Plastic surgery contest

A new type of miss is coming to life: Miss plastic, the girl with most beautiful plastic surgery work...
"Contestants showed off breast implants, nose jobs and face lifts as Miss Plastic Hungary 2009 strove to promote the benefits of plastic surgery"
I wonder, is this really the message we want to send to young girls?

Read more about it here.

Nice surprise

I should leave more often so when I come back I'm welcomed by Wolfram on the platform with a huge bouquet of flowers :)

Social media revolution

Did you know that:
- If Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest in the world, YET China’s QZone is larger with 300MM+ users – 1.5MM content daily
- YouTube has transformed into the 2nd largest search engine in the world
- Social Networking has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
- Wikipedia has over 13MM articles, 75% are in languages other than English
- Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…
- iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust advertisements
- There are 200MM+ blogs, with 34% posting reviews on products and brands

Watch the video here and find some more eye-opening facts about Social Media.

Seul en scene

Tonight after a long lunch at Severine & Patrick's and an exhibition, we all went to the theater to see Jacques Weber in "Seul en scene". None of us had any idea what the show was about. All we knew was it was with Jacques Weber and this guy is a pretty good actor.
There we were, the 5 of us, ready for almost anything on stage.
And it was absolutely great!
It's a one man show during which Jacques Weber "interprets" literature texts (classic or recent ones), famous or not, some funny, some emotional.
Fair enough, you have to be French to really enjoy the show as all the texts he uses are extracts from the French literature, but it really worth seeing.
If the poem "Le Corbeau et le Renard" from La Fontaine had been explained to me like it was tonight for sure I would have been more eager to learn it, back then at school.
I do confess that I did not recognize most of the texts (I did study science and not literature :)) but even the way he put them together really brought them to life.

You can have a glimpse here.

Seat number

I sometime wonder why train company bother attributing you a seat. As usual, when I was ready to get to my seat in the Thalys, I found it occupied.
Me:"Excuse me, which seat do you have?"
The man sitting at my place: "43"
Me: "well I have 41, and that's 41, so..."
Him: "yes, but someone is sitting at my seat, so why don't you take one of the free ones over there?"
Me: "Because I booked the seat by the window without neighbour. Why don't you get your seat"
Him: "It's only a seat, don't give me the attitude and just go sit somewhere else!"
It was Saturday morning, I didn't want to make a scene so I grabbed the someone from the train staff, asked her to get the man out of my seat which generated a mega domino effect because somehow almost no one was at his seat...
Now, why do they bother attributing us a seat if no one follows it???
PS: after that trip went very smoothly and I enjoyed my breakfast watching CSI :)

Sushi Shop

I don’t like sushi or any other sashimi, rolls, etc… I tried many times because it seems hard to believe for people that I could not like sushi, but really I don’t. I find them chewy and rather tasteless, not to mention I’m not a big fan of the soya sauce you deep them in either…
Anyway, as Wolfram loves them I promised him we would go for sushi on Wednesday night after the gym. So here we go for the Sushi Shop. First moment of panic, they only have sushi and other sashimi… nothing else… hum let’s look in details there might be something I could it. And there was. I found the omelet and a couple of other things I could eat, including sushi with foie gras (by the way, they could have simply brought the foie gras on a toast and not bothered wrapping it in rice :) )
While food was ok (based on what Wolfram told me), service was really bad and slow. Next time we will order for take away or delivery, especially when you know that they made a mistake in our check.

New season

When winter arrives it's the signal that all the TV series will start their new season :)
2 challenges this year:
- find out what the new ones are
- find enough time to follow all of them (the old ones and the new ones)

Why men never ask?

After a lunch at my aunt Anna's and a visit of the almost perfect apartment, we went to Brico, a do-it-yourself shop to buy a "key for the radiator". I had no idea what it was. Actually I had no idea to you were supposed to release the air bubbles in the heating system every now and then. I guess I just assumed the system was hermetic...
Anyway, here we are browsing the aisles looking for the key. Well Wolfram looking for it and me walking around as I had no clue what we were looking for. Eventually I offered "why don't we ask someone?"... "yeah, sure" was the typical answer I receive from the man who kept on searching. Men...
I took off looking for shop-assistant, quite challenging on a Saturday afternoon. Finally got hold of one, asked with full confidence if they had such key, of course yes. He walked me to the aisle, picked it up from the shelf and asked me if I needed anything else. 2min later I was proudly walking to Wolfram with the object of our quest.
Again, why don't men ask when they look for something?

We might need 3 bedrooms

After visiting several apartments and houses and especially after today where the place was almost perfect except for the 2 small bedrooms, we came to the conclusion we either need 2 big bedrooms or 3 bedrooms because there is no way all our wardrobes will fit into one, assuming you put a bed in the room.
It's really a pity that the place we saw today didn't work out as it was close to work, facing the botanical garden, walking distance from center of Meise, huge kitchen and terrace, even a jacuzzi... but 2 small bedrooms under the roof (i.e. Wolfram could not stand under half of it) :(

20 ridiculous complaints made by holidaymakers

Sometimes you really wonder...
1) A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".
2) A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.
3) "The beach was too sandy."
4) A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.
5) "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
6) "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
7) "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
8) "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."
9) "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."
10) "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
11) "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
12) "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."
13) "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
14) "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."
15) "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
16) "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
17) "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
18) "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
19) "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
20) "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."
Source: The Telegraph

Brrrr

It's officially getting cold.
Temperature is dropping, especially at night.
Cars are covered with ice in the morning.
Rooms can be freshened up in 2 minutes.
It's cold when getting out of bed.
I'm in the mood for soup and mugs of hot tea.
This is it, winter has arrived.

Muffin is a boy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After 3 weeks in Belgium, we took the kittens to the vet for their first visit. While he was doing the standard check-up we discovered something.
Guess what? Muffin is a boy!!!! Luckily for us the name Muffin works as well for male or female. Still, for 3 months this poor kitten has been called "she".
Mokka has been confirmed as a female. At least one of them was what we thought she was.
Now the different behavior between the 2 kittens makes sense. Muffin has always been more adventurous and the hunter... logical if she is a boy :)

Oups

After many weeks (not to say months) I finally got to check the pressure of the tires of my car. I was really motivated today so the fact that nor the first or the second gas station we passed didn't have the equipment stopped me.
Verdict:
- front: 1.9-1.8 instead of 2.3
- back: 1.7-1.6 instead of 2.1
If mother finds this out I'm in deep trouble as I should know well enough how important it is to have the right pressure in your tires. Let's keep a very low profile :)

UP

Hilarious, really funny!
Even better in 3D (indeed as there is a house flying, you really get to be part of the journey).
Take a very old who can barely walk without his crutch and make him the hero of an adventure movie. As unlikely action hero Carl Fredricksen is as funny the movie is. Teamed up with a little boyscout who never left the city, a speaking dog and a rare colorful bird and you get onboard the most unlikely adventure in Paradise Island, South America.
The Dream team:

Mythic is the fight between the 2 old mens who are not fast nor agile enough anymore which give a slow motion fight every now and then stopped by one of the characters who has to unblock a joint.
PS: a few tears of course when Ellie (Carl's wife and love of his life) passes away :( but no worry extremely fast they bring back a smile on your face.
PS2: one regret. Movie was only released now in Belgium while the rest of the world has been enjoying it for months... For sure DVD will be out by Christmas time.

Tax papers

Every year sometime between September and December comes a brown envelop with my tax papers. Everything is in Dutch as for a mysterious reason no matter where you live in Belgium, it's where you work that determines in which language your tax papers will be.
So every year it's the same game... figuring out where to input the numbers. To help me I receive from work a few documents with all the numbers I need so I can (in principle simply) fill them in.
I have to say I never quite understand what's written in tax papers in general so when it's in a foreign language it's even worse. Each year I keep my fingers crossed I'm doing it right.

No way!

While accessing Yahoo tonight to check my emails one of the news got my attention: "Rambo comes from Brest"... my own home town!!!
I was laughing reading the article on how his mother came to the city hall and was looking for her ancestors.
Unbelievable!
See the article here. (sorry all articles about this are in French)

I never knew

that HBO stands for Home Box Office... we learn everyday :)

Nap Time