Saturday 29 November 2008

Most played (3)

1. Sigur Rós - "Ara Batur"



2. Glasvegas - "Geraldine"



3. Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - "The Beat That My Heart Skipped"





4. Wild Beasts - "The Devils Crayon"





5. For A Minor Reflection (they are the excellent support act to Sigur Rós on their European tour) - "Kastljos"



Friday 28 November 2008

Cocktails and karaoke

My best friend Elke and her boyfriend broke up a while ago, so last week I took her on a fun night out.

First we went to my favorite Brussels bar 'Le Roi Des Belges' where we had a delicious cocktail called Road Runner (vodka, amaretto, coconut). It looked like milkshake, but it definitely didn't taste so! We were having a good chat whilst enjoying our cocktails, when four guys on the other side of the room started to point at us and say things. We thought they just wanted to harass us so we tried our best to ignore them as much as possible. After a while they came over to us. Even though we weren't really in the mood to do so, we had a little chat and figured out two of them were pretty decent blokes.

Elke and I then headed off to Nua, the karaoke/party bar of the Irish pub O'Reilly's. We invited the guys to come with us and after having finished their drinks all of them came, but - fortunately - only the two nice ones (Mario and Samy) stayed longer than half an hour.

I'm a huge karaoke fan (not a very good singer, though) so it didn't take long before I jumped on stage. Elke and I sang two ABBA songs ("Knowing Me, Knowing You" and a killer version of "Super Trouper") and one Alanis Morissette song ("You Oughta Know"). Elke did a solo performance of Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now", while I gave The Libertines' "Don't Look Back Into The Sun" a go. Mario and Samy also did a song or two, maybe three. I can't really remember everything they did, but I do remember their amusing interpretation of Amy Winehouse's "Back To Black".

Definitely something we should do again soon!

Here are some pictures (fortunately no pictures of me, I become a wild beast once I'm on stage :p)!








Wednesday 26 November 2008

Get your hands on some cheap wine

So I didn't make it to Dirty Pretty Things goodbye gig (cries a little), but I díd go to Late of the Pier last week.

It's been a while since I've seen an audience with the same amount of enthusiasm as the one that showed up for Late of the Pier. To be honest, I think the band could have done better if the crowd wasn't that convinced of having a good night before the gig even started. Their wasn't much of a challenge for the boys, if you know what I mean. But who am I to complain? It was quite some party, partly thanks to the never-stopping Neon Enlightenment-girls!

The great support act Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip!




Late of the Pier




Check out these pictures by Joachim Beckers from Wannabes (it's me in the last picture, ha!):

Tuesday 25 November 2008

Victory for you and me

Yesterday night my badminton club held the annual championship between practically all of its players (competition players and 'amateurs') and I became third in the ladies ranking - yeey! Last year I ranked rather low so I was really happy with my result!

Withering where some snowman was

I was supposed to go to the Dirty Pretty Things goodbye gig on Sunday night, but my plans got sabotaged by the snow. Traffic became hell and my mom said I wasn't allowed to go because it would be completely perilous. She might have been right in some way, but still.. It was their Belgian goodbye gig! :( And hearing how amaaazing it was from everyone who did make it to the gig (fortunately I wasn't the only one who failed to do so) doesn't help, exactly.

It's not easy to say this right now, but even all of this can't make me hate snow. In fact, I pretty much love snow.
You should have heard me a couple of hours before it obstructed me on my way to Carl Barât: "Snow! SNOW! It's snowing! Woohoo, Christmas! Woohoo, everything's white!" Yes, I can get a little silly at times.
















Saturday 22 November 2008

It's so magical what you can keep inside

Brussels looks so beautiful when it's dark.











Friday 21 November 2008

Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur

(translation: inside me a lunatic sings)

A moment I'd been looking forward to for a long, long time was the Sigur Rós gig in Vorst Nationaal (concert hall in Brussels). It was the fourth time I saw this amazing band perform and once again I was completely impressed.

Some people aren't so much into the new album because it's more accessible than their previous work (not me though - no matter how much I worship the previous albums, I think it's good for a band to do something that's a little different from time to time), but even those songs proved to be able to move people (including me, each time again) to tears when performed live.

The highlights? Fljótavík, Svefn-g-englar, E-Bow (untitled 6), Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur (I love the quatre-mains!), All Alright and of course the so very intense Popplagiõ (untitled 8).

It's not fair towards the band to try and describe what I experience during their shows, because no words are able to do it justice. It's like I'm sensing all possible emotions at the same time, extremely intense.. There's not a single band like Sigur Rós and I love them for that.

Here are some beautiful pictures by Pieter Morlion and Jens Baert!

Thursday 20 November 2008

Tuesday 18 November 2008

There are no holes in his shoes but a big hole in is his world


Me and my Finnish friend Ann-Sofi decided to go shopping in Antwerp last Saturday. During a couple of hours we tried to find her a navy blue winter coat that exactly fitted her desires, but we unfortunately didn't manage.

When we were walking passed a shoe store we suddenly heard a lot of noise coming from the balcony of the shop. We looked up and saw two Zwarte Pieten yelling at the people on the streets and throwing candy and balloons to them. I told Ann-Sofi before about the Belgian/Dutch Sinterklaas tradition so she was very exited to hear Sinterklaas was arriving on his boat in Antwerp that day (the celebration itself is only on the 6th of December, but the man always 'arrives' a while before).

After taking some pictures with the Zwarte Pieten in the shoe store we went over to the harbour to witness the arrival. Apparantly he had already arrived (his boat was quite small and we hadn't seen it yet, we were even photographing the wrong boat - a huge one that was just passing by - that explains why we were the most exited people around).

When we finally saw him on his carriage, we watched a part of the procession. Ann-Sofi got completely obsessed by Sinterklaas and it didn't take long for me to get completely sucked up by her enthusiasm and happily join in. I can't remember laughing like that for a long, long time.














Ann-Sofi being obviously Sinterklaas' biggest fan

me displaying my pervert nature on this doll