Let's waste time chasing cars around our heads

Just watched a TV show produced in the UK some time ago titled the Human Zoo. It had me thinking, (since Tom is about to start uni, I should actually exercise my brain sometimes)! It's a show (like many other which have preceded, and no doubt will still come) over a 'psychological experiment' and how people react when put in different situations, and why etc. It is on every week, and tonights topic was over 'leadership'. The group of people (somewhere around 15) was divided into two - half was the red group A and the other half was the blue group B. The task was for the people of group A to instruct the people of group B to build a structure with certain materials, but not help them. A sort of similar scenario as with managers vs workers. It caused me to start thinking within my job (and im sure everyone elses as well) there are far too many managers...basically everyone with half a brain is a manager in something which actually means nothing except the thought of being powerful. I too am faced with a job which sometimes makes me a 'project manager' but it is almost worth laughing at such a title! Sorry, such a long introduction to what my point of the entry is... I find it very sad that I am surrounded with people (and Im sorry to say it again, but in Australia it is worse) who consider their 'job position' such a powerful and important status, that they may forget that others dont feel the same way. Needless to say, that at the end of the day (in the experiment on telly), the B team (workers) ended up being required to cook the dinner for the A team (managers) and created such a good atmosphere for themselves, while the team of 'leaders' ended up eating in silence and fighting. One could say that the managers actually won, because the workers did eventually do everything they asked, and this power is multiplied each time they are obeyed. However, I am not arguing that people should be followers and not leaders, it is just an observation on how (as I see it) too many leaders causes unhappiness (no, totalitarianism is probably not the answer either - I actuallly dont know what the answer is...). I could keep on discussing this for a while (to myself...), and I know that many people wont agree, but this is just my view. I know this isnt always applicable to everything, but it did make me smile and know which team I would rather belong to.

Our house, in the middle of our street

At long last, I decided to post some images of the new apartment. Take notice, no photos of dining room, or either bedrooms. As you can probably imagine, all of the above are not quite ready for photos (due to laziness on our behalf)!.

This is our first lazy weekend since we can remember (we actually did go out on friday night, but that doesnt count this time) and it is starting to show... we are attempting to detox, but are still buzzing somehow, and need to learn to take it easy! Next weekend is another housewarming (our landlords!) so this time we can trash somebody elses place! We still have the slight smell of beer in the corridor (I think the door accidently had a bit too much to drink...) but apart from that, we have mostly recovered.

Received a 'weekend-desk' voucher from work (basically allowing you to go to specific places in Belgium/Holland/France or Germany and do 'things' like cooking with chefs, or bungee jumping or relaxing spa - anything you can think of. So my mind is now in overdrive planning our next adventure. Was considering hanggliding, until I remembered that there arent many hills (in fact, any) in this part of the world, so will try to think of something else...

Let's conspire to ignite all the souls that would die just to feel alive

Finally another entry from me and not from ingrid. After another horrible workweek of playing games on the internet, counting down the days till I leave and making up jokes to harass the people that are actually working, I was pretty worn out. So on Friday we had dinner with a colleague who leaves for holiday and I am not going to see him anymore. So I can not leave without telling all the company secrets and gossip for him to use or to abuse. On Saturday we prepared everything for our party. Tim and Tash came especially from Liverpool just to help trash our apartment. Tommeke organised a whole tap and two kegs of beer. Luckily Ingrid's plan of getting our new couches failed so people couldn't spill all over them.

The night itself went as expected. Ingrid's work colleagues came and behaved, Tash spilled and blessed the new place, my mates showed up fashionably late and left un-fashionably drunk. After cleaning up and watching soccer till 4 in the morning we got to bed. Being the happy little campers that we were on Sunday morning we managed to go to Antwerp for about an hour and the rest of the day we spent playing boardgames with Tim and Tash while we got rid of excessive wine bottle. So I think we all ended up a little tipsy when we got to bed.

So now we have got the prospect of going home to an apartment we have got to clean while we both are buggered and just want to relax. We were going to have a quiet weekend this weekend but that fails again because of my going-away party at work. But I think we are going to spent the rest of the weekend doing nothing except for getting the new salon. And we can now call all of you people in Australia through skype because we ended our Flintstones era and joined in on the international communication highway. Details of skype you have to ask Ingrid.