Crystal clear instructions

"Stop at noon.

It's at 12h French time that William will marry Kate. Stop your computers and phones. Get a sandwich and find a TV."

My mum, 6:47am

This new version of the song is bad, the video is very lame... BUT one should never miss an opportunity to highlight Brittany on TV.
Believe it or not, my family had picnics on that beach!

The queen's greenhouse

Every year around end of April, the queen of Belgium opens her greenhouse to the public. For 2.5 Euros one can walk around in her greenhouse and enjoy the flowers blooming in the Spring. The money collected is donated to a charity organization and hundreds of thousands people come to have a peak at the palace from the garden.

Truth be told the queen has a pretty nice collection of flowers in her greenhouse and I enjoy visiting it every year. This time Wolfram lent me his macro lens so I could do some close-ups on flowers.

Empowered with this heavy lens and my brand new flash, I tried my best to get a perfectly sharp picture of at least one flower. I even stepped away from the P mode and dared the Av mode… but only under supervision :)

I’m afraid I never reached perfection but as agreed with Wolfram’s father the most important is that to most eyes my pictures are ok… if they are not meeting Wolfram’s sharpness criteria, I can always blame it on the photographer (me) or the camera (a modest Canon 450D).

PS: while waiting for someone I happened to be rightly positioned for a few shots of a bug of some sort getting pollen in the rhododendron behind me. Sometimes one can get lucky :)

Lemon pie

It's been a while I haven't baked a lemon pie. This week-end, with Wolfram's parents visiting, I thought it would be a nice dessert.
So tonight, I squeezed the lemon, prepared the lemon cream, added the meringue and delivered a "tarte au citron meringuee"... which based on the reaction was "amazing".
It's more work than the every day cakes I usually bake but given the success I start thinking I should make Lemon pie more often than once every other year :)

No picture as the pie didn't resist long enough for one.

Bruges - Brugge

After the sea came Bruges. Bruges is one of the few places I really enjoy visiting in Belgium... but not in spring/summer because inevitably you are in Bruges with 3 millions of tourists. Sadly this was the case today. We even bumped into one of our colleagues, visiting Bruges with his parents (sounds familiar?).
With the crowd I gave up any perspective of a good picture, unless you want to have the Befroi with the fair or the church with a group of Japanese.
After a short walk in the city we settled down on a terrace in the shade for waffle and/or ice cream (note... amazing Melon de Cavaillon sorbet... good that we'll be there in August). Rested, we queued 30min or so for the boat tour.
The "captain" of the boat was quite entertaining, full of stories, and I grabbed the opportunity for a few shots. Probably not the best ones, but give a feel of a boat tour on the canals of Bruges by a sunny afternoon.

 Bridges in Bruges... including the lowest one (Wolfram had to bend his head).

If it was not invaded by tourists, I think I would enjoy living in bruges.

Cadzand

Wolfram's mum likes to go to the sea whenever she comes to Belgium. This year Wolfram was advised to try Cadzand, in the Netherlands, just across the border.
I'm not a big fan of the Belgian coast, therefore I was not expecting much and I was not disappointed: it looks pretty much the same as this side of the border.... I just cannot understand why people would want to go to a beach with container boats passing in front of them every 5 minutes or so. But again, that's better than nothing for most people. It's also one of those beaches where a tent is handy to protect from the wind.

This said it was nice to be outside given the sunny weather and I played around with a few flowers and shells.

PS: shrimp croquettes were, of course, a must for lunch in Zeeland.

Target achieved

It took me 13 months, 2 swimming suits, 1 sport outfit, lot’s of motivation and persistence to achieve my target.

It’s done, I’ve lost 20 kilos!
I feel good obviously and also proud after 1 year of effort.
Challenge will be now to stabilize; well after enjoying Easter chocolate.
Good thing now is I get to go shopping BIG time as all my summer clothes are too big now (not that I need a reason to go shopping…).

I’ve made my own facial cream!

Last night Aurelie and I had a girls’ night and this time we decided to do something a bit different. A while ago we had bought on Groupon a voucher for a workshop to make our own facial cream. At 7pm we joined 4 other ladies in a small shop in Wavre, Kalao, specialized in “Bio self make up”. After a quick introduction we started our formulation work, mixing the different ingredients, learning the advantages of each of them. For example Apricot oil works with all types of skins and helps keeping you tanned for longer (but you have to be tanned already) or weat oil has anti-oxidants thus helping keeping your skin young. Formulation work was super easy for the 2 chemists that we are, it was indeed interesting to learn about the different ingredients and above all create your own cream with the combination of benefits that you want.

We prepared 2 jars: one day cream, one night cream with different benefits, textures and scents, which are now proudly standing in the bathroom.

We also had interesting discussion with the other ladies, all mostly after “no chemical” which always drives me crazy. All components are chemicals per nature. The question is whether they are natural or synthesized. A toxic ingredient will be toxic independently if it’s natural or synthesized. So instead of looking for something “all natural” they should focus on getting the right ingredients.

All in all a fun night between girls doing girls thing… beauty cream :)

Metal or plastic

I always thought that license plates for cars were made out of metal; aluminum or some alloy. We’ve learnt yesterday that this is not the case; well not completely.

Yesterday as part of our Spring cleaning we decided to throw away all our previous license plates. Between the numerous cars we had and the numerous countries we had them, we managed to have quite a collection, getting dusty in the guest room. At the container park, we found out that they were made of plastic (thus going in the plastic container) and not metal.
Quid?
After a bit of research on our dear friend Google, I found the following for Belgium:
- The official license plate, the one that has the stamp etc. and that goes at the back, is indeed made of aluminum.
- The replicate, for the front, is made of acrylic.
Now we’re fully educated when it comes to license plates in Belgium. Next time I move to another country, I'll check what their license plates are made of, just for my "culture generale" :)

100 bikes in 5 minutes

This morning while I was squeezing oranges in the kitchen, more than 100 bikes passed on the street in front of my eyes... No doubt about it: Spring is here and half of Flanders is preparing for the Tour de Flandres / de France / Paris Roubaix... you name your cycling race, they'll be there.

Once again no time to visit Madrid

Once again, I'm in Madrid on a tight schedule, very tight schedule this time even. This means, once again, no time to visit the city :(
BUT this time in between each in-home visit I had the chance to walk the streets of Madrid from one home to another and got a glimpse of the city. On top the translator, an American living in Madrid, was an amazing guide full of stories about the streets, the buildings, etc.
I have no clue where I was but I liked very much what I saw and I'm even more committed to come back for a long week-end... especially now that we can have lunch / dinner on a terrace!

Absolutely brilliant!

Tonight we’ve got ourselves out of the living room and went to the movie theater to watch The King’s speech.

Given that movie got quite some Oscars (Best movie and Best Actor to say the least), it got our intention. What could there be in a movie about a king trying to overcome his stammering?

The story is simple, the script is brilliant and the actors are simply amazing.
I was delighted the whole movie, even surprised when it was already over, there were some brilliant lines and scenes. It’s a real pleasure to watch a movie where it’s all about the performance of the actors and the text, vs. the special effects or the 3D.

If you get the opportunity, don’t miss The King’s speech.

Head hunters are back

Business is getting better. A good sign of it is when head hunters are calling again. For almost 2 years, we haven’t heard much from them.

Until now. In the past 2 weeks, 2 different head hunters contacted me. I know, I should feel good about it. Usually I discard them as I am pretty happy with where I am, but this time, I decided it can’t hurt to have a chat and get a feel of what’s out there. In other word, just triple confirming I’m right about staying where I am.
This triggered a basic request: “could you send me your resume?”
"euh, sure…"
My resume, you mean this resume I haven’t updated in years, the one that probably still mention my extracurricular activities at the University and that I leave in Paris…

Of course I will send one, which means I have to update it and try to remember the highlights of my 6+ years within the company.
I’ve been interviewing students for the past 4 years, and never it occurred to me to update my resume. What was I thinking? I guess too busy trying to make a career internally to care about what’s outside.

Now, back in September 2004, I left France to Italy. Then what?

Luck

Today I parked the car in the center and used all the coins I had in the meter. Successfully I managed to get 2.5 hours of parking and left for the hairdresser.
Of course, I was done after a bit more than 3 hours and had already accepted the fact that I would find a ticket on the car. Especially because in the city center they are always checking.
I was even more sure I had a ticket when I saw policemen giving a ticket to another car further down the street.

Once I reached the car I didn’t find a ticket on the window. Believe it or not, policemen were walking the street upwards and they were 2 cars away.
Without further thinking, I jumped into the car and left as fast as I could. I didn’t want to risk them noticing my parking ticket had long expired.
It does feel good when luck is on your side.

We've got a new vacuum cleaner

And clearly my life is not very exciting these days: the only highlight of my weekend is the purchase of a new vacuum cleaner.
More powerful, bigger bag, Miele so it should last forever and swallow the ton of cat hair we have to handle in the spring when our cats change hair.

Now, it's time to work less, and get a life!