The meat of the matter

Someone (whom I would never disappoint willingly) asked what we ate last night. I had gigot d'agneau (leg of lamb). Gigot is related to gigue (leg) and giguer which means to hop about or something. Not sure if the English jig is connected. There's also 'gratin dauphinois' which means gratin from the province of Dauphiné.

This photo is more interesting if you use your mouse roller to zoom in and out - play the Ride of the Valkyrie at the same time and you're in meaty multi-media heaven.

More from DD200

Here's a bit more from last night. At the end of the video you can just glimpse Sarah rushing to rugby-tackle someone reading Mrs Thatcher's Bruges speech under the table.

Governing Europe's Diet

Not in any sinister way - here is a snap though of last night's visit from a group of DD200 Mothering Europe students, scoffing loads of Belgian food.

We are in a place called the Grand Café, and this picture was ably taken by the tutor, Sarah. Thanks also to Esy and Neil for covering for me when I lost the students down a hole in the road.

Click on pictures to make them bigger.

Rational....

...is OUSA's middle name, and so rationalization is all the rage. In this example, OUSA Matters and OUSA Cuddly Toys have been merged in a new medium (a recycled desktop) in the interests of greater efficiency and interactivity. The new E C M for England is responding to the sole remaining student in Belgium's question about what they've done with E C M Ireland.

Cherry trees are best by night

This isn't the best road for cherry trees in Brussels, but lit up by streetlamps this white cherry tree looked pretty funky (I'm lying on my back).

The main cherry tree area in Brussels (see here http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/schaerbeek.html) has a joint Belgo-Japanese celebration every April. The commune Schaerbeek produced cherries for the famous Kriek beer and so I guess that's why they planted loads. This road Avenue des Cerisiers is split between two communes one of which is Schaerbeek - you can tell the border because the street signs change.

Bucharest fast food

This chicken outlet in the centre of Bucharest is fairly hard not to miss.

In identity terms, it testifies I suppose to Romanian humour (in the light of bird flu), which I also saw in an exhibition (can't put photos on here for fear of copyright) of cartoons, for example showing Romanians taking over Covent Garden with big stars on stages and Roma beggars at the door. We were talking in our tutorial the other day about whether minorities use humour as a kind of strategy - I think Romania isn't really a minority, but it maybe feels kind of on the edge or something (as far as one can generalise).

Two alternative takes on Killer Chicken - this one http://viapontica.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/hilarious-name-killer-chicken-bucharest-fast-food-outlet/ from an ex-LSE man turned property market analyst, contrasts with the more sybaritic http://therockmother.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-say-roumania-i-say-romania.html

Presumptive stuff

Here is a café in the Avenue Livingstone in Brussels, just down the hill from the main EU buildings, appropriately called the Livingstone. Livingstone has a connection with Brussels via Stanley and the Congo, so there's a kind of colonial echo and reflection here. The café though is in competition with a big Irish bar called the Wild Geese (that has its own resonance I guess), a Tesco metro type supermarket, and used to be near a couple of German beer bars that have closed down. Now if you want to have a German beer and ambience you have to go out to Wezembeek-Oppem, near the German School.

Tourism tropes

We were talking about this in connection with my European Studies course - different views of countries as expressed through tourism literature.

This is a poster in Bucharest two and a half years ago - note how the concept of the grand tour is still with us, how more expensive the UK is, and how Tower Bridge is an enduring icon (also used in Eurovision 1999 by Israel).

As always, click on the picture to make it larger.

Eutopia.........

........is the ironic title of an exhibition in Brussels all about deconstructing, reconstructing and maybe even re-instructing Europe. http://www.rhiz.eu/artefact-23765-en.html gives you one or two photos.

What happens is go into the gallery (a converted power station, but only a baby one, not like Tate Modern), try not to get told off for taking photos, and then look at a few watercolours, some videos and the main bit of the exhibition, which is a kind of mock European landscape you enter through a kind of Checkpoint Charlie place. You can also vote and comment on the Lisbon treaty.

I haven't described that very well, but that's partly because of the unsettling effect of the exhibition - if things like the EU flag lit up by a flashing police lamp or a blank white aeroplane revolving over a bleak black landscape appeal, you should like this. It was the price of a cup of coffee to get in - just off the Place Sainte Catherine. You can peek into the exhibition if you go up the Rue Dansaert - it's just next to an oversized underwear shop. A good antidote to the saccharine excesses of Europe Day.

Fonko rules OK

Here's the label from the wine we had last night at our local Serbian restaurant (scallops on blinis was nice). The wine is actually Macedonian and as you can see it's named after Bucephall (ox-head - strange) Alexander's horse, who ended up in present-day Pakistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porus - not bad for his selling price of thirteen talents. Talking of talent, I think Miss California is great - not many people could stand on stage in front of all America wearing next to nothing and say anything at all about gay marriage, and she has helped the gay marriage cause no end.

Mountains and seas

That's the name of the resto last night we went to. We were interrrupted by some strange text messages that I cannot go into here! This food was good (escalope pizzaiola - here's a recipe http://www.paperblog.fr/511187/escalopes-de-veau-a-la-pizzaiola/ basically it's veal bashed up and a sauce made up of bashed up bits of tomato, garlic, capers, origano and white wine - really it should be called bashed up cow). It also made me take off one and a half pounds. On the way back I lay on the pavement and took pictures of cherry blossom illuminated by street-lamps, but I won't put them here because I'm in anti-flower mode.

Fluid borders again

Marianske Laszne (Marienbad, and sorry about the accents) is one of the first towns you get to once through the Czech border near Bayreuth. Fluid? Maybe not, unless you mean the spa water. It's kind of a show town (very nice beer and food as well as parks), and when we went it was really really really peaceful.

Fluid borders

Today a tutor posted a link to photos of East Germany in 1990 http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-41629.html which basically celebrates perceived dilapidated difference. By way of contrast, here's how the city of Erfurt looked just under a year ago - not sure if it is still recognisably the East, or if the Cuban (?) band symbolizes globalization, but there's lots to decode, not least the eye of the Western tourist.

The MED (Mike Easy Diet)

If you look at me on Facebook I often look like a big orange greasy ball. Round about early March I decided to do something about it (fat, not Facebook - how could I do anything about Facebook?), particularly as I was getting to the 'can't run to catch a bus' phase.

All the advice says that you need to change your lifestyle but maybe only in small ways. So you could chop off a leg and lose weight, but it's better to just file it down gently over a number of weeks. The best book I found was Fat Bloke Slims by Bruce Byron. He said a couple of things that rang true for me: first of all, you're likely to put on weight after bereavement (I think that's potentially a big cop-out, but I guess you are likely to shut up shop metabolism-wise and think it's OK to eat and drink a lot as life is short) and also most people have one weakness that kind of tips the balance. In his case, it was drinking every day - not very huge amounts, but still enough to pile on the kilos. Add into the mix less exercise, the effects of aging and voilà - a big orange greasy ball.

Anyway, this is my plan:

- two to four days a week off alcohol
- exercise of an hour each day (must not involve any equipment or going outside - do stuff like climb the stairs four at a time - but must involve good music)
- don't take it seriously
- change the scales over to stones and pounds rather than kilos because progress seems faster

The results:

- 15-20 cm off the waist (depending on how hard you breath in)
- about a pound lost a week (i.e. eight pounds) - but it's more like bumping down into certain brackets where you can go three or so pounds each way.

All I need to do now is spin this out for another 150 pages and I can write a best-selling diet book.

Congratulations

....to a couple of people

(they know who they are)

and their new arrival.

Dealing with spies

In another example of dastardly espionage, we recently caught this delegate from OUSA Greenland trying to peek in on an OUSA Belgium meeting, which was open anyway. We hadn't the heart to tell him that clandestine recording and closed meetings are both SO last century.

Discretion

The most important member of OUSA Belgium agrees with us that discretion is the better part of valour. Here she demonstrates how to blend into the background while remaining alert.

Optimism

From a US mailbox.

Plus, by request, a poem (about travel - an exercise in terza rima)

LANDING
Under a plastic, sweating white skin
Humans plant down like bowed little trees
Sealing their growth in dry air and din.

'I ought to try to move my old knees,'
says a woman from old Pakistan,
flying her hair in a man-made breeze.

'Look Will, I'm not in tune with this plan,'
says a suit. Clouds smile out a gap:
It's land, scarred like a tramp with a tan.

'Seatbelts on with the usual crap,'
thinks a steward who coughs at the mike,
and turns off our fictional map.

We bump and shake and fret but quite like
how Earth pushes at us like a spike.

Arcades, Benjamin, surrealism etc.

Remember my posts the other day about surrealism

http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/twist-of-malice.html and http://mikeinbrussels.blogspot.com/2009/04/narcissism.html?

Well, for those interested (hello no-one! - haven't I seen you nowhere before?) the University of Essex (always good to plug Essex) has a good resource (as I think you're supposed to call it) which also publishes a journal. A good article (bit esoteric at times for me though) here http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/publications/papers/journal1/index.htm talks about arcades, rather like the ones in Bologna. This is a self-consciously militant view on Walter Benjamin (he's a kind of Marxist rabbit) and arcades http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/waltbenj/yarcades.html and it also has a great pink background. Brussels supposedly has the first covered arcades in the world - so take that Parisians!

Less ponce-ily (or maybe not), arcades like the one on the right in Bologna, particularly when captured on photo (or even better in painting or in writing) can be kind of passages into dreams and other subconsciousnesses - more so perhaps than the kind of arches or arcades you'd find in a cathedral or bank (or even the arched window in Play School). I wrote a very bad poem indeed about arcades, but I like the arcade concept: arches soaring upwards yet being closed in, just like consciousness is rooted in subconsciousness and topped off by our extinction, and constantly reflected in the shopping windows of our life's journey. They protect you from the rain too. Gosh!

Vampires

Rumours that OUSA has been taken over by vampires were recently confirmed by this photographic evidence.

Bel....

....is a small town near Geel (North East of Brussels - about one hour's drive) famous for its sandy soil. As you can see, this extends even into the woods.

Bel is on the TOM-TOM but it is not on many maps - we found our way there by negotiating the Aarschot Ring, which has a windmill so is more pretty than it sounds.

The unmarked walking route (10 kilometres plus 1000 kilometres and/or years wasted trying to understand the stupid directions in our guidebook) starts by an old graveyard and then takes you to lots of gloomy pine forests. We needed the walk though as last night we went out with a group of very select young ladies, the oldest of which was 88 - think we had about four courses.

Schaerbeek........

.......is a suburb of Brussels. As you can see, they go in for cherry trees in a big way.



Don't forget you can click on photos to make them look big.

Narcissism

As a kind of brief follow-up to the excursion into surrealism - went to this exhibition about shop windows http://www.fondationpourlarchitecture.be/docs/pdf/2008/boutique_presse_en.pdf and included in it was a brief bit about surrealism's interest in reflections, and all that. So here's a Narcissus. Not for sale as it has been dead-headed.

A Twist of Malice

........and Happy Easter too!



A Twist of Malice is the title of a collection of poems by grey-haired (one assumes) women. You can find a proper review here http://www.saltpublishing.com/horizon/issues/02/text/boden_julie_review.htm (scroll down). I read it through in one sitting last night. Top marks for accessibility and entertainment value, although the effect of loads of poems with basically a similar array of messages (leading on from the various sections the poets have to work in) and props (contemporary British life zzzzzzz) is a bit numbing. It's the kind of stuff you could read on the train, but you're unlikely to remember it for the rest of your days. I counteracted the effect of all that reality and short-term pyrotechnics by reading some surrealist love poetry - http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/098710.html - more to my taste, although the celebratory tone of the surrealist stuff is arguably just as dubious and gendered as the tone of the more cynical grey hens. Best really just to go and eat a cake.

Les petits snobs belges!

That was what three men from Paris called us last night because we wouldn't go with them to a pub called The Loft.

Still, they weren't that bad - and as they were all younger than us maybe it was a compliment.

Here's a picture of me in Paris lying stomach-down on the pavement in order to adore the locals.

The lady on the bike

Last night I was on the phone to someone (famous landlady) and there was a knock at the door. My landlady friend then said 'Oh - it's a young lady on a bike'. The young lady on a bike then said that she'd come round to watch a video and she wasn't young. Then she asked the famous landlady why the lights had all been switched off. I ended the call then.

We have just been to the garden centre and got a lychnis for Liz that should turn orange (here's another orange flower to tide you over ). Also today we are off out tonight in Brussels downtown. I have just read an interesting OU text about High Albania in the Edwardian era - you can also trace the background in the Times (one of the perks of the OU Library - I'm only in it twice though I think).

It shouldn't be here!

This is a forget-me-not that really is not supposed to be in our garden, but I like it.

Spookily enough, our poetry group was delving into the past today. There was a great poem about the remains of a Tudor banquet, another one about the ghost of Jacqueline du Pré and I came up with this poem about borders.

ON FIRST CROSSING THE IRON CURTAIN

One eighties morning, we and our coachload
went through the few metres of road and,
feeling young and tanked up on Weissbier,
decided to wave to the guard, just before
she boarded the coach, and looked at
our faces and passes and lives.

Having processed that look, now, some
thirty years later, much closer to
that town next door called death, the place
where we'll be picked up by the thing
we're trying to fence out and fleece,
our bounded humanity,

I want to set off along a line, stroll
along the cheeks and the eyes and
the tomato-rouged lips of Frau Whatever,
all of a sudden smiling and then
darkening as the alsations barked.

Memories: strange-toned streetlamps
beside a moving walkway, where
distance is hard to judge and
we half-panic as we turn the bend.

What's happening today

After last night's celebrations, today will be quiet. So far I've done a bit of work for my current OU course, written a poem about the Iron Curtain (to be precise the border crossing at Hof in 1983) and have added another post to OUSA Overseas News http://ousaoverseasnews.blogspot.com/, and I also have to do the ironing. Really all these events are interlinked - ironing is a metaphor for how we imagine we can de-crinkle time and experience before they get soiled and creased again.

Blow-out

Following news that OUSA was now allowing the new Australia Branch to spend money on catering, the locals went wild.

Coulis scrumptious

Here's what our friends cooked us last night (inter alia).

22nd anniversary blog

22ND ANNIVERSARY BLOG

We were on the floor, in

a formal pose, our

hands fast approaching

the rest of our lives.

As the room dimmed,

a few warm hours

before the first shared sunrise,

I asked you to stay.

'Stop the blog now,' you'll say,

'Keep it all private.'

But I will send to the world
how much impulse a first touch can give

how much time a first moment can bear

how much heat a first kiss can leave

and how you will forgive me this.

Borders

Today I have to write something about the borders of Europe (not sure why gardening is relevant to European studies though) and tonight we are out for dinner.

International cuisine strategy

As part of OUSA's international cuisine strategy, OUSA Belgium's most important member bravely took part in a cultural exchange with Britain.

Political Correctness

Following complaints, OUSA has recently successfully campaigned for the Underground in Gay Paree to be rebranded along more straight-friendly lines.

Paris

So here we were in Paris - this is the Pont d'Auteuil - the Eiffel Tower is overshadowing the Statue of Liberty (symbolic of the state of the world I guess). Auteuil is an interesting area to explore - a bit off the beaten track perhaps. We also went to the Musée Marmottan http://www.marmottan.com/ and had a good night out on the town.

Today I got back to reality by going to the dentist. He said 'If you like, we can give you a bridge', which just goes to show how everything is connected to everything.

Conference mystery

When asked why the OUSA Celtic Fringe seemed to be four bottles of wine missing, OUSA Belgium's most important member said she had no idea.

What's happening today

Well, it's Palm Sunday which commemorates Christ entering Jerusalem to be crucified, using economy transport (something all OUSA Conference delegates will identify with). Yesterday atheists celebrated Sole Saturday in which they take off Richard Dawkins' shoes and socks, and kiss his feet in an attempt at meme transfer.

We're off to Paris to visit some friends who have had a rough year (Crewe Alexandra supporters).

Conference excitement

On being told that (right now) O U S A Conference was discussing Constitutional matters, O U S A Belgium's most important member found it hard to contain her excitement.

What's happening today

Hmmm - writing this what is happening bit every day is a bit boring, just like my life.

I must say I like blogging though - there's something satisfyingly lonely about it, like being a DJ spinning obscure tracks in the middle of the North Sea.

I guess in OUSA terms anyone who is anyone is at Conference at the moment - but I guess there is a world outside it. For example, I have just met our neighbours in the street and said:

'Bonjour - il fait beau, hein?'

to which they said

'C'est magnifique!'

For those of you who don't know French that translates as:

'Hello - I have a lovely foot, do I not!'

'Yes - if only I had a magnifying glass so I could look at it all day.'

I also had a dream last night about the garden being invaded by mice-daleks: kind of dalek-size mice on two legs with an exterminator growing out of their nose.

The suggestion that OUSA Belgium be renamed OUSA London East got a slightly frosty reception

The art of rhetoric

Here in OUSA Northern Europe we are very keen to train Conference delegates in the art of rhetoric. Here is an excerpt from one of our training videos demonstrating how to oppose a motion successfully based on carefully selected briefing. Note how the delegate from Southern Europe on the left proposing the motion tries to get away with making the same point twice and how skillfully the Northern Europe delegate on the right opposing the motion um.............outplays him by making the same point three times.

What's happening today

I must get down to studying zzzzzzzzzzzz - yesterday btw was a great day - many thanks to Eric for lunch. We also had a good time last night - I found some forsythia in my pockets just now but can't remember why I put it there. The only sour note yesterday was sad news from Maz - Maz puts the 'maz' in amazing.

Advice

Here in OUSA Northern Europe we are often asked by the millions of people wanting to volunteer for OUSA about how many ranks there are in the organisation and how easy is it to get to the top. Our advice is to keep your ambitions modest, sit back and enjoy the view as much as you can, and be prepared to change position should there be food downstairs.

Cat FAP

Here in OUSA Belgium we have in our time operated our very own facilitation panel. Here is our most important member looking a bit miffed at being excluded from a meeting on the grounds that catfood facilitation costs cannot be met from public funds. The real reason is that she squeaks too much, but that's another story.

"One thing about us Mike is that whatever we talk about, we're always going to be grown up about it..."

What's happening today

Before I start I'd like to thank Joy for giving me the idea of starting up a blog - great stuff.

Today I'm meeting Eric for lunch at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels. It might be quite poignant as he, I and Liz topped off a night out in Brussels there a couple of years ago. I think we will be discussing Liz rather than going on about putting the world to rights.

Then tonight we are going to Mimi's place - a great Greek restaurant on the Rue des Deux Eglises. It's really called 'Omiros - Homer.

I will also be doing some studying on the fluid borders of Europe (silly title - everyone knows it's not just rivers and seas that make borders).

While I'm in a thanking mood, I think OUSA's General Manager should be thanked for the way she handled the shift to dormant status of OUSA Belgium Branch, and I also think the outgoing President should be thanked for the way she kept to the promise she made about not forgetting international students.

This is the first of ten thousand commercials for the OUSA Cuddly Toys Forum.

The latest training package for moderators now includes this special video on mediation skills (image probably copyright of the BBC and whoever does subtitles now - as well as me of course - where's a lawyer when you need one?)

When asked to do some blue sky thinking, OUSA Belgium's most important member duly obliged.

This is a lychnis (Greek for 'lamp'). As you can see, it kind of glows in the dark (this was about 2130 on a summer's night). We are going to find another one and plant it in memory of Liz Ayers. I don't mean Liz glowed or was Greek or was pink btw, although of course many people are. Sorry about the blurred photo.

The venue for the OUSA Belgium AGM was a good choice, but there were complaints about accessibility.

The latest Region 9 recruitment drive for new students in Continental Europe sent out rather mixed messages.

The last OUSA Belgium Branch Committee meeting was even more exciting than usual.

The decision to make this year's Conference catering a vegan-only affair turned out surprisingly well.

The OU's expansion into China had a beneficial effect on this eternal student's brain size.

When asked for her opinion on OUSA Futures, the most important member of OUSA Belgium admitted she was stumped.

The 'stay anonymous' policy for the new Executive Committee's photo-shoot went too far, and a latecomer in pink spoilt the show anyway.

The OUSA activist was not sure whether to jump straight to the floor or go down the stairs like normal people.

What's happening today

I have cleaned the house, done some exercise and am going to meet some friends tonight near Schuman metro (the EU quarter of Brussels).

The above message is really in OUSA Secret Army code - 'cleaning the house' means providing briefing against Conference motions, for example.

One of the perks of being an OUSA Continental European activist is that you get your own private jet just in case you need to leave somewhere in a hurry.

This is a picture of a group of new First Class users admiring the aftermath of a Matters discussion.

Don't forget you can click on pictures to see them larger. I retain copyright to all pictures on this site, but don't really care that much unless someone makes loads and loads of money out of them.