Jouney to ABSOLUTION :-)

I have a lot of time at work at the moment, so a part from working on creating a whole website dedicated to foods and cooking only (well, if I can't become a chef, I can still be a chef in my very own kitchen, no? :-)), I am spending time on thinking of what I want to do or where I have always dreamt of being or travelled to.

Some ideas came across my mind yesterday, and so I sent an email to my best friend, asking if she wanted to join me. The thing is the more you are stucked with boredom, the more you want to do something exciting and unusual. Yes, I want to do a journey that I will remember the rest of my life, so if later I settle down, I don't regret (after all, we should never let regrets come into our life).

Having said that, big preparation for the next couple of months for where we are going to requires a lot of physical and mental strengths, but the outcome is gonna be so big. I and my best friend hope that we will find ourselves (not that we are completely lost or anything, things just do not go the way we plan), it also is a good idea to get a break from daily mundanes and responsibilities. Sound very spiritual, rite?-well, that is the whole purpose. Maybe we are completely out of our minds but really you don't get younger to start living your dreams, and have adventures...

So, if things go well, I hope we can depart by April next year, will be on the road for a couple of months. Maybe I will come back with a husband :-) Who knows?

To give or not to give?

I have to admit that I have been quite lazy with posting lately even though my mind is full with thoughts, with news, and I have been busy reading...The weather has been too nice to sit in with my laptop and to be in town, breath in the polluted hot air, so I participated in hiking. We did about 25km of walking on Sunday, and the last kms were a torture for some of us :-) "C'mon, we walked a lot already". Somehow, I enjoyed the pain and the psychological fight with my brain to overcome that pain, I also agree that what is the point to sit in the train for two hours, and spend only a short time in the nature.

Anyway, each of us has our own opinions on things. Last evening, I went to check out Harry Potter :-). Well, i have not read the book, but I saw all the movies that were out, and liked them. BTW, "The Transformers" also rules, luv it (I mean it was fun and easy to watch, Hollywood kind of movie :-)), don't expect much from it). Talking about reading, I read a lot recently, my current book is "This book will save your life"-sound like a book for the century, isn't it? It is. if you have read "Catch 22" (which I just finished before this book) or "Catcher in the Rye", you will realise how much similar these books are to each other. It is all about our generation, our youth, lifestyles...And I finished the funniest book of all the shopaholic book series that I have "Shopaholic and baby".

Okey, back to the main subject, last Friday, when I was walking home, there was a man who stopped me (he was with his wife and two children), asked "do you speak English?". They looked so lost, and so unfortunate, I said "yes". He started explaining that he needed to get back to Antwerp, and had no money, if I could give him 40Eur. I was shocked, not only he asked for money, he is asking for a lot of money. It was not the first time that someone asked for money for this reason. The first thought came to my brain was that "are you crazy or what? just walk away, this is a trap like any others that happened before", but then there is a better Thao talking "What if they really need help, and you walk away?" So, I said to the man "I am sorry, I don't have 40Eur, I have only 20Eur, is it ok?" He said "yes, I will ask some people for the rest". I gave him 20Eur, he bowed several times, and said "Thank you Madame, thank you madame, god bless you", I joked "I hope so" :-)

Of course, when I told my uncle the story, he laughed and said "well, you stupid, another time you fell into their trap". Even though it did hit me that they might lie to me, but I prefer to not let the situation where someone needed help, and i did not offer happen. I think we should have faith that maybe people do fall into difficulties and they do need assistance. Sometimes i think I can just save that money that I give to people like them to someone else who might need them more, but how can you define who need more? and that the person in front of you need help right away. Why is it too difficult for us to give something away? Is it in our nature to be greedy and selfish? if so, I think it already is the end of our race!

I think of the the reportage that my uncle saw on TV about the people of Iraq, they are now refugees, the country is a mess, people steal, and kill to live. Maybe in a couple of years, the word "peace" and "prosperity" will disappear from our children vocabulary. What they will learn is probably "freedom" "techonology", "internet"...

Couleur Cafe-The Roots

Help! my kajak abandons me :-)

Phew! last few weeks were crazy. I went to check out Couleur cafe, and saw some awesome concerts, I liked the one of the Roots very much. Last Sat, I spent my whole day in Antwerp for sales, but in the end I didn't find anything that was within budget, and cool. Maybe I have become too economical or have prices just went up too high? I have to say there are many things nice stuffs, but if you don't have a proper job, I don't feel like spending a couple of hundred of Euros on clothes. A few weeks ago when I went shopping for foods, and when I came out, the bill was almost 200Euros, mind you, it's not like we eat super expensive stuffs or anything, but when you compare, it's more than 8000 Belgian francs just for our stomach in a week! Yeah, I stopped comparing the price in Eur and BF for a long time like many of us did, but because the shop left the price in Eur and in BF, it just hit me that I ate too much :-)

I won't bother you, my faithful readers and dearest friends with the boring "money talk", let's me tell you the kajak story last Sunday :-). I organised the kajak trip to Dinant for a group of 12, the start of the trip was already a big crazy, then things began getting right, but after the lunch break, and a couple of paddles haft way to the end, me and my uncle fell into the strong, cold streams, and we never saw our kajak again :-). The water stream was extremely violent, the kajak had a hole, so it was filled up with water, at some points, it started sinking and turned upside down (maybe it did not like us). I shouted to my uncle, who was trying to get his sandals "get the kajak, get the kajak" but it was too late, the water carried it away too far, and the damn water was too cold, and the stones at the bottom hurted our feets, we were helped to get to the bank, and I rescued our paddles (still hoping that we will able to kajak...). My friends passed, and I called out to them to get the kajak for us. After a few attempts, we ended up walking 4km through the forest to the nearest train station (thank God that there was a train, otherwise we would have waited for another hour), and got the back to the starting point where I saw my friends reaching the end of their water journey without me :-(. So, we were cheered up by a couple of beers, and headed back to Brussels for a great Indo-Pakistan dinner.

Anyway, I hope the coming weekend will be less unfortunate, and I am already looking forward to it.