An eventful Sunday

This Sunday was a lot different than usual.

As some of you know, this Sunday was the stand off between New Zealand and Australia in the Semi finals where New Zealand won and will thus be playing France in the finals.

Our family got an invitation to the New Zealand embassy to have breakfast there and watch the game live with them and a bunch of other people after my mom asked them to borrow a flag (see previous post).

It was very nice and the ambassador invited us again for the finals. We are still deciding whether we want to go there or to a sports bar in Brussels.

Although the snacks and drinks were nice the spirit wasn't that good. People had reactions but didn't scream or give running commentary as people usually do.

When we got back we almost immediately left again to get a piano my mom bought second hand from some one. So we went to borrow a trailer from a family friend and went to pick it up.

The thing was as heavy as a wooden elephant...

After that we had a braai (BBQ) till late in the evening.

It was a fun, exhausting and eventful day :D

Bittersweet Rugby

Rugby.

A game not known in Belgium. For quite a few years Belgium didn't even qualify, which is not a surprise since they they think rugby is American Football.

As my rugby supporting friends know, South Africa dropped out of the World Cup yesterday.

My family and I support both the Springboks and the All Blacks.

As a matter of fact, my mother asked me today to go with the to the embassy of New Zealand today to go get a New Zealand flag to show our support.

Of course the neighbors have absolutely no idea what's going on with all the flags we put on our flagpoles.

Unfortunately I did not see yesterday's matches between South Africa against Australia and New Zealand against Argentina.

Since Belgium doesn't know this (awesome) sport they don't show it on any of the 300+ TV channels they show.

The only place where we can (sometimes) watch rugby is on a french channel, and it's french... obviously...

As for now we are supporting New Zealand. The host nation who deserve to win. They have so far played well in every match and they should be the champions of this world cup.

Sanicole Airshow 2011

18 September 2011,

We woke up, being very tired but looking forward to the day allot.

The day before me and my two brothers decided to go to the Sanicole Airshow the next day and made sure there are still tickets.

We woke up very early in the morning to arrive at the airshow an hour before it began to get good places to sit (next time we'll be able to choose a better spot).

Unfortunately the weather was not that great and in the future we'll definitely bring our own food since everything there was HELL expensive.

Many things had been learned that day but all in all everything was really great!

There were a few things we didn't know.

Firstly it was the 35th anniversary of the Sanicole Airshow:
This was celebrated by a formation flight of an MK48 SAR Sea King, two A 109BA Agustas and an AH-64D Apache from the Netherlands Airforce.

The Sanicole Airshow was founded 35 years ago by Gilbert Buekenberghs after finding inspiration from selling tickets at an airshow in England.

The organization of the airshow every year is mostly planned by the Buekenberghs family and supported by those who love aviation.

[AH-64D Apache]

[MK48 SAR Sea King] [A 109BA Agusta]

It was also the 65th birthday of the Belgian Air Force and was celebrated by the flyby of an Airbus A330 from the Belgian Air Force in formation with 4 (2 on each wing) F-16's.

[Airbus A330 + F-16 Fighting Falcons]

The last was of the 70 years commemoration of Pearl Harbor:
This was celebrated by an N3N-3 Canary, P-40D Kittyhawk (no picture available) and a Mitsubishi A6M Zero who performed a small re-enactment of the battle of Pearl Harbor.

[N3N-3 Canary] [Mitsubishi A6M Zero]

All in all it was a great airshow with a lot of aircraft you don't usually see flying around here nor in South Africa.

Some of my favourites were the Mi-24 Hind, JAS 39 Gripen, AH-64D Apache, F-16 Soloturk display (shame on you Belgium!) and the Royal Navy Lynx HAS.3 Black Cats (From England).

My favourite between these was the Apache Solo Display Team.

Never in my life have a seen a helicopter that can perform that well. I mean, a helicopter doing a flip and shooting out flares at the same time, that's just awesome!

[Mi-24 Hind] [JAS 39 Gripen]

[ AH-64D Apache] [F-16 Soloturk ]

[Lynx HAS.3 Black Cats]

The whole day was accompanied with very good pilots, some from the best pilots in the world. But of course it can't be compared to Waterkloof Airshow in Pretoria, South Africa.

Reasons for this are that there are way more aircraft flying, the show itself in the hangers are excellent with almost an impossible amount of things to see and experience, the food is (ALLOT) better. And the aircraft land and lift off in front of you. Did I mention the amount of aircraft? Also it's in summer, so nice and warm :D

But I'm not saying Sanicole was crap, it was very good (for Belgium) and I'm looking forward to next year.

Hopefully the weather will then be better.

[click on the images to make them larger]

Pics (2): The new family member.

[Simba]

The Darkness Comes

Many know of Britain's bad weather. A saying comes from there "if you don't like the weather, just wait 5 minutes".

Here in Belgium it's a bit different: "if you don't like the weather, just wait 5 minutes, it'll get worse".

Right, so that's basically just to show how bad the weather here can be.

I'm not talking about storms, this is relentless little sissy rain. I thought Belgium doesn't have a raining season since it always rains anyway... but no! I was wrong, the raining season starts tomorrow and the clouds have already begun to seep in...

As a matter of fact, Belgium INVENTED waterproof umbrellas and boots.

[YAY...]

Hobby!

After years of thinking "people who says reading is a hobby are insane" I have found myself trapped in its snare.

As a matter of fact, all I do these days is read. Even though we bought an XBox 360 just the other day I find myself reading quietly in my room instead of blowing people's heads off (GoW) throwing them with knives in their faces (CoD MW2) or just throwing them from buildings (Assassin's Creed).

[The four which I have so far]

These are some of my favorite books. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King book 1 - 4:
The Gunslinger (read)
The Drawing Of The Three (read)
The Wastelands (busy reading)
Wizard and Glass (didn't read yet)

Mostly I buy my books online at The Book Depository, it's cheap, fast, brand new and has free shipping world wide.

Pics (1) Laptop Setup

[After the back-light of my screen croaked I had no choice but to attach a very old external screen to my laptop.]