Tag Time

I got tagged by 3 people at the same time today: Thanks Tine, Lien and Dorien.
The problem is that it was a book tag, and that I don't read books. None. Never. Ever. I wouldn't know where to find the time to read books.
I only read the internet. Your blogs. And some more.
If you ever have a tag about movies, you can count me in!

Reliving my childhood

Tonight, we will be watching Ferris Bueler's day off. And for the next two weeks or so, we've got these waiting to pass the DVD-player: The breakfast club, pretty in pink, sixteen candles, st. Elmo's fire and Class.
Yes, I'm going to relive my 1980's childhood with these "brat pack" movies that I haven't seen in 20 years. Mónica has never seen them at all, as she was still watching cartoons in the early 80's.
I was still pretty young as well, but I had 2 older sisters who were in love with Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy's smile, so these movies were videotaped and watched again and again until the tapes were worn out.


The actors in these movies were being labeled as 'THE' actors of the future back then, but their careers never really got that big. If Andrew McCarthy ever stumbles upon this site while Googling his popularity, he has to explain me why he never became as big as Tom Cruise. But I heard he did many things on Broadway.
I wonder if all these movies are still enjoyable after 20 years. I would of course like to see them in the original version, but since Mónica wouldn't understand much if we did, we will have to see the dubbed versions.

Let's hope for once the forecasts are wrong

Oh lucky us. It's 24ºC/75F outside and the sun is burning. This weekend it will only be 16ºC/61F, and overcast. I'm sure the sun will be shining again on Monday though. Maybe I should take some days off to be able to enjoy the weather. But now that Mónica is working as well, I'd rather wait until we can take some days off together.

The beach was already packed with people the last couple of days. At least we were able to go for a walk along the sea twice this week, after work. How I enjoy living only 10 minutes away from the nearest beach. It has such a relaxing effect. And there are still so many beautiful beaches to explore. And villages. And woods. And lakes. And mountains. But we would like some sun with that.
I'm eager to start taking some pictures again as well. I won't leave the house without my camera this weekend.
I was fooling around with photopaint yesterday, and created this artistic tree from one of my pictures. I uploaded it to Flickr, and within one minute someone tagged it as a favourite. I'm starting to like Flickr more and more.
Have a lovely weekend.

43 things

How I like those nice little internet projects I run into while surfing every day.
Today I discovered 43 things. I had never heard of it before.
I don't know why it gives me this nice feeling. At least I know now that there are 637 other persons out there who would like to, just like me, spend less time fooling around on the net and more time actually working.

When catholic priests turn into businessmen

The last couple of days, we have been confronted with hidden camera images demonstrating the malpractice of many Spanish priests in the news and in Spanish television programs.
These priests are telling couples that want to get married that their church has their own exclusive photographer and that other photographers are not admitted inside the church during the ceremony. The price for the exclusive photographer to attend the wedding is about 300 euros.


According to the priests, it's all about respect for the ceremony and for the church. The exclusive photographers know the course of the celebration, and know where to take place to make the best pictures, without disturbing the wedding.
But in fact, the priests are offered a percentage of the income of the photographers.

The hidden video images we have been shown these days are unbelievable. Wedding ceremonies that are suddenly stopped and photographers that are brutally thrown out of the church by the priests.
"This is the house of God", shouted a photographer. "But I'm running the place", was the answer of the priest.

Forgetting Dutch

Once every couple of weeks I have an online webcam meeting with my parents.
It's easier and cheaper than calling on the phone, and we can at least see each other again. And since the speed of my internet connection got quadrupled two weeks ago, the quality of the sound and the image are perfect.
Last night we had another meeting. But for the first time, I was actually having problems speaking in Dutch, the language that I have been speaking for 30 years before moving to Spain.
I guess it must have been the sudden switch of having to talk in another language, since I am used to speaking Spanish all the time now. But it felt very strange, having to think for seconds and not finding the words I was looking for, knowing how to say what I meant in Spanish, but not in Dutch.
I never thought this was going to happen.


Amie passed me this baton or meme or whatever they are called: If I could be.

If I could be a poet, I could finally express all those feelings that I can't find the right words for now.
If I could be a chef, I would make the most delicious low-calory chocolate desserts for my girl.
If I could be a psychologist, I would finally know all the right words to say whenever someone needs my support again.
If I could be an explorer, I would be able to visit all those beautiful places in the world that I would still love to see.
But I'm just an average programmer, living from day to day, trying to make the best of it all.

I see wild animals, running around like domestic animals

So I'm driving towards the exit of the company last night after work (we are located in an enormous valley), when I take a look in my rear view mirror and suddenly see 4 wild boars(wild pig, see picture) crossing the street!
I thought I was hallucinating, so I stopped the car, looked back and saw 2 full-grown wild boars and 2 little ones running across the street. I never have my camera ready when I need it!


So I thought that nobody was going to believe me when I told my colleagues this morning about what I had seen. But they just said: "Ah, yes. They are always around here. I've seen them several times already."
As if we are talking about the cats of the neighbours.

More health problems

As if the allergy wasn't enough already (thanks for the tips, my dear readers), my throat started hurting on Saturday morning. I immediately blamed the damn air conditioning at work, because one of the lateral vents is blowing directly at me.
So I close the damn thing now and then, only to find it opened again a few days later by one of the maintenance workers.
We already had a notice that we are not allowed to close the green lateral vents because of some weird reason, but my hands are sometimes almost freezing from the cold wind blowing in my direction. So I close it whenever nobody's watching.


Anyway, by Saturday evening I had a mild fever. The throat ache got worse, accompanied by a headache and a dry cough. So when I was still feeling quite weak on Sunday night, I decided not to go to work on Monday and to go see the doctor.

My doctor (A doctor is assigned to you in Spain) is an older man. Usually, He justs asks what the problem is and prescribes a few days of rest to get it out of your system.
But when I went to the doctor yesterday, I had to see a substitute. So I told him about the fever, the throat ache and the headache, and he started to examine my throat and respiration.
And then he asked me with a smile: So tell me, what is the problem?
I could only think: Is this man an idiot? I just told him what the problem was!
And he continued: Because I don't see or hear anything wrong. And a grown 31 year old man like yourself should be able to endure a little throat ache, no?

I felt like a complete idiot at that moment, stupified by what he was telling me.
He prescribed me some soluble powders, while I was wondering why I needed those if there was nothing wrong with me!!??
And when he asked me if I needed a note to rectify my absence at work, I told him no, not wanting him to think that I only had come for that.
So here I am at work again, sucking on some tablets for my throat, with the air blowing at me from the left. I have to find a moment to close that damn thing again.

Damn polen

It's another one of those days when my hayfever is slowly driving me mad.
Yes, I'm one of those poor people who pass half the summer sneezing just because the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming.
Today my nose hasn't stopped running all day, I have been sneezing at least a thousand times and my eyes are swollen, red and prickly.
It makes me want to scream and kick, but I realize that that won't help.
The 3 packages of kleenex I had in my drawer were already empty around noon, so I have to get me a supply of that rough, industrial toilet paper every half hour, that makes me look like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Of course I have a medicine to take, some tablets called Zyrtec, but on days like these even those don't seem to help a lot. And as if sneezing a thousand times isn't tiring enough, these tablets are also sleep inducing. So by the time I'll get home, I will probably be exhausted.


It all started when I was about 16 years old, and since then it has been bothering me every year.
Tests concluded that I'm especially allergic to the polen of birch trees and grasses. And back when I used to smoke, the effect was even worse. I remember studying with tissues stuffed in my nostrils, so I wouldn't have to bother blowing my nose for 2 minutes.
Well, I'm off to get me some more of that terrible sandpaper they call toilet paper.
I'm counting the minutes until I can go home.

World of photography

When surfing the web today, I stumbled upon this website: http://www.woophy.com.
As I thought it is a remarkable photography project, I decided to upload some of my pictures, and cover some more of the world map. You can find me in Brussels, Porto, Hasselt and of course the north of Spain.
With the help of amateur photographers across the world they strive to ultimately cover every inch of the world map with images that represent the world's beauty and peculiarity from all different cultural perspectives.

All work and no play makes Chris a dull boy

It's going to be a long week.
All of a sudden, our team has been asked to attend a training, starting today and until the end of this week, from 6 to 8 pm.
So they decide to give us a training about something we will probably never use in our job, and to give it in our free time. Lucky us.


And of course it starts exactly the day that Mónica will be home a little sooner.
The poor girl has been working very hard the last two weeks, getting up at 7 am and coming home at 8:30 pm.

I had already written here that she is a saleswoman for the most important radio station of the area now, not only selling radio advertisements, but also creating them. And she is doing better than I had ever expected.

The first few days were a bit chaotic and nervebraking. But suddenly she transformed into this professional salesperson, convincing managers to advertise on the radio and creating advertisements and slogans out of nothing. And she actually seems to like it.
Too bad they don't even pay her half of what she is worth. But it's a start, and she is learning very fast.

Another weekend flew by

Mónica is slowly starting to understand that the weekend passes by too fast and that it should have one more day.
On Saturday, we spent too much time thinking and discussing what we would do. The weather was worse than we had expected, so enjoying the sun like we had done last weekend wasn't an option. We were both a little tired, and after the siesta and a few rounds of the very addictive game 'crazy taxi 3', we decided to drive to a new shopping mall in a near village.
We checked out the shops, dined in a restaurant with a serious shortage of staff, and went to see 'The Interpreter' afterwards.
The trailer of the movie had looked very promising to me, but it wasn't as good as I had expected. The plot was a little too complicated and the end was rather disappointing. Mónica even fell asleep during the movie.
Nicole looked younger than ever (apparently she has discovered botox), and Sean penn's nose is growing beyond human proportions.

On Sunday we went to have lunch at Mónica's parents' house again. Since Mónica started working, we hardly see them anymore. Of course we watched the Spanish F1 Grand Prix, supporting the Asturian Fernando Alsonso.
After lunch, I made my mom happy by calling her for mother's day. In Spain it had been mother's day last week.

Talking about speed

Mónica and I both like playing race computer games. I like all type of games, actually. She mainly likes the racing ones. And she doesn't even like driving in real life.
But everytime we ended up in the arcade hall of the shopping mall, we would play a round against each other.
I already had some racing games installed on my computer, like 'Need for speed underground II' or 'Colin McRae Rally 2005', but without a steering wheel it's just not the same.


So when we went shopping in 'el Corte Ingles' last week, we just couldn't resist the offer they had on a Trust steering wheel, even if we don't have much time to use the computer lately. Less since Mónica started working.
So our 'computer room/recording studio' got a new gadget, and we lose the stress of a working day by driving at 120m/h through the streets of a virtual city.

We're speeding up

We finally had the great news that our Internet Service Provider is going to upgrade the speed of their client's connections. Just in time, as I was thinking about upgrading my contract to be able to surf a little faster.
Up until now, we only had a 160 Kbps connection at home. But in the month of May it will be quadrupled, to 640 Kbps, without an extra charge.


Broadband internet connections only started to get widely popular in Spain in 2004, and due to the lack of competition, the speed offered by the ISP's was still very low. But since 2005, the competition is getting tougher and the offered speeds are slowly rising.
But still, for the same price I am paying in Spain, I would have a 5Mbit connection in Belgium.
So what's your speed?

visiting monte Naranco

On Monday morning the weather was quite nice, so we decided to search the Asturian tourist guide for a place we had not visited yet.
The first place I came up with was mount Naranco: a 600 meters high mountain in Oviedo, from where you have a stunning view of the city.


On our way up, we visited two pre-roman churches, constructed in the ninth century. And on top of the mountain, there is the 35 meter high statue of the sacred heart (Sagrado Corazón), that seems to be embracing the city.
We had lunch in the fields overlooking Oviedo and enjoyed the warmth of the springtime sun, until in the afternoon the clouds came rolling in.
By the end of the day, our faces had a beautiful colour.

So I snapped

Has the climate in Belgium changed since I left?
While the temperature in Belgium reached 30C/86F this weekend, here in the north of Spain we had 21C/70F, heavy clouds and an occasional shower. And I just heard that people in Belgium are having Thursday and Friday off this week, while here only Monday was a public holiday.
Why is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence?

My weekend began with this little story.
In March I bought a new digital camera in the local Carrefour supermarket. It came with a promotion of 100 free picture prints, valid until the 30th of april.
So I rushed to Carrefour on Friday evening, carrying my cd containing 93 of my favourite digital snapshots. I just couldn't find 7 more that were worth a print or that I didn't have printed yet. And I was in a hurry, so I didn't really bother.

When I arrived at the supermarket, I handed my cd to the lady at the counter, mentioning the promotion.
She asked: Are there 100 pictures on the cd?
Me: No, just 93.
That's when she said to me in a silly tone: Then it's not valid. The promotion is for 100 pictures. Not 99 and not 101. Exactly 100.
I looked at her in disbelief and that's when I snapped…

You have to know that this was the fourth time that I went to Carrefour with a promotion, and the fourth time that they told me they couldn't give it to me for some obscure reason. In fact, when I arrived, I was already wondering what they were going to invent this time.
And so I snapped.

I made quite a scene, and I'm not very proud of it. I raised my voice more than 1 tone, told her exactly what I thought about their promotions, took my cd, and left. She didn't even see it coming, and looked at me as if she got hit by a train.

So I went home and told Mónica what had happened.
That's when we remembered that her father had bought the same camera when I had bought it, and that he was going to go to Carrefour also that evening to get his 100 free prints.
So she called her dad:
- Dad? Where are you?
º In Carrefour.
- Did you ask for your free prints yet?
º Yes. They are ready in an hour.
- How many pictures did you have? 100?
º No, just 73.

My mouth fell open.

The only explanation we could find was that my scene earlier had somehow changed the rules, and that now it didn't have to be exactly 100 pictures (We checked the promotion papers at home, and there was no rule saying that it had to be exactly 100).
So we rushed back to Carrefour, Mónica went to the counter to hand over the cd (I wasn't going to show my face again), and this time there was no problem.
1 Hour later they were ready: 93 crispy clean pictures.
Why do these kind of things always happen to me?