About Me

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Antwerpen, Belgium
I'm a New Zealander living in Belgium for 6 months

Thursday, June 17, 2010

STAMP media, the vengeful ancients and the Soccer World Cup

17 June 2010

Old people
Call this the soft sentimental centre of James talking here, but I love seeing really old couples ambling jerkily down the street holding hands. It's strangely cute. Nice to see that some people can keep it going all those years (although in todays society one can never be sure that they hadn't just hooked up at a 30second dating event for 90+ ancients the night before). Of course I'm going to ignore the fact that there's a fairly good chance that they're only holding hands to prevent themselves from collapsing to the ground. Maybe its a "If I'm going down, you're going down with me" kinda attitude. I mean, 'til death do us part right? Hmmm.. not as cute anymore.. Or maybe it is.. But more in a slightly more sadistic kinda way. Those oldies. They sure know how to play dirty. (not sexual not sexual not sexual not sexual)

On an unrelated note, it occurs to me that when you get to that age, a one night stand can take on a very different meaning when it comes to overzealous Viagra users. 
Ponder that for a second or two while I try and resurrect my mental firewall. I suggest you do the same.

The purge of the interns.
The interns have officially left. But lets just say we purged them, sounds more dramatric... So the intern crew which have been with me for the majority of my stay here (Fleur, Jasmin,Thomas, Elise and Karen) are now all gone. Which leaves my main office area with myself, Bert and the new guy, Bart. Sounds like the beginning of a bad sitcom doesn't it? 'Bert, Bart and that New Zealand dude.' Hmm.. I don't think there's much potential for television glory there eh...

The office is definately a lot cleaner without Elise. She really did put her stuff everywhere...mainly my desk. It's interesting, the crafty bugger cleaned her table before she left, but failed to clean all her coffee marks off of mine, so now it looks like I'm the bad guy. I don't even drink coffee at work! That devil.


STAMP Media

On Monday and Tuesday I stayed home sick - Terry was sick too so we just chilled out and watched the Soccer World Cup (which I'll get to) at home.

Yesterday I came back to work and went with Bart to a press conference at the town hall, literally across the square from us. I took some pictures and he did the pen and parper thing. I find it mildly amusing to see that the mayor looked fairly bored throughout the talks. Got a few pictures of him looking like he's trying to sleep. I know I've mentioned before that the best thing about press conferences are the food, but I'm sticking with it. This time it was even better than usual because it was the mayor of Antwerps crib (during the day anyway), so it really was top notch stuff. Then it was back to the office to try and edit away my photographic mistakes.

Last night me and Karen went to Bert's parents house in Deurne (spelling??) cause they were out for the night. We watched movies and had pillow fights in our underwear while jumping on the bed for no apparent reason. You know, just your regular slumber party.

Today has actually been fairly similar so far except they didn't give us food at todays press conference (despite the fact that it was at the same place), which I found to be somewhat of a disappointment. Although I ws really looking forward to Subway anyway so they can keep their sophisticated surprise-thats-actually-shrimp-you're-eating-in-those-sandwiches from the day before. The latter did come as somewhat of a shock to me. Shrimp... Argh...

Tomorrow On Saturday night I'm going out to Brussels to see my long lost neighbours from South Africa - they left the country for Belgium when I was 9ish... I think... That should be really cool. It's going to be weird to see how they've changed, although I guess facebook has a way of minimising the shock these days.

World Cup Soccer
Firstly, I'm not a big football fan, but come world cup time, I'm in. Mostly. The teams I support are first and foremost South Africa and New Zealand.  Considering this I decided I might need some more teams to support if I'm going to maintain my interest in anything past the first round. (I'm being a bit harsh on SA here actually, they really surprised me with the opeing game against Mexico, hopefully they keep up the good work - they play Uruguay tonight so I'll be shouting for Bafana Bafana all the way). I believe the New Zealand media described the All Whites (their national team) as gutsy... I think that sums it up actually. I mean don't get me wrong, my support for them is infalliable. It's the faith part that's the problem.


As I was trying to say, I thought it probably wise to support some other teams as well.
So apart from those already mentioned I'll be giving my highly sought after support to:
  • South Korea
  • Urugauy (sorry Ana)
  • Ivory Coast
Of course whenever they come up against my main two teams, I will temporarily call off my support. As  fascinating as that is.... I'm going to go do something else now.

Ah yes, just one more thing, I've installed a Snake game in my sidebar. You know the kind you got on old mobile phones? Well its there. It's not an ad and its not going to whisk you away to some dark place in the cesspool that is the internet. So play at your leisure. Just use the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Sweet? Damn right it is. Pointless too.

Signing out... So to speak. XOXOXOXOXOXO

11 comments:

  1. You forgot the labels "Britney" and "naked", James. They go very well with "viagra" in the search robots :-)

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  2. my bad, i'll go add them quickly...

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  3. Hey man great post again, although i'd like to point out even though you were given the name "Britney" nice and on the screen you have managed to spell it wrong in your labels ;-p i feel somewhat better about my english mishaps the other week so thanks

    don't worry about the soccer man its just warm up to the real sports event next year right? our very own rugby world cup. hmmmm i havn't thought about that before i suppose you're gunna b a springboks man huh? well your dad will be at least right? should make for some very intersting AB's vs SA matches at your place for those of us to poor to afford actual tickets

    enough with the sports did you get my last post? with its very handy waste hours of your day in a productive way website? if you didn't its a collection of everything robert jordan and brandon sanderson have said in interviews and press things that is plot related all sorted into handy little categories so uh try and get some sleep yea ;-p lol alot of the stuff is answered with a RAF) (Read and Find Out) but theres so much good stuff, i've formulated a few new theories so yea have fun and let me know what you think.

    ok so that was my few minutes of free time for the morning, back to english study, books interesting, studying to write 4 essays in 3 hours....not so much....

    oh if you havn't check in with jess yea

    keep up the posts man, you always manage to make me laugh....argh i can feel the changes in pressure from you head swelling up all the way back here.

    your friend,
    Matrim Cauthon

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  4. Yay! tis updated. muy entertaining. Now reply to my email. Oh yeah, am liking Snake...provides a very good distraction from doing my static image.

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  5. Must have been painful installing a snake in your sidebar....whatever presses your buttons!

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  6. Hey you should check this out, should make your very envious of the people who have purchased one of these

    http://www.cbswords.com/product_info.php/cPath/31/products_id/156

    Matrim Cauthon

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  7. @ Matt.
    OMG I want that sword. i will buy it before i die. i will i will i will. i'll go outside and have swordfights with imaginary enemies and pretend i know what im doing. and you know what? i'll feel like the coolest person in the world no matter what anyone says. thats not a challenge though.

    na its funny my dad is actually more all blacks than i am. traitor. im a bit of both. support both teams when playing seperately but against eachother it gets a little. usually i go the SA way but not sure. i'll see how i feel closer to the time.

    havent checked the site out yet but will do lol, will need some spare time..

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  8. soooo cool right? ah i want one.... i geuss fantasies will have to do for now.

    lol yea leave alot of time for it coz once you get started its like hmmm ive been here a while....but....what did they say about THIS topic and then before you know it its 1 in the morning and you've read it all

    Matrim Cauthon

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  9. Not surprised that you've got no support for the Aussies. I can understand that, what with the likely hood of them not making the last 16, especially after Ghana. Damn refs... I'm okay, though. I can legitimately support the Netherlands, woo! A team that rocks at football and it's legit! A miracle.

    And my mental firewall was spammed into submission for hours after reading that. It's never going to be the same, ever again. Damn you!

    Oh, pillow fights are totally sweet. The best thing to do is fill your pillows with bricks! Winning there is the ultimate show of manliness.

    So, yeah. I'm on holiday break so nothing is going on, really. Kinda boring, but whatever. Plenty of time to watch football and download Pearl Jam, Everlast. I suggest you look at the latter (What It's Like is a good one to start on =D). When is it you're off on your little tiki tour?

    Alrighty, signing off with a comic now. http://xkcd.com/425/ You should approve of this. But enough from me!

    Your Favourite Aussie

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  10. Damn you Aussie! ..........i've still got an exam left, and its english....... so hard to study as its so tempting to go back to the good old days of winging english but then my stupid conscience tells me that back then we spent a whole year on the topics not a week and a half on each one..........

    but congrats for you i shall be joining in your freedom soon if not the watching soccer part.

    you coming up these hols?

    Matrim Cauthon

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  11. I'm already up in Auckland, lying in bed. Nice to not be down in Palmy. Getting sick of that stupid place.

    When you popping up? Text ahead if you're going to drop in!

    Your Favourite Aussie

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