Miscellaneous

• My laptop (HP Omnibook 4150 – I don’t know the age) is making strange noises it did not use to do in the past. Worrying.
• I tried to find a decent dress to wear at a friends wedding in July. Absolutely no success so far. Slightly worrying.
• Having raspberry ice-cream while sitting in the sunshine after a long rainy-grey week. Great.
• The ReZepTor is back. The idea: to cook every match of the Euro2008, predicting this way the winning team. In German only. Just great!

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Words of the week

• Talking amok – if you cannot persuade your enemies with arguments, just talk until they fall dead from the chair.
• Weihnachtschristen – Christmas Christians, chrétiens de Noël – particular religious species found mainly in the Northern Hemisphere between the 24th and 26th of December. Word read in “Die Zeit”
• “Das Eichhörnchen ist Geborgenheit” – Learning German is mignon. 
• “asexué linguistique” – I do not know if Belgium elects the “Unwort des Jahres” – the worst word of the year. If yes, this one which I found in an article of L’Echo would be my absolute favourite.

Objets divers

• Seeing a wonderful rainbow in the morning. Rain on the left side of the roof, sunshine on the other – weather in Brussels.
• Discovering a much shorter way from my language classes to go home.
• Reading a great article about the French rugby and why the English should have been so decent to loose the half final against France.
• Watching the peoples’ faces when they come in the (Belgian) post office: Annoyed when seeing the queue, disgusted when taking the waiting ticket, tired when getting out there.
• Wondering how to call a homeless person after the phone cell he lived in has been destroyed…
• Thinking about taking a photo from this grey heron I see so often at one of the inner city lakes, very close to one of the noisiest and busiest places in Brussels.

Life is full of snapshots.

Divers

1. When you get up at 6 o’clock and go out of the house at 7, then you can be on the top of Lion’s Head at quarter to 9. You can then walk over to Signal Hill, have pick-nick there and ask a nice couple to give you a lift to town. If you follow this instructions, you can be back at the starting point at 1 pm, and still have half a day for whatever you want to do…

2. There are only 4.729 million telephone main lines registered in South Africa (1 per 10 inhabitants) but 33.96 million cellphones (2 out of 3 inhabitants). More stats from this side

3. Picture of the day (actually: yesterday) and for people with a very powerful imagination: a very old and very short lady driving a huge, old, green Mercedes taking as much time as she needs to cross an intersection. New experience: Taxi drivers using their brakes and making place for the lady.

4. I love the spelling check tool from wordpress.

5. Ndiyakuthanda – I love you in isiXhosa (and yes, it in only one word, that is one of the reasons why I have so many problems to learn this language)

Miscellaneous

1. Every time I want to write this word: Miscellaneous, I have to look in the dictionary
2. WordPress has now over 526 thousand blogs and is still growing. My blog is number 503 thousand and something. Is there a way to find out the precise number?
3. I like the password I got automatically from wordpress
4. Patience I have with slowly loading Internet pages: none
5. Time zones in South Africa: One
6. Problem with only one time zone in SA: The sunset at Jo’Burg is around 6 pm in summer time. Cape Town: around 8 pm
7. Most popular South African football teams (after what I’ve been told):
   1. Kaizer Chiefs
   2. Orlando Pirates
   3. Mamelodi Sundowns

If you say that this is “n’importe quoi” you are right.