Christmas
is no longer a celebration where simplicity the first rule is. Its all about
the money. They commercialize an ancient principle.
It all
starts with the gifts. You have to buy a million gifts for whole the family.
Not just a small box with chocolates. No, you have to buy an expensive book
that you read once and put in a closet. Then you have to buy a Christmas tree;
of course this tree has to be the biggest in the whole street, full with
decoration.
Christmas
eve is then the highlight of this event. Here you can find food for a whole
army. Not just scrambled eggs with bacon but caviar, oysters and foie gras are
at the dinner table.
When you
dont do all of this you dont fit in certain families. I shall say the higher-class
families. So, the money and the power!
(Of course
this is not my point of view, this is just an opinion that you can have. And of
course we dont only eat caviar, oysters or foie gras)
Yesterday
they launched the new Facebook. There are already 500 million people that use
Facebook. So you can imagine that this is a newsworthy. Everybody is talking
about it. You can compare it with an earthquake somewhere in Asia.
Differences
Of course the
main activity stayed the same. The big difference is now in the pictures you
can see at your wall. In the new version they have more attention to the
pictures. Also when you open a profile, you can see immediately a short
biography (where they study, how old they are, relation status, )
It is also possible to indicate your
friends in to groups. You can do for example best friends/bad friends or you
can make lots of groups like school/basket/family/fools.
Critique
In previous changes to the social
network site there was often critique on Facebook. In particular, the way the
company deals with privacy issues, is often criticized.
Crossing Border
is a music and literature festival in Antwerp. It takes place in the Arenberg.
On four stages are performing simultaneously from four a clock, new names and big
names in the music and literature. This weekend was the second edition of
Crossing Border in Antwerp, it already exist for 17 years in The Hague. In The
Hague it is larger and they also make a bigger crossover to film and visual
art.
I have been
only Sunday the 21 of November.
My main
opinion about Crossing Border:
A nice and
peaceful festival, that gives a chance to a lot of new bands.
The bands
or people I saw:
Field
music: It took place in one of the smaller rooms of the Arenberg. At first
sight it look like a normal band but when you look closer you discover a complexity
of structures and rhythms. In the end a little bit boring.
The
Villagers: This band had a performance on the main stage. This group reminded
me of Mumford and Sons.
Ronald
Snijders: One of the few speakers a saw. Ronald brought 10 minutes of
absurdism. Its absurd, confusing and bizarre.
Ganglians:
They played a combination of Lo-fi, psychedelic, folk and punk. But I really
didnt like it.
Low: I fell
a sleep in my chair. But nice sound.
Basta!: One
of the coolest things I saw. It was just one bass player that works with loops
and delay. Its nice that one guy can perform you for a half an hour and it
never gets bored.
Local
Natives: An American new-folk band that is also in my top three of best acts on
CB. They played an energetic show with beautiful vocal harmonies.
Spoon: I've
only seen two songs. Those were also the two best songs of the festival. Nice
group with an excellent sound and light performance.
Last week I
have been to Hindi Zahra in the Ancienne Belgique. Hindi Zahra came from
Morocco but now lives in Paris.She started here career as a background singer and now ended this year
with a debut album called hand made. Here most popular song is: Beautiful
tango. In Belgium she is a really popular girl (most of the time girls).
She plays a
pallet of styles from roots, desert blues, reggae and gypsy to soul. But of
course each time comes the fragility of the women voice up.
The show:
Before I
came to this concert I really dont know anything about this female singer. But
I have gone home with a nice and pleasant feeling.
She started a little slowly at here acoustic guitar. After a few songs she goes
a little harder with more guitars and drums. To the end of the show the
audience exploded, with a climax at the two last songs. She got a standing
ovation.
For myself also the peak was the really last song, where she played by here own
on a guitar a beautiful song.
I also have
my compliments for the front of house mixer and the guy who controlled the
lights. They have done an appropriate performance for a perfect show.
Im going
to tell about an awesome website called RCRD LBL. I have discovered this
website by Eppo Janssen, who was giving an interview on Studio Brussel.
RCRD LBL is the first online destination for free, legal, MP3 downloads from
the hottest marquee and emergent artists. RCRD LBL delivers free daily MP3s on
its website, through its content partners, or on the RCRD of the Day daily
email newsletter. So, each day you get two brand-new songs. They dont specify
themselves in one style. There is a lot of diversity of music on this site. The
bulk of the music is, however, rock and electronic music.So metal, hardcore, reggae and typical
underground music have been less in the spotlights. Also most of time it is
about remixes of covers, music that you dont find on other music websites. But now you know immediately about the
new trends on the market. There is a lot of music that you can hear on this website
and two weeks later on the late evening line-up of Studio Brussel.
The music
magazine Wired said about this site: The future of the music industry.
Here are
some examples of music on RCRD LBL:
Chromeo, Black Mountain, Kayne West, Ra ra ra riot, The Drums, Underworld.
If you want
to check out the website: http://rcrdlbl.com/
I love to
travel, so Im going to talk about my trip next summer. This trip is going to
Asia. Its called the Trans-Siberian railway. Im going to travel by train from
Moscow to Beijing. The actually duration of the trip is 7 days but Im counting
1 month. My trip starts in Moscow were I start in the beginning of July.First I visit the city, after 3 days I
step on the train. The firsts stops are in 3 bigger cities of Siberia called
Omsk, Ekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. After the short stops in these cities I
take a bigger stop in the city Irkutsk. Nearby this student city is a big lake
called lake Baikal. This is the second most voluminous lake of the world. After
this last stop in Russia we are going to Mongolia.In Mongolia I want to sleep in a ger, a typical home for
the nomadic people of Mongolia. After a few stops in Mongolia, like Ulaanbaator
(the capitol of Mongolia), our journey goes to China. This is the final country
of my trip. In China Im going to visit Beijing.What then also my lost stop is in my trip. After this
adventure trip Im flying back to my normal life.
English blog
