Born to Try

Errol Flynn's a hottie.

Or was. Before he , you know, got old and died...

And here I am again.

Djeez, put Tom Boonen in your blog and suddenly you get comments... :p

Anyways, Kaderweekend is over and it was good. I enjoyed myself, I loved working with the other four (special thanks go to Bertje, who was really wonderful, and -even though he apparantly hates this being said- very adorable ;)). Included a picture of me as Spartacus (yes, I know I look like Tarzan, but it's the best I could do with what was available) and Ingrid, as herself. I'm not sure if it's me, or the flash of the camera, but I need a tan. Goddamn.

For some reason I'm still very busy, and that without having a job, it's amazing. I came home from the weekend to find a lot of rejection notices, but they didn't bother me too much since they were all jobs I wasn't hoping for too hard. I gave two activities the last two weeks, one being very much improvised and still surprisingly fun (at least, I thought it was fun), the other slightly less improvised, with Karolien, which went over rather well. In all the business I did manage to miss a meeting, but I can't say I'm too sorry about that :)

Coming up: 4 more activities and a whole lot more meetings, bring it on.

Me and Tim went to the KMSK yesterday. We got this little book with coupons and you can use those to visit all sort of museums for a much lower price. I'd been to the KMSK before, but the last time was 3 years ago.

I'm not even going to pretend I know a lot about art, I'm very much the shallow guy when it comes to that, my critisicm goes as far as "oeeeh pretty" and "yuk". I don't get modern and contemporary art AT ALL. Tim can see a bunch of spots on a canvas and explain how it is brilliant because of this and this technique and because it was so innovating. I don't know anything about techniques and I just like to look at something and understand what it is. That's probably why I really like the symbolic and allegoric paintings. Sure, they're not very original, sure they're not very innovating. But hey, they tell a story and stories are something I can get.

So, of all the paintings we've seen, these are my favourites:

Scaldis & Antverpia (http://www.wga.hu/art/j/janssens/scaldis.jpg)

This is a symbolic painting, which originally served a political purpose. Scaldis (the old dude on the left) is the personification of the river Schelde. Antverpia (semi-naked chick) is the maiden-personification of the city Antwerp. Scaldis hands her the Horn of Plenty. This basically states that the wealth of Antwerp depends on the Schelde. This painting was ordered by a city official to hang in the room where the negotiotions with the Netherlands would take place. These negotiations were intended to make them relinquish their hold of the Schelde, so Antwerp could make full use of it again.


Judith (http://83.243.20.58/Photos/00/00/05/90/ME0000059069_3.JPG)

I couldn't find an actual picture of the painting, but apparantly the artist made two of the same subject and the other one seems to be slightly more famous (possibly because here she ain't wearing all that much). Judith is a biblical figure who chopped off a guy's head, but feel free to look that up yourself if you're interested.


Madonna en Kind (http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/f/fouquet/madonna.jpg)

I once actually had to make an assignment about a painting and this is the one I chose after walking through the museum. The picture I'm posting here isn't too good, as the colours of the actual painting are much, much brighter and that's what attracted me to it in the first place: the red and blue jump off the canvas and accentuate the whiteness of the Madonna. She is painted as an image of pure beauty (yes, this was hot, hot, hot back in 1480) and it is rumoured her face was modelled on the mistress of the man who ordered it. It's actually part of a diptiek, but the other part of it is radically different (it shows the man who ordered the painting and someone else, I forget who) and it's not at the KMSK).

Me and Tim also had a little movie night, we watched two great classics which I'd been dying to see. If I'd known they were just sitting in Antwerp's library I'd have gotten them a long time ago.

Citizen Kane, which was awesome all over, and It happened one night, which was funny and sweet and had the oh so very charismatic Mister Gable. I also got It's a wonderful Life and I might watch that tonight. Still no sign of What ever happened to Baby Jane? and I am beginning to despair ever finding that one. Woe is me...

And in closing: a very unfortunate headline, which makes the story seem very depraved, until you read it and just wonder "what idiot wrote that headline, and was he drunk or just wicked?".

http://www.tatteredcoat.com/images/wankdorf.gif

Ik kijk in je ogen en ik kijk in je ziel.

Yes, X!nk, I know :)

So, Tom Boonen won another trophy thing. Good for him. Lately it's like he is everywhere and winning everything. I must admit I don't get the whole hype. Sure, he's rather adorable, but he's not God on muscle legs either now is he. Maybe my judgment is somewhat impaired because my boyfriend does think he is god-like and I'm sick of seeing him jump to attention whenever he comes on the television (the same thing resulted in my extreme dislike for Matthias Coppens :))

And alright, he did look rather hot in that Humo poster :p

Anyways, I'm almost off to Kaderweekend and I should start packing and I will, in about 10 minutes... Really!

Are you ready to jump? Get ready to jump, don’t ever look back.

Since Kevin is whining (yes Kevin, you :)), I probably better update. Unfortunately my muse has left me… Which is a fancy way of saying I’m much too lazy to write.

My birthday came by, as indicated very subtlely in the post below. It was rather nice this year. I didn’t do anything special on the actual day, but Tim cooked me a very fancy meal on thursday. It consisted out of a thai appetiser, with rice and salmon, moussaka & bavarois with truffles. Yes, 3 courses, I was stuffed. After dinner I got stuffed again, but in a whole different way. Nice day :)

On friday I went out to dinner with a bunch of friends. I invited a lot of people, thinking most wouldn’t actually bother to come to Lier for it, but more turned up than expected, which was nice (though my house was a little over crowded, good thing I didn’t go for the ‘cook myself’ dinner party).

I had told everyone not to buy me gifts , since they were paying their transportation here and their dinner (I could only afford to buy the drinks, and even that barely :p), but most of them didn’t listen. Now, when ignoring a ‘no presents’ rule, there is only one condition: at least make sure the gifts are great. Obviously my friends know these rules, I got me some good stuff: DVD’s of “Sabrina”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Sorority Girl”, a book with collected comics by Kim (an artist, duuh), a cool bear shaped nightlamp and a go pass. Not a bad haul for a no presents party.

All in all, this was a very nice year birthday wise, can’t complain.

Enig Verschil also had Startweekend, the official ending and opening of our working year, and that took up a lot of time and effort for the organising committee (doesn’t that sound fancy J), but we pulled it off splendidly. Of course some things went wrong, as they always do on these weekends and there were times I was about to scream (I’m very prone to attacks of controle freakiness at these weekends), but looking back, it really went well. I feel like some good things were given a start and hopefully they’ll develop further. I’ll make sure to help them along as far as I can.

One thing I’ve learned for myself on this weekend is to do a little less :) I thought I’d already learned that lesson, but apparently I needed some reeducating. I somehow managed to put myself in every part of the weekend: all 3 workshop-blocks, the morning entertainment, the evening entertainment, the closing activity and the introduction parts. It’s not a good idea to have no down-time at all at these things and I was physically and mentally exhausted by the time we left.

Tim says I’ve come pretty close to running the risk of doing so much, none of it is done well, and he has a point. I’m also organising Kaderweekend (not alone of course) and giving workshops there and doing part of the entertainment and Kaderweekend is next week, which means that after Startweekend there were only two weeks for that. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t worked as hard for Kaderweekend as I wish I could have. I’ll get everything done, that’s not really the problem, but I feel like I could have done a little better if I hadn’t taken up too much at Startweekend. At least I resisted the temptation of signing up for organising HRH-Kaderweekend as well, I’d be getting dragged to the looney-bin by now :)

Me and Karo have prolonged our collaboration as she is now coordinator again (I think she ended up quitting for all of 2 hours, quite a vacation, lol) and it’s nice to have her backing me up a little longer. I was fully prepared to do it alone, but she was right: it would have gotten too much eventually.

Karo’s intention to do less at EV had already collapsed: she’s now a member of the activities team, the RvB and ad interim coordinator. But she seems to be completely revitalised, so that’s good.

Speaking of good intentions: Tim and me decided to get some exercise regularly, so we are now having weekly swims. Well, we’ve only been twice actually, but still :p The second week we uhm got distracted shall we say and time just flew by, but we really do plan to go every week and swim for one hour. I don’t lose weight easily (at all, damnit), but I apparently have a lot of potential for muscle growth. Back when I went to the gym those things appeared shockingly rapid and I’ve only been swimming twice and already my tits seem to be uhm developing. Good for me I guess. Good for Tim too, he seems to like them :)

Ow yeah, Tim and me also went to the Book fair (or however you translate that) and I swore I would buy only one!! I bought 3…

But they weren’t expensive :p I got the Dutch translation of Vergilius’ Aeneis, the English translation of Homeros’ Ilias & Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’ Urbervilles. I read the Aeneis in school for Latin and I loved it, but it’s still not quite relaxed reading if you’re trying to figure out whether it’s an abjective, dative or genitive, so when I saw it for only 10 euros, translated in the original verse-form, I had to have it. Tim says I’m like a little kid looking at candy when I’m around books, moping about the ones I can’t take with me and glowing over the ones I have (I tend to hug newly purchased books, I admit it). What can I say? I never really liked candy.

We also went to see a play, called “De nacht leek wel een verzinsel”, about 3 people that lived during the second World War: Joris Van Severen, leader of the Verdinaso and controversial political figure, who was executed at Abbéville ; Robert Leurquin, a renowned newspaper reporter who died under strange circumstances years after the war ; and Rachel Baes, Robert’s wife and an artist, who was also Van Severen’s lover. The play told the story of their love triangle and the climate in Belgium right before Germany invaded. I can’t say I really loved it. It never made up its mind whether it wanted to be a history lesson or a love story and for people who knew nothing about Verdinaso, it might have been a bit complicated sometimes. I actually know a little about it and some things still went over my head. The acting was alright, especially the actor who plated Leurquin was excellent. Rachel Baes was portrayed very over the top, but that was the part so it wasn’t too annoying. I didn’t like the Van Severen character much, he seemed to be reciting verses in primary school.

Today me and Karo went off to Ghent, because we had a Kaderweekend meeting. We arranged some last minute stuff and we made some little videos for on the weekend itself. Mine is gross, no one will want to talk to me , lol. I’m still looking forward to it.

Okay, enough of an update already I think, I didn’t say half the stuff I got up to, but who wants to know really?

Till next time!