Archives for June, 2006

Winner

Touch me and get lucky!
I won a Playstation game in a Eurostar/Da Vinci Code tie-in. (Incidentally, sat through almost two and a half hours of turkey last night in front of the film. It was truly, truly bad.) The game hasn’t been delivered yet, but they promise I’ve won something.
I won 20 euros in an inflatable jousting competition. This makes me a world champion. There were a few accusations of cheating, as I was the only sober competitor, but I am proud to denounce all doping in sport.
I won 50 euros worth of Massimo Dutti vouchers, which I understand will get me one and a half pairs of socks.
I won an argument over the remote control.
But I appear to be losing lots and lots and lots over some score-prediction thing I did for the World Cup.
Perhaps I can repay my debts in socks.

06/29/2006 | Omphaloskepsis | No Comments

Tissue?

I sat next to a friendly, Dutch-speaking lady on the plane. She didn’t speak English, so we just smiled at each other occasionally. She was about sixty, small, with grey hair. She read a trashy magazine. She ordered a bottle of wine, took a sip and turned to me and made an astonishing noise, clicking at her teeth with her tongue. I think it was meant to express “mmm … delicious!’, but sounded slightly industrial.

Then she reached into her handbag and pulled out a small packet of tissues. She looked at me, smiled, and offered me one. I checked my face for dribble and my nose for runs. Then I declined. She offered again. I smiled again. It turns out she suggested I have a tissue because she was having one.

***

Malta, despite the jellyfish, is still one of my favourite places. Where else can letters like this and this make the national newspapers? I found an article in French on David’s blog about the Maltese, the highlight of which reads “Le Maltais moyen est petit. Le Maltais petit est minuscule. Il n’y a pas de grand Maltais”. (The average Maltese person is small. The small Maltese person is tiny. There are no big Maltese people.”) I can vouch for the veracity of this, as I stood head and neck over everybody last night, at a party where I excelled myself with charm, wit and amiability. I took Patrick under my wing, newly arrived from the States, and introduced him to everybody I know over the course of a couple of hours.

Unhappily, I found out on the way home, that Patrick’s name is actually Mike.

06/14/2006 | Belgium, Malta | No Comments

Cerebral sovereignty

It’s twenty nine degrees in Brussels. That’s eighty four degrees in American. I have spent fifteen minutes half-naked on my noisy terrace with Gilpin, Strange and Lenin and their theories on hegemonic stability, embedded liberalism, imperialism and state-firm relations.

They in turn have been battling for cerebral sovereignty with the football teams of Serbia-Montenegro and the Netherlands. Incidentally, due to a recent declaration of Montenegrin sovereignty, this is probably the last time that Serbia and Montenegro will play as Serbia and Montenegro.

I am wiser and redder for it.

I must pack sunscreen.

BUT it’s warmer in Brussels than it is in Malta at the moment. I will return alabaster to my colleagues’ various shades of pine.

Typical.

***

And for those of you unsure of the concept of sovereignty, here’s George Bush making it that much clearer:

06/11/2006 | Omphaloskepsis | No Comments

Football and broken glass

I’ve got 48 hours left before my final final exam is finished and I’ll be on the plane to the land of short people and loud voices. I’m in study mode, which is increasingly difficult with the football and the hot weather and fact that I’m home alone.


My front yard (above) is looking like Calcutta. Broken glass, beer mats, receipts and vomit. My front yard, I should explain, is one of Brussels’ finest public squares, just in front of the European Parliament and encircled by previously stately, Belgian and reasonably peaceful bars. In the space of six months, it’s turned into a grim, Ibiza-like Spring Break convention for Eurocrats and business-card hunters.

I thought of this when I read on a better blog than mine, that the place was turning into a disco-bar collective with awful music. The worst thing is that once the revellers have gone home, the staff parties begin. I’ve got all the bars on speed-dial, but they don’t hear the phone ring above the noise. So I trot downstairs, befuddled (what a word!) and affect my hardest “you’re inconsiderate, disrespectful and interrupting my sleep nightly” face, which is one step from my “I’ll pay you to go away” face. That normally works for five minutes or so.

With the World Cup on, it’s all day as well as all night. There are even open-air TVs, for God’s sake. I’m only glad to be leaving the country.

06/10/2006 | Omphaloskepsis | No Comments

Jussreddit – On Green Dolphin Street

To the very distant backdrop of the Kennedy/Nixon presidential race, On Green Dolphin Street is a nuanced, delicate tale of love, death and martinis.

Mr and Mrs van der Linden are stalwarts of the American diplomatic community during the Cold War. He is a haunted, exhausted career diplomat with a penchant for a breakfast drink. She is a model of reserve, who loves her husband unconditionally, even through her affair.

This a book without villains. Every character is flawed but sympathetic. Faulks’ writing is tight and nuanced. It keeps you reading. There are no great surprises, no cliffhangers, but it’s a grown-up book that demands your exclusive attention and is the better for receiving it.

Buy it or read more at Amazon.co.ukor Amazon.com

06/09/2006 | Belgium | No Comments

Tears and justice

We have a noisy bar downstairs from our apartment. Every now and again I have to go down and ask them to be a bit quieter. Similarly, when a naff Chinese restaurant charged my Dad’s credit card seven times, I had to go and have a chat.

On both occasions, my mother suggested that it might not be a good idea to go and speak to them, afraid that they would either “set the rottweilers on me” or “punch me in the face”.

A couple of websites have been doing the rounds recently, this one about a stolen phone, and this one, about a fraudulent eBay sale. Both are examples of virtual have a go heroes, using the internet to gain massive popular support for their being hard done by. They’re naming and shaming the perpetrators and cataloguing their progress. Mum says, watch out for the rottweilers.

In other news, I caught Chris Evans, the former celebrity, on the BBC last night. The programme sent a bunch of cricketers to India to get drunk and highlight the poverty our subcontinental cousins have to deal with.

I’m not convinced that the best way to do it is by sticking an overweight white man in a slum classroom and have him cry ostentatiously through the lessons, distracting and embarrassing the kids.

The Sun covered it with four close ups of a tear-streaked, snot-nosed Evans, “dignifying human suffering with his tears” (quote courtesy of The Friday Thing).

In an interview, filmed after his blubbing, he summed up his reaction to the “juxtaposition of sport, fun, devastation, upset” with the conviction that “I’ve got to be as good as I can as a person, but I’m sure that feeling will fade …”

Incidentally, he’s cried in public before, when he got himself fired from Virgin Radio for being a drunk:

“Evans could not stop crying and kept repeating the phrase “don’t get rid of me because I have not done anything wrong”.

***
And lastly, it’s time to give something back.

06/09/2006 | Omphaloskepsis | No Comments