Present Perfect

The scene: a top floor appartment with terrace. A dashing young man is transcribing bank account statements to his computer. A strikingly beautiful young girl is going through two baskets of socks, trying to match pairs.

young girl (prodding skin under chin)

When I push hard here it hurts

young man (caught in a fit of laughter)

So stop pushing, problem solved ?

young girl

Hey ! I'm having cancer and you don't even care !

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined it would have been so easy and fantastic at the same time to be living together...

The scene: a top floor appartment with terrace. A dashing young man is transcribing bank account statements to his computer. A strikingly beautiful young girl is going through two baskets...

Flew to Belgium and back for the weekend on account of a wedding of the guy who stole my job. Was great to see people again, including my ex-boss and even the ex-ex-boss. Nice to catch up with gossip as well. Photos of the wedding will make it online soon. And you know, just being around people you know are your friends and being able to fall back into the old social routines just makes you feel good from time to time.

This time I wasn't feeling the slightest bit sad at all to not live there anymore, I just wanted to get back home to Barcelona as quickly as possible after the wedding. Tried meeting up with my parents, too, but circumstances and their lack of organisation skills decided it was not to be. Same for a family gettogether on Sunday - they informed me three days in advance that there was to be one, and I could attend if I managed to get out of bed after the marriage. The next day they had decided to shift it to the evening, for a reason that probably was valid more than a month ago. Sigh. Just as well I suppose - sleeping later is always nice. Well, it is when your girlfriend doesn't wake you up :)

Sunday before going back we went to a Jazz festival in Brussels, in a nice park, with Kristien's parents. I couldn't attend the undoubtedly great barbecue in Peter's back yard with everyone I care about. Oh well, a bunch of them are coming over next week anyway.

And this week Tamara and Timothy have come over, and we're thinking of maybe going to a Tango evening. There seems to be an international Tango Festival close by as well, coincidence ?

Over the last ten days I also read two Dan Brown books on suggestion from others - Da Vinci Code and Angels and Daemons. Apparently he's very popular at the moment. I only realized how popular on Sunday evening when I was queuing to get on the plane, and the woman to my left was reading an English copy of the Da Vinci Code, and the guy on my right was reading an Italian one. They weren't too bad, just a bit too similar to each other, and the "puzzles" were easy to guess. You can tell he knows how to tell and twist a story though.

Anyway, I've decided to pick up reading again, and started with a classic of classics - the original A. A. Milne's Winnie-ther-Pooh.

Flew to Belgium and back for the weekend on account of a wedding of the guy who stole my job. Was great to see people again, including my ex-boss and...

Though I am at heart a cheerful person and an optimist I have a very big capacity for melancholy. A big part of me wants to be back in the last year of high school without any real cares in the world. Another big part wants to be back in university, celebrating the simple pleasures of life, having incredible amounts of free time during the day to work on whatever interests me. I wish I was interested back then in the things that interest me today... Or, I wish I was still interested in what interested me back then. Some book I'm reading referenced i, the imaginary unit, and I had a hard time remembering all the things mathematicians used i for. I remember i rocked my mathematical beliefs when I first ran into it at around sixteen. It sounds nerdish, but I've always enjoyed learning new things I could manage to understand.

And, let's face it - the days where I went out to party three times a week on average, until four in the morning or later, are pretty much over as well :) You get older, you lose immediate contact with friends, you do less crazy stuff, you learn less new things that stay with you forever.

But it also makes you appreciate more those precious few things that manage to stick around for a lifetime and counting.

This sounds heavier than I'd like it to be, so to offset that : I live in interesting times, I love my job, I live in a great city, and I love my girlfriend a lot. I am happy. It's just that being happy becomes harder to achieve or maintain as you get older :)

Oh simple thing Where have you gone I'm getting old and I need something to rely on Though I am at heart a cheerful person and an optimist I have...

People have asked me what to do about my upcoming birthday now that I live far away.

Well, the best I could come up with was to
create an Amazon wishlist. Hey, if it works for hadess, it can work for me.

I hope that helps the people with moral issues :)

People have asked me what to do about my upcoming birthday now that I live far away. Well, the best I could come up with was to create an Amazon...

What a week for my baby and me. She's getting ready for her radio show which starts next week. Yes, hard to believe, but true - the old radio station from Belgium where we both used to work has given her the opportunity to do her radio show from Barcelona ! So, they brought the equipment to the same building where I work, allowed her to hire a friend to help do production, and sent over a technician, and everything seems to be more or less ready. It's a testament to how good she really is at this job if they really want her that badly.

Needless to say this stresses her out enormously after basically not doing very much the last six months. Which is great for both of us, since I'm feeling the same sort of stress getting the streaming stuff ready. So for once she doesn't complain about me getting home late, and we can support each other knowing that things will be better after next week. Don't I just love my girl... She's going to do just fine.

What a week for my baby and me. She's getting ready for her radio show which starts next week. Yes, hard to believe, but true - the old radio station...