rain down on me

aah back in Edinburgh and the difference couldn't be bigger... since I arrived in Belgium, the weather improved every day until today 30 degrees Celsius - and now here in Scotland more than 10 degrees colder and grey and rainy...

It is also a bit how I feel after 5 exhausting but exhilarating days in Belgium. And everything went so fast... from sitting at the summerbar with Joris, to visiting friends, seeing my family back, picking up Alli and Emilie at the airport, the crazy birthday-party for Joris (remind me to tell you a story about this event, something truly shocking) a lazy afternoon in Antwerp, crazy party in my hometown...

A visit like this always let me long to go back to live in Belgium; I realise that I get a wrong image during such a travel; everybody is very happy to see you, they make a lot more time for you; but still...

going back to my roots...

and so i'm finally off to Belgium again!



it will be a busy schedule, like always trying to see too many people on too little time...
thursdaynight i am going with Joris to a theatre-play from the summerfestival, called Yerma,

on Friday i go to my old collegues from the company I used to work before I went to Edinburgh and then in the evening to see the new house of a friend near Leuven. On Saturday Alli and Emilie arrive so I will pick them up in the airport and then in the evening we will celebrate both birthdays of Alli and Joris...

Yesterday night and tonigh as well I will finish packing and wrapping in all the presents I have bought/made for Joris and also for my mother (her birthday was last saturday)
really looking forward to this - i know now already - too short a trip!

Will I see you in Belgium?

Love of my life

I want to talk about love, because maybe sometimes you just talk a bit too little about it, maybe you sometimes don't mention it in certain blogs, but it is there, and it is so overwhelming and powerful that on a day-to-day basis it is maybe too obvious, so here is my ode to love.

My love of my life is my friend Joris, and unfortunately he lives at this moment in Belgium, so not here with me in Edinburgh. Needless to say that I miss him very much and that it is very difficult sometimes to be here alone. Also needless to say that making decisions (see "being Edinburgh) is much more complicated and intense.

This thursday I go back again to Belgium to meet him and enjoy the wonderful time of being together; Just enjoying his great sense of humor or him seeing working for the summerfestival gives great satisfaction. It fills me with a great warmth...

And so sometimes you forget to mention this, in conversation or in blogs, and because other people are better with words than I am... so for all people who recognise these feelings, please read carefully

Dark as roses, fine as sand
Feel your healing and your sting again
Hear your laughing and my soul is saved
On forgotten graves you cry
Crawl like ivy up my spine
Through my nerves and into my eyes
Cuts like anguish or recollection
Of better days gone by

But it's alright when you're caught in pain
And you feel the rain come down.
It's alright when you find your way
Then you see it disappear
It's alright though your garden's grayI know all your graces
Someday will flower in a sweet sunshower

Eyes like oceans, so far away
A feather trail to a better way
Worried mornings turn into days
Then into worried nights
But it's alright all you'll be you are today

By Chris Cornell - Sunshower

four movies in one day...

i just had one of those terribly lazy sundays yesterday...and i loved it!



in total i have watched four different movies on television, three of wich i really really enjoyed namely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (great great movie! really a must-see!), Fairy-Tale:A True Story (with Harvey Keitel, a lovely childrens-movie about well fairies :-s) and the comdy-drama Cookie's Fortune (starring Glenn Close and Julianne Moore)
I also watched the still incredibly funny (ok, this is pseudo-intellectually not correct, but who cares anyway) Police Academy I...

Karine, Emilie and Alli came up to visit, we ate pizzas in front of the tv, even watched X-factor and Big-Brother Revisited (oh my, i just realise I must have watched tv all day...) Patrick and Heike stayed over... so lots of company!

Tonight i am invited at my boss' home to go and have dinner (barbecue) and fix her pc for her son. I am bit excited as she might check my intentions for later on this year... and later this week i am going to Belgium! Finally seeing Joris again!!! and my parents and my sister who must be really really pregnant now... But more about that later!

So which other movies should i watch on such a typical lazy sunday-afternoon (this is for all you out there as a stimulans to post a comment, because i know you are out there somewhere :-) )??

spectacular spectacular

Wow....wow......
I went with the Spanish to a circus-performance yesterday called ImMortal2 by the artistic circus company NoFITstate

it was a long time ago already that i felt so captivated by a performance but yesterday's show really opened again parts of my heart and mind that had been closed for a while. During two hours I was taking away on magical journey through artistic circus and theatresque acrobatics.
I think one of the elements that enhanced this feeling was the fact that it was not a typical circus where you have to sit down and watch the show. In fact in this circus there are no seats at all and you only have to walk around in the big tent and watch the action around you. There is always one main "scene" going on, but all the other actors around interact and perform as well.

There's live, superb music, singing, dancing, humour, anger, love, one very sensual acrobatics act on a rope... aaah I cannot start explaining how good it was, if you can you really should try to go and look for yourself. It transformed me back to antwerp, where this circus could be a top attraction during the yearly Summer of Antwerp Festival, so I told Joris to go and have a look at it, so who knows, maybe next year in Belgium... ImMortal2

a new day...

I went out yesterday with Maria and the Spanish friends who are - still - here in Edinburgh visiting me. We went to Alli's bar where Morgan, our Canadian friend, was playing a little improvised acoustic gig. Lots of young people from Morgan's youth hostel were there. It was also the last night for the two French guys who were visiting Matthieu, a regular in Alli's bar (since I know he is a regular, I think I qualify for the same title) and his lovely girlfriend Leslie.

My Spanish friends and the two French guys seemed to get along very well so after a good while - and bit too much red wine (I think i was blabbering around at the end...) - I left them all behind in the bar and went home. I presume they all went to the Underbelly, but stories still need to be confirmed... and was there maybe a little bit of sparky electricity in the air? we will have to wait untill the spanish awake before we will know...

the show must go on...

what strange times... in one day i had the most devastating experience since long and a few hours later I had the most wonderful experience since long... let me explain :

I came back home from work on monday to find my door of my flat wide open. First thought was that I had left it open when I left, but that thought soon dissapeared when I saw the complete mess in the hallway... burglars... and then it all becomes a bit vague, I don't know which room I checked first but the sheer shock when I entered the spare bedroom : my two pianos were gone... and it seems to be that these two were the only items missing...

If there is anything in the flat with which - by taking it away - one could hurt me the most, it is definitely my piano, or in this case even both of them. They are my creative outlet, my anti-stress therapy and just favourite activity... Off course they are only material items that can be replaced, but it is the damn unpracticality of not being able to play.... Aaaargh

But then on the other side of the emotional scale there was the visit of Maria, my good friend from Barcelona. I met her in Finland where she brought the Spanish warmth in the cold Finnish winter months. We have met not that much after Finland, but the friendship stays profound and I am sure she is the only person who knows me very very well... and that is why I am glad that she is here now and stays for a while, together with her crazy great friends !

life can suck and be great at the same time...

sunday night at the movies

I love going to the movies on a Sunday night. It can help to fight the Sunday-blues and it can be a nice way to end a beautiful weekend and hopefully begin a splendid week.

It has been a while since I last went to the cinema and even longer has it been since I did that on my own. Going alone to the watch a movie doesn’t bother me at all, especially with a theatre at a 2 minute walk from my doorstep. And going to the movies is a lone experience anyway – it can help you to get into the film easier. (note: it is not that I don’t like going to the movies with others, au contraire)
I do have lots of good memories of seeing films on my own, such as Gosford Park (which I went to see three times, a) because I didn’t understand everything the first time (dialects) and b) because it is such a fantastic movie)

Yesterday I went to see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp. It was really good, with hilarious musical intervals…but…I was not overwhelmed – Probably I was expecting too much of Depp after Pirates and Finding Neverland…

In the previews I also saw a lot of promising movies that are about to be released such as the Wallace and Gromit longplay-movie and Corpse Bride (animation movie directed by Tim Burton)… looking forward to autumn…