Life and its little pleasures

Tats

I got quite some reactions to my wrist, so for the people who asked:
That tattoo is my second one, the first one was one flower in the same place (see pic below from some time ago). Because it looked like a black blob, I wanted to give it some more colour. The experts told me that it was too small to have more than one colour, so I decided to make it a bit bigger and chose three flowers. Three because I kind of dedicate them to my nieces and nephew. So who knows what happens when my brother decides to have kids too :-)

I also have the line above my eyes tattooed. They call it permanent make-up, but when I did it 10 years ago, it was exactly done like a tattoo. The people doing those now, claim it is not the same as a real tattoo as the needle doesn't go as deep and it only lasts 5 years. Well, I still have mine after 10 years and it just faded a little bit from black to dark grey. This tattoo hurt way more than the wrist one, but neither of them were a walk in the park.

I had the wrist done in Miami at Miami Ink (Love Hate). They were very professional, clean and friendly. I don't regret anything, but if I ever do, I will just do the same as Angelina did with Billy Bob! :-)

Here it is

And yes, it hurts doing this.

Traveling

So, time for another update... I've had a pretty hectic schedule this past week, but it was one full of highlights again. First to Belgium for the taping of the "Tabel van Mendelejev". I had a fantastic time there; Urbanus and Jean Blaute are two extremely funny people! And Jean Blaute has promised to take me on a Jazz pub crawl in New York City and I intend to keep him to that. I'm not sure what impression my friend Danielle and me made on Jens Mortier, but I'm sure he was amused. And maybe he even listened when I told him to stop his agency from fucking things up with the Belgian bloggers :-)
Anyway, it will be on tv on May 19th, a Monday night.

The next morning, I was on a flight back to New York where I had my first introduction to skydiving that same night. Great fun, but let's see if this is a lifestyle for me. Not very much sleep though. The next evening, colleague M. had his goodbye drinks and that was as good as any reason to go pubcrawling with some great friends/work mates.
The weather was fantastic in the city and the "terrasjes" were out in full force. Hilary, Toby and I had a great lunch at Market, one of the Belgian restaurants in the city. Look how relaxed we look!

After New York I got back on a plane to Belgium, cause Standard de Liege was playing Anderlecht. 3 months ago, I asked my brother to help me get some tickets for this game as I felt then that it would be THE game of the season... As most of you probably know, I was right!

I also got my two best friends in Belgium, Ax and Danielle to convert!!! :-)

After a nice day off on Monday with a dinner with Mister P and Miss E and a working day on Tuesday in Brussels (where I could tease the Anderlecht-supporters with my Standard-scarf :-)), it was back on a plane to London.

Now here for a few days and then back in Belgium for the weekend. Life stays busy...

Pain

Just saw this at Appelogen. Quite a coincidence as just this morning I went through this torture (all for a good cause I'm sure).

Let's me describe to you the ritual of getting a bikini wax. Obviously, all you girls already know how this works, so this is for the guys.

First some vocabulary that is used where I go:
- Bikini wax: getting rid of the sides; everything that sticks out of your bikini
- Brazilian wax: removal of almost everything, front to back except for a thin strip of hair on the pubis
- Hollywood wax: removal of everything

Me personally, I always get a brazilian done ever since I went to Rio. I do not feel comfortable with a Hollywood as I am no longer 12.

When you come into the treatment room, the lady doing the torturing asks you to get undressed from the waist down and put on these paper knickers. She then leaves the room while you are doing this to give you some privacy. The fact that she will be very close to your vagina for the next 30 minutes apparently doesn't matter; English girls still want their privacy when undressing.
While you try to get as comfortable as possible on the table that is set up for you, the lady comes back in and mixes the wax a bit.

As for the wax, there are different types, but the ones that I have experienced are either warm or hot wax. Warm wax is put on you and left for a few seconds to dry. When dry, they rip the wax itself off, taking the hairs with it that are stuck in the dry wax. The hot wax is also applied to the skin, but then immediately ripped off with the help of strips. I don't have any preference. The experience of the lady doing it is usually the reason why it's real torture or bearable (trust me, it is never enjoyable).

First the wax goes on the sides, which is honestly not that big of a deal when ripping it off. If you feel that this is already as far as your pain threshold goes, stick with the normal bikini wax. After that, the lady works her way down and I guess it depends on how hairy you are as to where she stops. To be able to do this, she asks you to put your legs in different positions, from bending it to the side to bringing your knees up to your face. She also asks you for help in "spreading" your skin.

The last step is to decide on how wide you want your landing strip to be and from where you want it to start and finish. This is also quite painful, but after that, you are done, except for some soothing creme.

Again, the lady will leave the room so you have privacy to get dressed (still don't get this as she has just been looking up your bum). All that's left then is to pay and make another appointment for this blissful treatment...

Just don't...

I'm telling you, I've had it with people who think they should give me advise on my love life. I'm so sick and tired of strangers asking me :"So, why are you still single", usually followed by something like "work is not everything, you have to make time and work hard on a relationship".
Who the fuck do they think they are? I never asked for their comments on my life and I'm not sure how much longer I can still pretend like I don't mind and laugh it off with a joke.

Or another one of those hateful remarks: "You are too smart, men are intimidated by you. Maybe you shouldn't be so outspoken." So I should act dumb, look pretty and then I'll be happy? Really?? I'm not sure how that is supposed to work.

And you should know that this usually comes from either a) a woman whose husband is fucking around and in some cases has even tried to pick me up, or b) the most ugly man whose wife is even more boring than he is.

Why do people think I'm not happy while being single? I have a great job, great friends, a beautiful apartment in a fantastic city, I get paid quite well and I can have (good) casual sex whenever I want to! Now I'm not sure about you, but for me, this all sounds quite wonderful.

I'm not saying that I don't want to find someone special. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not going to feel unhappy because I don't have that now. I was actually quite lucky in my life to have met a few guys that I spent a longer time with and they were all pretty wonderful (except one huge asshole). I loved them very much at the time and considered them my best friends. I also wish them nothing but the best in their lives now. I know off at least two of them that are now dads! And I think that is wonderful.
I've learned a lot from them and I'm sure they had a role in making me who I am today.

So if you feel sorry about me because I'm single and you are in a loving relationship? Don't be... Because while you worry, I might be somewhere in Manhattan with a cocktail in my hand while a gorgeous model is trying to seduce me for a night of unlimited pleasure. And you know what? He might succeed...

Break

Almost 2 years ago I started with this blog. At first because the broadcasting of the Apprentice started and I wanted to give some insight into what happened behind the scenes. Afterwards just because I enjoyed it so much and it gave me a chance to talk a bit about what was happening in my life.

Lately I feel like I have to push myself to write anything. I don't have the passion anymore that I used to have. On top of that people keep complaining about not having anyting to read or because I started writing in English... So I decided to stop, have a break. One thing I learned in the last couple of days is that if you can't commit to anything, it's better to call it quits and I just don't have the commitment anymore. So maybe this is a temporary break, maybe this is final. All I know is that for now, I will no longer be updating this blog. Ciao!

I miss them

I completely support Pietel's idea for a Curse-blog. The way I feel today, I could easily contribute enough material for quite some time. I might have done a very, very stupid thing and I don't know how to make it better. These are the moments I miss my best friends the most. You know, the ones that you can tell everything while crying and making no sense at all for hours. And they will know exactly what you mean through your sobs and say the right thing the whole time... I miss them a lot.

32

Same age as David Beckham, Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, Charlize Theron, Jack White, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Adams, 50 Cent and Joaquin Phoenix. Good company :-)

But damn... am really getting old.

Sick

My head is spinning, my temperature is almost 2 degrees up, I feel sick to my stomach and I'm dead tired. Hate feeling like this...
Today I'm working with my laptop on my knees on the couch with 2 blankets wrapped around me and a bottle of Advil on the coffee table.

A gorgious looking male model bringing me some soup would be very nice right now...

Stuck

I can hardly move my neck... After Werchter, my neck felt a little stiff. But that all disappeared. After Port Eliot, that pain came back with a vengeance... And now I can hardly move my neck. Looking up hurts like hell and even opening my mouth to put food in does not feel good. I urgently need someone to come and give me a deep massage, because this is no fun... Looks like this might be the answer.