Entries from Simon Butcher

As you may have noticed from yesterday's post, John and I headed off to Kyiv (Ки́ев) for the weekend for our brief but memorable visit to the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

While our stay in Kyiv was only concomitant to the tour to Chernobyl and Pripyat, the city seems quite lovely and the trip itself certainly wasn't uneventful!

On Friday, 25 April 1986, engineers at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station were preparing to shutdown their forth reactor for maintenance. They took the decision to use the maintenance window to test certain emergency safety systems, in particular those related to keeping the core cooling systems operational.

Engineers at the time were concerned that any major disturbance in the power grid would cause a peak in electricity demand from the reactor that would provoke it to overload and shut-down automatically for safety. Sadly, this safety precaution could have also shut down the water pumps that kept the reactor's core cool, and the engineers believed that the backup power generators would take too long restore power to the water pumps, causing a melt-down situation within the reactor.

The engineers had a plan to use the momentum of the turbines from the power plant to generate electricity for the water pumps while the backup generators would start up. This was a great plan on paper, but it hadn't been successfully proven on the equipment for many years since the plan was developed. Naturally, another test was required.

This article is somewhat large, weighing in at around two-megabytes. Slow or mobile internet connections may struggle to load the full article.

Ghost towns have always piqued my interest. There's something interesting about how a large number of people can gather together to build a town, or even a city, only to have some unforeseeable event render the area deserted.

Because of the Victorian Gold Rush, I'm familiar with quite a few ghost towns from an Australian perspective, however sadly there's not much left due to the Australian Government's policy of destroying them.

If you're a regular reader, you've probably noticed that I've had a terrible time lately trying to update the blog. Things have been ridiculously busy for me lately, to the point where my spare time has completely evaporated.

I am trying to change the situation, but until then posts might be a little later than usual. That doesn't mean that I still haven't seen some odd stuff around the place, so it's time for me to use my invented word again; it's time for another (tiny) dose of benespection.

Everyone loves a cheese cake, and if you think my Toblerone Cheesecake is too sweet then maybe try this cake out. This is a cooked cheese cake that is light and fluffy and goes well with mixed red berries.

This recipe is very simple and it only takes about an hour to put one of these cakes together!

Since 2002 the city of Brussels has organised a bunch of live music events around town each summer, and last year it came to my front door. Despite certain folk petitioning against its return, it has once again graced my neighbourhood and presented me with some new talent to consider.

As always, this year I missed several events, and certainly the festival lasts longer than the three days presented here. Nevertheless, once it arrives on my doorstep I cannot ignore the Brussels Summer Festival.

Earlier this month, I came across Ommegang as I was heading home one evening. This has now become an annual event here in Brussels, and I had heard rumours of its existence.

Essentially it's a medieval festival, with many re-enactments. The event also has daily jousting on the Sablon! On this particular evening I decided to follow the parade on it way through the city as I walked home.

At the rear of the parade was free beer, courtesy of Charles Quint, and very nice beer it was, indeed!

Coming from Australia, I love a good pie. Among my favourite types of pie, Chicken & Mushroom ranks quite highly on my list of delights. Sadly living in Belgium limits my access to pies, so I have to make my own.

Here is the recipe for my Chicken, Bacon and Mushroom Pie, which is rich in flavour and works perfectly on a chilly night.

Scams will always exist as long as the general population of the world remain stupid and ignorant. I attribute any rise in the number of scams to be directly related to the state of the economy — any increase from the “normal” level of scams usually corresponds directly with any economic uncertainty within the market.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last twelve months, you have surely noticed that there is a bit of a problem with the global economy. If you haven't noticed then you must have at least noticed that scams are on the rise; Ingenious as some of them may be, now is a good time to use your brain.

One last day in the Ardennes before heading back to reality — that is to say, home and ultimately work.

So it hasn't been so much of a road-trip, with two long stop-overs in picturesque locations, but at least it's been a holiday!

Ahh, Belgian weather! It's amazing sometimes how you can cross the border into this small country and suddenly the weather turns sour.

That's not to say that the weather here is always bad like everyone says, but it does seem to be overcast more often than not.

With the car ready to go, and us not really willing to actually pay for the hotel room, we spent our last morning in Chamonix and decided to continue driving north.

This was my last chance to exploit the sales in the area, so after one last coffee I headed over to the Aigle shop to pick up a heavily discounted winter jacket that should come in handy in a few months' time.

Still in Chamonix today, and I've been deliberating whether or not I want to go paragliding at a nearby paragliding school since we arrived. Chamonix in the summer also offers hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing… and an adventure park!

Chamonix has a lot to offer, but when you're not sure if you're leaving today, or tomorrow, or in a few days' time, it's very difficult to plan what you want to do. Given the price and the timing, I sadly dropped the paragliding idea and we went for the very adult decision of going to Les Planards adventure park!

We awoke in our free hotel room to spend a day roaming the touristy yet placid and beautiful town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, wedged in the heart of Chamonix Valley between Mont Blanc, Le Brévent and Aiguilles Rouges.

With last night's tartiflette digested, the day was spent generally vegetating around the town while we waited for news on the car that broke down yesterday. We returned to the tourist information office to exploit their free Wi-Fi and did a little bit of shopping.

This morning we were in Avignon — a city once full of religious old farts popes and anti-popes — indeed quite a powerful place, if I understand correctly. After consuming what can barely be described as the dregs of breakfast from the Etap, we headed out into the town to investigate.

However, we had a slight conundrum to deal with first…