Day 2 - Getting around

Well, so much for chronology. It's now Tuesday afternoon and I shoukd be writing about what happened Monday! That's what going on vacation'll do to you! It'll make you loose track of time. But I don't really mind. This is the sort of place where you can really become disconnected from your world and see what's out there, away from all of the familiarity.

To retrace my steps, what did I do yesterday? Ah yes, I got up at a quarter to nine (after having pushed back my alarm clock twice) and had breakfast with Shana, a girl we met while we were on the bus. She's travelled with Intersoc loads of times so she knows the ins and outs of how things work around here. After breakfast, she went back to work and I got started trying to redecorate my room. I pushed the two beds together and rearranged some of my things. I had to work from 11 to half past 12, grabbed a quick lunch and then back to work until half past 2. Here's a little list of all the things I had to do:

- Wash everything they place on the rack

- Mop my little shack

- Wash the entire kitchen floor

- Clean the two 'bain maries' in the restaurant

- Scrub the kitchen furnaces

- And lastly, throw away the garbage bags

So as you can see, I've got a lot on my plate. Even if I start fifteen minutes earlier - which I've been doing in order to get a headstart on the pile of pots and pans that await me - it's always a battle to end on time.

After work was over, I changed out of my wet clothes and into something a bit more presentable. After all, not everyone at the bar had to know that I spent the last three hours scraping the most filthy of things off the aluminum. We met more people from Intersoc, some work in the restaurant, some work in the bar, but we all have one thing in common: we're all secretly craving the time when the clock strikes the hour of our release from labour!

Anyways, the second day has been quite enjoyable all in all! I'm starting to appreciate the quietness of the hotel and the ambiance that reigns throughout the corridors. Even the older people are pleasantly surprising me with their wisdom and their youthful spirit!

Stay tuned for day three! I'm going to finish my glass of ice cold water, jump into the pool and dry off under a 37 degree sun! Heavenly...

Day 1 - Got gravy?

This is my first blog to go international as I'm reporting to you live from the South of France. A former college roommate (for lack of a better term) asked me if I was interested in going on vacation for free, the only catch being that I had to do the dishes. Of course, I immediatly jumped on the opportunity, which is abundantly clear by the fact that I'm no longer on Belgian soil and that my cell phone provider has changed to OrangeF (I'm pretty sure the F stands for France, although I'm open to other opinions!).

The trip started out a bit frantic because when we arrived at the busstop, all we could see where elderly people. Me and my roommate were the youngest ones there! I panicked a bit, but I eased my mind by saying that all the young people must still be at Saint-Pierre la Mer (a fact of which I was proven right 13 hours later).

The busride itself was fairly nice, since it had a capacity of 54 people and there were only 11 of us, we all had extra room. I slept from 2:20 am to about 8 am. Not much, but what do you expect to get from a tourbus?

When we arrived at the hotel I was quickly drawn to the magnificent colour of the sea. That's the kind of blue you don't see in the North Atlantic. The hotel itself is pretty nice as well. It has a building for the guests and a separate building for the employees (aka me). We weren't allowed in the rooms until after 3 pm, so we got out of our bus-clothes and changed into something more comfortable as we laid ourselves down by the pool. The sun was burning brightly and although my skin has a tendency to turn lobster-red first, it usually settles into a nice light brown tint some time after that - thankfully!

We ate around 6 pm and while we were waiting to get started on our work, we sat at the bar, getting acquainted with our fellow co-workers. At a quarter to 8 we were expected in the kitchen. My job is to wash all of the big and heavy stuff, which basically means I get the shitty end of the stick. I get to scrape those unholy pots clean and throw away the tons of leftovers, but I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

The whole time I was working there, I couldn't help but feel like Cinderella; working my ass off and waiting until something better comes along to sweep me off my feet. Alas, Cinderella got herself a prince, I got myself a gigantic plate of paella, clams and shrimps included to wipe clean. One of the worst parts of my job is the amount of food I have to throw out. Seriously, all that food could help fight hunger in the entire Third World. I threw away 17 entrecôtes, at least 5 kilos worth of potatoes, gallons of untainted soup and countless vegetables. Policy dictates however that everything left over, has to be thrown out.

My chef doesn't speak a word of Dutch, so I have the pleasure of trying to decypher whatever it is she wants me to do! Ninety percent of the time, I can make out what she's trying to say and I respond politely with a "Oui." or a "D'accord!". The other ten percent of the time I'm at the mercy of God's will, trying not to spill sauce all over myself and praying the garbage bag doesn't rip when I have to toss it into the bin!

With the job also comes a nice little working space. You know, wooden desk, reclining chair, potted plat somewhere, wi-fi connection etc. Oh wait, that's not me, that's the office of someone who is actually getting paid to do this kind of work! Which is not to say that I'm jealous or anything, I'm just covered in gravy and other things alimentary!

Nontheless, I kinda like it here. It's a quiet place where I get to meet new people, experience new things (even if that includes scrubbing pans and sweeping rice off the floor) and all the while, I get to spend the day by the pool or by the sea.

This Thursday is my first day off, so I'm going to try to do an excursion or maybe hire a bike to ride around Saint-Pierre.

I'm going to try to maintain this makeshift-journal and keep you updated on the daily life here at hotel La Méridienne! Forgive the typos as I'm writing this blog on my belly in my room with the use of my iPhone! But I'll do my best at delivering top-notch quality writing! *cough*

Personal time machines

As I was watching what I thought was a comedy, I started to think about a very serious subject: the loss of a parent. It also got me thinking about the deceiving nature of human memory.

It is often said that memories can be highly subjective and that they have the ability to distort reality. Still we rely heavily on them to guide us and to remember our past. But the question is, how accurate is this remembering process? Do memories reveal the truth, or do they only reveal what we want the truth to be? The smallest memory can be tainted by personal agendas and subjectivity and therefore become superfluous. Someone once said that memories are irrevant if one has the facts, yet we continue to cling on to the past. Why do we choose to believe our memories over the cold, hard facts?

Maybe it's because we don't like where we are now and by changing a few details here and there, we prefer to indulge ourselves in a fantasy. A scapegoat into a better life.

Forty years into the future, my father -should he still be alive- will supposedly be in a dire state. He'll be needing help twenty-four seven. And as my father's condition deteriorates, I'll start to look back on my childhood, remembering the times when he was still able to pick me up and when he was the strong man I knew him to be. But when I think back about my childhood, I'll inevitably look back on our fights and our arguments and all those old feelings of resentment will start to resurface. At that moment, with my father's life slipping away from him, I'll choose to omit or change a few details, because I want to remember the past the way it should've been. When remember my father, I won't look back on our grudges and the spiteful things we've said to each other. Instead, I'll forge my own version of the past, I'll rewrite it to make it all better, make it perfect.

I think that's how it goes with a lot of things in our lives. Throughout the years, we're confronted with so much drama and heartache that sometimes, we just let our imagination take over and rewrite some of the hardest moments in our lives.

Maybe it means we're only fooling ourselves. Maybe it means we're living a lie. But I dare to ask which one of you hasn't wished he'd done things differently at some point?

In a way, we all have our personal time machines with which we can alter the past. Only ours doesn't include the dangers of paradoxes or the threat of stepping on butterflies and destroying the future. It's a sort of do-over, because we're rarely awarded one in real life.

Tattoos and other things

Okay, so I've got a lot of things to tell you guys! First off, I've finally went ahead and done it: my third tattoo is now officially a fact! For quite some time, I've been brainstorming about what the final design should look like, but after an afternoon of sketching I settled on this particular design.

For those of you who're wondering what it is, it's a crack on my right side. I chose this design because in a way I consider myself to be fractured. I've always had to struggle with weight issues, so whenever I looked into the mirror I could always see the cracks, no matter how small they were. I also think of other people as fractured in a sense that we are not just one person, we are multiple. Fractures of our original personality, each divided and put in a niche. We are not the same person around different people. One of my favourite quotes is that of Nathaniel Hawthorne,

"No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true"

which basically means that we behave differently in private than we do in public. So, we become fractured, separate people. The same goes for me. I've had a lot of friends over the past few years, but I've seen them come and go. I've been through quite a lot, and each time the experience has taken something away from me, but at the same time, I replaced it with something new. So who I am keeps adapting itself to my changing circumstances, making me a fractured person.

Please ignore the fact that this picture was taken in a bathroom, I am not like those slutty girls, it was just the only room in the house where I could be alone for five minutes. In case you're wondering, no, my parents don't know about this latest addition to my physical appearance and I don't really want them too either. Seeing as how they weren't exactly gung-ho on me getting a second tattoo two years ago, I doubt they'll be throwing a parade for this one. But it is my body and I will "decorate" it as I see fit. Regardless of future sagging and wrinkling, the meaning of these tattoos will always be known to me. I also want you to know that I don't take these decisions lightely. I think a lot about what I'm going to put on my skin, since it's going to stay there for quite some time. You'll never see me wind up with stars across my face or something so desperately messed up like that.

The first pictures of the tattoo were quite bloody and messy, so I waited a few days for the redness to subside and the swelling to go down a bit, but I think it looks pretty great now (or at least it will, once I stop smothering it with this lotion that I have to rub on it). This concludes part one of "Things To Tell My Faithful Readers".

Part two and three involve something I've recently discovered. Well, it's actually been up in the air for quite some time, but for some reason I wasn't able to form those thoughts into solidity. A couple of months ago I had to go out and buy some bread (sounds like the beginning of a bad joke), and as I was putting the money in the machine, I got so fixated on the price: two euros for a loaf of bread! And it got me thinking, ever since 2009 the economic world has been in a crisis, therefore prices everywhere are soaring (or dropping, depending on the demand-and-supply), but when the recession ends, you never see prices go down. So it got me thinking, as of 2010, chances are slim that I'll ever be able to buy bread again for less than two euros (unless I get it from some shady night shop, but if I want the real deal, I'll have to pay top dollar for it).

Okay, so perhaps this wasn't the most interesting strain of thoughts, but it just made me wonder as to how our future lives are going to look like, because pretty soon, we'll be the ones worrying about mortgages, bills, grocery shopping and all those other joys of adulthood.

The third thing I thought I should mention is something I experienced about ten minutes ago. Now, I don't have to explain to you what Facebook is, I think you're all pretty well aware of what this little website is. But what amazed me, is how much I've become dependent on it. Can you imagine being dependent on a computer program? Which is, when you think about it, just a whole bunch of ones and zeros? It occured to me when I wanted to put some pictures of my new tattoo online, but Facebook was offline (yet again!) and I noticed how frustrated I was by this. For a minute, it seemed as though nothing would ever make sense again. When did we become more obsessed with meeting people online than in real life? When did Facebook and others like it, knock human contact off of its throne?

There, I think I've said my two cents again. Stay tuned for more insight into the psyche of me, the most interesting person you'll ever meet (for the record, that last part was submitted by the ego-tripping piece of me, so there lies absolutely no blame with me, the original me).

A treatise on love

I can't believe this is going to be my 53rd blog already! Don't quite know how I've been able to amass such a wide portfolio in such a short time, especially given the fact that I haven't been writing that regularly in some time now. Still, it's a nice little piece of me that I can look back on and that I'll take with me as time hurries me along to new destinations..

I've been together with my girlfriend for little over a month now and I've only recently become aware of the strange effects it has had on my state of mind. Before we were together, I used to resent couples making out on the street, in the restaurant or on any form of public transportation, thinking "Can't you wait five goddamn minutes until you're in the privacy of your own home? Do we have to see a preview of how rowdy your sexlife is?". I used to be so cynical about all things concering love, going on about how fleeting and temporary it is. But now I have to admit I'm becoming more and more understanding of the whole couples scene. Suddenly, a boy and a girl together doesn't invoke the thoughts of silent loathing anymore, instead it's a reassuring feeling of "I have that too now". It might come off as weird or something, but I guess it's a sort of situation where you really need to be in my shoes in order to fully understand it.

The thing about me and her is that it all feels very natural, it's as if it was preprogrammed into our behavioural patterns. We are able to connect nigh instantly. We share many of the same interests, yet there is plenty of difference to spice things up every once in a while. She, for instance, loves Pokémon and all things adjacent, yet I think it's kind of passé, but our little quarrels about the subject give birth to an even greater sense of togetherness, because love is much like a rollercoaster (forgive the Ronan Keating nod), it's the ups and downs that make the relationship worth it. As I told a friend of mine just recently, whenever your lover begins to annoy you, he/she will do something afterwards that'll make you fall in love with him/her all over again and this in turn will strengthen the relationship because it's just another brick that's being added to your mutual foundation.

The whole concept of love remains ambiguous however. There are many forms and many types of love. Love is rarily experienced in a universal way, but that's what makes it so special. It differs from person to person, making each and every relationship unique and often incomprehensible to outsiders. My best friend once asked me how I felt about the fact that she was getting back together with her ex-boyfriend, but all I told her was that I was happy for her that she was willing to take another chance on love. It's not in my place, nor do I think it's in the place of others, to question someone's relationship. We don't know all the specifics about that relationship, even though some will claim that they do. We cannot possibly know all of the little details that have built up that union, all of the tiny -sometimes insignificant- bits and pieces that have forged it. Because in the end, that's all a relationship is, it's an assortment of likes and dislikes, virtues and vices and happiness and sadness. And somewhere along the way, these tiny specs clit together into a collectiveness, shared only by the people involved.

For me personally, it's important that love doesn't have to be about effort and predetermination. It doesn't have to be about cocky behaviour or macho-bullshit. It's not about doing a specific act at a specific time and in a specific place. Love shouldn't be that hard. It's just something that organically fits into your life and adapts to the way you choose to organise it.

I love the fact that she supports my dream of becoming a writer. I love the fact that she's into the whole gaming scene or that she enjoys staying in for the night, instead of partying and slowly going deaf in yet another mundain nightclub. But I also love how we don't fit together. She wants four to six kids, I only want three to four (which means we're going to have to settle on four). She wants to live in the country, surrounded by greenery, while I crave the cityscapes and the chaos on the streets. If we should add it all up and multiply it by a lifetime, we'd get a whole lot of time filled with harmony as well as discord, and I'm perfectly content with that. Love should be easy, yes, but nobody said that the fire should burn out as soon as the novelty has worn off?

The thing that worries me sometimes is the number of people you involuntarily invite into the relationship: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and other third parties. When two people are together, how many other people become affected by it? Take my mother for instance, when she found out about me and her, the first she said was that she couldn't sleep over for at least three months. I responded by saying: "Mom, in less than a month you're going on vacation for seven days, what do you think is going to happen?" and I could hear my Dad laughing in the kitchen. And now she won't stop badgering me about if and when she's coming over to 'meet the family' so she can have the Talk. I'm really looking forward to that one... *rolling eyes*.

But not only immediate family is involved, there's also the matter of past lovers. In my case, one in particular. The girl from Ghent. I knew I couldn't start up something new unless I was completely sure that she had left my thoughts. Of course, she can never fully be forgotten, seeing as how she's become solidified with some major memories from that period, forever encased within that timeframe. But I didn't want there to be any room for comparison, I didn't want the thought of Ghent-girl to corrupt the future memories of me and her. I had to be sure. So I finally made peace with the past and moved on. I think she has too and I couldn't be happier for her!

I can't wait to see what the future will bring and what I/we'll be like then. For now however, I'll settle for the present, enjoy lying in her arms, talking to her and rolling over in the morning to see her stare at me when I wake up. There's no better time than the present, so all the more reason to enjoy it as much as I can! 

Time's elope

A few days ago, while I was watching Oliver Stone's epic masterpiece "Alexander", I couldn't help but think about one particular thought: "What if Julius Caesar had never existed?" I wouldn't even know how to begin to divulge into that topic, seeing as how I'm not that well informed on Roman history, but it still offered some remarkable insights.

There are nearly seven billion people on this planet. Surrounded by all that chaos of voices, hopes and dreams, surely there must be some meaning to it all? There must be a reason why two people can find each other and two more become forever lost. There must be a reason why I am here and why I have these thoughts that I have. Sometimes I think people forget how pivotal they can be in the world's history. After all, our time here is so short, so why not try and make the most of it? Why not live life to its fullest? And why not take those chances we know we'd otherwise never take? The future is not set in stone. We all have our hammers and chisels to carve our own path with.

So given how valuable life is, I do wonder how big its influence can be. If Hitler never was, would the second World War still have occured? If Einstein had never lived, he wouldn't have invented the atomic bomb that meant the destruction of so many things in this world. Of course, there are so many "What ifs" and even more possible outcomes to accompany such scenarios that they offer an infinity worth of thoughts. These "What ifs" can be a great source of wisdom and a new perspective on life, but it can also become an addiction, an excuse for not wanting to adapt to this world, instead choosing to believe in another world entirely.

If we think of each life as a peddle being thrown in a pond, it makes you wonder just how far your ripples stretch? Are you just an insignificant drop, no different than one of those trillions of stars illuminating our skies or do you have the power to cast such powerful ripples that they last for decades, centuries even? The latter should include people such as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Caesar, Mao, Che Guevera and even Barack Obama as the first black President of the United States. A country that up until a few decades ago, still waged a war for equal racial rights.

Sometimes it's funny how history can unravel itself. The smallest of people can become the biggest of leaders, the most ignorant of people can become the greatest thinkers of that time and others, who were born with every privilige and every possible advantage, become irreparably damaged. It almost seems as though it's all random, but how can that be when everything else that surrounds us seems so right and predestined?

Now I'm not saying I'm a determinist, but sometimes things just happen for a reason. There must be a reason why I didn't finish my studies in Ghent and instead relocated to Brussels to go study there? There must be a reason why Churchill survived getting hit by that cab in 1931? And more importantly, why does our world have the potential to sustain organic life when all other worlds in our vicinity are so inhospitable? Why did we not perish in the nuclear holocaust everyone predicted would happen in the final days of the Cold War?

There must be some kind of design to it? Not something written by some sort of deity or any other type of religion, but something else entirely. Something unbound by physical or even metaphorical form, something that just is. Just as we are. The greatest determination in this world is the fact there is none.

Those In-Between Moments

Last night I saw the movie "Before Sunrise" with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and it got me thinking about the concept of stolen time. The meeting between Hawke's and Delpy's character on the train was strictly accidental and wasn't supposed to turn into a rendez-vous that lasted until daybreak. Yet somehow, it did. And somehow in between the time of departure and the time of arrival they chose to create their own little universe. A universe created solely for the purpose of a connection and a desire to pursue it.

It made we wonder how many of those connections are made in the world? Is it possible for two people to jump out of their normal lives and create a seperate universe, free from everybody else and available only to them? Maybe these connections happen all of the time? Maybe that's what they call love? An escape from reality into a world where only two people exist, living on stolen time.

While I was watching the movie I couldn't help but admire the wonderful writing that has gone into this movie. So you too could understand what I'm talking about, here are a few quotes from the movie:

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking... I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?

Now I don't know about you, but I thought this was some pretty good writing.

The movie itself is quite minimalistic, it's all about two people walking around in a city, discussing their POVs and occasionally sharing secrets they normally wouldn't tell to a complete stranger. They realize that what they have isn't just some boy-meets-girl-and-wants-to-hook-up-with-her situation. It actually goes a lot deeper and it's quite fascinating to see how their relationship evolves and how the ever-encroaching dawn is allowing them to open up to one another in a way they've never experienced before.

I also couldn't help think about what Celine said about God existing in the space in between two people. How marvellous the thought that there lies a sort of divinity in between what people say and do! Come to think of it, if you can find so deep a connection with someone while living on a planet with approximately 6.7 billion people, I'd say that's quite extraordinary.

In our hustle and bustle lives where speed and precision are the two dominant demands, it can be quite hard to find what you're looking for. Choices are made in the blink of an eye, rarily thinking about the consequences. We shake hands with people whose names we forget the instant they leave our sight. We pass about a thousand lives while crossing the street, but we never consider getting to know one of them. All we see are fleeting impressions. And even those are tainted by prejudice and personal taste.

I'm not saying we should get to know everybody we lay eyes on, but nobody said we have to be so closed off as well. Think of those millions of kids who shut out the world with their headphones, effectively becoming a (i)Pod-generation. Each day, millions of connections are severed before they actually have a chance to begin, just by putting those headphones on. Perhaps, within one of those countless possible connections, there might have been the one that really mattered. The one that would have made it all worth while. But we'll never know and what kills me, is that most of us wouldn't even care.

So maybe next time, when we're on a train, boat, airplane or even on foot, we might look up from our shoes, shut off our iPods and allow ourselves to actually see the people around us and let them see us. You never know where a friendly smile might take you.