A weekend away in the hills

Yes! Well! Now! That's it! The pentecostal weekend has come upon us, and it has become time to pack our bag. For a long weekend away, a trip out of the country and into the hills of Belgium. Throw the weekend bag wide open, dive into the cupboard and toss randomly useful things in there. Hiking shoes, old jeans, camera, check! Take a train down south, impatiently staring out of the window, bored with the pedestrian talk of people beside you. How slowly the landscape changes! But unmistakably, changes comes over it, the paperflat damned landscapes of the Northern Low Countries turning into the gentle waviness of their Southern counterparts.

You cross the border. Or at least, you think you do. Maybe you did so five minutes ago, maybe in two kilometres; what matters is that the Dutch urban regions change into troubled Belgian urban zones, where Flemands, Walloons, Morrocans, Congolese give it their slackest of efforts to live together on a few square metres, using all the instruments of cultural-religious-tribal-economic-in-short-political warfare that they can think of. Brussels is in sight!

The car stands waiting already. Your old friends are there, in general merriness everybody pats each other on the back, kisses cheeks, provides pokes between the ribs. The trunk swallows up all your luggages and off you go. Full speed over bumpy semi-highways, off to the east. There Stavelot, in the southern Liègian area awaits you. Stavelot, who has heard of it? That tiniest of Walloon villages sounding like Stavanger and Camelot at the same time? The weekend you will have there! You stop over at a supermarket on the way, kilometres away, to stock up some beers, some snacks, the general. And back in the car you jump, off shoots the car, you drive drive drive, and Stavelot comes in sight...

Toiletschrijvers doceren

Ik breng de laatste weken hele dagen door in de achterste zaal van de Universiteitsbibliotheek Binnenstad van de Universiteit Utrecht.

Wanneer men daar het toilet bezoekt vindt men op de muren van een daarvan de volgende regels aangebracht:

toiletschrijver #1: "Grateful Dead - Turn On Your Lovelight"

toiletschrijver #2: "Poëthisch hoor. Emo"

TS #2 heeft het (naast zijn gebrekkige spelling) duidelijk bij het verkeerde eind. Hij ziet het woord "dead" in de regel staan en denkt waarschijnlijk aan een band à la Slayer of Iron Maiden. Op zich geen totaal vreemde gok als je the Grateful Dead niet kent. Hij houdt (net als ik) niet zo van Slayer en Iron Maiden en vindt TS #1 daarom een beetje emo.

Maar niets is minder waar. The Grateful Dead waren hippies die hele gezellige muziek maakten. In de jaren zestig reisden ze per bus de hele Verenigde Staten door op zoek naar vette gigs. Ze waren pioniers van de LSD. Ze inspireerden een hele generatie Amerikaanse intellectuelen. Voor diegenen die deze band niet kennen, klik hier voor een live versie (Woodstock '69) van Turn On Your Lovelight. Have a grateful day!

The Light Pen of Great Authors Who Preceded Us

It was high time. I kissed whoever stood next to me, shook hands with three more fellows, and started to run home; no one called me back. At the first crossroads, where no one could see me, I turned, and followed a path back into the woods. I was heading for the great city in the south, of which they said in our village:
  'The people who live there! I tell you, they never sleep!'
  'Why don't they sleep?'
  'Because they never get tired!'
  'Why don't they get tired?'
  'Because they're fools.'
  'Don't fools get tired?'
  'How could fools get tired!'

(from: F. Kafka, 'Children on the Road', Contemplation, 1913)

Dingen die je vrienden doen

Terwijl je in de universiteitsbibliotheek nog een dutje doet boven je data-analyse, bereiken je vrienden soms letterlijk grote hoogten.

Via Facebook blijf je op de hoogte van het reilen en zeilen onder je vrienden. Hier pikte ik een artikel op van klimvriend en mede ex-bestuursgenoot van de Amsterdamse Studenten Alpen Club Bas Visscher. Deze zomer gaat hij op expeditie.

De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst

Gisteren was het op de kop af tien jaar geleden dat de EU zijn eerste openbaarheidswetgeving aannam. In een korte tijd heeft de Raad van Ministers van de EU heeft een prijzenswaardig snelle en grootschalige omwenteling gemaakt waar het transparantie betreft. Wil de Raad met zijn transparantiebeleid echter recht doen aan zijn eigen principes, dan moet er met de huidige wetsherziening betekenisvolle voortuitgang geboekt worden om het proces van transparantmaking af te ronden.

Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things

Beter goed gestolen dan slecht bedacht. Eén of andere persoon met veel tijd en een gevoel voor humor presenteert King Jong-Il Looking at Things, met elke dag een nieuwe foto waarop de Noord-Koreaanse leider zich onder het volk begeeft en dingen inspecteert.

Op de inzet: Kim Jong-Il bekijkt en proeft koekjes.

Counting down the weeks of studentness

By some coincidence or purely for reasons of procrastination, I wondered down my old Warwick blog again. It still stands there, saved and locked into eternity on a University of Warwick server, as some kind of public source for posterity. I don't go back there very often, but every time I do, my former self surprises me with the inventiveness in blogging culture that I possessed back in the day.

So today, there I was again, reading entries pondering my final pushes and efforts before obtaining my BA. At the end of February of 2008 , as I had neatly started collecting my literature and questionnaires for the thesis, it dawned upon me that "the final push begins here and now". On the 28th of May, a few days from here three years ago, I recorded "the final hours", with a few exams and a big essay to complete. Just a few days later, my work with be done and some more later I was pleased to find out that it was rewarded with a first degree (= cum laude).

Three years on, sitting in another university library in another city in another country, I suppose then that now finally the time has come to announce the final weeks of studentness. Two months from here, my thesis will need to be completed. I am still utterly in the middle of it, one half of me fighting to keep on going with it in a straight line towards the goal, integrating all elements as foreseen, and turning this into my cum laude icing on the cake, while the other half is fighting and running, looking this way and that, signing me up to all sorts of evening programs, courses, procrastinations, dinners with friends, walks through the shops and endless facebook screens of idle horsecrap. But only three months or so, only some 15 weeks perhaps, and then I will end this part of my life called studentness, which lasted a very varied seven years.

Sad or happy, anxious or excited, there's no escaping it: let's start counting down the final weeks of studentness here and now!