- Dutch tend to be louder, Belgians more subdued.
- Dutch humour is in-your-face, Belgian humour is sarcastic-rebellious.
- Dutch tend to be protestant, Belgians tend to be catholic.
- Dutch like salmiakki (salt licorice), Belgians don't know it.
- Dutch diet includes more frituurs, Belgian diet has more vegetables.
- When speaking Dutch people in the Netherlands pronounce the G's like Spaniards and the R's like Americans, Belgians just speak with interesting and varied intonations. Or as they say, in Belgium Dutch is a language, in the Netherlands Dutch is a throat disease.
La mondialisation pour les nuls
Vidéo du canal ARTE.
Belgium is like
A 40-something year-old dad I saw last week. He was dressed in khakis, blue shirt, brown pullover and pink Converse tennis shoes.
A little stylish, with a touch of unexpected rebelliousness and a rather subversive sense of humour.
¡Feliz día de las Madres!
Porque si no fuera por ustedes no estaríamos aquí.
A la mía le aprendí el valor del trabajo, de la fuerza y del amor. Y ah cómo se lo agradezco.
I can’t believe it…
But I'm watching the Eurovision semifinals from Helsinki. And I'm actually quite moved by the small clips between performances.
Hard Rock Hallelujah!
Update: 2 of my favourites didn't go through to the finals: Andorra & Belgium… the annoying acts of Belarus & Slovenia went through instead. However, 2 that did go though that I liked were Georgia & Serbia. Now let's see what do the finals have in store, as there are some contestants like Germany that seem to have some interesting stuff.
Clausura 2007 Quarterfinals 1st leg: Tigres 1-3 Chivas
The holy flock had a very important victory away at the University Stadium of Monterrey, beating Tigres 1-3 for the first leg of the Mexican League quarterfinals (yes, the league is rather strange). Especially noteworthy is Omar Esparza’s excellent goal (the 3rd), since the kid is 19 years old.
If the team doesn’t screw up this weekend, we’ll be up in the semis, where we shall meet the winner of the América-Atlas playoff series.
Family
Family means different things to different people. To some, it is only their parents and siblings. To others, it might mean several generations of people including aunts, uncles and cousins relatively removed from them.
That is the case in Mexico. Even though I don’t meet them very often, on my dad’s side I know around a hundred people who fall into the category of “family”, even though I don’t always remember how exactly am I related to them. On my mom’s side it’s easier, and I probably know less than fifty.
In family reunions, since I never knew who was who, I usually called people around my age “cousins” and adults “uncles” and “aunts”. Even though there were some exceptions to the rule, it did work.
All this because I was chatting on MSN about the family with a cousin who is the granddaugher of a cousin of my grandmother on my father’s side. And yes, she’s still family, and we still know about each other, even though she lives in a part of Mexico I seldom visit.
These days, keeping in touch is not so hard
I was reading Batz's Journal, where she comments her views on leaving Barcelona after being there two years, and going away from those friendships she has formed during her time there.
I started thinking that in fact these days it's not so difficult to keep in touch with those you care about. With e-mail, messenger, skype, blogging and of course text messaging and voice telephony you can still keep in touch. These days video conferencing is not so difficult either, as many chatting programs have integrated it.
Around a year ago, I was in a very particular situation. My parents were living in Brazil, my sister in Mexico, my fiancée in Japan and I was in Finland, so there was a minimum of 8,000 km between one member of the family and the next. Keeping in mind the time differences, these utilities were a godsend, and now that I'm in Belgium I use them to keep in touch, as my friends and family are scattered all over the place.
This is much better than the situation in the Middle Ages, or even 30 years ago. In that sense I'm glad I was born at a time when this is possible.
My iPod is semi-sentient
Today I was a little bit blue. The sky was overcast, with this annoying drizzle that isn't even proper rain but still messes up my hair and my glasses, and it was just the proper mood for being a little pensative.
Even though I have my iPod in shuffle (all 3000+ songs), it played almost exclusively during the whole day songs according to the mood: "My way", "Sunday, Bloody Sunday", "Polly", "Ayer me dijo un ave", "Denial, revisited", "Pennyroyal tea", "The wind cries Mary", "Black hole sun", "Bibo no aozora", "Long Cool Woman", "Ánimas que no amanezca", etc.
Given that when I'm happy, the same shuffle tends to play more rythmic songs, I'm starting to wonder if my iPod is semi-sentient or at least rather telepathic…
In the news
- Sarkozy won in France. Now the question is: Is it a good or a bad thing?
- 20,000 people posed naked in Mexico City. The previous record was 7,000 in Barcelona. Who would have thought?