Belgium's world cup

Bronze. This is the best world cup soccer result ever for Belgium. It is pretty amazing for a country of ten or eleven million people to reach this far in the tournament. Except for Italy, most big soccer countries were present: Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, France. Belgium played a great tournament and was loved by many spectators: the game against Japan was a thriller. Winning against Brazil was pure class. And beating English twice was icing on the cake.

This is Belgium's golden generation with Romelu Lukaku up front, Courtois in the goal, Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Dries Mertens, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Meunier, Marouane Fellaini, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, and several more.

And yet, it could have been so much more. Roberto Martinez, Belgium's coach, opted to build the team around Eden Hazard. Hazard is a talented player with great dribble technique and scoring ability. He is most effective from nearly standstill situations when he gets around his opponent with a quick dribble move or a fast acceleration. On the other hand, players like Lukaku, Mertens, Meunier and De Bruyne are most effective when the game is open and with a relentless pace. This mirrors how big club teams play: Manchester City, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United.

And there lies the issue with Belgium's golden generation. By building the team around Hazard, rather than De Bruyne, you clip the team from its most lethal capabilities. You saw flashes of this fast play in the goal of Meunier against England. You saw also this at full display in one of the most incredible counter attack in the final minutes of the game against Japan.

Belgium goalie Thibaut Courtois caught the ball and rolled it to Kevin De Bruyne. He dribbled it about 10 yards past midfield and passed to Thomas Meunier, who had plenty of space on the right side. Meunier crossed the ball, and Romelu Lukaku pretended to play the ball, which allowed Nacer Chadli to come from behind and tap the ball into the back of the net on what turned out to be the final kick of the game.

We dare you to find a better counterattack!

Chadli finishes off a beautiful team play to give Belgium the win late in stoppage time. 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/lbUxZDzG0E

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 2, 2018

Will a team build around De Bruyne have done better? We will never know. By winning against Brazil with great tactics and some luck (the first goal was an own goal by Brazil), Martinez has been proven right.

The frustrating loss against France leaves us knowing it could have been more. It should have been Belgium in the final against Croatia. Imagine the fireworks between those two teams.

The country is looking ahead at the European Championships in 2020 and dreams of winning it. To have a chance, the Red Devils need to make some important changes in the team structure: retire Witsel and Kompany. Bring in young and quick defenders. Put De Bruyne in a similar role as he plays in Manchester City. There is plenty of work ahead for the team: the European Championships are often tougher than the World Cup.

Ronde Van Vlaanderen 2013

All the discussions whether the "Muur of Geraardsbergen" or "Bosberg" should be part of the Tour of Flanders (Ronde Van Vlaanderen) aside, the last edition today has become much more of an NBA basketball game. Nevertheless all the scoring back and forth, the excitement of an NBA basketball has been reduced to the last 2 minutes. Either the game is dull where it has been decided early on and the point difference is large throughout the game. Or it is a game of time-outs, fouls, free throws or 3-point shots in the last 2 minutes. Just tune into the last 2 minutes.

That's how today's Ronde Van Vlaanderen felt as well. That's also how last year's Ronde Van Vlaanderen, the first year on the new course, felt as well. Seventeen hills and we all have to wait until the last two for the excitement: Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg.

We knew it was going to be between Cancellara and Sagan. But with exception of Jurgen Roelandts, who did attack a little earlier, and Tom Boonen who had to abandon the race early on after a crash, where were the other favorites? Chavanel? Voeckler? Van Avermaet? Paolini? Why didn't they attack early on? Your names don't even show up on the post race interview lists.

It is only the second time the new course is used, but let's hope that in the coming years, we don't have to wait until the last 20km to see some action.

Picture: www.steephill.tv

Cycling 2011 in review

The best Dutch cycling commentary remains Sporza. At the end of the year, the Sporza team creates a nice summary of the cycling year. Unfortunately, because of ownership reasons and television rights, it can not be shared outside of Belgium. Come on guys - this is a rebroadcast many months later in support of the sport.

Ons audio- en video aanbod is, om juridische redenen, enkel te bekijken in België. Als het access point van uw internetverbinding niet wordt herkend als Belgisch, dan kan u evenmin genieten van ons audio- en videoaanbod. 

Met vriendelijke groet, De sportredactie

Or translated to English:

Our audio and video programming is, for legal reasons, only viewable inBelgium. If the access point of your Internet connection is not recognized as aBelgian, you can not enjoy our audio and video offerings. 

Sincerely, The Sports editor

When you visit the Sporza link to watch "Cycling 2011 in review" outside of Belgium, you would never know what's going on with the video. It goes into an infinite loop trying to load. Is it my ISP? Is my browser? My wireless router? There used to be a simple "This video can not be shown outside of Belgium" error message. Usability is a lot about what happens when it is not usable. 

Nevertheless, it was just a matter of time when good cycling loving souls shared the wealth. Here's one rebroadcast (for as long as it lasts). Enjoy!

Impressions from Belgium

Count down to April 4th

Counting down to April 4th 2010: De Ronde Van Vlaanderen - http://www.rvv.be.

When visiting Belgium

I often get asked what to do or what to visit when spending a few days in Belgium. Very often Belgium is not the main destination of the vacation. It is a stop on route from Paris to Amsterdam, or the airport of Brussels is the entry point to Europe. So I'll make it brief:

Cities to visit (in order of my liking): Antwerp (Antwerpen), Bruges (Brugge), Ghent (Gent), Leuven and Brussels (Brussel). If you like to visit a modern vibrant city, start with Antwerp. It combines great history (architecture, paintings, museums, culture) with lots of pubs, restaurants and shops. If you like true medieval history, visit Bruges, also known as the Venice of the North. Ghent was the capital of Europe during the empire of Charles V. It is also a happening university town. However the center of student life occurs in Leuven. And yes, you should also visit Brussels. I typically compare a visit to Brussels to a visit to Washington D.C. If you can only pick one city in the US to visit, would it be Washington? Or San Francisco or New York?

What to drink? A visit to Belgium would not be complete without a visit to a couple of traditional pubs (cafes) and sample some of the 8700 different Belgian beers.

What to eat? Did you know French fries originated in Belgium? You won't be able to avoid them. In every town square, on many corners, you'll find a 'frituur' or small place to get a pointy bag with Belgian fries. Try it with mayonaise rather than ketchup, or try a couple of the various sauces on top of it.

Of course try a real Belgian waffle, the famous chocolates, speculoos, a bucket of mussels with fries, shrimp in tomato, eal in a green herb sauce, real Belgian endives or white asparagus.

Belgium is a cycling country. Many cycling champions came from Belgium. You'll find lots of people on a bicycle during the weekend making trip along the various trails. Checkout the fietsknooppunten blog for a sampling of trails and what to see along the trails. Or request the blog author for some recommended trails.

Leave a comment if you have specific questions about towns, seasons or customs.

Ronde Van Vlaanderen

It is over: Stijn Devolder wins the Tour of Flanders (Ronde Van Vlaanderen). This is the most beautiful of the one-day bicycle races.

I woke up this Sunday at 6:30AM. Why would you want to wake up that early on a Sunday my wife asked. What would you do if Argentina was playing the world cup final against England at 6:30AM?

The Sporza live video feed did not work. Thus I could not listen to the legendary commentary of Michel Wuyts. Plan B: pick up a video feed on justin.tv and listen to Carl Bertele and co on Sporza radio. In a side window I was following the #rvv tweets. (Next week, I'll try out http://www.tvtweets.be/)

It was a beautiful race. Great weather, fast pace and every second counted. This picture captures a lot. Devolder, in a group of four, attacks on the Muur van Geraardsbergen. Just take a look at the supporters. That's the face (and scream) I made in the kitchen this Sunday morning. Next Sunday : Paris - Roubaix (get details at Steephill.tv)

Copy Cat

Almost daily I read news from Belgium in Het Belang Van Limburg, a national newspaper which also includes regional news of the province of Limburg. Occasionally I read something in the gossip world of Het Laatste Nieuws. I came across this little story about Reggie Love: Meet Reggie Love, de man achter Obama. Interesting since I had not heard about Reggie Love among all the news coverage in the US. So I googled a little more about Reggie and came across this article from The Guardian: The man behind the man: Obama and the aide who makes his campaign tic. 

Body Man: 

TG: Reggie, as everyone on the campaign calls him, is more than a body man, whose official duties are to look after the candidate's personal needs. He carries the candidate's pens, his favourite snacks and drinks, an endless supply of chewing gum (Dentyne and Nicorette), as well as numerous bottles of water. He lines up the podium before the candidate steps out, and adjusts the autocue machines to the correct height, a few inches lower than his own.

HLN: In feite staat Reggie in voor alle persoonlijke noden van Obama. Hij draagt zijn pennen, zijn favoriete snacks en drankjes, een enorme voorraad kauwgom en talrijke flesjes water. . Hij controleert ook het podium waarop Obama het volk toespreekt en zorgt ervoor dat de autocue op de juiste hoogte staat (hij is net iets groter dan Obama).

Jay-Z :

TG: It was Love who introduced Obama to Jay-Z, loading the New York rapper's music on to an iPod which he bought as a birthday present for his boss.

HLN: Voor zijn verjaardag kocht hij zijn baas een iPod die hij gevuld had met de muziek van rapper Jay-Z.

In Charlotte: 

TG: Back in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, Love is something of a college legend. At a rally earlier this year, Obama called his body guy on stage and led the crowd in a chant of his name.

HLN: In zijn thuisstad Charlotte, in North Carolina, is hij een lokale legende. Obama riep hem er eerder dit jaar eens op het podium en dirigeerde het publiek terwijl ze zijn naam scandeerden.

Unfortunately Het Laatste Nieuws refrained from adding a true reference to the original article.

(Image: BBC News)

Wanted: Traffic Expert (Relocation a must)

Belgium has gone mad when it comes to traffic signalization. On our recent vacation in Belgium, although I do carry a Belgian driver's license, I felt like a foreigner in my own country when it came to driving.

Several traffic signs where completely new to me.
At the entry roads to Antwerpen, I noted the following sign over and over. At first I thought something was going to fall on my car. But the red circle does not mean this is an advisory sign, rather a mandatory rule. The signs means no entry for cars who carry explosive or incendiary cargo. I didn't take it conveys the message very clearly.

The provincial recreation park, De Nekker, in Mechelen featured a funny sign: no waterpipes allowed. (Photo forthcoming).

Even since unmanned cameras were allowed by law to catch speeding, local governments have been installing these "birdnests" as my dad calls them, everywhere.


Even in the middle of the night on an empty road, you better be on the look out for them, as they never rest.

To increase the effectiveness of these cameras (read: revenue), it appears there's an active campaign to confuse drivers about the current speed limit. This is especially the case if you are not familiar with the area.

• In Tremelo, in one direction you can drive 70km/hr. Make a U-turn and the speed limit is 50km/hr. It turns out the town limit with Keerbergen is in the middle of the road.
• In several town centers, I noted an "end of 30km/hr" sign. The "entering 30km/hr" sign is nowhere to be seen. You are speeding by definition.
  
• "Herhaling" means "repitition". All ofa sudden you encounter a sign "50km/hr- herhaling". Shock! Was I speeding? Where was the first sign? Nobody knows. Also known as X-signs.
  
• As you leave a town, the typical speed limit is 70km/hr. We saw several times when a 70km/hr sign is followed withing 100 meters(!) by a 50lm/hr sign, allowing drivers to squeeze one quick burst out of the engine.
  
• Upon entering an urban area, a white sign indicates the name of the town, as well as a little pictorial about the local abbey or church. This also means 50km/hr. Why not add a sign stating the speedlimit explicitly. It will be much easier for tourists and foreigners.
  
• While on one hand overloading the meaning of the sign with a speedlimit, there are plenty of examples proving the Belgian maffia must own signage companies. On several roads I noted signs literally every 200 meters (with no street crossings in between). On the stretch Herselt-Aarschot, I must have counted ten 70km/hr signs every 200 meters. This little stretch is also known for extreme alzheimers.
  

Speed limit signs a plenty, direction signs are few. Unlike in the US, driving to and from town centers based upon signs is nearly impossible. I was looking for the note "Sponsored by Garming or TomTom" underneath the signs. Luckily I was well prepared using Google Maps.

Poorly design beltways where two lane roads are reduced to one lane traffic jams, the wild grow of speed limit signs, the lack of directions and the "birdnests", really take the fun out of driving in Belgium. It's time to get some real experts behind the wheel. Traffic experts, apply in the comments section.

Classics

Cycling is the second most important sport in Belgium. This time of the year, various one day races captivate the country in front of their television, often twice a week. They are known as "the classics". Many of the spring one day races happen in Belgium: take a look at the calendar of one day races. Among them Gent-Wevelgem, Brabantse Pijl, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Waalse Pijl Liege-Bastogne-Liege and others.

My top three classic races are: (1) Ronde van Vlaanderen - tour of Flanders (rvv.be) (2) Paris - Roubaix and (3) Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

Naturally I try to follow the races on the internet. There are various ways to follow the races. Cycling.tv provides a subscription video feed. Sporza Radio broadcasts the races live. (Sporza, part of VRT, is the sport channel of the publicly funded national Belgian broadcasting station in Flemish). Unfortunately, the Sporza video stream is only if you live in Belgium, as the contracts with the race organizers prohibit broadcast to other countries.

Voor wie niet in België woont...
De livestreaming van sporza.be is in het buitenland niet te bekijken, omdat er rechten op de beelden rusten. De eigenaars van de contracten (de organisatoren van de evenementen) zeggen uitdrukkelijk dat de beelden alleen op het Belgische grondgebied te bekijken mogen zijn

Anonymous internet proxies to the rescue! With any luck I will be able to follow the Ronde van Vlaanderen with the help of an anonymous internet proxy in Belgium (e.g. from aliveProxy). If you know any good ones, let me know.

A perfect match (Man zkt vrouw)

The Belgian movie, Man zkt vrouw, (the English title is A Perfect Match) (wikipedia), made its North American premiere as part of the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose on Friday Feb 29. The film is directed by Miel van Hoogenbemt and was written by Pierre De Clercq and Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem.

Man zoekt vrouw - De trailer

I met up with Miel and Pierre at the Paragon Bar in San Jose, prior to the movie. They had arrived the night before and were still jetlagged. Although both are experienced film makers (IMDB: Pierre De Clercq, Miel van Hoogenbemt), they appeared a little anxious about what was to come. How would America like the movie? What would the audience ask during the Q&A section at the end of the movie?

The movie is a romantic comedy and stars famous Belgian actors. It is located in Ghent, Belgium.

On the day of his forced retirement, a school principal (Jan Decleir) decides to look for a wife on the Internet. It's not love he is after, but merely companionship. He meets a lot of women but can't seem to make up his mind. Until his new housekeeper (Maria Popistasu) arrives: she is almost forty years younger than him and a total disaster at housekeeping. For the first time in what seems a lifetime, he falls totally and desperately in love.

The movie is very well done, with witty comments. The plot is simple - it doesn't try to weave a complex story -. Yet, they story leaves enough unanswered which makes you wonder what will happen past the end of the movie.

Also the cinequest visitors appeared to like the movie. Throughout the movie, you could hear the entire audience crack up. And during the Q&A section, many had compliments and questions about the movie: about the languages, the location, the music, the actors and about the plot, (I won't list the questions not to give a way the plot.) As for the music, it was created by Spinvis. From the Man zkt vrouw blog:

Het was Wim Opbrouck die ons nog tijdens de opnamen de Nederlandse componist aanraadde. “Ga bij Spinvis.in Holland,” fluisterde hij ons toe, “die gast maakt geweldige muziek. We hebben wat van zijn materiaal gebruikt voor De Bende van Wim.” Wij dus naar Utrecht waar we aan Spinvis (het alter ego van de zeer aimabele muzikant Erik de Jong) onze film toonden en hij was meteen dol enthousiast om er de muziek voor te schrijven. Bedankt voor de tip, Wim!

Prior to the movie, Pierre had worried how our group of Belgians would receive the movie. Would we still be proud of Belgian cinema? We were! We stuck around until the end and I was happy the film was a success.

• Official website Man Zkt Vrouw
• Review: European-films.net
• Review: 9Lives
  (Dutch)
• Review: Humo (Dutch)
  

Waterzooi with Geuze

La Trappe is a new Belgian restaurant in San Francisco, on the corner of Greenwich and Columbus. The food menu includes rabbit stew with prunes, mussels and fries and chicken waterzooi. It is however the beer list which is the most impressive. Thirteen trappist beers (although West-Vleteren is not on the list), Lambic beers (geuze - my favorite-, framboise, kriek, peach), abbey beers, probably close to 80 beers.

My dad pointed out that the name of the of the "Belgian" restaurant was rather peculiar. La Trappe is the name of a trappist monestary in France, although its beer is the only trappist beer brewed in Holland. So I had to find out and went for a tasting tonight. The food and beer were excellent. And indeed, as I suspected, although the menu was Belgian, the owner was not. Michael Azzalini is Italian, who apparently lived in Belgium for a while.

Another "Belgian" eatery in San Francisco, FrjtzFries, is owned by a Colombian, who used to live in Antwerp. And Monk's Kettle in the Mission is owned by two Americans. (Three Belgian bars in the San Francisco Bay Area)

Belgians might have good cooks, brewers or monks, but it lacks more international restaurateurs.

Suck on that, Belgium!

Sinterklaas

In the midst of all the Christmas shopping and appearances of Santa Claus in the US shopping malls, we kept the European tradition of Sinterklaas on December 6th alive. While other years he drops by in person, he was terribly busy this year (as he wrote in a letter to our kids). Hence he only dropped by in the middle of the night and left the presents and candy in the living room. And lo and behold, the horse of Sinterklaas ate the carrots my kids left in their shoe. It was a great morning. All was well.

Wikipedia has some interesting facts about the history of Sinterklaas and his relation to Santa Claus:

Sinterklaas is the basis for the North American figure of Santa Claus. It was during the American War of Independence, that the inhabitants of New York City, a former Dutch colonial town (New Amsterdam) which had been swapped by the Dutch for other territories, reinvented their Sinterklaas tradition, as Saint Nicholas was a symbol of the city's non-English past. The name Santa Claus is derived from older Dutch Sinte Klaas.

West Vleteren - St. Sixtus

I have been catching up on reading the newspapers of the week. The front page of the Wall Street Journal of Thursday November 29, 2007 is an article by John. Miller about what is labeled the best beer in the world: St. Sixtus Trappist of West Vleteren in Belgium. Come to think of it, I've never drank this beer. And after reading the article, it might be difficult to even put your lips on a glass of West Vleteren. It will be definitely on my to-do list when we visit Belgium next year. (Or if anybody in Belgium reading this post could arrange a couple of bottles.)
So far my favorite beers include (in no particular order):

• Duvel (Brewery Moortgat)
  
• Brugse Trippel
• Lindemans Geuze
• Scaldis (Brewery Dubuisson)

Trappist Command: Thou Shalt Not Buy Too Much of Our Beer
John W. Miller, WSJ

WESTVLETEREN, Belgium -- The Trappist monks at St. Sixtus monastery have taken vows against riches, sex and eating red meat. They speak only when necessary. But you can call them on their beer phone.

Monks have been brewing Westvleteren beer at this remote spot near the French border since 1839. Their brew, offered in strengths up to 10.2% alcohol by volume, is among the most highly prized in the world. In bars from Brussels to Boston, and online, it sells for more than $15 for an 11-ounce bottle -- 10 times what the monks ask -- if you can get it.

For the 26 monks at St. Sixtus, however, success has brought a spiritual hangover as they fight to keep an insatiable market in tune with their life of contemplation.

The monks are doing their best to resist getting bigger. They don't advertise and don't put labels on their bottles. They haven't increased production since 1946. They sell only from their front gate. You have to make an appointment and there's a limit: two, 24-bottle cases a month. Because scarcity has created a high-priced gray market online, the monks search the net for resellers and try to get them to stop.

"We sell beer to live, and not vice versa," says Brother Joris, the white-robed brewery director. Beer lovers, however, seem to live for Westvleteren.

When Jill Nachtman, an American living in Zurich, wanted a taste recently, she called the hot line everybody calls the beer phone. After an hour of busy signals, she finally got through and booked a time. She drove 16 hours to pick up her beer. "If you factor in gas, hotel -- and the beer -- I spent $20 a bottle," she says.

Until the monks installed a new switchboard and set up a system for appointments two years ago, the local phone network would sometimes crash under the weight of calls for Westvleteren. Cars lined up for miles along the flat one-lane country road that leads to the red brick monastery, as people waited to pick up their beer.

"This beer is addictive, like chocolate," said Luc Lannoo, an unemployed, 36-year-old Belgian from Ghent, about an hour away, as he loaded two cases of Westvleteren into his car at the St. Sixtus gate one morning. "I have to come every month."

Two American Web sites, Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, rank the strongest of Westvleteren's three products, a dark creamy beer known as "the 12," best in the world, ahead of beers including Sweden's Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter and Minnesota's Surly Darkness. "No question, it is the holy grail of beers," says Remi Johnson, manager of the Publick House, a Boston bar that has Westvleteren on its menu but rarely in stock.

Some beer lovers say the excitement over Westvleteren is hype born of scarcity. "It's a very good beer," says Jef van den Steen, a brewer and author of a book on Trappist monks and their beer published in French and Dutch. "But it reminds me of the movie star you want to sleep with because she's inaccessible, even if your wife looks just as good."

Thanks to the beer phone, there are no more lines of cars outside the monastery now. But production remains just 60,000 cases per year, while demand is as high as ever. Westvleteren has become almost impossible to find, even in the specialist beer bars of Brussels and local joints around the monastery.

"I keep on asking for beer," says Christophe Colpaert, manager of "Café De Sportsfriend," a bar down the road from the monks. "They barely want to talk to me." On a recent day, a recorded message on the beer phone said St. Sixtus wasn't currently making appointments; the monks were fresh out of beer.

Increasing production is not an option, according to the 47-year-old Brother Joris, who says he abandoned a stressful career in Brussels for St. Sixtus 14 years ago. "It would interfere with our job of being a monk," he says.

Belgian monasteries like St. Sixtus started making beer in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which ended in 1799. The revolt's anti-Catholic purge had destroyed churches and abbeys in France and Belgium. The monks needed cash to rebuild, and beer was lucrative.

Trappist is a nickname for the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, who set up their own order in La Trappe, France, in the 1660s because they thought Cistercian monasteries were becoming too lax. The monks at St. Sixtus sleep in a dormitory and stay silent in the cloisters, though they speak if they need to. Today, though, Trappists are increasingly famous for making good beer.

Seven monasteries (six are Belgian, one, La Trappe, is Dutch) are allowed to label their beer as Trappist. In 1996, they set up an alliance to protect their brand. They retain lawyers in Washington and Brussels ready to sue brewers who try use the word Trappist. Every few months, Brother Joris puts on street clothes and takes the train to Brussels to meet with fellow monks to share sales and business data, and plot strategy.

The monks know their beer has become big business. That's fine with the brothers at Scourmont, the monastery in southern Belgium that makes the Chimay brand found in stores and bars in Europe and the U.S. They've endorsed advertising and exports, and have sales exceeding $50 million a year. They say the jobs they create locally make the business worthy. Other monasteries, which brew names familiar to beer lovers such as Orval, Westmalle and Rochefort, also are happy their businesses are growing to meet demand.

Not so at St. Sixtus. Brother Joris and his fellow monks brew only a few days a month, using a recipe they've kept to themselves for around 170 years.

Two monks handle the brewing. After morning prayer, they mix hot water with malt. They add hops and sugar at noon. After boiling, the mix, sufficient to fill roughly 21,000 bottles, is fermented for up to seven days in a sterilized room. From there the beer is pumped to closed tanks in the basement where it rests for between five weeks and three months. Finally, it is bottled and moved along a conveyor belt into waiting cases. Monks at St. Sixtus used to brew by hand, but nothing in the rules of the order discourages technology, so they've plowed profits into productivity-enhancing equipment. St. Sixtus built its current brewhouse in 1989 with expert advice from the company then known as Artois Breweries.

In the 1980s, the monks even debated whether they should continue making something from which people can get drunk. "There is no dishonor in brewing beer for a living. We are monks of the West: moderation is a key word in our asceticism," says Brother Joris in a separate, email interview. "We decided to stick to our traditional skills instead of breeding rabbits."

The result is a brew with a slightly sweet, heavily alcoholic, fruity aftertaste.

One day recently, the wiry, sandy-haired Brother Joris returned to his office in the monastery after evening prayers. He flipped on his computer and went online to hunt for resellers and ask them to desist. "Most of the time, they agree to withdraw their offer," he says. Last year, St. Sixtus filed a complaint with the government against two companies that refused -- BelgianFood.com, a Web site that sells beer, cheese, chocolate and other niche products, and Beermania, a Brussels beer shop that also sells online. Both offer Westvleteren at around $18 a bottle.

"I'm not making a lot of money and I pay my taxes," says BelgianFood.com owner Bruno Dourcy. "You can only buy two cases at once, you know." Mr. Dourcy makes monthly two-hour car trips from his home in eastern Belgium.

"Seek the Kingdom of God first, and all these things will be given to you," counters Brother Joris, quoting from the Bible, adding that it refers only to things you really need. "So if you can't have it, possibly you do not really need it."

174 days and counting

And still no government in Belgium. After two full months of negotiations Yves Leterme, the strongman of the Flemish Christian democrats, handed Saturday afternoon for the second time his mission as formateur of the next government back to king Albert.

A parody on Yves Leterme is also no longer in my favorite countdown list, de Afrekening on Studio Brussel. It is written in Dutch by two popular radio-presentators Peter Van de Veire and Sofie Lemaire, of the Flemish broadcast Studio Brussel. They sing the text on the fragile music of ‘Hey There Delilah’ from the US-band Plain White T’s.



For details about the ongoing creation of a new Belgian government, check out http://crisisinbelgium.blogspot.com

South-Africa 2010

Belgium did not qualify for Uefa Euro 2008. Since I do not have cable television, it is not easy to follow the European Championship qualifying games in the US. I missed a couple of the earlier games of Belgium. And before I realized the qualifiers were going on, the headlines in the Belgian newspapers predicted dooms days. Oh, what an optimism! But they were right: we did not qualify. Belgium (18pts) ended up fifth in Group A, behind Poland (28pts), Portugal (27pts), Serbia (24pts), Finland (24pts), and ahead of Kazakhstan (10pts), Armenia (9pts) and Azerbaijan (5pts).

Today was the drawing for the qualifying groups for South Africa 2010. Belgium was unlucky and ended up in a strong group 5, with Spain, Turkey, Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Estonia. Chances will be slim, however traditionally Belgium plays better against stronger teams. Anybody remember the game against Brazil in Japan? If we don't qualify, there will always be Messi and Riquelme.

Nobel Belgians

A colleague of mine is very skeptical about global warming and believes humans have little effect on the warming of the globe. So when Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Price, I knew he would drop by for a little chat. What does Al Gore and co have to do with fostering peace? "It's all political", he said. We decided to look up the list of previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Indeed you wonder why some did earn the price.

I was surprised to see four five Belgians on the list. Although most of them won in a by gone era, when Europe was the center of the world and when Belgium was a little more relevant in the world.

• 1904 : Institut de Droit International
• 1909 : Auguste Marie François Beernaert, Member of the Cour Internationale d'Arbitrage.
• 1913 : Henri La Fontaine, President of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
• 1958 : Georges Pire, leader of L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde, a relief organization for refugees.
• 1999: Artsen zonder grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres) (Wikipedia incorrectly listed them as French/Swiss, although Nobel organization lists them as Belgian)
  

Here's a chart of the number of Nobel Peace price laureates by country. (It is not perfect since e.g. Mother Teresa gives both Albania and India a point.)

A decade in the Valley

(Artikel geschreven voor Agora, tijdschrift van de Katholieke Hogeschool der Kempen)

Meer dan tien jaar geleden namen we afscheid van onze ouders in de luchthaven van Deurne. Wij waren net afgestudeerd aan het HIK als industriele ingenieurs electronica en waren op pad naar California voor een avontuur van vier maanden. Via een samenwerking tussen het HIK en het International Education Program (IEP) van Foothill College in Los Altos, gingen we drie maanden lang werken en leven in California. Nadien liet ons visum ons toe nog een maand lang rond te reizen in de gouden staat. Karel Geyskens, docent Engels, was de drijvende kracht aan het HIK van de uitwisseling. De job varieerde van kampleider bij de YMCA tot een ingenieurs stage bij een eletronica bedrijf. Gelukkig had ik een job kunnen strikken als ingenieur in de communicatie groep van VLSI Technology (dat nu deel uitmaakt van NXP, de recentelijk afgesponnen semiconductor groep van Philips.) Drie maanden lang werkte ik er in het labo aan mixed signal telecommucation chips. Van chip design had ik echter maar weinig kaas gegeten. Mijn specializatie was in digitale technieken. Chip design was nog maar net toegevoegd aan het curriculum van industrieel ingenieur en slechts een handvol ingenieurs hadden zich ingeschreven. Het midden van de jaren negentig was het begin van de "BOOM" in Silicon Valley. Nog voor mijn drie maanden voorbij waren, werd mij een permanente job aangeboden. Op het moment dat mijn collega HIKers op rondreis trokken door de fantastische nationale parken van de Westen van VS, stond ik aan te schuiven in de Amerikaanse ambassade voor een nieuw werk visum. (Ik bespaar U alle paperassen werk, maar na menige visa kende ik het immigratie systeem van de VS van binnen en van buiten.)

Mijn diploma van industrieel ingenieur werd toen vergeleken met dan van bachelor in de VS, gedeeltelijk omdat hier het Belgische systeem onbekend is. Gelukkig is dat met het verdrag van Bologna en de recentelijke besluiten in Belgie aangepast en mogen we ons gelijkstellen met het masters diploma van vele andere landen. Hopelijk hebben beide ingenieurs groepen in Belgie (VIK en KVIV) ingezien dat bachelors vs masters geen Belgische interne kwestie is, maar vooral hoe beide diplomas vergeleken moeten worden met deze van buitenlandse ingenieurs.

Na vier jaar chip design en vooral system design gebaseerd op onze communicatie chips, was ik op zoek naar een job in een echt systeem bedrijf. Ik vond een job als software ingenieur in de I/O technologies group van Sun Microsystems. Sun was toen aan een exponentiele groei periode bezig: iedere dot-com kocht Solaris Sparc servers van Sun Microsystems en routers van Cisco. De sfeer binnen Sun was enorm goed: work hard, play hard and kick ass. Iedereen werkte 60+ urenweek. Sun zorgde dan ook voor de entertainment: goodies, bier, chique restaurants, big parties, etc. De kater van de "bust" was des te groter. En de lessen blijven ook des te langer bij. Sun was een fantastische ervaring, met enorm slimme ingenieurs en aan het hart van vele belangrijke uitvindingen (van Network File System NFS, tot Sparc processoren, Solaris operating system en vooral Java). Vooruitgangen van dergelijk kaliber (Sun, Apple, Google, Intel, Netscape) zijn eigen aan de no-rules-based en can-do cultuur van Silicon Valley. Sommigen voelen zich als piraten van de vallei (zoals het Macintosch team bij Apple). Anderen zijn meer het hippie type, en komen zonder schoenen, met lange baard naar 't werk. En er zijn er die gratis werken, en die binnen breken om hun favoriete project te voltooien, zoals Ron Avitzur vertelt in the graphic calculator. Natuurlijk vind je ook de serieuze ingenieur in grote getalen. Veel is hier mogelijk, zelfs de naakte ingenieur - the nudist on the late shift .

Werken in Silicon Valley heeft ook andere voordelen. Het noorden van California is een mooie streek. Het weer is aangenaam en niet zo warm als in Los Angeles of San Diego. Regen zie je niet meer vanaf mei tot soms eind oktober. San Francisco is een vrij Europese stad, van mentaliteit. Voor Surf city Santa Cruz en de grote golven van Mavericks moet je slechts de berg over. En in de winter ben in enkele uren rijden in de ski resorts rond Lake Tahoe. Voor zeer goede wijn (en jammerlijk vrij prijzig) moet je naar Napa en Sonoma, een van de belangrijkste wijnstreken van de VS.

Silicon Valley mag dan wel een mekka zijn voor de ingenieur, het is hier niet allemaal rozegeur en maneschijn, zoals de bust van de dot-com bubbel ons leerde. Even snel als men aangenomen is, ligt men hier buiten, met of zonder afscheidspremie. Het leven raast hier verder tegen 200km/uur: net zoals in Belgie kloppen ingenieurs vele uren. Met het hoge tempo van vele start bedrijven en veel concurrentie wordt die soms een beetje overdreven. Slaapzakken onder de bureau is hier niet ongehoord. De vele ingenieurs (,MBAs en nu ook bio-ingeneurs) in een nauwe vallei heeft tot een schaarste aan woningen geleid. Voeg daar nog aan toe de gouden eieren van de dotcom, en je leert snel dat hier alles peperduur is. Een kleine wonig op een lapje grond met drie slaapkamers kost U snel $600000. Stuur uw 5 jaar oud kind naar preschool en U ziet uw maandelijks inkomen inkrimpen met bijna $2000. En als belangrijke Belgische prijs barometer, de prijs van de patatten is hier ongeveer $2 per halve kilo. Een pint bier (engels maat) kost U snel $5.

Na bijna acht jaar bij Sun, ben ik in het voorbije jaar overgestapt naar een klein bedrijf (60 werknemers): Real-Time Innovations. We hebben middleware voor real-time data distribution: distributed systems die in tijd-deterministisch data uitwisselen gebruiken onze software. Bijvoorbeeld: control software in vliegtuigen en schepen, alsook het uitwisselen van stock quotes op de beurs van Wallstreet.

Silicon Valley is een echte melting pot. Slechts 2 op 10 ingenieur is blank; 1 op 20 is amerikaan van originele afkomst (en daar bedoel ik niet mee "Native-American"). Er zijn hier veel Indische ingenieurs, meestal in de software branche. Ook veel Chinezen en Iraniers. Europeanen vind je ook overal en van alle landen. Bij RTI werken bijvoorbeeld een Italiaan, twee Noren, twee Fransen, twee Nederlanders, twee Spanjaarden en tot voor kort waren we nog met twee Belgen. De melting pot brengt ook zijn problemen mee kwestie van manier van werken en manier van communicatie. Indiers zijn bijvoorbeeld veel minder direct. Veel aziaten zullen weinig vragen stellen als hun baas er bij zit, kwestie van geen zwakte aan te tonen.

Belgische ingenieurs (alhoewel er hier maar weinig zijn) kennen een goede reputatie, vooral kwestie van algemene opleiding en basis principes. De cursussen die mij vooral zijn bijgebleven zijn (voornamelijk omdat die in mijn dagelijkse job aan te pas komen):

• heuristieken, pseudo en pascal programmeren
• (de twee uren per week en slechts twintig paginas tellende cursus) digitale technieken
• Labo met Labview en het programmeren met de 68K processor

Jammerlijk heb ik toen niet meer tijd geinvesteerd in de labos, kwestie van blijven tinkeren met de processor of die steppen motor. 't Ja, het labo meet en regel technieken was vrijdag ochtend (een pover excuus).

Enkele verschillen met de opleiding in de VS is dat hier meer nadruk wordt gelegd op:

1. Presentatie en communicatie: even belangrijk als goede software code, is een goede presentatie. Niet alleen voor een sales ingenieur die direkt met klanten in kontact komt, maar ook om uw ideen te verkopen aan uw baas of zijn baas.
   
2. Praktische ervaring: vele studenten, meestal omwille van financiele redenen, zoeken jaarlijks een zomer stage in hun branche. Sommigen gaan op zoek naar een international stage (gelijkaardig aan Erasmus) of werken mee aan een open source projekt. Die ervaring, zowels technisch als het werken in teams, maakt groot deel uit van de opleiding van vele ingenieurs.
   
3. Elke avond zijn er hier meerdere bijeenkomsten en tutorials in een of andere user group: de robotics geeks, de python scripters, de Java junkies, de technoArtists die kunst maken van computers, linux user group (svlug), etc. Ook in Belgie vind je dergelijke groepen, maar vaak slechts nabij de grotere universiteiten. Bijvoorbeeld, BEJUG is vrij bekend.
   
4. Entrepreneurship en studeren gaan hier hand in hand. Het beginnnen van een bedrijf wordt gestimuleerd aan de universiteit. Er zijn zelfs 'labo' projecten waar men een idee leert voorstellen aan venture capitalists (de investeerders).Er zijn trouwens genoeg voorbeelden van bedrijven die begonnen zijn als een studenten project aan de universiteit: Google of Sun (Sun staat trouwens voor Stanford University Network.)
   

Over de jaren ben ik wel in contact gebleven met Belgie. Natuurlijk is er de familie die af en toe op bezoek komt. Het Belgisch nieuws, nieuws over Club Brugge en o.a. Tom Boonen lees ik via de Belgische kranten online. 's Morgens luister ik naar de Belgische avondspits via Studio Brussel, of naar de Afrekening via hun podcast. We hebben hier ook een hechte Belgische vriendengroup, onder wie trouwens enkele ex-Hikkers. Belgische tradities worden verder gezet: Sinterklaas komt op bezoek voor onze kinderen. Onze kinderen spreken trouwens Nederlands (alhoewel omwille van het school, onder mekaar het Engels de voertaal is). Op het menu vind je soms koniijn, frietjes en stoofvlees of vol-au-vent. Regelmatig gaan we het Belgisch bier (van 't vat) nog eens controleren in de pubs van Palo Alto. Inbev zou ons trouwens hiervoor moeten sponsoren.

Ben je in de buurt, of zoek je contacten om een tijdje naar Silicon Valley te komen werken, laat gerust iets weten.

"Daar is 'm ... daar is 'm"

The most mythical goal of Belgians Red Devils: Belgium - The Nederlands, 1985, world cup qualifier to go to Mexico.

Sport-Voetbal Magazine heeft het doelpunt waarmee Georges Grün België in 1985 ten koste van het Nederlands elftal naar Mexico kopte uitgeroepen tot meest mythische doelpunt ooit van de Rode Duivels. Ook Rik De Sadeleer op zijn best.

• "Ze gaan lopen ... ze gaan lopen"
• "Daar is 'm ... daar is 'm"
• "'t Is om er geel van te worden"
• "Dank U George"
  

(Telegraaf)