Things I like on a Wednesday – part II

The wonderful story of the last globemaker (via here)

The Absence of Water – photo series by Gigi Cifali (via here)

Retro travel posters inspired by movie locations (via here)

Sunglasses by Quay Eyeware

Vresse-sur-Semois

In November, a high school friend of mine invited me and my boyfriend to go on a little trip to Vresse-sur-Semois, a small picturesque town in the South of Belgium. She hired a chalet in the woods, and planned a nice carefree-weekend, where no one had to worry about assignments, deadlines and studying for midterms. It was exactly what I needed, so I immediately said yes. A couple of weeks later, we were on the road to nature.

On our first day, we started our walk through the woods. What we thought would be a chill stroll in the afternoon, turned out to be a 10km-hike, where we probably climbed to the highest point of the hills in Vresse.

Once we got to the top, our sore legs were forgotten once we saw this amazing view of the town.

After that, the climb down began. No more paved roads, but steep downhill through the forest. I have to admit, I slipped a couple of times. Buying Dr. Martens boots instead of hiking shoes probably wasn’t such a good idea.

I’ve been longing to go back to this place, especially now with deadlines and midterms coming up. I’m sure I’ll be back one day, when I’ll be in desperate need of another carefree-weekend.

Book reviews: Don Quichote & Night Film

As many of you may (or may not) know, I love to read books (fiction books that is, never really ventured into non-fiction territory to be honest). My pile of to-read-books has shrunk a little bit since my last update, so I thought I would share my thoughts about two books I’ve read the past couple of months.

There are some spoilers in these reviews, so if you want to read any of these books without prejudice, I suggest you skip these!

1. Don Quichote – Cervantes
This one is a lie actually: I haven’t finished it. I stranded on page 111 of this 785-page thick book a couple of weeks ago and I just had to put it down for a while. The story is about a Spanish nobleman who’s obsessed with tales of medieval chivalry, when one day he decides to take matter into his own hands and become the greatest knight of La Mancha. His new purpose in life is to fight injustice and to one day become very famous for his good deeds. Together with his squire, Sancho Panza, he hits the road fighting giants, criminals and joining armies in the greatest fight of their lives. Or at least he thinks so. In reality he’s fighting windmills, priests and tries to butcher a flock of sheep. Although this all sounds very promising, nothing really happens besides him and his squire getting beat up again, and again, and again and again. The repetitiveness of the story annoys me so much that I just had to take a break. I should maybe give it some slack as it is an almost 400-year old story and is in no way in compliance with ‘literature standards‘ these days, but with still a rough 600 pages to go, I was afraid I wouldn’t get much more out of it than Don Quichote, getting his ass kicked due to his brain gone insane. I know I should persevere and read that book to the last page, and one day I will. But for now I just have other interesting books lying around that don’t take me months to finish.

2. Night Film – Marisha Pessl
Oh how I’ve waited for this followup to Special Topics in Calamity Physics, basically my holy grail book in high school. You can imagine expectations were very high and, to be honest, weren’t entirely fulfilled. The story itself immediately got me hooked: disgraced journalist Scott McGrath investigates the death of Ashley Cordova, daughter of the infamous and mysterious director Stanislas Cordiva, known for his dark and macabre movies and adored by hundreds of fans called Cordovites. Scott and his two sidekicks are trying to figure out the truth, piece by piece, and get sucked into this world of demonic withcraft – and that’s where I got lost. I just couldn’t believe that this dark magical world, where Marish Pessl was leading me into, was true. I just couldn’t, not after reading Special Topics, which to me had a total different mindset than Night Film, one that, I believe, suited me better. So when at the end of the book, the reader got to choose between two different realities – the dark magical truth or the rational scientific truth – I chose 100% for the second believable reality.

This ultimatum reminded me of Life of Pi (one of the best stories I’ve read btw. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t watch it and read the book instead), where, after the revelation that Pi’s story might not be the incredible journey he’s told you about, your mind is just blown and you can’t think about anything else or pick up another book after this huge bomb that has dropped and shattered your beliefs and everything you thought was real.
Well, I didn’t have this at all with Night Film, and this is why this book wasn’t such a hit for me. It put so much effort into trying to make us believe that his whole fucked up history about spells and witchcraft was true, that, when it turned out that there might be a different explanation to it, I was just like: oh, thought so. And that was it. No bomb, no minds that were blown, no disbelief.
Is Night Film therefore a bad read? No, it’s not. If you want to get lost and get carried away, you should definitely give it a try. Will it be the best thing you’ve ever and are going to read? Probably not.

Lastly, there’s actually another book that’s disappeared from my to-read-pile, and that is Heldere Hemel by Tom Lanoye. I don’t think it has been translated into English, so I’m going to keep it short: the story is based on an accident that occurred in 1989, when an unmanned Russian jet fighter crashed into a house in rural Belgium. The story is told from the viewpoint of different characters: the pilot of the jet, two people working at NATO and Vera, resident of said house and currently trying to separate from her cheating husband, and their hippie-son. With its 92 pages it is a short, but enjoyable read. I wasn’t a big fan of Belgian/Dutch author to be honest: based upon books I’ve read in high school, I thought of Duth/Belgian literature as mostly depressing, pessimistic and some of them were just oozing with sexual frustration. But this book surprised me and made me realize that I definitely have lived with a wrong prejudice about Dutch/Belgian literature for years and that I should give them another chance. Which I have btw! Started reading Post Mortem by Peter Terrin yesterday. – So proud of myself.

Any of you had any good reads the past couple of months? Any life changing or disappointing stories you absolutely want to share? Feel free to do so!

Talk to you next time!
Janice

Well hi there

Long time no see, huh? To be honest, I knew this was going to happen, the neglect of my blog for over two months after the semester ended. I can give you 34835455 reasons why this happened, but I’ve decided to list all of the things I’ve been doing this summer instead. You can decide for yourselves which of these can pass as a good excuse for not updating this blog.

• worked the entire month of July on my thesis about online television. I got so sick and tired of it, that I wanted to burn my copy immediately after it was finished.
• worked for six weeks straight in August and September as an accounting support at a big ass firm.
• realized this summer job was way more interesting than most of the stuff I’ve learned the last four years during my Communications studies, and decided to enroll in another master’s degree. This time it’s Business Economics.
• Moved everything from my previous, crappy student apartment back home in July, only to move back to Ghent in September into a new and awesome duplex together with my boyfriend. I’m kind of digging this whole living-together-and-being-homey kind of situation.
• Oh, I graduated. It was about time.
• Tomorrow I’ll have my first course of the new semester. It’s called Financial reporting in IFRS context. I have no idea what that means, but I’m so excited!
• And as you probably can see, no trips or travels have been made during my online absence. I think I can officially state that the summer of 2013 has been the least exciting holiday I’ve ever had in my entire life. Maybe that’s why there were no updates, because there simply was nothing interesting to report (unless you want a documented account of my growing frustration during the different stages of my thesis writing process).

How was your summer? Did you have as much fun as I did (sarcasm)? I hope not!

I’ll leave you with a nice polaroid of me and my friend Guyentie at our graduation ceremony:

 

byeeeee!

 

The Diana

One thing you need to know about me, is that I love taking pictures. Ever since I bought my DSLR, I try to always bring it with me, wherever I go, so I can shoot the most random things that are happening around me. I might not be good at it, but I don’t friggin’ care. I love snapping pictures. If I haven’t used my camera for a while, I have this growing urge to drop everything, grab my camera and just go out and shoot whatever and whomever I encounter.

About a year ago, I got myself my first (of many) analogue camera: Lomography’s Diana F+. I was drawn to it by the romantic and blurry square pictures it produces. When I encountered this mint green version at Urban Outfitters, something clicked in my head and I immediately took it to the counter. Haven’t had a single regret buying it

Now, the Diana F+ is not an ordinary camera. It doesn’t work like a digital camera, nor a regular SLR for that matter. You have to get to know the camera very, very well in order to take those awesome pictures you see appearing on the lomography-website. And after shooting four rolls of 120mm-film, I can honestly say that I still have a lot to learn about this little plastic toy. Main problem I encountered is the darkness of the photo’s. Having a flash with you at all times, especially when it’s late in the evening or if you want to shoot inside, is a must. Second thing I’ve learned, those little plastic frames you get with your camera? Very important if you don’t want your photo’s to overlap. Third, the zoom-function is not to be trusted. And lastly, the too blurry pictures you get, even though you haven’t shot a single photo on the B-setting, might be caused by the higher ISO. Keeping these things in mind, I hope my future Diana-photo’s will turn out perfect and almost exactly as I want them to. Practice makes perfect, right?

Overall, I’m quite content with the way the photo’s of my last three rolls turned out. I expected more of them to have failed or being too dark. I do regret not keeping an eye out for those frames, although the slightly increased level of intoxication at my Halloween-party might be the cause of that. Anyway, enough with the twaddle, on to those photo’s!

More photo’s to be found here.

Things I like on a Wednesday

Collages by a Belgian artist called Sammy Slabbink. More here and here

Book Paintings by Ekaterina Panikanova. Via Honestly WTF, and more here.

This raincoat by Petit Bateau. Picture by Niotillfem.

This story by the Statue of Liberty being made in Paris, with original photo’s and drawings from that time. More to be found on this lovely blog called Messy Nessy Chic.

The fall/winter collection by Kira Plastinina for Lublu. More here.

Yesterday I went to see Patti Smith in Bruges and it was amazing. Patti Smith seriously is one of the most genuine and talented artists out there. Her voice is incredible, her humbleness is real, her jokes are witty and she’s incredible on stage, just doing what she wants and not giving a fuck about what other people might think. Found some footage of the concert on Youtube here and here , but it really doesn’t do her voice and the performance justice. I’d say, if you ever get a chance to see her live, go and order tickets. You won’t regret it, I promise.

Sunny day in June

Summer finally decided to hit Ghent, so my boyfriend and I decided to take a break from analyzing data and went into town

We decided on a whim to visit the Belfry, one of Ghent’s famous medieval towers that overlooks the city. The fact that I’ve been living in Ghent for four years now without having a decent view of the city centre, felt like such a shame to me, that I decided now was the time to be all touristy and climb up the tower to the top.

The Saint Bavo Cathedral, almost packed and ready to be renovated.

On the other side, you can see the Saint Nicholas’ Church. The recently constructed park in front of it, is where we had our little afternoon pick nick.

We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon with Starbucks Frappuccino’s and a very disgusting snack which is supposed to be an apple donut (Do not get this, ever! It’s so bad). I also started reading the 1Q84-trilogy by Haruki Murakami. I know, I’m pretty late to jump on the band wagon, but better late than never right? I’m loving the story so far, and been very intrigued by the personalities of Aomame and Fuka-Eri. It’s been a constant in my life: whenever I’m reading a book or seeing a movie or series, either the very powerful girls and women or the very bizarre and strange ones are my favorites.

❤

Enjoy the rest of your week. Talk to you soon xx

Isbells @ Huiskamer Ernest

So… I’m back! I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. I’m currently working on my thesis, and I can’t wait for it to be finished so I can hand it in and never have to look at it again! Think I took too much on my plate by doing too much research and using too many different research methods… In a month and a half I will (hopefully) be finished and (hopefully) have passed so I can graduate and finally have my master’s degree in Communication sciences.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Amelie and I visited this new coffee place in Ghent, called Huiskamer Ernest. This coffee bar simply wants to be a cozy and artsy living room in the city, where you can relax, hang out with your friends, read, study, work, etc… They organize concerts and workshops as well, and on the 2nd of June, Amelie and I went to see Isbells.

Isbells is a Belgian band which is mostly known for its melancholic pop-folk songs. To be honest, I didn’t know that many songs, but I still had a great time. They’re amazing live and the music fit perfectly in the intimate atmosphere Huiskamer Ernest advocates. It literally felt like Isbells was performing a private concert in your living room.

For all of you who don’t know the band, here’s a live performance of their song ‘Heading For The Newborn’ at our youth radio station Studio Brussel. Couldn’t find any of the footage taken at Huiskamer Ernest online, so you’ll have to do with this. You can find more about them here and here and here.

Hope you enjoyed and talk to you soon!

Janice

De neus van Pinokkio

On Wednesday, my friends and I headed to the recordings of a Flemish game show called De Neus van Pinokkio (literally translated: Pinocchio’s nose). I guess everyone knows the story about Pinocchio, the little wooden puppet whose nose would grow every time he told a lie. The program is named after the story, because it’s basically all about lies. The panel tells the public different stories – through photo’s, video footage, re-enactment and witnesses. It’s the public’s task to guess which one is correct and which one is false.

To be honest, I hadn’t seen the program before I went to the recordings. I’m not that much of a TV-fanatic (TV in the sense of the classic TV-screen. Online television on the other hand, that’s another thing). So the main reason why I decided to attend these recordings, was to see the whole behind-the-scenes-action and to have a good get-together with friends.

At 17:24 we left by train to Vilvoorde, where the recordings took place. We decided to have dinner on the train.

We were welcomed by a free drink while we had to wait for the recordings to start

And then finally we were able to enter the venue. I think I had one of the worst seats in the venue, I couldn’t see a thing that was happening on the platform in the middle (or maybe that’s just because I’m short). Luckily there were screens around the venue, so I could actually see some of the things they were talking about.

I got separated from Guyentie, Tjalda and Amelie, who got a seat in another section.

My boyfriend was behind me during the show. As you can see, each participant had three signs, each sign representing one of the stories. We had to vote for the story which we thought was true, by putting the corresponding sign up in the air and pressing some buttons on a little machine we had as well (to make counting the answers a bit easier).

Oh, hi!

I think I got almost half of the answers correct. Which is not that bad, considering I’m the worst at detecting lies

Around 11pm we managed to get a train back to Ghent in what could be the creepiest station I’ve ever been. I’m sure it used to be a more glorious, and less neglected, piece of architecture back in the days. Hopefully someone’s planning on renovating these neo-renaissance platforms.

How about you guys? Ever attended recordings of a show as well?

Bloglovin’

Just a quick update to let you guys know you can follow my blog with Bloglovin, if you’d like!