Luke, I am your Fazer

Some years ago my sister and I could be seen as real Star Wars freaks. Almost every weekend we would watch one of the original three films and during the rest of the week we would use as many quotes from the movies in conversations, both appropriately and inappropriately. One of the memorabilia we purchased back then was the Star Wars Monopoly edition. This weekend we had some friends over to play some games and due to this event the box was taken out and again we got all exited by seeing our mini Darth Vader and mini starfighters. In the end we decided on playing Risk, but I did think it was worth replaying some scenes of the films. I was always a big fan of Han Solo, the true hero of the series if you asked me back then. :P The way he always saved the day and brought some wit into the life of little whining Luke must have appealed a lot to me. That and the looks of Harrison Ford. :S Quite shocking to think that a 14 year old could fancy a 40 year older man, but I guess we all went through such a phase, right? ;) These days I have to admit though that Darth Vader is way cooler! :P

Today on the other hand I met up with a friend who is currently working in Sweden. She was back at home now for some days and she was soooo kind to bring me some Fazer Blå! Yum! My ,and everyone else's who has tasted it, favourite milk chocolate from Finland. I'm not entirely sure if it beats the taste of the Belgiann Côte d'Or, but it certainly comes close. :) A while ago I had the chance to try some real Venezuelan (Tack igen Thor min!) chocolate, which is quite a priviledge, as that should be one of the countries where the origin of this divine brown stuff lies. And it was good! Yes, a shockaholic I am, and proud to be one!

The sun

I took this picture yesterday morning, as I was kind of surprised to see how fast the rising hours of the sun are changing during these days. I have passed by this spot almost every day in the past 3 weeks and when I first paid attention to the sun's location, it was standing relatively high above those trees on the right. Each time it was around 8:10 so I could really compare it well. This morning the sun wasn't even visible yet, so winter is approaching fast. Not that we would notice it by the temperatures... Today we have another 18 degrees I think, yesterday it was even warmer. Nice, you could say, but it is hardly normal for the middle of October. And it's even inconvenient, as the mornings are absolutely freezing. I leave home with a scarf around my neck and with gloves on, I leave work with only my t-shirt on. So you have to carry around all of these clothes for nothing. So I suggest weather changes soon and true autumn and winter comes. And I want a real winter, with snow!! I think we had quite a good one last year, snow at the end of December and also sometimes during January and February. Maybe we even can go skiing again in our park. :)

So, back to worknow, my lunch break is over and my supervisor will be back soon.

Red

Last week the local elections took place here in Belgium. Normally this wouldn't attract so much attention from foreigners, but on Sunday many journalists from abroad had found their way here, to Antwerp. There is a lot to see here for tourists, but this time it were the high expectations about the outcome of the elections that caught all of the attention. You could actually call it some kind of disaster tourism, as everybody had come to see political extremism prevail. Everybody supposed it would indeed happen, over the past years this party has grown steadily and was on the verge of becoming the largest party in certain areas, mainly close by or in Antwerp. I am proud to say now that not everything went as bad as was expected. (Bad in my opinion would of course have been that extreme right would have gained more power) All over Flanders the "Vlaams Belang" had indeed grown, with the exception of two areas, being the city center of Antwerp and one of it's districts Borgerhout, where I live. Here, and in many other regions, the socialist party had grown immensely and for the first time in years the right party had lost some percentages. Not really much of course, but maybe it's a start, at least that is what I want to believe. You could say that that fact that the extremists grew everywhere else overshadows their loss in two areas, but even the right party showed that it was more the other way around. They had not expected to loose in the one place where it all started for them and where their popularity had spread from so also for them this came as a shock. They won't truly admit this, but some behind the screens filming has showed their disbelief and disappointment. Now I just hope that this will go on also in the years to come and that more people would realize that negativism implies no improvement in the way a city or country is governed.

My sister has come up with another alternative for when you aren't happy about the government. She would want to see a party being started, that supports animal rights. What the other ideas of the party would be, aren't very clear yet. I agree of course that animals need to be treated well, kind of equally, but to start a party for it? Maybe if pets would have the right to vote... My cat would want more card board boxes I think, otherwise she seems quite happy over here. :) So far my political statements. ;)

Apart from this red Sunday I also experienced a red Tuesday. Some colleagues at my work meet to practice some sport each week and this time they were going to play volleyball. I used to like this at school so I decided on joining them. It really was a very nice evening, the play wasn't exactly professional so my mistakes didn't stand out that much. :P The main problem however was the ball, it was incredibly hard! With each serve my right wrist hurt like hell, spreading the pain to the rest of my arm and shoulder. Everybody complained about it, so I was not the only one being like a baby (or fuffi ;) ). By the end of the evening I could move my thumb anymore and cycling back home was quite hard each time I drove over a bump with my hands on my steering wheel. :P And sports are supposed to be healthy? ;)

Material Girl Part Two

It's been two weeks since I started working and I still enjoy it quite much. By now I have gained some more responsibilities and noticed the lesser aspects of both my job and it's environment. The novelty of it all has worn off and now I am able to see that of course not all is as perfect as my first impression was a week ago, but that doesn't mean it's all bad now. After some more time I just got to see some more of the boring sides of my work and also the more meaner sides of some people. Not that I dislike any colleagues or so, I just noticed that there is a lot of gossiping going on. Some of you know me pretty well and know I very much enjoy gossip, but I prefer to think of this as positive information exchange. However, the things I heard talking about were quite more negative, which unfortunately is relatively natural at a place where many different personalities work. Anyway, it's part of life and of course it's not nice, but something I would see everywhere eventually.

This week I got to do my first preadvise for an airfreight. A preadvise means entering information into a computersystem and sending it afterwards to the correct people so they are informed about where certain good will have to be picked up, what their dimensions are, where they are being transported to and who has to take care of them. It's harder than sea transport, which I normally have to take care of, mainly because the information has to be completely correct. A ship is larger than an airplane, so then it doesn't matter when the pallet you preadvise is two meters higher than what you wrongfully entered into the system. :P One of my colleagues managed to let an airplane fly all for nothing from the US to Europe, so I was glad to notice that I haven't pulled something like that during my first weeks. ;)

I called this post part two of my material girliness due to my shopping over the past few weeks. The realization that I now have money to spend has been quite interesting so spending is what I did. I didn't exaggerate of course, but it was nice to be able to buy some clothes that I needed without having to feel really guilty about the cost. So I bought some trousers, shirts, a nice winter coat and today another pair of boots. :) Shoes are necessary for women, and preferably several pairs of them. I am of course not planning to go shopping each week from now on, as I think the time has come for me to buy a laptop. These days they don't have to be so expensive anymore, so as long as I can do the basic stuff on it, I will be pleased with it. But that will have to wait some more months, first save some money and spend some in Finland and Sweden. :)