Random knowledge

The short version : I currently live in Keerbergen, Belgium, and I work for a Spanish company (no links, no, this blog is for fun).

Three projects.

1. I want to open a jazzy club named the ‘Blue Note’ (investors are welcome).
2. I want to be a fulltime father and travel the world so I can show my sun how wonderful this place is.
3. I want to live forever (ongoing).

The extended version: (the idea for this comes from Jason Kottke)

2008
Looking good. I’ll get back with a more definite report at the end. In the meantime I continue to take notes in my Moleskine notebooks.

2007

146 flights got me to (in random order) Cologne, Luxembourg, London, Manchester, Dubin, Paris, Toulouse, Las Palmas, Tenerife, Madrid, Barcelona, Palma, Venice, Rome, Catania. More hotel nights than I care to remember, and all with the same breakfast buffet. Best food in Spain. Worst food (?) in the UK. Best travel book: The inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai. Worst travel book: I avoid bad books. Best travel gadget: blackberry. Worst travel gadget: belt. Best airline experience: Brussels Airlines. Worst travel experience: Spanair.
Next year I want to fly less and ride more with my bicycle.

2006

Roeland wins the football championship with his team. Party ! I still read books, but I don’t like French fries as I used to. I start a blog. Why did I do that ?

2005

This e-dad thing is great. Who complains about office hours and queues ?

2004

I have a new girl friend and a new home. A major change.

2003

I switch jobs. I work now for a Spanish company. Olé ! The best part ? I become an e-dad, working from home most of the time. I love the IT stuff making this possible. Roeland is very happy as well.

2002

February 20, 2002 is a peculiar date : 20.02.2002 and at 08.02 pm it’s a very peculiar moment : 20.02.2002 – 20:02. A rare palindrome time ! I can’t remember what I did at the time. This sucks (excuse me…).

2001

I travel a lot. I would like to do this for a living. So much to see, so much to learn, so much to tell.

2000

We made it. Y2K wasn’t that big a problem. The computer still works and my car still drives. I spend January 1 with some colleagues. A Concorde of Air France is less lucky. It catches fire after takeoff, crashing and killing all 100 passengers, nine crew and four people on the ground. Working in the aviation industry I feel very involved. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a great movie. Zhang Ziyi is even greater.

1999

Another year, another job. dEUS releases their album ‘The Ideal Crash’. This is what I call music.

1998

I read ‘Blindness’ by José Saramago. He remains one of my favorite writers. V and I live separate. Not an easy period. Roeland lives alternatively one week with V and one week with me. Things quiet down and life continues and everyone is ok.

1997

Roeland’s first school day at the Wip, a Freinet school in Wezemaal. The school is located in a small castle and is surrounded by trees. A peacock says hello at the entrance gate.

1996

Life goes on. I discover the pleasures of Macintosh. I adopt LateX as my default desktop publishing software. Especially math can be edited beautifully :

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{eqnarray}
E &=& mc^2 \\
m &=& \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}
\end{eqnarray}
\end{document}

I know, Word is easier, but LateX is fun and better to be honest.

1995

I turn 30. Three decades on this blue planet and so much to do. But first things first : I decide to go back to the university. I want to study economics.

1994

The third of August is definitely the highlight of this year : my son is born. He has green-brown eyes and he’s named after a famous paladin, Roeland. Roeland (Roland in English) was one of the 12 legendary chivalrous retainers of Charlemagne.

1993

We move back to Belgium. Nice, but not as nice a memory as December : V is pregnant !

1992

I watch Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino’s debut as a feature film director. It introduces many of the themes and aesthetics that will become Tarantino’s hallmarks : violent crime, memorable dialogues and nonlinear stories. I have been a fan ever since.

1991

February 9, I marry V. I don’t like ‘bockwurst’ but I still like French fries. Grunge music is all over the place with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Freddy Mercury dies. Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC, is found in a glacier of the Alps. A busy year.

1990

I move to a small town near Bonn. I’m in excellent shape. Germans are bad at making French fries.

1986 – 1989

University comes and goes. I study sociology at the RMA. The Challenger explodes live on television (Jan 1986). I know now why I prefer to listen to the radio. Mathias Rust, a German pilot aged 19 eludes the Soviet air defenses and lands on a bridge close to the Red Square near the Kremlin in the heart of the capital of the former USSR (1987). Chet Baker dies in 1988. I still read books. I have a Robert Ludlum period, a Tom Clancy period and a comics period. I read some good books as well : The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and … and …

1985

I spend some time in Paris. Oops… I forgot to tell my parents. On my birthday (May 29) Liverpool FC plays Juventus in the European Cup final. I’m watching the game on TV. 39 football fans die and hundreds are injured during a riot, which came be be known as the ‘Heysel Tragedy‘. It was my worst birthday.

1979 – 1984

Another 5 years in high school. Happy times and unhappy times. Less Latin, more math. Girlfriends and my first beer. I get my driving licence. Music : The Police, Soft Cell, Human League, Kraftwerk, The Cure, Talking Heads and many more. Movies : Alien, Raging Bull, The Empire strikes back, Ghandi, Apocalyps Now, The Tin Drum (I preferred the novel of Günther Grass thou), Missing and many more. I grow up, fall down and get up again. Interesting period. I read Tolkien at the age of 17 and love it. I still do.

1978

September 1, my first day in another ‘big school’. It’s a boarding-school which means that I leave home on Monday morning and return back on Friday evening. I still love to go to school, but the first weeks are a bit difficult. I miss the culinary art of my mother. I learn Latin and math and other stuff. The French teacher is quite beautiful (Kate).

1977

A train highjack takes place at the village of De Punt in the Netherlands. Activists aim to endorse the self proclaimed Republik Maluku Selatan (RMS), a self-proclaimed republic in the Maluku Islands. The Dutch Marines storm the train and six hostage takers and two passengers loose their lives in the operation. It is the first time I see terrorists in action on TV. Elvis Presley dies too. Not all bad news in that year. Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, originally titled Star Wars, is released. Although the first of the saga, it is the fourth film by chronology of events. Among fans, it is commonly abbreviated as ANH. It’s also my last year in my home town school which is quite exciting.

1976

I fall in love for the first time. I met her on a holiday in Germany. Two weeks after my return a car hits her and she dies. I’m sad. Chicago has a hit with ‘If you leave me now’ about a quarrelling couple. We didn’t have the time to quarrel.

1975

I’m 10 years old. My first decade on this planet. Everything looks bright. I decide to stay around.

1974

ABBA performs Waterloo and wins the Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton, England, kick-starting their stellar international career. I love the blond (Agnetha). David Bowie has a hit with Rebel, Rebel. He’s not blond, but his music is better.

1973

Jason Kottke was born. He inspired me to start blogging (no… not in 1973). I read about 15 books per week.

1972

September 1, my first day in the ‘big school’, an all boy school. I say goodbye to my girl-friends at the infant school and will never meet them again. I can swim !

1971

My last year in infant school. I remember Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the first film adaptation of the 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by author Roald Dahl. I don’t like chocolate but still love French fries.

1970

The UNIX epoch is at 00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970. Paul A. Samuelson, an American economist, is awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1970 (the Nobel Prize…). I didn’t know him at the time but I would meet him again at the university. I like French fries.

1969

My first day at school. I’ve always liked school which is supposedly not very cool. At a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, California, a fan was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels, a biker gang that had been hired to provide security for the event. This was certainly not cool. Even more famous than the Altamont concert is Woodstock, which consisted of dozens of the most famous performers in the world at the time, playing together in an atmosphere of peace with nature and love, with many thousands of concertgoers ; it is still one of the largest concerts in the history of the world. This is definitely cool.

1968

My sister was born on the 4th of July ! And Manchester United wins the European Cup, the first English Club to do so. They beat Portuguese side Benfica Lisbon by 4 goals to one.

1967

My parents buy a nice home next to the sport centre in Lichtervelde (an even smaller city). I have my own room.

1966

Adam West’s Batman, the first full-length theatrical adaptation of the DC Comics character, opens on Saturday, July 30, 1966 in Austin, Texas. I was too young to go to the theatre according to my mother.

1965

I was born on May 29th at 04:30 am in Roeselare, a small city in Belgium, about 15 miles from Bruges. My full name is Kurt Charles Hector Buyse. The meaning of Kurt (pronounced kert) is ‘courageous advice’, which is rather nice. Charles and Hector are the first names of my grand-fathers.