1 & 1/2 bits of good news and an example of how awkward I find life.

1- I've been asked to guest post! These are available at the links below if you want to read them, I'm personally just really excited about the fact that they're even there, and it's just crazy that something I wrote would ever look that good and professional.

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/taken-2-movie-2012-review-more-of-the-same-in-a-good-way/

http://www.sdmmovies.com/2012/11/23/28-days-later-2002-film-review/

...and 1/2 - The lovely people at Expatica wanted to advertise with me, unfortunately because of the way Wordpress is (i.e. free) I can't change the HTML set-up etc. etc. so this wasn't possible (it's like a you can live here but you can't paint the walls kind of deal), but it was very sweet of them to ask and I hope I get the chance to work with them in the future.

And the example of how awkward I find life:

This happened when I was going to a gig last Tuesday (discovered an awesome band, there will be a video below).

So I don't um, pay for public transport here, basically they just have machines on the street/metro stations where you can buy tickets but they don't actually check if you have them and it's expensive and I'm poor blah blah. I'm going to defend myself here by saying that I can only use public transport about 3 times a week max. and I walk everywhere else I need to go every other time. Although realistically I don't actually feel that guilty about it because I watch basically everyone else who gets on the bus/tram/metro do exactly the same thing. Sorry STIB/the Belgian economy.

But sometimes they do have people that check tickets, and I thought I'd spotted one of these people, so I stood up to get off hoping he wouldn't check me if I was leaving the bus, but whilst I was stood up it came to my attention he wasn't checking tickets, just asking people where they were going to so the bus company could improve their services. However, because I have absolutely no control over my social awkwardness I obviously felt compelled to get off the bus anyway because I'd been stood by the doors for so long that if I just sat back down it would look weird. So I travelled about 20 metres and had to walk the rest of the way, for no reason other than not wanting to look weird in front of all of about 5 people. I guess that's what you get for cheating the system whilst also having no social skills.

This is the band I was talking about, I'm not really a fan of the bees myself, but almost everyone I've shown this to (and apparently everyone on YouTube) has disagreed with me, so enjoy.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/a_bAQZATCTM]

Also a lot of people have been sharing this around but it's so good I feel I should do it too.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/8nif01WZ9aI]

Have a lovely last week of November :)

xx

No spoilers here - just good food.

 

Look how beautiful Brussels is in the autumn! It's still like 20°C here at the moment, which is even better. I really feel that if it was always this temperature and looked this good then I'd stay here forever, but realistically I'm just waiting for winter to return with a vengeance.

Okay so I saw Taken 2 over the weekend, it was really good, that's all I'm saying.

There is a post coming but that probably won't be for another month or so, to prevent the punches in the face that I would totally deserve if I completely ruined the film for anyone who reads my blog.

I also made a very dangerous discovery:

And it's only €0.15. They shouldn't make something that's so tempting that cheap, especially not when 6 apples are like €3 or something ridiculous. But luckily after you've eaten one you can't  imagine eating anything sweet ever again, so as food, it more than does its job, and you definitely couldn't have too many of them. And I'm actually doing exercise now, so I don't feel that bad - actually, what am I saying, I never feel bad when it comes to food. My bad eating habits are definitely the worst symptom of my limbo financial situation where I have no idea how much I'm going to have to live off for the next 8 months - to say I go to what is now the third best University in the country, they sure take their sweet time to respond to their students. Clearly time taken to (helpfully) reply to emails was not one of the criteria.

They've started selling Christmas themed biscuits in the Delhaize now, so if you hadn't already noticed, Christmas is coming. Usually I'm not excited this early but I'm travelling home on the night of Halloween and they don't celebrate Bonfire Night here for obvious reasons so it's the only winter holiday I really have this year. And it's going to be the first time in about 5 years (seriously, what have I been doing with my life) that I won't spend Christmas tidying gift displays and getting up at 5am on Boxing Day (okay really, I didn't realise how awful that was until I saw it written down). I'm not even going to mention the fact I won't have to do any revision, because that's just mean.

Apparently this post is almost entirely about food because I'm now going to talk a bit about the amazing Romanian food I had for lunch (and dinner) at the event I went to on Saturday. Salată de vinete is mashed aubergine and chopped onions, it's amazing on bread, pancakes with ham and cheese, eggs stuffed with pâté and a side dish made with tomatoes and root vegetables. Dessert was pastry filled with cream (best description I can think of) and what were basically Hobnobs but they were home made so obviously ten times more amazing. Overall, I had two very good meals from that food. Thanks Romania.

Continuing the theme, the crisp flavours here are just baffling, so they use blue for paprika and green for pickles, which is...fine I guess, I mean blue for paprika is a weird choice but whatever. But the issue is really that those are the only flavours you can get, which means someone at Walkers/Lays decided that Belgium didn't need a variety of crisp flavours, they needed Paprika, Pickle, Naturel and nothing else. And now they've got this special edition hamburger flavour which is not only the worst thing I can imagine but its also taking up space which could be used for other normal flavours. I don't even like crisps that much, but it bothered me that should I ever crave them, I'd have incredibly limited options.

I think that's pretty much it.

Oh and I'm going home in like 8 days.  So excited.

Lots of love!

xx