In Bruges (again), the Soccer World Cup and Rock Werchter! Also Wikileaks on the side.

24 June 2010


Rock Werchter
Wow, the time has finally come. It's a week until Rock Werchter, the best festival in the world. (Thats not just me talking, it has actually been voted the best festival in the world... don't ask me how they work it out or decides though). Either way, I'm starting to get pretty excited. Wolfmother was meant to be there, which would have been awesome, but apparently the lead singer had a severe case of screwjamesoverlitus, so they can't make it anymore. Nevertheless, with a line-up like this one, its still gonna be incredible. Here's a taste of what I'll be pushing and shoving my way through the hordes to see (I say to see them cause I have a feeling the hearing will go pretty quickly): (These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, don't like all of them, but all are undeniably pretty big names)

• Pearl Jam
• Muse
• Vampire Weekend
• Them crooked vultures
• Jack Johnson
• Rise Against
• Greenday
• Rammstein
• Pink
• Corene Bailey Rae
• Arcade Fire
• The Black Box Revelation
• The Black Keys
• 30 Seconds to Mars
• Alice in Chains
• Paramore

Now you may not like all the bands there, but you have to agree, thats one awesome line-up!
Seriously. Well it all starts next Thurs and goes until the Sun, so its going to be four hardcore days of music, bad smells and possibly a few broken ribs. Hopefully it doesnt rain... Cause that'll suck big time.

World Cup Soccer
New Zealand are playing Paraguay today. Tense times. I'm hoping for a miracle. Italy are playing Slovakia as well and we kinda need Slovakia to do well... So maybe 2 miracles then.. Don't want to say anything more lest I jinx everything... Either way, good luck to the All Whites, they've done much better than everyone expected regardless of what happens now, so we'll at least have that I guess.

A shout out to all my peeps in South Korea and Uruguay, well done for making it through to the second round, you know I've got your back(s)   ;)

In Bruges (Again)
In other news, I'm going back to Bruges tomorrow - staying for the weekend. Bert is coming with. We both love the movie and he hasn't been to Bruges, which I think is blasphemy, especially considering the fact that he is indeed Belgian. Going to try and get to some of the places they filmed, recreate some scenes etc. Think I've mentioned that already in a previous post, hell I don't care, I'm gonna do it and everyone should know. So yeah, pretty psyched about the whole thing really. Will be good to see the city at night as well. You know, different atmosphere and everything. Maybe I'll see a midget or two. Fingers crossed eh.

Hmmm wonder who I offended with that last line... If I keep it up I might find myself running short of viewers.. Hahaha, get it get it get it???? Its funny cause midgets are short. And South African New Zealanders are mildly offensive...

Homework
I've been going extra crazy on listening to Pearl Jam lately - got 349 songs by them on my i-pod. Live albums and all. Also been brushing up on Muse.

Wikileaks
I'm not going to go on about this but if you haven't heard of Wikileaks, check it out here. Its revolutionary. A guy by the name of Julian Assange founded it - Aussie guy. At the moment he's kinda my idol. Regardless of what you think of him or the site, it is very interesting and I really recommend checking it out. Look up some stuff about Julian as well. He's like a modern day hero. For now anyway. He's what every government conspiracy theorist wishes they could be. Fair enough too. If you google either wikileaks or Julian Assange you'll find plenty of info so go wild.  For me its one of the biggest world-wide news worthy stories in a long time... ok Enough of that. Just have a look okay? Consider it your daily duty to humanity or something, you know, whatever chokes your puppy.


Conc.
To all those who have commented on my posts, (you know who you are) thanks a lot, really appreciate them, keep them coming. To those who haven't commented, feel free to do so, its great to hear what you have to say about all of this (whether I know you or not). Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Over and out.

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!!!!

Night of the Irish barmen

WoOoOAh.....


Ok here I am.

Random rambling intro
I am currently wearing a fairly large pair of metrosexual sunglasses. The ones which all the girls love to wear but which also happen to have the side-effect of making their faces look like some mutant beetle (I'm not talking about a genetically modified John Lennon here). You all know what I'm talking about. Lets get this right out of the way. I'm well aware that you've all probably been aching to know if they're my glasses or not. But wonder no longer my good people. I have aquired these glasses through great treachery and deceit. (Ok so I took them when Karen left them in the office during her smoking break but thats not nearly as exciting). One must commend Karen on her magnificent taste in sunglasses.  Perhaps they'll protect my eyes from the powerful glare of the computer screen. Or maybe they'll just give me a headache after a while. Only time will tell.......



Night of the Bartenders
Here begins an epic journey. On wednesday night me and Bert were going to see the movie Kick Ass. You know, a real man-date. We probably would have ended up drinking beer and beating our chests, shouting out manly things just to vent our great overflowing masculinity. That is, we would have, if we had ever gotten that far...  We had some time before the movie started so guess where we ended up. THE PUB! (one has to say that with widened eyes and far too much intensity for a sane being).
Long story short, we missed the movie.

As I've mentioned before, we tend to frequent one pub in particular - The Irish Times, so we're relatively familiar with most of the barmen there. In fact last week he walked up to us and told us what our order was. Kudos to him, it was right. Although it definately made us think a little... I mean half the mind says "god we come here too much" while the other half says "awesome, they know us well, next step = drinks on the house." Without coming to any particular conclusion about that I'm going to resume my story.

One of the guys who usually serves us was in plain clothes having a drink with some friends (some more Irish louts presumably). Anyway, we got talking to him and eventually we ended up joining them. My presumption was spot on, they were a bunch of Irish louts. But great louts. The kinda louts I could hang out with and do lout-like things with (Manly things of course, wrestling bears and whatnot). Anyway, we were having a great time, they'd already had a few drinks so were very entertaining, as only Irishmen can be. As such, they were pretty generous with the drinks. Which was great. Obviously. Seriously though, completely made my night. I mean, the bartender were drunk and buying us drinks. Thats pretty cool right? I mean its definately a step up on the great Chain of being... A.K.A  the Great Pub Hierarchy.

Apart from everything mentioned above, my main conclusion about the night is that I still need to go see Kick Ass...

Women (the creatures, not the song)
Something bizarre that I've noticed here in this giant pub of a country, is how much people use their bicycles. I mean, to get everywhere. Everyone does it too, rich, poor, whatever. So you get people in suits riding bikes down the street. My favourite though, is seeing business women, (could easily be a highly acclaimed lawyer judging by the clothing). I don't mean 'business' women, I mean wealthy professionals. Firstly; it is a little strange to see a very well dressed women cycling down the road in a tight black formal skirt. Strange, but I can get over it. What I can't get over entirely, what baffles my poor ignorant mind, is seeing them cycle in these massive high heeled shoes. I mean really. Apart from looking ridiculous, it must present some kinda safety hazard. What if the heel gets caught in the pedal and said women ends up breaking her face. I mean her expensive make-up would be ruined for starters. The facial lacerations wouldn't be that great either.


More on my captivating thoughts later... In a few days... lovelovelovelovelove