Entries from Simon Butcher

I'm a proud brother today after my sister wound up appearing on various national news programs in Australia doing a press conference for ARBIAS. I managed to catch the story on the SBS World News Australia snippets released online, which even features a cameo from my Dad (a.k.a. Rent-A-Crowd).

As Scott has reminded me, a year ago today the two of us were wrapping up our 8000km lightning fast road-trip, mostly through Western/Southern Europe. Back then I didn't keep any sort of journal, and I still didn't believe in taking photos using my then brand-new E70 since camera-phones usually take photos of miserable quality.

Scott took on the role as the photographer putting some of them up on Smile In Europe. I left this up to him since he brought a suitcase that included his fancy Nikon D70, and about a million accessories to handle any photographic circumstance!

My usual metro this morning from De Brouckère was late, which in itself isn't unusual. Despite being «La Grande Vacances», a late metro still converts the locals into pig-headed selfish morons, unable to understand that forcing themselves through a small doorway with twenty alighting passengers is not only impolite but incurs further delays for everyone.

One particular woman and her son did just this, blissfully ignorant to the obvious fact that once everyone had left the carriage there was plenty of room to embark. They hogged the open doorway arrogantly, refusing to move to let other passengers pass easily. So far this could describe any morning's journey to work, and most days I'm simply amused (or bemused) by the sheer aberrations being played out before me.

Upon arrival at the next stop, Gare Centrale, this woman's son, who must have been no more than 8-years old and no less than 6, started screaming painfully; «Maman, maman, mon bras! Il blesse! Il blesse!»

My family lived in Hobart for the first three years of the 1990s. It was there that I met Nick, who is ultimately to blame for my addiction to adventure games. Nick encouraged me to try Space Quest Ⅰ, and from there we ended up playing stacks of graphical adventure games together.

Over the past few months, I've been able to revisit these old and nearly lost gems, with the aid of software emulators such as Nick's NAGI for the old Sierra AGI games, FreeSCI for the early 1990s Sierra SCI games, and finally ScummVM for those brilliant LucasArts games of the last decade.

According to the InBev marketing department, it's barbie-season. Fantastic news, but I'm still not going to drink their crappy Jupiler grog. Or Stella for that matter. Click on the ad for a look, since it's a some-what clever adaptation of the Jupiler logo.

I was starting to believe we'd had summer in place of spring and it was now autumn, but sure enough though summer has finally arrived this weekend. Perfect timing, as the 127^th Foire du Midi officially opened last night.

I've been pretty busy with work lately, so today a day was taken off to do something not many people would do: Drive up to the Netherlands on a work day and go and visit a new amusement park. In this particular case, John (who also wrote a trip report), Aline and myself ignored the warnings of bad weather and headed to Walibi's sister park, Walibi World (not Wally's World — ahem).

With the exception of a few large electrical storms and brief showers, the glum weather of the morning pushed off and we were lucky to enjoy mostly blue skies in the very green but awkwardly laid-out park. The park seems to be roughly the same size as Walibi Belgium, however designed in a more hub-and-spoke manner with most of the paths being dead-ends.

To its credit though, the heavy greenery and the winding path layout hides many rides and pathways without becoming a labyrinth, effectively making the park seem larger and quieter.

More importantly though, pity us poor IT sods who still have to take a bunch of manual steps to prepare systems for the coming new financial year. Woe unto us.

Walibi have spent a fortune on advertising over the past week, keenly promoting themselves by way of their new Walibi Heroes campaign. Essentially the idea is that you rock up to the park, buy lots of crappy merchandise, ride on a bunch of prescribed rides to collect little stamps in your “hero portfolio” in order to become hero of the day, month, or year. Ultimately, this all depends on how many of your friends you can convince to vote for you pretending to be a statue of yourself within the park.

I did not return to Walibi for this reason, but rather to finally experience the first-of-its-kind Vertigo, which has suffered various set-backs for the past 18 months. The ride finally opened while I was in Greenville, so obviously I had to check this thing out.

In a vague attempt to cheer me up after returning to Brussels and immediately catching a nasty cold, an anonymous antagonist believes this is what I'd look like if I was a South Park character.

Yes, very amusing.

Yesterday I completed my quick tour of duty in the USA. I must say, it's good to be back in the city of Belgium, here in Eastern Europe. Well, close enough anyway, right?

Seriously though, I honestly have the feeling that I've been isolated from the world. Despite what they think over there, the concept of World News doesn't really exist in the USA, so I didn't know about the murders in the Marolles, nor the bikie violence in Melbourne. I've been under a rock, and yet the rest of the world heard about the firefighters who died in Charleston.

What does a European do when they find themself in Greenville surrounded by bars with televisions blaring sports news and serving weak North American domestic beer? They go to Addy's, a nice Dutch place run by a guy with enough self respect not to serve imported gnat's piss like Stella Artois.

Unfortunately, even as Addy himself admits, the locals aren't quite ready for a real bar with some real beer. It's only been a few months since Greenville changed the alcohol limits on beer, and if the new strength of the beers isn't enough then the atmosphere will certainly be a culture shock.

After a reasonable drive, through peach and firework country, up to the border between North Carolina and South Carolina, I arrived early this morning at Carowinds (RCDB) accompanied by colleagues and their family. Fortunately despite the humidity, the weather wasn’t too hot and warnings of rain kept the crowds low.

The park is quite green however it is very dry, with very few fountains and no large body of water to take the edge off the heat. I imagine in summer the park would be stifling hot. This season marks the first year under the new management of Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, and surprisingly the park is very clean and in excellent condition.

With much acrimony, my office finally accepted to move me from my hotel in the middle of no-where to a hotel right in the heart of Greenville. Stuck without a car, as Mr. Brewer was, the Greenville Marriott becomes really isolated as it's almost entirely surrounded by freeways. The two locations are really a fair distance apart without a car.

Freedom has come at a slightly additional expense (to the company), as I leave the company suite and move into the Hyatt Regency Greenville on Main Street. The Hyatt is a fairly old hotel and looks like it was renovated in the 1990s, compared to the Marriott which was built only a few years ago.

A trip to the United States of America wouldn’t be complete without visiting a real American home. Fortunately this evening I can now cross a few more things off my list: I’ve visited a truly American home just near Paris Mountain (and had myself a fantastic cook-out as a result), met a dog that can read, and finally seen fireflies outside of Disney cartoons.

An American colleague of mine, who is actually our project manager for our ERP system migration, kindly invited me out to his house for a real cook-out. This suited me perfectly. A large chunk of carefully seasoned and cooked steak and some giant spuds is always a great meal.

Stopping over for six hours in Atlanta waiting for my connecting flight now grants Atlanta a spot along side Brussels, İstanbul and Dubai on my list of airports I know intimately. Not really a thrilling accomplishment for a city that was once home to the Olympics, I suppose.

After a long flight, with so many security checks, it was a little daunting to arrive from the soberness that is Brussels airport early in the morning to the business airport in the world. Surprisingly, people were quite rude through-out the airport in general, but in small groups they were excessively friendly. Within 15 minutes of arriving, I was already thrown into a conversation about American politics, the Iraq war, and US immigration policy.