Holidays

School 's out, here in Belgium. And the heat is on: 28 to 30°C is abnormally high.

I couldn't decide to laugh or cry earlier today, because I saw some advertising for school gear in a local newspaper. That's how commercial we are. The kids are barely home and starting to enjoy the massively available free time, and there they are: advrtisements to buy your school stuff.

There must be some nutcrack without children in their offices.

I took the kids' backpacks and all, and I put them away, far away. For the next 2 months. Let's not bother for a while. It's holidays.

My mind can't accept this.

I'm not a good blogger, I know.

I only send a few remarks into the world, and they mean nothing. but I am struck by facts - like this morning in the news- that I don't know what to do with it, and I want to share this. Ultimate madness, confusing my mind, posing more questions than I could ever hope to answer.



Number one.

"Baby sterft in wagen door verstrooidheid vader"
says the headline. Baby dies in car by absent-mindedness father. Apparently, a father goes to work, and forgets to drop off his child of 11 months at the daycare centre. It dies of dehydration, the mother finds it when she comes to collect the child seat in the car.

How absent-minded can you get to cause the death of your own child ? Was it work? Was it another kind of trouble that kept him busy? Was he stressed, afraid to be late for a meeting? Stress kills. One child down. Pay the toll for it.

Number two:

Enkel berisping voor Oekraïense broers die Simon Wijffels neerstaken

Two brothers, Ukrainians aging 15 and 16 at the timeof the incident, get reprimanded because the stabbed and nearly killed a boy of 14 years old. He didn't want to give them a phone number of a girl, so they stabbed him. He barely survived, and still suffers from the attack.

A normal person would think this won't go unpunished, you can't just stab or kill someone because he or she does not agree with you, or does not want to give you something. But no. The get reprimanded. Don't do it again, ok? You could have killed this poor guy.

Why did they stab in the first place? The wanted to hurt him, because he was standing up. They used excessive force to hurt him. They will do this again, next time, in another place another time.
They don't need a reprimand. They need the consequences of their deeds.


I filtered out a few more, like the one of the mayor of Ghent hit on his face because he argued with a drunk motercycle driver about his driving behaviour. The man was arrested. and I sincerely hope the judge does more than reprimand him.

This is the world we live in... What do we do about it?

And, by the way, I put a pic of my superb, home-made bolognaise-sauce here. Because there are still good things in life.

Dreams of Africa

I lived in Africa, some time ago. The forgotten continent. I used to dream about Africa, afterwards. For years. Now it's long gone, I seem to have lost the african spirit somewhere in this all-busy western life.

It was quiet, cruel sometimes, and full of beauty and death. Cars could crash full of passengers, and in a decor of beautiful sunset it would take hours for rescue, people bleeding and dying in the fabulous nature.
A troop of babboons would sit and shit on a nice Mercedes, all nice and natural.

I have no idea how it is over there now, but I sometimes wake up in the morning, wondering, no, grieving about this lost dream. It was so much worth it.

Why didn't we stay?

Playing around.

I was playing around on the internet today, I must say it's really infinite. I use to Stumble a lot (a very time consuming activity), and move from topic to topic. Then, I see my wife and children again, and I realize there's more in life than computers and internet.

So I stop now and move on to a real activity. Bye.

All is quiet on New Year's day...

... except that Israel is bombing the shit out of Palestina. 'Out of necessity' is the official version of the Israeli's. 'Obama, what do you do about it???' is the oh so stupid call from Hamas.

I think about my little daughter of two years old, still full of amazement for the world, and wonder how this all can be accounted for to our children, to anybody's children.

Hannah, you have a name that appears in all three western religions, Judaism, Christianism and Islam. I hope you will, one day, find a world where your name stands for peace over religion. Where people finally found out that none of the Jewish prophets, nor Jesus or Mohammed, ever told their people to 'go and kill a bunch of heretics'.

If belief thrives to war, I can't believe anymore.

Tsipise.