Belgium - 1

After being dragged back to Walibi after only one week, it's turned out the park still has many early-season problems. The park itself has been heavily criticised in the media over the past week, including a scathing report on the Belga news-wire, «Walibi a vu du monde, mais a connu quelques soucis».

The short of the article is this: While Walibi's opening patronage was higher than the previous season (10,500 people), many attractions were closed for “temporary” reasons. Some of the rides were particularly rough on the opening Saturday, and technical staff worked overnight to help fix the problems. This may go some way to explaining why some rides did not open until the afternoon of the second day of the season.

The article goes on to state that the park management have invested €4m with special attention paid to increasing capacity of the existing rides, which is indeed visible in many places, but it looks like some rides have been somewhat neglected.

How could I write an article about my rollercoasterholicism without returning to Walibi on the first weekend of the 2007 season? Well, as it turns out, I couldn't possibly do such a thing, so I went today.

The interesting thing about Walibi is that the start of the season is always quite dreadful. Last year I arrived on the very first day only to find a messy park full of jerky rides and incompetent staff. I'm happy to say many of these problems were solved during this opening weekend, but perhaps not quite in the way I would have preferred.

I love events such as lunar eclipses. They tend to remind me how small I am compared to the size of the universe. It's amazing how something so simple can be so impressive.

This is the second lunar eclipse I've managed to witness, and the beautiful colour of the moon is something that will also still continue to impress me. Unfortunately the photo shown here isn't very good, but it's the best I could do with my little digital camera (along with some cropping and noise cleaning in GIMP, but otherwise no other alterations). This photo was taken around half-past midnight this morning.

Sometimes I wonder if I have one of those information symbols glued to my forehead -- I feel like a walking tourist information booth. While I realise Brussels attracts a large amount of foreigners by its very nature, I do feel like I've become some sort of an tourist information point. This has reached a level now that I can't go to the GB without being asked for directions on the way home.

Oddly enough, the STIB, in their infinite wisdom, started making public announcements that playing music on public transport is forbidden shortly after I wrote my previous rant about public transport. Since then, I have neither seen nor heard buskers within the public transport network here in Brussels. Hurrah!

This does seem related to the STIB's new efforts to secure public transport, including many new guys that just stand around wearing highly visible vests with the word "prevention" on them at trouble spots.

Spring is upon us here in Belgium, despite it being 45 days early. Trees are starting to grow new leaves, birds are building nests, and the weather this weekend has all the attributes of perfect spring days. It's at this point that I feel inclined to point out that I could have been wrong about it being winter in a previous post -- maybe winter was cancelled this year?

One thing about taking public transport is the unfortunate amount of anti-social behaviour you have to exhibit to make the journey a smooth one. If you seem too sociable, you wind up attracting undesirables: Smelly buskers, smelly beggars, and not-so-smelly emissaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently arrived from Canada and unaware that Belgians really don't want to talk to them.

Since many people I know don't take public transport, it might be time to explain what they're missing.

Winter has finally arrived in Western Europe. Not bad really, considering it's just over a month late. To be honest, I was starting to have my doubts about seeing winter at all until the end of the year, but it took a large violent storm to force some semblance of balance back into place.

This time last week, we were only just starting to see the start of strong gusts of wind that really took hold on Thursday, causing vast property damage, even to the point of rotating traffic lights 90° on the boulevard in front of the office. Here in Belgium, we only topped wind speeds of around 100km/h, however this was a mere breeze compared to other countries such as Germany and Austria where gusts peaked to around 170km/h.

If you haven't yet noticed because you're too busy living under your rock, the weather is completely stuffed, worldwide.

So, it's Christmas again, which means we're closing in on the end of another year. Time is flying past so quickly lately, that Christmas is a welcomed change of pace. As with every year, even the Mannequin Piss is in on the action!

With the huge amount of light emanating from the Grand Place Christmas decorations, and the constant requests for photos from those unable to come and visit themselves, I grabbed my aging Sony DSC-P52 and went out into the cold and fog to grab some pictures of this tackiness.

As an experiment, and as my way of proving that my life is just as mundane as the next, I thought I'd finally exploit the (horribly inadequate) camera in my Nokia E70 and capture a day's worth of mindless monotony. While some insight into my current lifestyle may not sway humanity, it will provide curiosity and humour to my future self, if the archive of my blog can be somehow assured.

Now, it's interesting to note that despite Gartner's predictions, modern archaeology is already taking note in the blogging movement, and some universities are beginning to encourage archaeology and philosophy students to blog. Ultimately, the incessant self-publishing phenomenon will provide future civilisations a window into our own; albeit for now, its view into a somewhat obscure facet of our present reality.

Armed with this as my primary excuse to cover up my general state of disregard and laziness, I've decided to leave the images from the E70 in their original state, including those which are blurry and normally inadmissable. This is my day, as seen by me, through my trusty camera phone.

For me, Christmas shopping season has begun this weekend. Normally I wait until the last minute, but this time around I felt it was a good idea to start battling the hordes of relentless Christmas shoppers early in order to avoid any unwanted surprises, and help me find presents for people. It's only one week away from Plaisirs d'Hiver (Winter Wonders), which includes lots of Glüewein, Christmas markets, and so forth. Brussels is going to be chockas again, so it's a good idea to start early.

“Heading up through Normandie; saw some war relics. Wanted to spend the night around Calais but since it's 99% British, we're driving back to Brussels instead!”

“We're in Strasbourg, no need to worry.. Road trip plans are going okay, just very tired.. Just going to bed now.. Talk soon!”

Before arriving in Belgium, I was somewhat news obsessed. I'd listen to ABC NewsRadio on a regular basis (with the exception of when they were broadcasting from Parliament). I'd even go to bed and listen to the news from the BBC (naturally being retransmitted via NewsRadio).

Sitting on my own in my new and baron apartment in Brussels a feeling somewhat lonely (amplified somewhat by the time of year), I tuned into NewsRadio over the Internet for a news-fix and to see what was going on around the world. To my surprise, NewsRadio would cheer me up and make the world feel small again for me in no time.