Baloji (thanx to Agenda)

Thank god we can learn what is going on in Belgium/Brussels for free through Metro (newspaper) and Agenda (weekly magazine about the cultural stuff in Brussels). However, I like Agenda also for the free tickets it gives to the people that e-mail them. For a year now, every week, I send them e-mails to try my luck for a concert or show. I got lucky twice!!!
About a year ago, I won two tickets to a concert of Asian Dub Foundation. I haven't even heard of them until then. After I won the tickets, I looked for people who could go to the concert with me. All my friends rejected me (yeah they're really busy). I was about to stay home that night. But my roommate Aleksandra found out about it and forced me to go, and she joined me. Of course I was somewhat prepared for the concert; I listened to the last album of the band and even picked a favorite song -which is still my favorite, Speed of Light. It was a great night, I danced and jumped for hours!

Three days ago I received another e-mail from Agenda informing me about me geting lucky again, for the concert of Baloji. (I even forgot when/how I sent the e-mail for those tickets.) Apparently Baloji was a Belgian-Congolese rapper using Congolese sounds. I asked almost everyone around to join me for the concert and rejected by all of them. Finally Ezgi couldn't resist my insistence and decided to come. Yesterday we went to this well-hidden place in Schaarbeek and listened/watched the concert with a bunch of people. The music was really good and the concert was so fun! (OK, I have to admit, we each had to drink one beer in order to start moving a little.) In time I started to feel the music although I did not really like rap and did not understand most of the songs and talk (my French is not that good) - and by the end of the concert I was all of a sweat! (In Turkish, kurtlarımı bi döktüm bi döktüm ki sormayın gitsin! :p)
If you have the opportunity, go to this guy's concert. He and his band are so sincere and cool, such beautiful people..

One last remark: Baloji is much more handsome than he seems in the photos and I loved the comb in his hair :p

El Metteko, straight.

Yesterday, after a few hours of my return from Gent, I met with Heini and Eleusa (a Brazilian superwoman whom I met in French course) in front of the Bourse (exact time: 16.30 :p). The plan was to go to this Brazilian night in a pub, El Metteko. However when we went there we learned that during the Christmas Market period, they would take a break from this tradition of Brazilian night (afternoon actually) which normally takes place on the first sunday of every month. However we had a very nice evening.
Eleusa came with her husband Philippe (Belgian, yep) and made us talk in French all night which I am grateful for. After a couple glasses of wine, we walked to the Grand Place and watched the show (projection on the town hall). Except the persistent advertisement of Electrabel, it was nice.. And I like the giant Christmas tree in Grand Place with white lights (although it glitters a bit too much sometimes). Last year there were blue flourescents all over the tree, god... (wait, I wrote about this earlier I guess?)
At one point, everybody was hungry and I was dizzy. After all, I wasn't able to recover from my Gent evening yet. So I let them eat their delicious seafood in a restaurant and came home.

2nd Anthropologists Reunion @ Gent

Since we all graduated, I cannot see my friends from anthropology very often. So on 22th October - which was a Friday - I decided to invite them for dinner in my place. Elisabeth, Chris and Ibraheem came and Gert-Jan joined us after the dinner (to take the opportunity to drink Port wine I presume :p). The reunion pleased everybody I suppose, we decided to repeat it, in another place.

Yesterday I went to Gent for our second reunion in Chris' place. This time Elisabeth and Karen was there except I and Chris (not to forget Chris' roommate Rex). Despite the terrible, horrible, scary snow, I managed to get there with my high-heeled boots. (It took me more than two hours to get there but let's focus on the positive stuff). Although Karen had to wait one hour for the bus and Elisabeth had to leave really early, Chris' spagetti with Bolognese souce and Karen's quiche made our night. Everyone overate as long as I remember.

After the party, I left with Karen to stay at her place. We were expecting to catch a night bus but turned out we missed it with only 2 min! However it wasn't that unfortunate, we had a pleasant - and a bit dangerous - walk home. Karen prooved how smart she was by distracting me continuously and keeping on responding "5 minutes" to my question "how long do we have?" Well we had to walk for 45 minutes on that slippery ice/snow at 2 o'clock in the morning!

In the morning (i.e. after we went to sleep and woke up), following a short Gent tour, I had to take the train and come home, since I am supposed to party somewhere else in the afternoon. (Was it "thé dansant"?)

By the way, it started to rain in Brussels and to wash off the snow. Hallelujah!