Mummy-love rules!

Mum came around today to give me some sympathy and support. Stu drove to England this morning - for the sole reason that the car needs an MOT! - and will be back on Sunday. I'm on my own, which I really don't mind once in a while, but my soar throat has now developed into something more of a glandular problem, combined with a cough that is getting nastier as we speak. I basically needed some mummy-love.

Got an exam tomorrow for Russian and knew I wouldn't study properly unless I had somebody watching me study, especially cuz we're talking about my favorite language in the world here! Mums are the best. She even brought me a kilo of lemons to go with the honey and got me a cake at tea time.

Just finished watching Citizen Kane as we're discussing the film tomorrow during the Audio Visual Interpreting course. I'm normally not all into black and white films, apart from Hitchcock maybe, but this was good stuff.

Ginger sh*t with attitude

I was sent the most hilarious short film ever by email today and would love to share it with all of you!! The full version is available on YouTube.com and more info on the website of Good Bye To The Normals.

Land of Hope and Glory

Had my first Night of the Proms rehearsal yesterday. Out of the 60 choir singers, I guess I knew 3 from the old days... Things have changed. The average age has also drastically gone up. Whereas in our days, we all used to be students and 27 was considered old, the 30 year old age group is pretty much the norm now. We tried on our uniforms (a hidious light blue coloured shirt which so doesn't fit the colour of my eyes!) and wrote down who we want to share a hotel room with. I'm still planning on studying hard on Tour... and looking at the amount of time we'll be sitting on the coach, I think I might get through more pages than I'd hoped.

These are the places we're performing and doing them vaguely in a straight line to Valencia and Madrid wouldn't be too bad, however...

Health wise I'm having a little struggle at the moment. Have been working so much and sleeping so little recently, my throat and glands are feeling sorry for themselves. I've finished the big French>English translation which only needs fine-tuning now. I have an increasing amount of homework, tasks and papers to write and on top of that I still haven't returned the translations I'm supposed to do for Imperial College. And ah yes, I have a Russian exam on Thursday. Really feel like curling up under a duvet with a good book and burning all Russian books by way of protest.

WHAT?!?

So one of the kids I used to babysit when I was 16 is getting married next year????

18 all over again

So Evi asked me if I received the email from the manager of the Proms choir we used to sing in as they are short of people to go on Tour with the Night of the Proms the week before Easter... As we've been feeling all grown up lately and maturing (uhm uhm), we all of a sudden had this urge to relive our youth and go crazy again during 10 days of Proms Fun. The Night of the Proms has been a major part of my youth, the part where partying, drinking and not sleeping was 'cool', also the part where my liver got damaged and where champagne and salmon breakfast was normal, the part where we stuck our nose up if they didn't put us in the local Hilton for the night... and then I haven't even mentioned the countless nights of uninterrupted flirting in hotel bars. Ahhh, good old times.

BUT THEY ARE BACK! Only Evi realised her dad is actually getting married in the period we'd be away, so Saskia, another Promsie from those days, is going with me instead. Ten days touring through the South of France and Spain. I might actually see Courtney in Marseilles or Nice as we'll be performing there one evening as well. I'm quite excited going to Valencia and Madrid as I've never been there so I hope we won't be sitting on the coach for too long driving from one place to another. Aaah yes, the coach. That was usually the time we caught some sleep from the previous night as we'd shut the hotel bar at 6AM. It's amazing how creative one gets sleeping on a seat that is hardly big enough for your bum. This time, Saskia and I are going to be sensible though - we're going to take study material and spend our time on the coach 'underlining'... We'll see how that goes.

Car trouble (again)

In all my excitement about Courtney being here, I totally forgot to mention what happened to the car... (my fault - AGAIN). I drove back from choir practise and parked the car in the street. All week long, parking signs - *with plastic bags over them* - were put on the side of the street indicating you could(n't) park. As there were plastic bags over them, everybody parked there and so did I. I even told Stu I'd move the car in the morning as I'd feel more comfortable knowing Beast was parked nowhere near the signs. You can probably guess what happened in the morning when I went out to park Beast somewhere else...

Phoned up the police to ask what had happened with my car. The woman on the other side of the phone thought it was rather cool having towed away an English car - 'we don't tow them away often' - oh good. Had to get on my bike to the police station at the other end of town to pick up my fine, which you'll be pleased to know, I refused to except. I protested and appealed as my car was unnecessarily towed away so we'll see what happens there... After I picked up the police documents, I then had to collect Beast at the other end of town which cost us €125. We were going to buy a bed this month... NOT.

The day you could get Stu to do anything...

This is probably the most funny picture I've ever seen of Stu in my life. He's so feeling the moment here, true anger and road rage at its best!!

And yes, he is sitting IN a tree...

Stu, Bram and Danny climbed on a 'plane' in the play area and pretended to be Pilot and Passengers. Check out Bram and Danny's waiving!!

Words aren't enough to express this moment...

Surprise Surprise!!

Finally I can talk about it!! I had to bite my tongue for 3 weeks and it was so hard at times not to spoil the surprise. But I've managed to do it! My Australian friend Courtney emailed me 3 weeks ago saying she was moving to France, Avignon for the next 4 years. I was totally gobsmacked but obviously extremely excited. I hadn't seen her for 5 years!! So when she arrived in France and got a French mobile, I phoned her and arranged to meet up soon. She also knows most of the Belgian gang as I left her 5 years ago in the hands of my brother and co to show her around Belgium. We decided she would be flying over on Danny's birthday and I would arrange to all get together so they definitely wouldn't plan to go away or something... It was lovely to see Courtney again on Thursday when I picked her up from the station and it was so cool to see the look on everybody's faces when she walked into the room!!

We just got back from Mum & Dad's where we had a lasagna feast last night for Danny's, Mum's and Tessa's birthday. Mum & Dad had no idea either that she was coming so the evening was hilarious. A lot of Uno, Australian wine and loads of laughter... I can't honestly think the last time I've laughed so hard in such a short period of time. We all stayed over and went to the park this morning to play aerobie. We also had some wicked photo moments, one of them being Stu going head in first the trunk of a blown over tree. You have to see it to believe/understand it.

We're now back home and exhausted from all the partying and fresh air. Courtney is currently asleep on the sofa, Stu is trying to fix his laptop as it fully died on him yesterday and I just watched the final of the Diamond Tennis games which was Kim Clijster's last ever game in Belgium as she retires at the end of this year. She lost...

Nesting

I'm starting to feel a lot more settled now we've decided to move back to England permanently. I'm actually really looking forward moving back to Tunbridge Wells. I'm arranging things around the house in my head and deciding what is going to go and what needs to be bought. I think on top of the list is a bed. We haven't had a bed for 5 years and I'm done with sleeping on the floor. Second in row is a new sofa. I'm so fed up with the old summer school left overs, I really want something that is comfy and mine. And thirdly, we really need a new TV. Since our big one blew up some months ago, we're still watching TV on, yet another summer school left over. And as I'm having increasing difficulties looking in the distance, which of course could easily be fixed by going to the opticians and getting new glasses, the tiny 3 inch TV screen isn't helping.

I've decided to turn our dining room into my study/office/library. It's going to be one big room of intellectual activities! I'm also finally going to put up our map of the world, although I feel Japan and Alaska might need to be removed from the world to make it fit the wall...

Moving back to England also means we've finally told the Loft developers. Ouch. I'm glad we seeked proper advice from the Notary about getting our deposit back. They weren't happy when we told them we weren't going to continue with the purchase and they were even less happy when they realized they have to give us our deposit back as it says in the contract we signed.

Stu keeps on saying we should visit Did & Baxie in South Africa when we have our deposit back - I better start charging my camera and get my summer clothes out again!

Brief look at this week

Energy left after first week of second semester: 1%
Satisfaction of time schedule: 20%
Courage to get through Russian courses these last few months: 30%
Happy feeling about new courses: 50%
Russian Grammar exam mark: 40% (now there's a surprise!)
Sexiness of sexiest lecturer (just to keep me going when I'm bored): 35%
Amount of translation work: 150%
Russian Translation exam mark: 60%
Imperial College Application progress: 100%

I've run out of energy. It doesn't happen often but I'm literally dead. Drained. I was found standing asleep this morning and managed to have half an hour nap during English literature today with my eyes open. The fact that I start at 8/9AM and finish 4 out of 5 days at 7PM has hit me hard. Obviously I have gaps in between but they are filled with work at the moment. Of course I've taken on way too much work again, but I'm loving it! I've taken on a French into English technical manual which I'm really going to get into... I love learning new things and e-ID software systems are just what I wanted to know all about!! ZZzzzz.

Keeping up with my time table has been hard as I have so many contact hours this last semester. I guess my body will start getting used to waking up early and working late - at least that's what I hope it will do. I'll be screwed otherwise.

Went for dinner last night (yes, there's also a social life to keep up with) with Katrien & Tom and Evi, and I should have put my money on it - Katrien is pregnant again!!! Jeeeej - the baby is due in August.

Received an email from Imperial College today and they've sent me two Test Translations which I need to get back to them asap. Lets hope they find a second person who wants to do a Masters in Dutch, cuz otherwise I can be as good as I like, they still won't run the course just for me...

Due to popular demand...

Now tell me I don't look like my brother in the bottom picture!!

Hurray for the out-of-bed look!

I've been saying for probably over a year now I needed to go to the hairdressers. I find going to the hairdressers such a waste. I'm not very good at sitting still for such a period of time, I hate the fact I can only put my glasses back on when it's all done and it's looking nothing like you wanted it to look, they always tell me I have no hair but feathers (if there's one thing I have issues with in life, it's my hair!) and it costs far too much money for those few scissor movements. I really don't like going. I hate it. In fact, there's nothing worse I can think of then sending myself to the hairdressers.

I had the scissors in hand myself yesterday and was about to cut a fair bit off when Stu literally put me on my bike and pushed me out of the door. I was still debating with myself whether I was really going to go - or perhaps go to the optician instead (I really have long distance issues these days) - but I gave in and made my way to the hairdresser I'm 'fairly' happy with and go to every 2 years or so. They immediately had time for me (bugger!) and jumped at the chance to release me of my dreadlocks hair. The result is OK-ish. It's short. It's rather spiky. And it's self- maintaining. No hair dryers, no brush, no putting it where it should be. Perhaps it's not that bad after all...

Loft aches

We're going to phone the developers later today and tell them we're not going to buy the loft after all. I've been checking all the legal speak in the compromis we signed to definitely make sure we can back out and get our deposit back. As far as I can tell, it's there in black and white, if all the work is not done or badly done by the 31st of December 2006 the buyer has the right to withdraw from the sale. And as the work is not done - not even close to finishing (in fact nothing has changed since we saw it before Christmas - and we're the 1st of Feb today!) - and some of the work is of such poor quality, it's in our best interest not to continue with the sale. Even though it really hurts.

Another baby boy was born yesterday, Miro. The mother, Stef, was Julie's next door neighbour when we were little so I used to play with her as well. Aren't we all growing up?!?

Evi came around last night before choir rehearsal and we had a good old natter as we hadn't seen each other since we got back from England. She's started her new job at ATV (Antwerp TV Channel) which turns out to be a little more stressful than she thought it would be. Looking at her job description and responsibilities, she should be paid 10 times more than what she's currently earning!

J.K Rowling has announced the publishing date of the final Harry Potter book!!!! 21 July is booked in my diary. (very thoughtful of her to publish after the exams) I just need to wake up on the Saturday, walk to the letterbox, open up my Amazon pressie and take the rest of the weekend off... Excellent.