belgianwaffle

Archives for September 2004

Great constipation stories


Posted in: Miscellaneous

Check out the horrifying, toe-curlingly embarassing story on Dooce. Warning: this features what the author delicately calls “poop”…

Comments
adam_ball

on 18 September 2004 at 11:55

Hey what’s wrong with foreign toilets? Unless you mean those nasty older european ones with a waterless platform for you to deposit your sample on. I’m convinced they are there to stop men spending half an hour in the toliet. Who can sit there with the humm rising around you for longer than is absolutely necessary?

belgianwaffle

on 18 September 2004 at 14:19

What can I say lads, you’ll have to take it up with Dooce.

Friar Tuck

on 19 September 2004 at 00:46

How do you find these stories?! Do you google “poo” everyday? Come to think of it, that’s more exciting than what I do in my spare time.
I cannot relate to the foreign toilet problem either, although I was a little reluctant at first to use the old Italian-style hole in the floor that you squat over. I mean, how are you supposed to know if your aim is right?!

belgianwaffle

on 20 September 2004 at 10:34

No, you don’t need to if Dooce is one of your faves.

Sick baby


Posted in: Princess

When we got home last night she had a temperature.  Put her into her pyjamas only pausing to insert a suppository (oh how she loved that) and her Daddy put her to bed and remained hovering and singing over her cot for half an hour until she dropped off.

Up again at 10.30 roaring.  Up at 12.47.  Up at 3.30.  Bloody electricity gone.  Make up bottle with aid of torch which Mr. Waffle has stashed beside the bed for just this kind of emergency. Very hot baby.  Decide to dose orally with Nurofen.  She takes one look at the spoon and starts to shake all over and scream blue murder.  How can they tell that it’s medicine?  I hold her while loving spouse tilts spoon down her throat. Very serious unhappiness. Electricity comes back.  Take baby to our bed to calm her down.  Takes about half an hour. Nurofen begins to take effect.  She feels strangely invigorated and starts requesting songs.  After an hour of popular favourites including “Row, row, row your boat” and, of course “Meunier, tu dors” consents to go back to bed.  She is much better this morning but we are sad shadows of our former selves.  Oh truly, a sick baby is utter misery.

Comments
belgianwaffle

on 20 September 2004 at 10:03

For a non-parent this is very insightful.

Locotes

on 21 September 2004 at 17:07

Thank you. I try. For being so young and all…
*rolls eyes*

belgianwaffle

on 22 September 2004 at 10:48

Baby Locotes. There was an 80 year old woman at my mother’s golf club called girlie. She got the name when she was the youngest in a large family and it stuck. Maybe this will happen to you. Maybe you will be baby Locotes when we’re all 90 and you’re a sprightly 80. By the by, see Saturday’s Irish Times has an article about how Pana is all trendy now, is it true?

Locotes

on 22 September 2004 at 16:26

Hmm…I see. To be fair I’ve been highly well-behaved on all these older blogs, not mentioning my youthful appearance and how my life is still all ahead of me, but perhaps a rethink is in order?
I can’t say I read the IT (obviously enough, they’re the enemy *spit* – but I actually don’t rate it much anyway), but Pana is definitely looking well. Were you not here only a while back? Or did you not leave Dublin? Anyways, I don’t know about trendy, but it certainly is all nice and flat and paved and tarmaced. Though as usual the local scumbags are trying their best to mess it up (but I don’t talk about that here in front of readers from other counties – you understand).

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 11:24

Yes, I know the IT is the enemy and it’s very patronising about what it insists on referring to as “the provinces” but what can I do, I married out and himself likes it. Was home in August but everything was still a bit dug up and they certainly didn’t have tables out in front of Reidy’s.

Locotes

on 23 September 2004 at 12:24

I only found out when I came into work this morning, but they actually had the official opening of the street last night, with parades and music and stuffed shirts posing for pictures, etc. Don’t know how I didn’t hear about that beforehand.
Yeah the tables and chairs outside are everywhere, there’s always a big crowd outside that place. You’ve heard about the new legislation that says the tables have to be put away by 9pm or so? A lot of fuss about it, not too bothered myself as I don’t smoke – MUCH more bothered about Michael Martin’s new scheme to raise alcohol prices – as if we weren’t being scammed enough. Grrr.

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 14:53

Loc, you’re joking, they have to put the tables away. Why? Dutifully watched the official opening on RTE on the computer but a bit difficult to see and fuzzy so not really able to appreciate the grandeur of the street. Liked the woman who said “yeah, they got a Spanish architect to do it, it’s like something you’d see in Santa Ponza but I suppose we’ll have to live with it.”

Locotes

on 23 September 2004 at 18:19

Please tell me that’s a true quote. Classic. She should know if she’s a true Northsider, seeing as she probably spends every summer there.
Not joking about the tables and chairs, it all has to be brought indoors at 9pm – to prevent chances of ‘public disorder’, i.e. they’re afraid some feen will get a chair across the head after a disagreement. You can see what they mean I guess, but it went down very badly.

Locotes

on 23 September 2004 at 18:30

Seeing as the RTE website let you down, this might help a bit. Check here for People’s Republic pictures of the opening, and here for their article after the roadworks finished last month. Hilarious. Never say I don’t do anything for you.
😉

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 22:05

Not only is the quote true but here is the link – http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0922/cork.html. Don’t say I never do anything for you and the squirrel. And NO, I have not had a bad experience with a squirrel. Enjoyed the PRC stuff. Ta.

What scares the Princess?


Posted in: Princess

You know she’s scared because she clutches her heart and starts to shake.

Mechanical noises: washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher, hoover (oh God, the terror when she sees the hoover, let alone hears it, is pathetic), ringing telephones, including mobile telephones, loud humming from any mechanical device (e.g. supermarket fridge).

Car noises: backfiring, breaking suddenly, beeping horns, revving up, police and ambulance sirens.

Enclosed spaces without natural light: the cellar, public toilets, lifts.

Animals: dogs, cats, donkeys, rabbits, horses, cows, goats, sheep, chickens.

Illustrations of animals: dogs, horses (have you any idea how many books for small children feature these animals?)

Her own shadow (not a big problem in Belgium in Autumn/Winter mercifully).

Thermometers, facecloths, suppositories and the spoon from the baby nurofen bottle.  Yes, since you ask, she’s still sick.

Comments
silveretta

on 20 September 2004 at 15:12

Anyone who is all fearty when faced with a hoover, washing machine, tumble drier, etc, sounds like she’s got her head screwed on right to me. Buy her a maid and she’ll soon overcome her fears.

Locotes

on 21 September 2004 at 17:49

I’m not quite sure what to make of all that. It’s ok when she’s small, but you better get her over all these things by the time she’s 20 or she’ll have serious issues. So she doesn’t just get a fright and move on, she’s actually scared of these things all the time?

belgianwaffle

on 22 September 2004 at 10:44

Krista, stop it, you’re scaring me (clutches heart and shakes). Have googled “sensory integration” and am terrified. Silver, much more inclined to go with your views. Locotes, well, not everything all the time but she is a nervous little child, I blame her father.

emmm

on 22 September 2004 at 11:34

belgian, don’t worry, i am 24 and i am still terrified of loud noises – so much so my boyfriend automatically glances at me to check I am okay if there is a bang in the street. I can just about watch fireworks now, but when I was younger I’d hide inside. I’m also terrified to the point of tears by seagulls if they get anywhere near me, and by motorbikes. If I even see a motorbike I can feel my heart pounding and I do shake a bit.
It’s a big joke that I’m nervous of things and it hasn’t affected me really.
My dad used to scare me ‘for fun’ when I was little. Suddenly growling if I stroked his beard or shouting ‘BANG!!’ if I was touching a socket or something. He only stopped doing it because once I jumped so voilently I hit myself in the nose and got a nosebleed.
I was one of those kids that hated, hated, hated being thrown in the air and carried around on shoulders etc.
To be fair, I am terribly clumsy (this is also a big joke – ‘don’t let Em touch anything important!’) and not very good at dance etc and once a counsellor told me I had self-esteem issues but I don’t think I do.
So, basically, ummm – your kid is cute. Don’t worry too much.

belgianwaffle

on 22 September 2004 at 12:50

Em, this is very, very comforting. Thank you. She’s alright on the being thrown in the air thing (actually she likes that) but there’s no doubt that she hates loud noises. I think that she gets it from my father. He has started refusing to travel by air because he hates the noise of the PA systems so much. Have you any idea how long it takes to get from Cork to Brussels travelling by train and boat? Actually, not as long as you might think, but still, a while.

jan

on 23 September 2004 at 03:26

Glad to hear I’m not the only one with a nervous child. My little girl (age 3) sounds a lot like yours–noises tend to startle and distract her. She is absolutely petrified of toys that make noise, which means we’ve had to disable every toy with a battery in it.
Oddly, she loves fireworks and amusement parks, so it’s not just noise, it seems to be only particular noises.
And, yes, she does have some sensory integration issues, but it’s really not as scary as you would believe from your reading (I believe a previous generation would have just called her a timid child and left it at that, but at least here in the U.S., we like to put labels on our kids and try to “fix” them).
I’m sure your princess is just fine–she looks like a beautiful and charming baby!
on 23 September 2004 at 04:33

What happens when they fire the cannons on her Pirate ship? 🙂

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 11:20

Jan, I am much comforted, thank you. Our baby seems to be a happy enough child on the whole, so fingers crossed she won’t need “fixing”.
ChaOtic, they use a silencer.

But is it art?


Posted in: Reading etc.

“This sculpture was conceived by the artist as a stage scene.  By opposition of edges and colours she suggests the multiple horixons of the singer, being a private man as well as a show man.”

Is this rubbish or have I got a closed mind?

Comments
cha0tic

on 20 September 2004 at 11:57

It looked like a high tech porta loo from the red side. Though I did like the way that you could see through it from the silver side. I dunno about the multiple horizons & stuff though.

belgianwaffle

on 22 September 2004 at 11:02

HJB, I’m with you. Cha0tic, am impressed by your artiness.

Sleep tight


Posted in: Princess

This morning, the Princess picked up her butterfly and cradled it in her arms making a highpitched noise that might be interpreted by the charitable as singing.  I looked at her and she pointed at the butterfly “dodo”.  “Oh” I said “is the butterfly going to sleep?”  She looked at me balefully, put her finger to her lips and hissed “Shh”. Two can play at that game. I picked up the butterfly and said “waah, waah, no, no”. She giggled and grabbed the butterfly back, put it in a cardboard box, patted it on the head and said firmly “dodo”. She then took my hand and walked me away. I think that, perhaps, my little girl might like a doll for Christmas.

Comments
Locotes

on 22 September 2004 at 16:40

I still think it’s that extinct bird she’s after. Someone must have left the Natural Geographic channel on in front of her one night…

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 11:18

Yes, silver, purely for her benefit. And I think she might like a doll’s house as well. Though, obviously, it would have to be kept out of her reach, in case she swallowed the furniture.
Hmm, maybe Locotes.

Belgium’s rich tapestry of linguistic diversity


Posted in: Belgium

I may have said this before, but Belgium is a strange place.  One of the strangest things about it is how everything divides along linguistic fault lines.  As someone who comes from a country where, at least in part, many things divide along religious fault lines you would think that I might be used to this kind of thing, but no.

Any event in Belgium is a matter of linguistic divide, I offer the following random examples:

Many years ago, before we had a baby and went out occasionally Mr. Waffle and I went to a concert in Ghent, to see the American band Cake.  Ghent is Flemish speaking. This subtlety was lost on the band who said “Bonsoir Ghent” and were greeted, to their surprise, by sullen silence and a couple of boos (francophones were obviously too scared to open their mouths). Baffled band.  Someone near the stage whispered into the lead singer’s ear. “Gooie avond Gent” said he. Explosion of delight, riotous applause. The lead singer then said in English what most of us foreigners think but would NEVER say “this linguistic division is ridiculous, you’ll end up like the Balkans, if you go on like this”.  This went down like a lead balloon, understandably enough, so they just went on and played to the surly crowd.

Once, I was in the post office and there was a big queue and this woman skipped to the front of the queue to ask whether she could have a form and fill it in while in the queue. No.  Now, this is annoying. But this being Belgium, it became a question of language. He was only refusing to give her the form because she was a francophone and there was no point him denying it (he was a Flemish speaker) because she knew for a fact that Flemish speakers got all the jobs in the post office. Big row.

Recently, DHL have been looking to increase the number of flights into Brussels airport.  This has caused controversy because, you know, it’s a bit unpleasant having aeroplanes flying over your house in the middle of the night, but on the other hand DHL provides lots of jobs etc.  I’m not sure that I have understood all the details but on to this basic fact I have heard the following linguistic elements being grafted:

– it is suggested that the flights should go over the Brussels region rather than Flanders because the Brussels region is the hub that encourages the business. Please note that Brussels is officially bilingual, in reality it is largely francophone and it is situated in Flanders which is Flemish speaking, think of it as like West Berlin before the wall came down – it has its own special region, the Brussels region, which is separate from Flanders – the Flemish do not like this much, they disapprove of Brussels. You might also like to note that Brussels airport is in fact located in Flanders and not in the Brussels region. Are you still with me?

– it is suggested that flights are being deliberately routed over the “communes à facilité”. Stay with me here. Brussels is expanding. Beyond the Brussels region. It’s full of eurocrats and fat cat internationals and we like living in the distant suburbs us eurocrats and fat cat internationals (though not us Waffles, I hasten to add, we live in Brussels). And the distant suburbs are Flemish. But we don’t speak any Flemish, we get by in French so with great reluctance the Flemish agreed to the “communes à facilité”, suburbs where you could do business in French with the local authorities.  But only for a couple of years until your Flemish got up to scratch. But the Flemish are not pleased and they worry that the Flemish countryside will be overrun by these ignorant foreigners who will force them all to speak French.  Now the latest conspiracy theory which the French speakers offer goes as follows – the DHL flights will be routed over the communes de facilite driving down prices and driving the internationals and French speakers out leaving the area free for hordes of Flemish people to come in, buy up the property and turn these areas back into proper Flemish speaking zones.  What the DHL people make of this, I have no idea.

– DHL provides Belgium with a lot of jobs and a lot of these are low skill, menial jobs so they go the employment agencies and sweep up a lot of people. Good for Belgium?  NO. Only good for Flanders because they only go to the Flemish speaking employment agencies. Who knows what the truth of this matter is? You would have thought good for Flanders would be good for Belgium anyway because as any Flemish speaker will tell you they are dead from propping up the financially feeble French speaking region (Wallonia) with their thriving economy. But it doesn’t really work like that.

Have no idea what the latest on the DHL thing is but the Belgian PM (a Flemish speaker, since you ask) emerged from a 20 hour meeting yesterday saying they couldn’t reach agreement, I suspect it may be a long haul.  Meanwhile DHL are allegedly looking at the attractions of Germany for their European hub.

I have other stories along these linguistic lines but I will save them for another day, in case you get too, too excited.

Comments
dmts

on 22 September 2004 at 13:27

and we’ve got four language lines in Switzerland – Italian, German, French and Romansch…but Romansch is only spoken by about 5% of the population.

belgianwaffle

on 23 September 2004 at 11:16

Norah, v. interesting might be pushing it, but there you go, you will be able to cater to Belgian sensibilities whenever you meet one. By the by, here’s more of it from the Economist.”The Belgian government is once again riven by infighting. The issue, as ever, is the demand by Dutch-speakers for more power to be devolved to Flanders. Not surprisingly, Wallonia, the French-speaking half of the country, is resisting. The problem this time is an obscure battle over parliamentary constituencies on the borders of Brussels, where French and Dutch-speakers rub against each other. But the real issue is the Francophones’ fear that the richer Dutch-speaking half of the country is intent on secession. That this debate continues to take place in a city dedicated to the promotion of European unity is an irony lost on the participants.”
Heather, we have German as well, I just didn’t mention them because they seem like a peaceable minority and no one appears to believe that they get all the best jobs.