Surgery

Well, I'm back. It was a strange 30 hours, even though I probably slept through 15 of them.

The hospital story begins as I left my apartment at 6:20 AM, after staying up all night working on my papers, turning them in, and then cleaning my apartment in preparation for crippledness. I've been staying up pretty late the past few weeks, as I tend to write better in the early morning hours and I've been drinking a lot of red bull. But there was no red bull on Sunday, since I had to fast for the anesthesia and I didn't want the taurine interfering anyway.

So I was a little sleepy as I took the metro to the hospital. When I got there a little before 7, the hospital was closed. I mean, the doors were open and you could walk in, but nobody was working. That's not something that I'm used to seeing. So after waiting for the help to arrive, I checked in and headed for my room, on floor 2, section U24.

I assumed they meant floor -2 (2 floors below the entrance, in Europe the ground floor is "0") since that's where all of my appointments had been. I took the elevator down and there was indeed a section U, which was the surgery section. I followed the signs looking for room 24, which it said was next to the surgery theater. "Cutting to the chase" I was thinking "I like that." There was no receptionist at the station so I headed in, walking past people in wheely beds prepped for surgery.

I was walking down the hall when a woman in scrubs started yelling at me in French. The only parts I could understand were "you can't be in here" and "you have to leave now." I didn't think much of it, as I'm used to making such mistakes so I went back to the reception and waited for the receptionist to show up, who informed me that there was indeed a floor 2 in a different bank of elevators.

So I found my real section and found a nurse who showed me the room I would be sharing with another man (later introduced to me as Angel from Peru). My surgery was at 9 so they had me change into the hospital gown right away and take a shower with some disinfectant, then the nurse shaved me knee. I got into my hospital bed and an orderly wheeled me down to the same section I had barged into before, only this time I was prepped for surgery in my wheely bed like the others.

I stayed there for quite awhile, as other patients were wheeled in and left, and I started to think that 9am on a Monday morning isn't the best time to schedule surgery and maybe my doctor was hungover or stuck in Ibiza. It was pretty close to 10 when a group of doctors came and got me, and started asking me questions in French as they wheeled me into the theater, which I didn't understand so I just nodded my head, which made them mad because they were asking me how much I weighed, which is not a yes or no question.

At this time I should say that the hospital I have been going to is a teaching hospital. The doctors sometimes have assistants that are medical students who do some of the easy work. There were probably 10 people in the operating theater when we got there, and I new that half of them where there to observe by the way they were trying to look busy. I am an expert of knowing how to look busy, so these gomers couldn't fool me. One plucky young lad, with a "real" doctor's assistance (maybe my anesthesiologist?) starting jabbing a needle into my hand for the IV. He missed several veins, gave a Rick Perry "oops" and then pulled the needle out and went for a third time. I silently prayed that Dr. Butterfingers wouldn't be near my knee to make a salad out of it.

Next they put a plastic holder for my left leg to prop it up, and they put a mask on me which they said was oxygen. At this point, one of the doctors (or maybe a gomer?) asked me which knee they were operating on. I wanted to say "how about we start with the one that's shaved and in the plastic holder" but I just laughed. I don't know if I was laughing because there was some kind of anesthetic in the mask or if it was because I had been up for almost 24 hours. Mercifully, at that point the anesthesiologist told me it was go time, and I nodded and then the sounds of the operating room got very strange and then I was out.

When I woke up I was in the post-op, which made sense. It had only been under for 2 hours. My left knee was in a lot of pain, which considering what was going on before the surgery made me somewhat relieved. They shot me full of painkillers and then wheeled me back up to my room. I think I slept a lot that afternoon. When I woke up there were people speaking spanish in the other half of the room. Angel's family introduced themselves, the daughter started speaking to me in English. "The nurses tell me you only speak English," she said. "That's not true," I corrected her, "I speak un poco de espanol and I can understand sometimes when people yell at me in French." She didn't seem impressed, but she was polite anyways.

I spent the evening alternating between reading and sleeping. There was a bottle with a snap cap by the side of my bed. "It's for pee" one of the nurses had said when I first arrived. Around ten o'clock another nurse came in "Il fait pee pee? (Does it make pee pee)?" she asked. "Non." Then I heard her asking Angel, and when she left I hear her asking the same question people in other rooms down the hall. Nurse Pee Pee, as I came to call her, came back every hour asking if I made a pee pee, and every time the answer was no. Finally, at about 4am  I did have to go. But I have spent 31 years conditioning my body to not make a pee pee when I'm lying on my back. Plus the whole gravity thing was wrong. So Nurse Pee Pee helped me wheel my IV while I hobbled on crutches into the bathroom. She asked "Il fait pee pee?" as I came out. "Yes." "Bon!" she replied, and I never saw her again, making me wonder if she was part of some opium dream.

This morning was easy, just sleeping and watching some TV. Around noon they brought lunch, and Angel and I had a pretty good half-hour chat in Spanish. I could understand maybe 70% of what he said, if you count hand gestures. Usually people get bored talking to me in Spanish, but he seemed to enjoy it. He told me stories about being a professional soccer playing in Peru, back in the day. Then the doctor came and checked me out and told me I could go home. Fahim drove out and picked me up and took me back home, where I am now eating burned frozen pizza in bed.

That's where the story ends. Now I have people coming over to play guitar. I hope you have enjoyed my story about surgery.

Off to Surgery

I've been pretty busy working on my final essays for school, which are due tomorrow. It's 1:41 in the morning and I have to be at the hospital at 7 to get my ACL repaired. I was planning on working all night, but I think these papers are about as good as they're gonna get. I can't eat anything more until after the surgery, and I don't think I can go to sleep since I've been staying up until 6 pretty regularly for the past few weeks, and I don't want to oversleep. So maybe a nap, I don't know...

I don't have much to say right now, hopefully I'll have some down time soon to catch up on some older stories, and also have something new to talk about as I sit later today in a communal hospital room with people speaking languages I don't understand. Honestly, I've been pretty relaxed today, considering all of the deadlines coming up. I think in a weird way the stress of the paper deadlines and the anxiety of the surgery have cancelled each other out, each one keeping me from dwelling too hard on the other. I'm all moved into my new studio apartment on the ground floor and have a bunch of frozen pizzas and cans of soup to last a week or so, and my friend Fahim will drive me home from the hospital tomorrow.

So, cheers to my last night of having one ACL.

Aachen, Germany

I'm bad about posting photos, because it's kind of a pain in the butt. But I am trying to get to know iPhoto a little better so that I can post some of this stuff. These are from a recent trip to the Christmas market in Aachen, Germany. This is also the place where the great king of europe Charlemagne ruled from over 1000 years ago. We took a high speed train for a little over an hour to get there, and spent the day the day wandering around before coming back the same day.

Charlemagne's throne

Charlemagne's thone with me and Norwegian Thomas

Charlemagne's final resting place

Some church or something, I don't know

The crowd.

My group of travelers having a beer after a long day of standing in the rain

Inside of the chuch

Christmas market; the shack on the left was selling Glühwein, a hot spiced wine popular this time of year.

Success!

My job in Brussels is to organize conferences, mostly in the area of security and defense. My focus recently has been on conferences on cyber security, so I have been the point man for the new shindig we’re throwing at the European Parliament. It’s a smaller affair, maybe 25 participants, with two panels, each with three speakers over one hour.

Today was a good day. I’m actually home sick with a cold, but working online I see that a member of the European Parliament (MEP) has just confirmed as a speaker. Success! I have three speakers confirmed, but I still need to scramble a bit to ensure that I get the other three. I have only some of the 25 participants that I need, but there tends to be a last minute scramble on the side of the participants. If I have 15 a week before, I will likely have 30 on the day of the conference.

We are organizing this conference (Round Table, we call them) in coordination with an Estonian MEP. The Estonians are big into the area of cyber security since a few years ago. A small country, they are highly digitized with banking and voting and other central services provided almost exclusively over computer networks. In 2007 their infrastructure was attacked, severly crippling the country for a few days. Ever since, they are the first to beat the drum for overhauls to the European systems of cyber security.

So far on the list of confirmed participants we have people from NATO, Europol (the European police agency, like Interpol but for Europe), Permanent Representations to the EU (like embassies for member states of the EU) and staff members of the European Pariament. It looks like there is interest, which seems to be the case for most of the cyber security events these days.

In related news, I have been accpeted into the NATO internship program in their cyber defense area, beginning in the spring (after my current work contract is over). I still need to get a security clearance from the Americans, which is not easy. I received my background check form from the State Department. They estimated the burden to be 2 ½ hours, including research. This was not the case. Even having 20 years of housing history and 10 years of work history previously researched for other NATO forms, I was still 5 hours into the form when I started to lose my patience. They asked me if I had ever had contact with any foreign governments, and I typed “Yeah, every fucking day” and then put the form away for the night.

The next evening I drafted a three paragraph response detailing my work with my company. They wanted a list of every foreign government I had ever contacted, and I told them that it was outside the scope of this form to list every government I had ever had contact with, but that it was all in line with my job, and if they wanted more info they can come talk to me. Sometimes I really don’t think I’m cut out for government work. But if this gig doesn’t work out, maybe I can go talk to the Estonians.

I promised myself I would post something in the month of October

I'm trying not to abandon what readership I have. Sorry for trying people's patience. I've been so busy that the thought of blogging has been a little bit daunting. That's kind of the blogger's quandary, isn't it? When you finally have something to say you're too busy to say it.

But school has started up again, I'm working 15 hours a week (paid) at the German company where I did my internship. I have student government duties, and try to go to as many social events as I  can fit in, especially since I skipped some birthdays when I was hobbled up in my apartment.

By the way, the knee is better. I have ACL surgery scheduled for January 9th (Mom's birthday!). I guess I could write a whole big post on knee stuff, but I'll just leave it to say that I have been without an ACL in my left knee longer than I ever had one (17 years), and it affects my life in ways I don't always notice, and I'm looking forward to relearning how to do things with two working knees again.

I had big plans to write about my adventures in the Belgian hospital system. I had a blog post written about my struggle to learn French but scrapped it. Things are busy, which is good, but it does get stressful. I find myself missing playing my electric guitar, and end up watching youtube videos of amateur players demonstrating their new amps, and fantasizing about which amp I'm going to get once I have money and a place to play it.

So I've been turning to music to help with the stress. I wrote a song back when my friends were leaving. It really isn't about anyone or anything in particular, it's just about people leaving. It's just a demo, recorded on my built in computer speaker. If you're curious, it's posted here:

How Far Would You Fly Away From Me?

Well, I have a Halloween party tonight, so I need to go find a lame costume in the 20 minutes before the store closes. Happy Halloween, by the way. Love you all.

Backlog

I published a few things I have written earlier but haven't been able to post since we don't have internet at home right now and I haven't been to work much in the past week. I am actually sitting in the lobby of my office building uploading stuff on some random internet signal.

I did go to the doctor on Tuesday and they say my knee is broken. Not shattered, per say, but there is some kind of fragmentation at the bottom of the femur. I got an xray and CT scan but I didn't see them. The hospital system is a bit different here than in the States. For instance, in the States you are sitting in an exam room and the doctor comes in with the xrays and shows you were the problems are. In Belgium, I was sitting in a wheelchair in the hallway with black socks and no pants on, and the doctor came over and drew a little stick figure on the back of an envelope. "Uh, that's great Doc. Can I have my pants back? It's drafty in this hallway and old women are leering at me." Her English wasn't so great but she sounded like she knew what she was talking about. The whole hospital experience was quite interesting, for instance getting an xray while an xray tech who didn't speak English barked commands at me that I didn't understand. But I have private insurance, and I am eligible (and have almost finished paperwork) for the Belgium insurance plan, and these tests only cost 10 Euros in these communist countries anyway. I ended up with a full cast on my leg, and I see a specialist next Thursday.

Speaking of communists, in order to get on the Belgium insurance I needed a document from the commune. Andy, my German coworker, was kind enough to drive me there yesterday. I hobbled to the basement on my crutches, and saw that there was a 45-minute line. I am not able to stand for 45 minutes, and didn't want to make Andy wait that long, so dejectedly I hobbled back to the car and told him the line was too long and that I will just go another time. He asked me if they had handicapped access and I said there wasn't, that the "take a ticket" machine was broken and there was just a line. "This is not acceptable. I'll be right back," he said sternly, and thus the second German invasion of Belgium was launched.

He returned 5 minutes later. "I've found someone who will help you. Some were helpful, and some were not." We hobbled past the receptionist with her piles of pamphlets. "Like this one, who is ONLY GOOD FOR DISTRIBUTING MAGAZINES!" She pretended to be busy. We reached the basement and went around the corner to a back office, where Andy knocked on the door. A woman nervously pushed her head outside. "She is the one who will help you." She took my documents and I could hear the employees chattering amongst each other about Germans and handicapped access as she closed the door. But a few minutes later she returned with my documents. It was the fastest and friendliest experience I have had at the commune yet.

So, I'm bored but things are going OK. My internship was set to end next week anyways, so I'm not missing a lot. Orientation for new students is the following week, which being part of the student government I will have to help with, but won't be too taxing. School starts the week after. This might be a good time to get my knee and ACL fully repaired. I've actually had a damaged knee for more of my life than it was healthy, and to tell you the truth it always hurt. It hurt if I exercised it a lot, and it hurt if I didn't. So this might be the perfect time to get that piece of housekeeping out of the way.

I really had a great summer playing basketball twice a week. I lost most of the fat on my stomach without doing any situps. When we started playing in May, I could only play for about half an hour before getting winded. Last week we had an extended session of about 3 hours, with only a handful of 5 minute water breaks. When my wallet was stolen I was able to run a mile home without being winded to start cancelling my cards. And I had a lot of fun getting better at the game and meeting Belgians on the court. If somebody asked me at the beginning of the summer if I would still want to play knowing I would end up with a broken knee, I think I would say that I would do it all over again.

A Bad Weekend

6 September, 2011

I had my wallet stolen on Saturday night. I was walking home from a friends house, and was pickpocketed by a young man. I chased him but was unable to catch him. Left without an ID or cash cards (I luckily have a backup credit card that was not stolen) I was fuming. I went to play basketball on Sunday. The game was uncharacteristicly physical and I badly injured my knee again as I landed from attempting to block a shot. It was worse then that time I injured it playing soccer a few months ago.

So last night I was lying crippled on my couch, alone. The internet was in my roommate’s name and was shut off when he left, so I didn’t have the ability to contact anyone via Skype or make long distance calls, or even kill time on Facebook. I almost never watch movies, but I found a random DVD that had been left by someone, and wanting to distract myself began to watch it. The movie turned out to be about people whose parents get cancer and whose friends die in car accidents, and it depressed me so much that I had to shut it off.  I felt the urge to call home, but could not.

Last night, without money, ID or the ability to walk I felt homesick for the first time in a long time. And it was a terrible feeling. I hobbled to bed early, and thought of how miserable I was. And I thought about how much worse things could be. I was not injured when my wallet was taken. Much worse happens to people in Brussels, and had I been stabbed the lost wallet would have been the least of my concerns. I was safe, warm, and dry. There was cheese and grapes in the fridge. My parents and friends weren’t dying like in that horrid movie. But there was an unmistakable sadness, probably the bitter combination of the anger and frustration of being victimized and the helplessness of being injured.

I woke up today and called in sick to work. It was too bad. I had a meeting scheduled at NATO for my current internship. It was a big opportunity, but hobbling interns are not very useful.  Then things began to turn around. My German coworker Andy brought over some anti-inflamitories. My friend Fahim brought his guitar over and we played for awhile, and he offered to drive me to the doctor and to the bank, which we will do tomorrow. My Romanian friend Alexandra came over for awhile, and offered to make me dinner tomorrow. Amerian-via-Belarus Yulia explained how the medical insurance works over here (herself having similar misfortune). Fahim’s Greek girlfiend Naya drove me home from basketball last night.

And maybe that’s the Brussels experience. Expats taking care of expats. Fellow wanderers and lone wolves, none of us having family here,  becoming family. And maybe that’s what hurts so much as I watch them go, one by one, back to their country of origin or on to the next big challenge. And it’s maybe a little frustrating having this love and kindness bestowed on me with little chance that I will be able to pay it back. But I am beyond grateful that I have the love and support that I feel from my real family manifest itself in their kindness.

Berlin, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

For my internship, I was given two weeks off, which seems a bit silly since the internship is unpaid, and maybe I could just not come in whenever I want. But fine. For the vacation, Heather came to visit me. We still Skype, and she is maybe my best friend.

For the first week, we did little day trips around Belgium and the area. We took a train to the Belgian coast to a town called Oostende. This is where the Belgian aristocrats have their second (third? eighth?) home. It was a beautiful day and we went swimming in the sea twice (also getting kicked out of the sea twice, by some guy on a jetski who had a walkie talkie but didn’t speak much English). The water was warm and very swimmable, at least by Oregonian standards. On our way back we stopped in Brugge, which I did just to show her how horrible it was. Heather agreed that it was horrible, although we did have a very nice pasta dinner there.

Next we went north to the southern part of the Netherlands to a city called Maastricht. It was nice. The Netherlands are quite livable, what with their bikes and flawless English and tall people (so that I could buy clothes there, something I’m not really able to do in the Land o’ Hobbits that I currently live in).  We got their via the famous Belgian city of Liege, which is famous for something or other but all we saw was the train station.

Anyway, the real headliner was the trip to Berlin. We had arranged with my German coworker Andy that one of his friends had accomidation for us for 2 out of the three nights we were there. Andy actually happened to be on our flight out (he goes to Berlin maybe 2 weekends a month). But for the first night we needed to get a hostel. Except that Heather informed me that she doesn’t do hostels, because she doesn’t know how awesome and cheap they are. So we got a hotel room for the first night.  It was in the East part of Berlin in a neighborhood called Mitte, and the hotel was East Berlin to the core. (As a reminder, East Berlin was communist and West Berlin was capitalist.) The building was made of concrete, as pretty much every building older than 20 years in East Berlin is. The fixtures were like some kind of futuristic 60’s deco, like Star Trek meets Mad Men. It was pretty great. Two thumbs up.

Andy showed us around town. He seemed to really like showing us the city. Berlin is cheap but not dodgy. We saw the Berlin wall, the Holocaust memorial (both are quite cool) and Andy gave us a tour of West Berlin (the “lame” Berlin) for the highlights, although we didn’t get out of his car on that side.

That night we had dinner in a restaurant that had an open-air courtyard for eating. (I had a delicious plate of gormet ostrich for slightly more than a hamburger costs in Brussles.) The building was not designed to be open-air, but was “redecorated” by Allied bombs during WWII. Actually, Berlin still shows many scars of war. There are bullet holes in the Roman columns of  government buildings. Neighborhoods are pockmarked with newish buildings built from the rubble standing side by side with older buildings that were somehow spared. Even the museum had entire floors missing from its original construction, and the interior stone walls show scars of bomb shrapnel.

That night we stayed at Andy’s friend’s house. It was also concrete, but he had decorated the place to make it quite livable as kind of a post-Commie chic seen around East Berlin. The next day, Heather had to work on schoolwork for awhile, so I went in search of Hansa studios.

When I visited Dublin a decade ago, I went to all of U2’s recording studios. One I entered by pretending to be part of a maintenance crew going in the front door. The receptionist was very nice as she kicked me out, and allowed me to take pictures of the platinum records on the walls (Google “U2 studios” and somewhere there is a website that shows all of the studios and their location. I gave them my photo and they put it up on their site). Another studio was open, so I went inside past a room full of amplifiers and up a flight of stairs. The engineer asked me how the hell I got in there, and I told him the door was open, and then he escorted me off of the premises (no pictures this time). The other two I was not able to get inside of. However! The recording of U2’s classic Achtung Baby (itself being rereleased this fall on its 20^th aniversary) was not started in Dublin. The first sessions were held in Berlin in a place called Hansa studios, where David Bowie and other famous people had worked before.

I googled the location and headed over via subway. When I got to there I was vaguely disappointed. It was an office-type entry with buzzers for various Hansa and non-Hansa entities. I pressed the button for the main Hansa studios. Nothing happened. It was Saturday, so I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there for a couple of minutes. As I was starting to feel a bit pathetic I began to head out just as a group of people arrived at the door. “Do you, uh, work at Hansa?” I asked them. One of them nodded his head. “Do you, uh, give tours?” He told me that there is a tour given in September, information was on the website blah blah blah. “I don’t, uh, suppose that I can see the studio?” He shook his head. It was, afterall, his place of work. “OK.” But as I was leaving, I looked at the back gate and saw the parking lot. The VERY SAME (I think) parking lot that appears in a photo in the albumn notes. So the Hansa mission was a resounding success and I can finally say that I finished what I started ten years ago. Four thumbs up!

Anyway, the rest of the trip was hanging out in Berlin with Heather and Andy and Andy’s friends and drinking beers by the river. I think the earliest we went to bed was 3am. It was a good trip. The end.

Train station at Liege, designed by George Jetson

In Maastrich

Heather makes a new friend

Sunset in Maastricht, Netherlands

Some guy. Everybody gets a status nowadays.

Hawaii, no wait, Oostende!

 There was nowhere to change into swimming suits on the beach, so we used my coat to wrap around ourselves to provide some modesty. Heather was trying to discretely change when I yelled "Surprise!" and she turned around, and it ended up being a pretty good picture.

I rather like Oostende.

D'oh!

And then Heather took another one, which caught me off guard.

Brugge swans

Brugge people

Brugge building

East German Trabants. They run on a 2-cycle engine, like a weed whacker. (You have to put oil inside the gas.) When the wall came down thousands of these were discarded at the border.

Berlin museum of old stuff.

View of the museum and East Berlin. Note the East German "Space Needle". I don't think it tilts though, just my camerawork.

Berlin is cheap. My mega-BLT and salad cost 6 euros inside the museum café. Also, Heather.

The Berlin wall.

Holes in the Berlin wall.

Andy, Carmello (Andy's dog) and Heather check out the Holocaust memorial.

I don't remember what this is, but it is decorated with Napoleon's cannons. And the omnipresent space needle is in the background.

Bundestag (sp?). Or Deutchstag. Uh, German parialmentary building.

Apartment we stayed at with Andy's friend Roy.

Berlin subway station.

Outside of Hansa studios.

Hanging out by the river, drinkin'.

Hanging out with Andy's friends somewhere in East Berlin at some unspecified time in the morning.

Mac'd

It's been a busy summer. I'm back at work after a two week vacation, the last week of which Heather came out to visit. We took a few day trips to some Belgian cities (Brugge, Liege, Maasricht and the beach at Oostende) and then flew to Berlin for four days. We returned last night, and Heather boarded her flight back to the US this morning. I will post some of the good pictures once I get them sorted. But I want to announce that I am typing this on my new (to me) Mac. (Warning: If you don't care about computers, you should skip this one and check back in a few days when I get some pictures posted.)

The Dell that Dad gave me last year has been bulletproof. It's a 6 year old computer (about 108 in people years) and is faster than most of the other computers I use. The secret? I keep it lean and mean without putting a lot of stuff on it. And it runs Windows XP, which is fast and efficient despite being a decade old. But the keys are starting to break, and the power cord needs to be propped up with a bottle cap in order to get it to charge, and a few weeks ago I plugged it in and it blew the master breaker in the apartment, which seems like a cue that it is time to upgrade. My uncle Bert graciously gave me his old MacBook Pro (which Heather brought over with her). I've been a die-hard PC user and defender since 1994, so this wasn't a small change.

I remember back in the 1990's when computer processors were doubling in speed every two years. Back then, a computer took about 90 seconds to boot up. With the growing speed of computers we computer nerds were promised faster boot times, as little as 5 seconds. This reality, however, never materialized. As processor power increased, the new resources were devoted to maintaining operating systems ever-increasing in complexity. As such, my laptop at work - with a clock speed 60 times faster and with 250 times more memory than my family's first computer - takes over 2 minutes to boot. This same laptop when shutting down gives me enough time to take my cups to the kitchen, wash them, dry them and put them away, and even then sometimes it hasn't been able to shut itself down, causing me to just pull the plug from the wall in frustration. What the hell happened?

Granted, the work laptop is running Windows Vista, which is widely regarded as the worst product Microsoft ever produced. But it's been a long time since a supposed "upgrade" made my life any easier.  I've noticed that every new redesign of Windows is merely a snapshot of what Apple was doing 3 years ago. So I wanted to try a computer that was thoughtfully designed with features that I would actually want to use. As I get older, I'm much less inclined to want to fiddle around with technology to get it to work. I just want to turn the computer on and have it quickly doing what I want it to do.

There are some downsides to Macs. I have already run into a few compatibility issues, and many programs are made for the PC only. But this computer boots up fast, runs programs quickly and efficiently and shuts itself down in 5 seconds or less. It doesn't bombard me with questions and messages that I don't care about. It doesn't sit there and constantly churn. And the layout is visually pleasing, something that Windows has had 18 years to get right but fails at, in my opinion.

When I informed people about my switch, Mac people usually gushed about how much they love their computers, while PC people usually responded with "Huh." So I sense that there is quite a divide between the two camps. I still will probably always use a PC for work, but it's nice to be able to come home to something that requires much less effort to use and maintain.

OK, none of that was about Belgium, so I'll try to be quick about posting some Belgian stuff, once I figure out how to import pictures into the new computer.

Airshow

Yesterday afternoon, my coworker and I were lazily staring at our computer screens when we heard the unmistakable sound of a fighter jet flying low in the sky. As this is unusual in Belgium, we stuck our heads outside. Two more F-16's followed, flying slowly, maybe 1000 feet off the ground. 10 seconds later an entire parade of aircraft followed, including 3 helicopters, 2 C-130 cargo planes and a passenger jet. At the tail end, another pair of F-16's followed.

Honestly, I thought it was some kind of airshow. But later on the news they showed the French state funeral of 7 soldiers killed in Afghanistan the previous week. Sarkozy was there, and they had the ceremony in a large cathedral in Paris. What we had seen earlier that day was a sort of aerial funeral procession.

I caught myself thinking that it was all a bit overdone; that it was only seven soldiers, that the US loses that many in a week quite often, that all they needed to do was flash their names across the scrolling news bar on the headline news show. And then I thought about how long it's been, how long we've been seeing those names on the scrolling news bar, and how maybe we're becoming desentized to the thought of soldiers' caskets flying home. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to see the flag-draped coffins and the grandmother crying on national TV once in awhile.