Google Reader

I've recently become a big fan of google reader. It is sort of like Facebook, without the networking, if that makes sense. You can see my reader page here, these pages are GREAT if you want to procrastinate at work (not that I EVER do that...as I write this blog, at work...). You can share interesting articles, and your opinions! Spread the love.

The Bike Theft

This week is quite quiet in the office. Alex is in DC and Lucy and Nicolo have left, their replacements will begin in January. Therefore, it is usually just Marta, Nuria and myself working, with Javier popping in a few hours a day. Our office however, is an open plan office, and therefore, it gets VERY quiet. Almost eerily, you can hear EVERYTHING, (or so I thought). However, a very strange (and creepy) thing happened yesterday; while the three of us were upstairs working at our computers, someone snuck into our office and stole Marta’s bike out of the kitchen.

I KNOW!

It’s so strange, because the door is SUPER creaky, so we should have heard the it open, the slower you open it, the louder it is. Therefore, the person that broke in, either must have known this and whipped the door open really fast, or was simply in a rush and just whipped it open without worrying about the noise.

In addition, there are about 3 or 4 bikes outside in the hallway to our office, none of them are locked and none of them were taken.

Marta’s bike was in the back corner of our kitchen, and for someone to come in and take it without being noticed, they must have KNOWN it was there, come in, gone straight to the bike picked it up and walked out.

Oh, and Marta got food poisoning yesterday too, it’s definitely her week.

Checking up on the news. Some serious news for this serious time.

Personal ads at their best, if anyone needs a nemesis, give this guy a ring.

Sooty, after what was probably, the best night ever.

Cookie Baking

In order to help us get in the Christmas spirit, I decided that Emma and I should make sugar cookies. It sounded simple enough, but then again, we're in Belgium.

So, it was sunday morning(ish), and I leave the house to go pick up some flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla, baking powder and baking soda, before I meet up with Okey to go to "brunch" (we were meeting at 3). FAIL.

Almost every supermarket in the area was closed except for a GB express which did not have vanilla or flour. So I picked up a bag of what looked like flour, except it was specially made for bread and muffins. I figured that there was already baking soda in it, and that was the difference, (figured being the key word as the bag was in Dutch).

I get to Emma's and we use a glass casarole dish and tinfoil to cook the cookies on, as we have no cookie sheet (yes, I realize I used the word cook or cookie way too many times). But we simply go for it.

Round one:
the "dough" looked like play-dough that had been left out in the open for about a day. It was crumbly and dry. We tried baking one batch with this dough, and after the tops burned and the insides were raw, we (well I), decided that it simply needed more butter and sugar.

Round two:
I may have overdone it with the butter. The cookies were really, really gooey and they were not hardening when taken out of the oven and put on the rack. We (well I), decided to add a little more flour.

Round three:
The most successful round, they really looked like cookies on the top, however underneath they were a little bit, uncookie-like. However, they still tasted pretty good (you can't really go THAT wrong when combing eggs, sugar and butter).

Now I just have to get rid of these cookies before I really make myself ill and eat them all.

I WANT

HILARIOUS

Christmas Party Eurodad Style

So yesterday we had our office Christmas party slash saying goodbye to Lucy who's moving to Mozambique and Nicolo who is moving to Paris. It consisted of:

• indoor rock climbing,
• a pub,
• Moroccan food,
• getting kicked out of a karaoke bar,
• and a pub.

Needless to say I had to cab it home and the office wasn’t full until about 10:30 this morning (and by full I mean all four of us who now work here).

The Eurostar Experience

The last two weekends I went home, first for Thanksgiving, and then to help my parents unpack all the boxes into the new (almost finished) house (yeah!).

Mom, Beau and I enjoying the new living room!

This required four trips (obviously) under the channel on the Eurostar. Recently, as I’m sure everyone knows, there was a fire in the Chunnel, disrupting the Eurostar service until next year.

Therefore, instead of the normal 2 hour journey, these trips have been anywhere from 2 hours and 20 minutes to 3 and a half hours. Now, on my way in on Monday morning (leave London at 5:54AM, arrive in Brussels at 9:20ish AM), I usually sleep, so I am not sure why there were delays on that trip, but on the others, the reason given was “due to construction, the trip under the channel took longer than planned”.

But the Eurostar experience as a whole is usually très interesting. There is such a mix of people it’s great. There’s ALWAYS, American college students, usually with a big backpack and lots of travel guides, the European (usually German or Italian) young traveler, usually in dreadlocks and a bandanna, the businessman/woman on his or her laptop, looking very important and busy and the British holidaymakers either drunk 30 some-things (usually men in football jerseys) or an older couple on an anniversary trip.

I was trying to decide what category I belong in, as I am so easy to slot everyone else in a category, and I haven’t come up with a conclusion yet. I suppose, I would look like a business person, as I am usually dressed for work on the train, however, I never do anything very productive, except for maybe read/edit a report and then nap. I also usually just bring my Nike backpack (very unprofessional), so I guess I’m a combination of American tourist (sans tourist books) and business person? I have also started to bring my own food, as the train food makes me want to vomit. So at one point I pull out a little packed dinner/breakfast and munch away, (this snack usually consists of spéculoos, a yogurt and a sandwich, wrapped in an old Financial Times I stole from work, which I usually end up reading...try to read around the mustard stain!).

I will be back home for Christmas on the evening of the 23rd, so hopefully I will be able to find a new category I will be able to slot myself into during my 2 hours of intensive people watching.

Public Transport in Brussels

The cold here is unrelenting and devious, slinking into your socks when you are least expecting it and coming out of the folds of your sweater, you feel it between your fingers and it seems to seep out of the computer’s keyboard. I’ve started to layer like a bag lady and walk at a rate that is unnatural when compared to the length of my stubby legs. Neither solution is particularly effective.

I woke up yesterday, in my normal bedclothes of sweat pants, a sweatshirt, a hat, scarf and wool socks, it was pouring with ice/rain outside and I jumped in a warm shower. After wrapping myself up in layers in hopes of staying dry, I walked down the four flights of stairs to the street and started to make my way to work. It was about ten past eight in the morning, so the sun wouldn’t be up for about another hour, and even then the dim rays that can force themselves through the almost impenetrable cloud cover seem so tired from the effort, the morning light is never more than a dim reminder of what a sunrise could be.

We have interviews at work this week as Nicolo our finance director is moving to Paris with his ‘artist’ girlfriend, (she’s a singer/actor, and has been in some interesting African movies, all of which Nicolo has featured at Cineclub, the Eurodad sponsored movie club that he started.) so I had to be at work by nine, I should have had plenty of time.

As I walk down the steps onto the metro platform, I noticed that there were quite a few more people then normal. In Brussels, people don’t seem to have the same idea about “work hours” then the rest of the world, which is great for me when I meander into work at 10 AM, and I am not the last person to arrive, it is also good, because rush hour doesn’t exist, as no one seems to ever be in a hurry. Yesterday however, the platform was teaming with people and they all looked restless. It was before nine however, and I hadn’t had my cup of coffee yet, so I don’t think about it too much. The train comes, it is packed, but I manage to squeeze on, and we go. Well, we go for almost one stop before the train breaks down.

Yes, the metro broke down, and as I was in the last carriage when the doors were manually opened, I had to skirt along the edges of the inside of the tunnel for about 10 yards before I got to the station. Now, in most cities, I would think that after the train broke down and the subway was delayed, the staff would be a little apologetic or at least realize that people have somewhere to be. Not in Brussels, the metro staff decided that this is the PERFECT opportunity to check people’s tickets. Hundreds of people on the platform waiting for another train to come, late, unhappy, wet and clearly impatient are of course the best group of people to check for tickets.

Regardless to say it took me over an hour to get to work. I could have walked it in a shorter time, however the thought of trudging through the ice/rain made me think the wait was worth it.

Shrimp on a Treadmill