:: @ Choepie’s ::

Just finished this great book by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Lucia Graves. I read it in English as it was a gift from Albertin for my Birthday and Flemish books are pretty hard to find over here. In meantime I’m halfway through *Nordermoor* of the icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason, I’m probably missing some dots on and backslash through the ‘o’… This one I’m reading in Flemish. But I’m missing some time to finish reading… I want to have like 36h a day.. 28h to do things and then a good 8 hour sleep each night… and not 4 hours like previous one.

BTW we are reaching the end of August and I’m having already 20.000 hits for august only… isn’t that great ? I started this site halfway july, had 9.800 hits in July… AND best of all : I’m world famous (not rich unfortunately)… had visitors from Japan (please send sake if you read this !), Belgium (Beer!), Germany, UK, Greece !, Holland (go away! - except if you’re Sas) and some more…

I must not forget to post a picture of ‘Mister Pink’. ‘Mister Pink’ is dying but I’m trying very hard to keep him alive. It’a a little palmtree, and a couple of months ago, I watched with tears in my eyes, some little green, new leaves growning out of the center of the palm… 2 weeks later, they grew untill about 1m and they suck all the green out of the regular leaves : “parasites” I thought so I grabbed my Leatherman and cut them off… Mister Pink recovered a little bit, started to become green again, but unfortunately 2 weeks later, new green leaves came out of it, so I cut if off again… of the 5 leaves he has, only 2 are regaining their color and the other stay very dry and dead. The problem is, those leaves that come out, they really look like new leaves of this plant, but they grow long and no real palmleaves come out of them.. they just grow on one ugly line up, untill more than a meter… I’m desperate ! Anyway, anybody has an idea what the name is of this plant… (I know it’s Mister Pink !) I mean brand, type… something latin.

11 o’clock, sundaymorning… it should be on the list of strickly forbitten things, but somebody kind of called my out of my bed… I forgot about it, but I promised Gema to join her to the Rastro. Before I could consider the possibility not to go, I was already out of the shower and on the way to ‘la Latina’. Gema wasn’t awake either because she was waiting for me, 2 metrostations away from our meeting point. Anyway we met in the middle where I had some breakfast in Tirso de Molina, we crossed the Rastro and installed ourselves on a terras near Puerto de Toledo for an afternoon of big glasses of Claras.
Ana was coming home after a trip to Valencia and I picked her up at the busterminal and went almost straight to a terras to have a HUGE steak for dinner…. nice and calm Sunday. Nice and calm weekend after all.

Quite a busy day yesterday… got up pretty early to continue developing a web based appliction for at the office. When I develop, I work from home, it’s a lot more relax and no french are running around the area, and I move on a lot faster, so at 8 o’clock in the morning I was already writing some code. I wanted to make it early and have a nap before going out… well not for my boss who decided to hand me over a -very bad english speaking- italian customer… talktalktalk… it toke him almost an hour to tell me his system was slow… worked on it untill about 8, and there was Jon and Espe for a game of poker… and there was Gareth to have a steak at gallego around 11, and there was Nico to grab some beer somewhere… I agreed with all and dropped completely exhausted in my bed round half past 4. Bit hangoverboy today, should quit smoking anyway.

Working from home right now. I’m programming well at least that’s creative. The fact is : Is shouldn’t do this, because I’m working way too much if I’m home. In the office, there are a billion other things you can/must do. At home I get on my desk and hardly think about eating or drinking. If it wasn’t for my VPN connection with the office that fails once in a while (it must be due to the ADSL of Telefonica…) i didn’t had a break in the whole day.
I’m growning fat and the fantastic steak on the terras with Ana, Jon, Gareth and a Wales friend of him, doesn’t help too much. I need to move a bit more. Today a mail came around about launchin the new football saison.. I’m not a great player.. actually I must be the worse, but it’s good fun and I move, so I replied that they can count on me. I wonder if they really will.

Halle Berry is boring even in catsuit. It’s been a long time since I saw a movie so bad. The catsuit couldn’t keep my attention. I had a stupid day as well, I’m not sure if I can blame it on the catsuit, but I was bored the whole day. Shit happends I gues. Tomorow is another one. Don’t even feel like writing. Nothing happend.

Strange day today.. I spend about the whole day outside on some benches, first in the Castellana (under the trees to hide away from the sun) and lateron in the sun on Plaza Colon, reading ‘Shadows of the Wind’ -great book actually - I can’t believe I don’t feel worse, at the end, I came home around 7 in the morning after seeing Dan Bell in Mondo, playing a pretty nice minimal house set. Anyway, I can fall asleep in front of the television watching Catwoman… I don’t think it’s a great movie, but Halle Berry in catsuit is nice enough to fall asleep with

Going through some turntableism, I really hope they confirm to me that they will provide some decks at the party where I’m supposed to deliver some music for. I tried to imagin the people, after 3 hours of party, whether they would like some ‘real old and good DISCO’ or a nice mix between all kind of styles… so yesterday I tried setting of with some disco and going over some *clasics* from house and electro towards some great techno… well whatever, I’ll drop some vinyl in the trunk of the car and we’ll see what happens….

Pretty busy at home… I need to prepare a good Disco set for a privat party… although I like playing live, the *real* disco I have, I have on Minidisk, and most of the bars don’t have their players (and I’m not very tempted to get mine over) so, I record them all to my computer, and will try to get some ready mixed CD’s out of it. So for the next week, Donna Summer, The Beegees, Barry White etc.. are jelling through the house, I might be bored ot this music by the time the party starts
Anyway I’ll take some CD’s and a Vinyl case with me, just in case I’m not alone tired of Disco.

Finally we watch ‘LA BICI DE GHISLAIN LAMBERT‘…(bought it in Spain, original title is ‘ Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert‘. (click on the title to be linked to a description in French or Spanish) Now talking about a great movie ! This is definitely one ! Only the ‘Belgian Mussels’ were missing, but besides that : this is 100% Belgian atmosphere. Benoît Poelvoorde is a great actor..(unfortunately you need some french to read his site.) I need to find some more movies on him over here. One of my favorits was ‘C’est arrivé prés de chez vous !”. Black&White movie about some madman in Brussels… I believe it’s also known as ‘Man Bites Dog: It Happened in Your Neighborhood’.

It must be the age I guess… I’m still very tired from the creamfields festival. Neverthless I managed to join Jon and Espe for a nice and quite evening of poker at Jon’s place. Nothing special, espe and me are still novices in this one, but we managed to play 2 good rounds and we definitely want to repeat this.
It’s good to have some nice things to do that doesn’t cost money, I have to save some because there’s a wedding upcomming wherefor a new suit, a nice present, a renting car and 4 nights in a hotel in Cadiz is needed…

don’t hold back… cause you woke up in the mornin, with the mission to to move, so I make it harder…
don’t hold back… if you think about it, so many people do, be cool man, look smarter….
don’t hold back… and you shouldnt even care, bout those losers in the air, and their crooked stares…
don’t hold back… cause there’s a party over here, so you might as well be here, where the people care…
don’t hold back…

the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… galvanize! c’mon, c’mon c’mon….

don’t hold back… if you think about it too much, you may stumble, trip up, fall on your face…
don’t hold back… you think its time you get up, crunch time, like a sit up, come on keep pace…
don’t hold back… put apprehension on the back burner, let it sit, dont even get it lit…
don’t hold back… get involved with the jam, don’t be a prick, hot chick, be a dick….
don’t hold back…

the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… the world, is holdin back… the time has come to… galvanize! c’mon, c’mon c’mon….

world, the time has come to… push the button… world, the time has come to… push the button… world, the time has come to… push the button…
world, my finger, is on the button… my finger, is on the button… my finger, is on the button… push the button… the time has come to… galvanize!

2nd time I saw The Chemicals in 2 months time… good things come in pairs. After about 6 hours drive we, that is Ana, Frederique and Uco entered Almeria to meet up with Oscar and Marta. From Almeria it’s about 1 hour drive to end up in Playa de Villaricos where Creamfields Andalucía was to start at 18h on Saturday. Went out foor some beers on friday but as I was the only one with a drivers license the trip after a days work, really got me tired and I didn’t want to risk my Festival with going out too much, at the end this 1day festival was to end around 9 o’clock in the morning….

After spending the afternoon on the beach doing absolutely nothing, we entered the holy grounds of Creamfields. It was a lot smaller than I expected so orientation shouldn’t be a problem, but the wind was…. the stages weren’t positioned too bad, but a little more distance could have given the difference in hearing one or two concerts at the same time.

I’m still not sure how it comes, but I happen to miss a lot of concerts I came for : Ellen Alien, Todd Terry, Carl Cox, Felix da Housecat and The Hacker… I still can’t believe this. Well Ellen Alien started when Chemicals where in the middle of their set after some technical problems, The Hacker I just forgot about and the other 3 were programmed at the about same time and at the same time I was already dying for sleep.

But we had a great time ! The day started with Carl Craig which was surprisingly accessable… I’m not sure if I’m happy with that. Ladytron and Goldfrap where not too bad, but they went a bit lost in the style of the festival and that’s why Ana and I started wandering around and found Lady Nightingale.
Lady Nightingale was about the biggest surprice… I couldn’t place her and somehow I was confusing here with Annie Nightingale… but her presence didn’t match with the face I had in mind Anyway, she could be your mother… touches the mixer with a typical mother-attitude like ‘What a lot of buttons I have here - I might do something stupid, but if I turn this knob it might be wicked…. oh boy, it is ! ” Her mixing skills where from lucky to bad, but she definitely played some very nice tunes and the mixing didn’t really matter. We went for another tour, catched a glimp of Deep Fish, but headed back to the Speed tent to check out about ‘The Bliss Borthers”, which happen do be more single and female than I expected… but it didn’t matter anymore because the Chemicals where about to start off… we’ll at least they gave it some good tries… after the second technical failure, I thought that that was it, they wouldn’t return on stage… but then “hey girl, hey boy, superstar DJ’s, here we go !!! ” went over the area and they headed of for a hell of a party ! Even if you’ve seen them before.. it’s still great to see them again !

We managed to find Fred, Uco and Marta, while they where watching Mouseup from a save distance from the Loft stage and once together we went back to the mainstage to catch up with 2manydj’s, my homecountry does provide good fun. Although I’ve seen them lots of times before, they still surprised me with a great set !
Chosing between Todd Terry, Felix da Housecat or Carl Cox wasn’t necessary… we were exhaused by then and I was lucky that Marta was Ok (alcoholwise) and had a drivers licence…

Great weekend, met again some very nice people - Marta & Oscar : thanks again for the hospitality !!! - and had great music… there’s nothing more needed for a perfect world…

Hey girls ! Hey Boys ! Looking for pictures ? Here we go !!