The One with the Thoughts of Frans

Last Thursday, I set off on a trip which would eventually take me to Brussels. I spotted a rare fish in the sea.

1. 
   I had never seen a submarine in the wild before. Only in harbors.

Much later, in a bus, only a few away minutes from my place, I got a phonecall. Instead of the expected four people joining dinner, I would have to cook for eight. My phone was scared to death after hearing that, but luckily giving it an electricity boost when I arrived made its heart beat again.

Our olive oil was all gone, so I did what I’d always do: use butter. However, my dear visitor happened to be a vegan. Mel only managed to stop me from throwing the rest of the vegan stuff in butter just in time, and the neighbors gently lent us some olive oil. Loes (my housemate) just told me that she discovered we also had some vegetable cooking butter. That night we watched Artificial Intelligence, which is not a movie I can recommend. Especially the ending was bad.

1. 
   The next day we had to leave early. Too early. Three and a half hours later, when we arrived at Julien’s place (our host for the night), someone didn’t react very friendly to me taking a picture as you can see.
2. 
   An interesting table-decoration at Julien’s place was this evil moon thing.
3. 
   We arrived at the venue a little while later. The Claws were just arriving around the same time. In the garden of the Botanique there were these guys preparing some kind of tent, probably for an event the next day or week. I found them amusing for some reason.
4. 
   This cigarette represents one of my main impressions of Brussels. A damn lot of smokers.
5. 
   When we were walking back from the park we ran across a few weird guys looking for Manneken Pis. We didn’t actually encounter the little guy, but we did manage to take a few pictures of the weird guys checking out interesting accessoires.
6. 
   A front view should make clear that the weird guys were part of this band which goes by the name of Clawfinger. 😉 One minute later I made a movie of him saying tandenborstel, Dutch for toothbrush. Later on he also got us on the guestlist. Thumbs up.
   
7. 
   Later that night, after the first band finished playing (featuring the man where we’d spend the night), I decided to take a picture of this sign. It’s funny because it says there’s some kind of non-smoking law since ‘91, but like 90% of the people were smoking inside (remember my earlier impression).
8. 
   I also took this picture to prove that I had “BASE” as a mobile phone provider in Belgium, which I thought sounded much more awesome than the Proteus (or something like that)Proximus which Mel had.
9. 
   And then some sound reached our ears.
10. 
    Check the crazy guy in the background of the picture. 😛
11. 
    My camera kicks the ass of yours mate. 😛
12. 
    André doing his thing.
13. 
    “I’ve got a personal trainer” (from Nothing Going On). Mel made a video of this, although it’s actually of the event right before it, Bård doing the duck walk.
    
14. 
    And some more guitar action.
15. 
    I thought I’d take a shot of the guys in the background, but the ones I made of Henka managed to fail.
16. Now just for some pictures.
17. 
18. 
19. 

And that’s it for today.

I thought it was quite good. It was sent a while ago, of course. If you didn’t receive one, happen to read this entry and happen to be close tomorrow, just drop by. Otherwise don’t feel disappointed, I didn’t invite you because I didn’t think you’d make it anyway. 😉

Geachte heren,

U bent met behulp van de data in onze computer geselecteerd als de meest intelligente en getalenteerde mensen in West-Europa. Daarom hebben we besloten U in te lichten over geweldige kansen die Uw leven kunnen veranderen, dit is geen spam!

Dit geweldige aanbod is slechts beperkt geldig en daarom hopen we dat U op onze bijeenkomst komt om de voorlichting bij te wonen. Deze is op donderdag 9 februari, rond de klok van 21 uur. De geheime locatie is Matenweg 6, “Patio Melba”, op de campus. Mocht U niet weten waar dat is, de route vind U op http://melba.student.utwente.nl/index.php?id=11

Mocht iemand U naar inlichtingen hierover vragen, pretendeert U dan dat het een “verjaardagsfeestje van Frans en Ivo” betreft.

Wij verwachten U op 9 februari te zien,

Hoogachtend

Ivo Stammis en Frans de Jonge

Or, in English:

Gentlemen,

With the data in our computer, you have been selected as the most intelligent and talented people in Western-Europe. Therefore we are telling you about great opportunities which can change your life. This is not spam!

This magnificent offer is only valid for a short while and therefore we hope to see you at our meeting. This is at Thursday February the 9th, around the clock of 21 hours. De secret location is Matenweg 6, “Patio Melba”, on the campus. May you not know where this is, you can find the route at http://melba.student.utwente.nl/index.php?id=11

If anybody asks what this is about, pretend it’s the “birthdaypartay of Frans and Ivo”.

Regards,

Ivo Stammis and Frans de Jonge

Yesterday, around 20:30. “Well mom, I’ve arrived at my mailbox, so I’m gonna hang up.” “Okay, we’ll talk again tomorrow!” I get my keys out of my pocket to open my mailbox. Two weeks of mail. A bunch of advertisements, a pre-filled transfer form of the health insurance and a specification explaining why the rent is up almost ten Euros. I could as well have left it all in there. And then the € 25 fine for driving without lights on in late November hasn’t even arrived yet.

I open the door, and continue directly with all of my packaging to my room. With my rucksack on my back, sportsbag over the left shoulder and mail in my left hand, I use my right hand to insert the key into the door of my room and open it. While carrying my luggage inside, I switch on the light, grab the remote and turn on the radio. My journey’s done, I stretch and jawn. Then I feel something against my leg. I watch down right away. It’s the rabbits. They must be hungry, otherwise they wouldn’t be like this. The girl who’d feed them during the holidays probably last came here two or three days ago.

So I walk to the shed, turn on the light, reset the flatserver (which had crashed halfway during the holidays) and grab the food. I turn around just in time to see the rabbits moving in at high speed, hiding behind the washing machine. Shaking the bucket so the seeds inside make noise against it I slowly walk out, expecting to be able to lure them with me. After all this is the sound they associate with food. Flokkie, the white rabbit, follows. JW, the brownish one, does not.

So I offer Flokkie some food from my hand. The voracious reaction shocks me a little. I drop a few extra hands of food in front of him and go to the shed again to take care of JW. Luckily he had already left. Shaking the bucket, he comes towards me, anxious. I offer him food from my hand, he takes a quick bite and turns around. I quickly walk backwards while offering him food. He finally comes to eat, I drop a little more and close the door of the shed. I drop plenty of food in their own little home and go to my room and turn on my laptop.

Five minutes later Thomas arrives. After a customary handshake and backknock he takes me into some kind of strangling grasp you’d expect a boa constrictor to perform on his prey. “I needed that,” he explains while releasing me. Later we’ll drink a bit in the kitchen, but first we each go to our room to perform some MSN-ing. The normal flow of life begins again. Or well, almost. I have yet to catch on.

Last night, a little more than 17 hours ago, we went out to watch the fireworks of the 2006 new year celebrations. We hadn’t bought fireworks ourselves because we consider it a waste of money. Since everybody seems to be competing with who has the most and the best fireworks there’s no shortage of nice views at all.

Across the street there is some grassland with a lot of ponies on it. They seemed to be quite calm while the fireworks was only further away. Then some relatively close neighbours started their warfare of extremely loud and bright fireworks. It was a neat sight, but the ponies all started crawling towards each other.

While the fireworks went on, the ponies simply stood there. Too scared to move. So I started walking towards them over the road. The sound of my voice must have broken their shock or whatever it was they had. Practically all at once they looked at me.

Then, within what must have been less than a second, they all started to run. They all ran towards me, which was neccesary to cross the ditch which leads into the next meadow. You couldn’t hear the horses running except when they were very close because of the loud fireworks.

Unable to see them anymore, I walked the road in the other direction. The horses all had assembled behind the barn, thus hearing the least they could of the loud noise as possible.

This afternoon they all seemed very calm and peaceful. Food can cure a lot.

If I had a digital camera, I would post a picture of the ponies celebrating that the fireworks are over. Since I don’t have that I can only give you one thing.

My best wishes, good health to all and a happy new year!

For this entry we’ll have to go back in time. It was last year, September 2004, the second week of my first year in university. I was in Amsterdam switching trains. A blond pretty girl sat down next to me. She was 20 years old and happened to study psychology at the same university. You could say she was a bit of a movie-style stereotype college-girl.

It was around 18:00, so after the conversation where I discovered what I just told you, I took out my lunch package, which I had prepared at my parents place earlier that day. She did the same. It was not a lunch package however. It was half a bread, a knife and a can of peanut butter. She then took a book out of her bag and put it on her bosom. As you can probably imagine she put a slice of bread on it and started to put peanut butter on the slice.

Intrigued I inquired further about this behaviour. Her reply was simple and effective. “I am a student, students do that. For example see that guy at the other side of the train eating pickles from that jar of pickles? He’s a student.” “Interesting, how can you be so sure?” “I know him, he’s in my year.”

I don’t think ever I saw her after that trip, or else I didn’t recognise her. I don’t think I ever thought back at this until yesterday. Last Thursday we went out and came home around 5. I didn’t get to sleep until something like 6. So when I got up around 11:30 I didn’t do much except being lazy and tired. So when I wanted to catch the bus around 13:00, without thinking about it, I put half a bread, liver sausage, a knife and half a carton of grapefruit juice in my bag.

When I got a book out of my bag, put a slice of bread on it and started to use my knife to cut pieces of the liver sausage, suddenly all of this entered my head and I thought: “Aha, I am a student”.