Reperage

Today we went to the castle where our wedding reception and dinner will be held.
Objective was to see it when tables are dressed to get a feel of the place once ready to host a wedding party.
And it looked really nice, like the kind of place I could picture our wedding party happening. Of course it won't be the same in winter (less sun, less light) but still the place is great.
We also took the opportunity to discuss decoration of the "grange", i.e. the room where the dinner and party will take place. With four brains thinking hard, we came up with a plan that hopefully you will enjoy in December.
Until then, patience...

PS: Wolfram took all the pictures, of course, plenty enough so I can recreate the room and paste on them the decoration elements.

Merci - Thank you - Danke Schon!

For all the birthday wishes.
I've received wishes by cards, ecards, emails, sms, phone, texts, messages on my wall and of course live.
For one day I cherish this thought of having so many people around the world thinking of me.
So thank you again.

We have a church

Today we had one important appointment. We met with the minister of the Eglise Protestante de Bruxelles.

A month ago or so, my aunt Daad was watching the church on Sunday morning on TV and guess what... it was in a lovely littel church in Brussels. She told my Mum who told me and I looked for it. Strangely when we searched for a protestant church, this one never came up. Maybe because we searched a church more in the area of the castle, maybe because we searched in English and not French, we will never know but thanks to Daad, we discovered it.
We attended the service one Sunday and contacted the minister to talk about getting married there.

The minister is a very welcoming woman. I have to say that after being turned down by so many priests I found it very refreshing and motivating to meet with someone with a smile and eager to marry us, despite our complex situation. It does puzzle a bit people that we want to get married on a Thursday in December in Belgium while we're moving to Singapore in September. I wonder why?

After filling out all the administrative information, she explained to us what would happen during the ceremony. She also took quality time to explain to me that it is a blessing and not a sacrament like in catholic church. I've also been told that I need to get a certain document (dispense de forme canonique) so the marriage can be recognized by the catholic church as well. More paperwork, yeah :)
We booked the four preparation sessions we need to complete with her in July so it's done before she goes on vacation and we leave Belgium. It starts on Monday.

Cherry on the cake: not only does she speaks fluently English, but she can speak some German as well and offered to do so during the wedding ceremony. It's almost too good to be true.

No one will debate this

I need new shoes.

Yesterday as I walked from one building to the other something bothered me. I felt like a rock in my shoe. Back at my desk I looked and what did I find? Indeed a little rock. But worse was that this rock had went through the sole of my lovely shoes.
Leaving me with only one option: throw away those shoes and get new one.

Luckily summer sales are starting this weekend.

It's summer when the rain is less cold

Thanks Mum for sharing and making me laugh this afternoon.

When the unexpected happens

Something that I believe is called sun is shining.
Who should we call?
The fire brigade?
The king?
The X-Files?

Sun in June in Belgium... It has to be some aliens' trick to lure us into giving the planet away.

Cupcakes for Tamara

One of the member of my department is on a long sick leave. Since Tamara has been out of the office, we've been trying to support her in different ways, sending flowers, cards, magazines to read, etc.
When Katrien asked what we could do next, I suggested cupcakes.
And today the whole team took 30 minutes together to decorate cupcakes baked the night before by Sophie.
Some of them are piece of art.
Some of them are more creative, more abstract in their style, let's say.

But all of them were decorated with Tamara in mind and hoping this will cheer her up.

Tamara, we miss you. Take care of yourself and come back to us soon.

A vendre!

With the move to Singapore, tough decisions have to be made, like the cats not coming with us, and a lot of sorting is needed.
A move is always a good time to sort one's belonging, a move so far away means many things will not come with us. For example, with an average temperature always higher than 20C, there is no point bringing the whole winter clothe collection. Which if you ask me is a pitty. My brain simply refuses  to make choices when it comes to clothes, even more for shoes.
While I struggle with the content of my wardrobe, the reality is that the wardrobe will not be coming as most apartment overthere have built-in cabinets.
So this weekend we made the list. The list of all the furniture we will not take with us due to a smaller apartment waiting for us. After spending more than two years in this apartment composing with the furniture we each brought or buying new ones, it feels like going back to square one. It took us some time to be fully settled in and now we're moving again. That's life :)
Hopefully we will manage to sell most of the furniture not coming with us. If not, we'll give it to people who need it.

In case you need shelves or CD rack... send us a message.

Yellow tomatoes

Yesterday while grocery shopping I spotted something unusual: yellow tomatoes. Intrigued, I thought why not.

While they look funny in the pack, once in the plate or prepared, something is weird. They just look too pale. Like tomatoes which would have missed sunlight.
Taste wise: not quite there either. Now what I keep wondering is whether they taste different because it's a different variety of tomatoes or because my brain is playing tricks on me. It looks like a tomato, but it's yellow, therefore must taste different.

Conclusion of this trial: not sure I'll buy yellow tomatoes again, maybe in cherry size but not big ones for cooking.
But at least I can claim I tried something new this week :)

50 hours in Berlin or so

My first time in Berlin and all I've seen from it was on the way from/to the airport and between the hotel and the set.
I was there for technical support for a copy shoot and spent most of my time on the set. On the one hand it's exciting to be behind the scene when something is shot, on the other hand I would have loved to have a couple of hours to visit a bit.
I guess next time.

Live as part of a production team is very different from what most of us know. They have periods when they don't work at all, and suddenly they are busy for days/weeks/months. They can't plan really anything because their agenda is subject to change any minute, if someone calls. They need to make sure they do a good/great job so the next time someone needs a producer/director/photographer/cameraman/catering, etc. they are being called again.
What's also interesting is that they all have a specific role to play. They were 70+ people on the set, each with his/her role clearly defined. In other words, don't ask a cameraman to fix the light. To the outside eye (like me) it seems like there are way too many people at the same time, but in their world, with each a specific role, they all belong there and they all know what they have to do. A bit like an ant hill.

I can't wait to see the final edit so I can share it with you. Patience.

Mother's day surprise

For Mother's day we decided to surprise my mother with a family Skype videocall. I subscribed to Skype Premium for the occasion with the hope that we can all see each other during the videocall. With standard Skype, only a two-way videocall is possible.
The good thing is that she was happily surprise to see all of us.
The bad thing is that the quality of the image was clearly not as good as advertised. We could still see each other which is the most important but many of us were blurred.
This said we did manage to immortalize our Calendrier CMB in 4 different cities, 3 countries. If you wonder, it seems none of us can plan vacation without it :)