meaning

This last weeks have been full of experiences. I won't report on them all now. If I would have posted on this blog more frequently, there would have been a very enthousiastic report on our weekend in Madrid and lots of impressions and thoughts about Congo.

But reality caught me in speed. A lot seems futile now. Loosing a friend, probably my best friend, this unexpectedly, puts it all in other perspectives. A lot I would have done in another way if only I would have known.

Arne, merci voor alles.

Keeping in touch

Keeping friendships active, staying in touch with all kinds of people you know, doesn't proove to be that easy.


It has probably to do with the time I'm in.
In general, this is the globalisation age: getting to know people from anywhere has become very easy. And also the means for communication have developped to an extent unimaginable at the moment I was born. But intuitively it occurs to me that this evolutions still don't create an easy situation for distant friendships. Well, let's say it depends of what one expects from such long friendships. I'm starting to consider them as latent ones, just kept alive at a minimum level, but blown alive at moments when one meets for instance. Such moments are getting near again! I already met Aude from Berlin in Ghent some weeks ago and wednesday evening, I'll see Helena from BCN, I got to know in Helsinki some years ago, in Brussels. Then I'm heading to Madrid for a major reunion with the spanish (oyé Leute, dass seid ihr, joder! Endlich..) i got to know in Berlin, together with Sara and Frederic and with a nice french delegation as well. Can't wait...
But not only supporting these somehow particular international relations is not evident, also the ones with former classmates. They leave the city, or almost get married, beside the fact that they're absorbed by working life... But it's not that dramatic. The nicest occasions still can be taken to match up. Miguel for instance leaves to Uganda for a year. His farewell party was a very nice occasion for a very nice meeting with lots of friends. Or, last friday, an architects party was an occasion to come together for a mexican dinner first with my group of archi-friends, and shaking all of us again in that good old place, sioux...

working day patterns/ het leven zoals het is: maarten

6.45 Renee wakes me up; she catches an early train to Antwerp everyday, this Renee-alam is the most effective an, but stil...

7.00 or 7.20 or... I finally get out of bed

9.00 The Africa Archives in Brussels open. Everyday is an attempt to be there at that moment. It rarely succeeds...

16.00 The Archives close. Or, I'm satisfied, having found something newly revealing, or I'm frustrated, having checked numerous dossiers and not found anything of interest

17.00 Back in Ghent. I take my bike from the train station and drive home, or pass by at my professor's office

20.00 Renee or I cook... chat .... drink...

... some work is done, or planned to be done the next day...