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

Leaving interns, Brussels and Villa Vanthilt

8 June 2010

Peculiar aren't you?
Hello curious people. It's been awhile since my last entry and to those who would complain of such things I say thank you, because at least it means you don't entirely hate reading this. Or so I tell myself anyway.

The end of an era
So last week was sad and this week is going to be as well, because all the interns who've been here during most of my stay are leaving. 3 left last week and  another 2 by the end of this week.

mubmubmubmub

Naturally, since we were seeing some people off on Friday, we had to make a night out of it. I mean, we're not animals right. Well... I guess we kinda are but you know what I'm getting at. First stop was the river, which was great cause the it was so hot. I mean ridiculously hot. I'm actually getting a slight tan. In Belgium. Who would've thought eh? In any case we were there til 10ish then moved on to the Irish Times to see some live music. There were just four of us left at that stage  and after a while it dropped down to 3; Myself, Bert and Fleur. Long story short it was a great night. The live music was really good as well.


Brussels
On Saturday myself, Bert and Elise joined Karen in Brussels for a night out. Karen cooked us a great chicken noodle thing. She kept telling us how it really wasn't up to standard but I think I had like four helpings so I think that kinda speaks for itself.

Karen took  us to this Celtic bar, which was really good.  You could get a pint of beer there for  €2 (thats $4NZ for those back home), which I think most people will agree is pretty good. Met quite a few other exchange students there as well which was great. Met a couple of Aussie girls which was awesome. I mean as much as I love to hate the Aussies, they're much closer to home than anyone one else right now, so it was really cool.

We then missioned it over to an absinth bar. I mean, I'm in Europe, its pretty much sacrilege if I don't visit at least one. When the sun came up we thought it was probably time to call it quits for the night/morning and went back to Karens place to crash for a few hours. Woke up looking like I'd been hit by a car.. Kinda. The best part was that later that day I had to be on national tv...


My television debut
There's this talk show here called Villa Vanthilt which was doing a promo on the socer world cup. So they needed a person from very nationality involved in the world cup this year. So I was the NZer. We had to do this soccer related game which I was predictably average at. The prize for the winner was pretty awesome though- a flat screen tv with a massive sound system. The italian guy who won really pissed me off though - when they presented him with the prize they asked if he had one already to which he replied, "Yes, I have 2". I mean, come on. It should have been some kinda prerequisite that you don't already have one.  Ah well.  Despite my dismal failure, many people failed in a much more obvious way than me, so in some perverse way I felt pretty happy with that.

My actual appearance on the show was fairly minimal. It mainly comprised of me being behind a bunch of people and trying not to do anything too humilating whenever I was surprised by a camera. Those camera men are crafty buggers. I swear they hide in bushes and wait until you're doing something mildly silly and then jump out with a giant self satisfied grin on their faces silently cackling with the intense joy of humilating someone. God, clown camermen would be petrifying. Imagine everything I just said but with a clown cameraman. Could make a movie about that. Not a very good one. I mean it'd have its moments but the novelty would probably wear off halfway through. Like digging  large hole when you were a kid.

It was very interesting to see how these shows are organised behind the scenes though. It was very open so there was a relatively large audience outside willing us to do something stupid. I feel I mostly won that battle though.

Info dump sign off
So that was a bit of an info dump. I would ramble for a bit about some arbitrary experience ith no particular reference to anything, maybe shoot in a couple of metaphors for the hell of it, alas, work is over now, so I bid you all fare well, will be back soon, and I hope you will be too. If not, then, well, I'm probably not going to know its you so don't lose too much sleep over it eh. Or maybe do. Yeah... DoOoOoOooooooo..... (like a ghost saying do).

POLYGOMY!!!!