Rambling - 3

I’ve been trying to avoid using my holiday time from work so that I can use most of them for my eventual trip to the arse-end of the world at the end of this year, thus keeping as many holiday days for next year as possible. To this effect, I haven’t taken much in the way of time off this year at all.

So hectic was last month, I didn’t really get much time for myself to decompress, and the national holiday of November 1^st gave me the perfect excuse to was time to relinquish some holiday time to finally unwind a little.

Fortunately Aline was kind enough to offer an escape by way of her family’s chalet in Chiny, so on Thursday morning we trundled down towards the French border with John for some well-earned time away from everything and anything for four days.

…Or so we thought.

Recently I mentioned that an Ex of mine was to arrive for a short visit. These plans didn't come together when I put my foot down last night, effectively cancelling them.

Ordinarily I wouldn't air such things out here, but in this instance I felt I really needed to let it out into the open and allow the funk to dissipate.

One week ago I was awoken earlier than usual by the sound of what I initially thought was a chainsaw. This being somewhat odd and inexplicable, I made the effort to get out of bed and take a peek. It seemed workers had arrived to shut down the fountain and, from what I could tell at the time, they were starting to encase it in wood.

Being a little too weird and therefore difficult to comprehend at the extremely unsociable hour of 7:30am, I went to vegetate under the shower and wake up. Once outside, I still failed to comprehend what exactly was going on here.

Death seems to be a common theme lately. I seem to know or at least know of several people who are currently going through their grieving process right now, as if it's some sort of organised or seasonal event. Indeed, death has come to my family, with distant relative Geoff Echberg, who could be considered my Great Uncle, passing away last Saturday at the age of 92.

When you look back into your past at the people you once new, the situations you were once in, the places you once frequented, and the things you once did, how exactly do you feel? Do you feel sad? Angry? Regretful? Revolted?

Something the Victorian education system failed to teach me is that history is important; it tells you where you've been, who you are now, and where you're going. Without history, we'd all be moronic shells, bumping into the same problems we never knew existed and never really going anywhere new.

Lately I've been in a very retrospective mood. Most people would tell me that I'm living in the past and it's time to move on and look forwards into the future, however my personal “balance philosophy” tells me that a little retrospection is a good thing. (I will write about that later, in great detail, I promise Steve!)

People don't seem to realise that computer programming is an artistic discipline rather than procedural office work. Those outside of the field would probably scoff at that remark, after they've put together a pivot table within excel. Just because you can cook doesn't make you a chef.

Your average manager fails to understand the difference between someone within an artistic job and someone with a procedural job — the difference being that to accomplish their goal one designs and constructs while the other follows list of tasks. Just because you're a mechanic doesn't make you an automotive engineer.

Sleep is one of my most favourite things.

When I don't sleep I tend to lose my ability to multi-task and eventually I get stuck in an infinite loop — like a record skipping — on singular topics that honestly never seem to reach any formal conclusion other than to recursively become ever-more circuitous than would otherwise be necessary, and ultimately the introduction of some form of interruption is usually the only thing that can put an end to my redundant cogitation, forcing my brain to return to functioning with syllogism; and in my current state of excessive verbosity would compel me to stop writing this esoteric yet amaranthine dissertation that I nonsensically continue to slowly dribble into this post painfully like a daydreaming slug slithering through a dry salt pond and onwards towards oblivion…

The one thing that occurs to me lately is that getting healthy can be very expensive. Oddly, I always knew that eating healthy was horribly expensive compared to buying junk food, but now I realise the cost of things to help you be healthy are equally expensive.

I love my empty calories, and as my metabolism is slowing down like the rest of my family, I'm regaining the pot-belly I once grew while I baked myself in the sun at a resort in Pattaya back in 1992. Get me another watermelon juice, slave!

It's time to put an end to all that, and get a bit of catabolism going, beyond just walking everywhere. I've been saying for months that I should start running, but I couldn't motivate myself. Cyclocity instead encouraged me to cycle, and unfortunately for them I wound up buying my own bike.

Over the weekend just passed, the Brussels Summer Festival (formerly known as Euritmix) wound up the last big batch of their 280 free concerts being performed through-out the city. Me being me, I missed out on most of it, but I couldn't possibly miss the action when it arrived on my doorstep!

The weekend was probably the busiest weekend I've had in a long time, with many errands to run and much out-of-pattern spending to be done, and yet I still managed to spend a lot of time watching bands from my window ledge. For my own future reference, I thought I should jot down some notes about these unknown bands, which is represented by this post.

As I try to refrain from The Lovin' Spoonful references, I have to say that lately I've been feeling more and more at home living in the city. I love summer in Brussels, because all the plebs that live outside the pentagon bugger off on their holidays and the city centre turns into one amazingly friendly village (so long as you ignore the tourists).

Brussels also comes alive in a certain indefinable magic way, not only because it has it's own beach on the canal, or the arrival of the carnies at the medieval city gate in the south, but because of a fantastic summer festival.

This year, the festival has come to my doorstep!

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.

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.