries to solve problems in such a way that no innocent people have to suffer, because that only leads to more hatred and more fanatics.

Let me tell you something about the Spanish habits.
The Spanish have some weird expressions they use whenever something goes wrong or doesn't work out the way they planned.
They say: 'Me cago en...'. Literally translated this means: 'I shit in...'. And they shit in almost everything. For example, they use: I shit in the milk, I shit in the moon, I shit in the whore, I shit in God or I shit in the sea. Only, whenever they use it, they don't think about it literally. It's just an expression of bad luck.
When I just moved to Spain, it sounded a little weird to me. And I asked my girlfriend: how do you know which expression you have to use at each occasion? But it doesn't seem to work that way. You just shit in what you want, although some expressions sound a little stronger then others.
If you ever visit Spain, I'm sure you will hear it, because they say it all day. I have my own variant. I say: me cago en la mano (I shit in my hand). At least it's mine.



Apparently, some of my visitors don't understand the little script on the left of this blog. You see where it says: 'Hello to the people visiting this site from...'? Well, every person who visits this blog sees another city and state in that sentence: their own. It's like a little program that looks up where your IP address is located, and fills in the city and state. But many people seem to think: hey, this guy is from around here! Sorry, I am not. Unless you live in Spain (where I live) or in Belgium (where I used to live). Then you're right.

Friday evening started bad. I was very tired when I got home, so I fell asleep until Mónica woke me up around 20:30 to tell me that the central heating system broke down and was making a strange noise. We called the technician, but he couldn't come until Saturday morning. So we spent the evening cuddled up on the couch.
The technician arrives at 9am on Saturday morning, enters our kitchen, pushes a button and says: it's ok now. Couldn't he say over the phone: try to push that button??? Moreover, he charged us 23 euros for this! Next time I will try pushing every button I find!

On Saturday afternoon we went shopping, had dinner at the mall, and even went bowling afterwards. although it seemed more like a game of: try to hit a pin if you can.
Sunday was a rainy day. We stayed at home and watched 'love actually' in the afternoon: a movie that shows us the love stories of 8 different couples around christmas. Ideal for a rainy Sunday.
On Sunday night, Halloween, we watched the director's cut of 'the exorcist' on tv.

Yesterday morning, we met with Mónica's parents to visit the cemetary. We all spent the afternoon at the mall together. We had lunch at Antonio Banderas's restaurant 'La posada de Antonio'. The service was terrible! We were already waiting an hour for our first course, when Mónica's father asked why it was taking so long. 5 minutes later they show up with our main course, and they cancelled our first course without any explanation. Sorry Antonio, but you won't see us again there soon.