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Showing posts from 2008

Visit to Belgium, part 2

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As mentioned in my previous e-mail, the other days of my visit to Belgium. Between the two days in Brussels, as usually on a Friday, I go with my mother to my hometown Sint-Truiden where we see some ants of my mother for coffee, and their usual talks about what happens in live. Later that day, we went to my sister Isabelle to have a look to the newlook of the restaurant. While the restaurant had light colours in the past, mainly yellow and also some green (a wallpainting of an Italian-style garden), that was now all gone and replaced with dark colours. I have to admit, the change was so big I was disappointed. On Sunday, the official opening of the restaurant (This was also the reason why I went to Belgium). Now there were more things in the restaurant, such as flowers and decoration, and now, I have to admit, the restaurant was much better, there was again some colour. And colours changed the restaurant into a really nice place. Later, as we would expect, guests came along. F

Visit to Belgium

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Last weekend, I went to Sint-Truiden in Belgium to bring a visit to my parents. My sister Isabelle invited me for the re-opening of her restaurant. And as I already was thinking of going I decided I would. I had to get up at 4am Thursday morning to catch the train of 6am. I took a minicap. The taxi driver started talking and we ended with speaking about the Roman empire during Julius Caesar. He didn't like the emperor. We arrived at the station, and the taxi driver gave me his mobile number so that I can call him to continue our conversation about the empire. The journey was easy and without any problems; this was in contrast to that afternoon when there was a major fire in the tunnel, destroying one tunnel. During the day, I visited Brussels and waited for a friend I would see that evening. I sold him my lens for his camera. It was a beautiful day: warm and very sunny, we need more of these days. Arriving at Brussels, the first thing that can be seen is a tall building (fi

The Ramayana

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Dear, Lately I am having very bad dreams. They go about killing myself, or others. They wake me up and leave me awake for quite a time. I hope they will disappear one day. When I have these dreams, I do some reading (last night about Hara Krishna), or after my dream about suicide, I did some praying and that made me fall asleep again. Also singing in my mind will remove the bad thought, singing 'Our Father' or 'Hare Krishna'. These made the mind calm. I also started doing some meditation. Two evenings ago, I did some meditation. Lately, on Friday August 29, I went to an exhibition in the British Library after an interview for a job. The pictures below show the building of the library (in the background you can see the new international train station Sant-Pancras where the Eurostar now leaves to Belgium and France). The exhibition visited had the name: The story is the following (I remember this, so if some mistakes are made, forgive me): De

Chicken and the egg

A question that was long a mystery is finally resolved, and explained why!! Question: what came first, the chicken or the egg? Answer: first came the egg: fish, amphibian and reptiles all leg eggs, therefore, the egg came first. Also, can you imagine that a reptile (e.g. crocodile) changes from one day to the other into a chicken, then to lay an egg so a new chicken will be born. No, it was easier for nature to have a mutation during the development of an animal so that a new species (chicken) was formed. Of course, this took place over a longer period (mutations took place over time, giving rise over time to a new species). In case someone has another view on this, please let me know and I might rethink my answer.

Niet echt gelukkig, maar zal wel overgaan

Het voorbije weekend, en ook vandaag, zijn niet mijn beste dagen. Ik voel me neergeslagen, heb lichte hoofdpijn en mijn linker gedeelte van mijn darmen voelen verschrikkelijk aan, alsof er iets in het rondhuizen is. Ik ben dan ook anti-candida aan het gebruiken en, zoals de verkoper aangeeft, deze kunnen de symptomen tijdelijk verergeren, maar nadien, eens de infectie weg is, zou ik me beter en beter moeten voelen. Ik heb ook nog eens de anti-para-pil ingenomen en dat heeft tot gevolg gehad dat mijn hoest verminderde. Ik hoop zo dat ik binnenkort mezelf echt voor genezen kan verklaren. Het is ook spijtig dat ik van niemand (Isabelle uitgezonderd die me aleens gebeld heeft) iets te horen krijg. Hoewel ze wisten dat ik zwaar ziek was hoorde ik niets van ze, geen telefoontje, geen e-mail. Toegegeven, af en toe een kort SMS-je hoe het met me ging. Soms verlang ik te weten dat mensen aan me denken, en niet dat ik altijd de anderen moet contacteren (waarvan sommigen dan ook nooit thu

What a miserable bank holiday

I'm getting better and better. A detox whereby no alcohol and sugar but with lots of vegetables and fruit and oxygen and friendly gut bacterien really did wonders. The past weekend was longer than normal as it is a bank holiday in the UK, this means an extra free Monday. However, it was the wrong weekend: Saturday was a beautiful day as can be seen on my previous blog with my visit to Kew Garden, although the wind was cold. However, Saturday nacht, Sunday morning and nacht and most of Monday day the rain was poring down and the temperature was low (I was wearing my winter jacket again). Sunday afternoon, the weather was slightly better and I walked along the river Thames towards Canary Warf, a walk of about 45min. Here I also watched "Cassandra's Dream", a film with Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell. Colin played the same role as in another movie I saw a few weeks ago, "In Bruges". In both movies he plays a person who kills someone, and this makes him de

Kew Garden

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Finally, after months being unwell, and sometimes really being ill, I found for myself what I am having and I'm now threating me for it. I am sure I soon will be much better. Today I met Budhi, and together we went to Kew Garden. It was such a beautiful day, the sun was shining and it was quite warm, although there was a cold wind that was sometimes unpleasant. As Budhi is a member of the garden, he could invite a friend for free, me, and I really enjoyed the day. We had a laugh and walked around happily from one orangerie towards another. We also walked on a platform high between the trees, and saw many fishes in the waters. As can be seen, there are beautiful flowers at Kew Garden. A few of them: orchids and meat-eating plants. Then outside (and inside) there are waterfalls with plants around them. In some areas, water lillies can be found as can be seen in the last picture here. These are very large and have beautiful flowers as can here be seen. The garden is worth seeing if it

First two weeks of April

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I went on the 4th of April to Edinburgh for a conference, hardly saw anything of the city and flew to Belgium due to illness. In Belgium I was seen by doctors, however, they didn't really find what was wrong (something with my guts). Now I am taking self-medication (herbal), and I am feeling already much better. In the meanwhile I was able to take some photos. Where I come from you have many castles and it is the main center in Belgium for the production of fruit. Around this time of the year many trees had flowers, and it is really beautiful in the hilly landscape. I enclosed some photos of the flowers and castles with details to show what I mean. Castle from Ordingen in Belgium Limburg. It belonged to the 'German Guild' that looked after the belongings from people fighting at crusades. Recently bought and now being restored. Only part of the complex is shown. The first picture shows the castle of Ordingen, now from a distance whereby can be seen that it is

Easter weekend 2008.

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There I am back. I went to Cotswold during the Easter weekend, together with Edward. We were invited by Gerard and Marc who rented a cottage. We arrived on the Saturday lunch time, and after shopping in Waitrose's (not cheap), and a lunch, we went for a walk. The area is hilly and beautiful. The photo shows us before the cottage and just before we left (me, Gerard, Marc and Edward). And of course, I took my D-SLR with me. First we walk along a small river, then turned to the right and walked to the top of a hill. During the walk, we saw beautiful houses which were large and well fitting in the surrounding with the green hills. The higher we walked, the more we saw from the environnement and the more we enjoyed it. And the weather: in the morning we had rain, not something you really want on a trip, however, in the afternoon the sun came out and it was beautiful. This can be seen on the left: the sun was appearing and some areas were still in shade. We walked further, saw some anim

Thursday, 20 March 2007

Thursday was a terrible day. I had a high heart beat. Derek, with whom I had lunch, and Lucia, two good friends from work, measured my blood pressure, and it was really high for my age, what explained why I felt uncomfortable. However, in the late afternoon, I started feeling better and in the evening I even could eat well and had a good night rest. I also bought my own blood pressure meter and everything was normal again. And a call to the GP resulted in the answer that I should make an appointment with the nurse, next Tuesday, to measure my blood pressure. It is now a holiday so patients are not important! It started the night before. I met Lucien on Adam4Adam, a website, and we had a drink and lunch at his place. Later that night my heart started beating like hell and I could sleep only a few hours. The rest of the day was as described above. Lucien is a nice black man, a little older than me. We had a lovely chat at Barcode Vauxhall and later at his place. He even made b