Wahhhh

Predictably, the first weekend I have that involves a fair amount of laxity in the stress department I've got wildly sick - that clever body of mine saving it all up for when I have the leisure to huddle in the executive suite for a day or two, and when the F-word is feeling indulgent enough to get groceries and DVDs. It's not so pleasant - running a temperature and having all this new industry jargon swimming endlessly through my dozy brain, and occasional moments of semi-clarity when I go into a deep, deep rebellion at my own plan of spending the last years of my twenties working in an office.

I feel like a big impostor there, which is strange because by yesterday I was pretty comfortable with most of the things I'll have to do. And it's not as though the other employees seem off - certainly more 'authentic', whatever that means, than people who were gung-ho about the television business. I don't know. I guess I haven't completely dealt with the fact that I'm going to be working hard and working full time just at the time in my life when I'm realizing that avoiding that was the whole point of the human race having an Industrial Revolution and female emancipation.

Anyways. We don't live in a post-industrial paradise yet and I have to make my money someday. And I'm doing it in a beautiful city, from a beautiful apartment, and getting good money working in a seemingly good office to do it. I don't give myself much more than three years before I start popping babies or just say fuck it and go to shrink school, but even that sounds like a jail sentence. Maybe two years would be enough . . . or maybe they'll sack me next week. We'll see.

Quickie

New apartment is beautiful and signed for and things are great but stressful.

Drought still in progress and it has started to annoy and disturb me. Holocaust denial is a crime in a whole whackload of countries, climate change denial should be too . . . such a law would serve a much more practical purpose than spending public money prosecuting silly pisspot 'academics' whose girlfriends had dumped them for Jewish men, or whatever.

This is the land of random, surreal beauty and I don't think the EU would work based anywhere besides the bizarre fantasy place.

It's all about the French

The new job starts in an hour and a half. Excited and happy, and very very happy to be in Brussels. We spent the weekend looking at apartments and pounding the pavement to see For Rent signs in appropriate neighborhoods, and holy FUCK, people here are nice. In the south I thought people were so nice (outside of the cockhead administrators of my ex-school, but more on that later) because they were country folk, but so many absolute strangers have volunteered their help here, so many absolute strangers have put themselves out of their way to advise or direct us, without us even asking . . .

In France, Belgians had a reputation for being dumb - like people from Newfoundland in Canada. I think that's because they're about ten times nicer than the French, pound for pound, even with the huge influx of expats in Brussels matching up to the huge influx of tourists in Paris. This niceness must baffle the French so much that they assume they're stupid. Even though childcare, the health service, and pensions here continue to work after a fashion, and even though half of France's cultural icons from the last century (weak though some, like Johnny Hallyday, appear to my critical faculties) are of Belgian descent.

Anyways. Time to memorize industry jargon.