Present Perfect

Phew. Last Friday was spent in a datacenter in Barcelona, where a stressful wait for a cab until an hour before my flight segued into - yet again - a 40 minute wait to be let on the plane, because both the check-in queue and the security queue where literally empty. I went from outside the airport to sitting down at the terminal in five minutes, in stark contrast with the rest of the world's airports.

By 11.45 I was in Kristien's arms and ready to be taken home. On Saturday we went shopping in Brussels. I shelled out 1.5 PlayStation's worth of money on CD's (Archie Bronson Outfit's Derdang Derdang is amazing), DVD's (ended up buying the L-Word series because I couldn't find it anywhere through more conventional means), and a whole range of books (including a big Penrose book). Sometimes my feminine side wins, exchanging chunks of emotional distress with bouts of consumerism. We ended up sitting at a dodgy snack bar on the Anspachlaan (where the famous Ancienne Belgique concert hall is) and I got a truely excellent pot of mussels with white wine sauce.

I felt like a tourist in my own country all day (highlighted even more by the fact that I heard people speaking Spanish all around me), but it was excellent. I'm starting to appreciate the finer sides of Brussels, after having hated the city for countless years.
In the evening we went to a drive-in movie, V for Vendetta. The movie was great (I'm talking to you, Johan), and besides the fact that originally we had driven to somewhere half an hour away from where Kristien lives - the Esplanade at the Centenaire which is under the Atomium -, while the actual drive-in was at the Esplanade at the Cinquantenaire (which is just around the corner), we had a great time in the end.

Sunday morning was spent strolling the market and getting great cheese, Tartiflette quiche, and having breakfast at a cornet street bar with our fresh cheese. In the afternoon we went to Marktrock, where Kristien was presenting on one of the stages, and her collagues from Donna were broadcasting a show. One of the people performing was Born, a guy who participated in Belgium's Idol contest. The fun thing about him is that he's a lot like our friend Peter - he has red hair, his accent is exactly the same as Peter's, has similar glasses, and although a bit thinner even physically resembles him somewhat. He even drives the same model of car ! When he was driving away after his gig, I told him that he should look up rost schaamhaar in Google, and somewhere on the first page would be a link to Peter's page (it's link 8). He told me he had "rost schaamhaar" too, and I said, "yeah, sure". At that point he opened his pants and pulled them down, and it's true - Born has rost schaamhaar ! I swear, Born and Peter are brothers. Swentel, take Peter to Borns bar in De Pinte !

After that, I got to see Dear Leader, which is the new band fronted by the ex-Sheila Divine frontman. He still has that amazing voice, and he ended the set by morphing his own song into a medley of Cutting Crew's "I just died in your arms tonight", the Smiths' "There is a light that never goes out" and the Pixies' "Monkey gone to heaven", before going back to his own song. Any band that can pull off a transition like that deserves our utmost respect.

And to close off the evening, Metal Molly is together again for a series of concerts. We arrived late, but when I did they had just broken into a perfect trilogy of Orange, Suncomfort International and Happiness. And as if it was 94 all over again, they ended their set with exactly the song I hoped for - a rollercoaster cover of Sloan's "Underwhelmed".

Sometimes it's good to come home, even when home isn't home...

The rest of this week I spent working on the half-finished cluster install and fixing various bugs here and there. Today I'm off to Pukkelpop, and Sunday I return home to Barcelona...

Phew. Last Friday was spent in a datacenter in Barcelona, where a stressful wait for a cab until an hour before my flight segued into - yet again - a...