A socdem elected official will visited my place of work soon for god knows what reason and I am contemplating calling in sick that day because I feel like I will explode with rage for some reason
A cool dystopian thing happened this morning as I found myself discussing with my mother what exactly was in het emergency kit in case of war, seeing if it was cheaper to buy everything individually because private companies selling said kits are making them very expensive.
Because that's what life's about right? Prepping for war together with your mom.
Visited a book store in the city today because I have been on a reading streak and I want to keep it up.
There was a whole table dedicated to anarchist books so I figured they are anarchist leaning. That's okay with me. I usually shop at our commie store but I can spice things up I guess.
What confused me, though, was that the table also had books on Navalny for some reason. I know we make fun of anarchist takes sometimes but this just genuinely confused me. They know he was a far right racist piece of shit, right?
Anyway I got some books. Testaments by Atwood, Walden by Thoreau and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
The amount of people simping for Nick from The Handmaid's Tale is disturbing. An attractive nazi is still a nazi. The man is a literal fascist. For fuck's sake.
At this point I'm seriously contemplating doing a rain dance or something. My plants need water. Please rinse off the thick layer of pollen from everything. Please.
Also, Belgian men, for the life of them, cannot seems to save themselves if their lives depended on it lol. Very rarely I see a Belgian guy with actual strong, independent opinions, who is able to cook, clean, whatever. There is like this insane passiveness surrounding a lot of them and I often find myself wondering if there is anything going on in their mind.
Now, this all sounds very negative of course and I don't want to be disrespectful or anything but sometimes you just need to vent lol.
Well we're both Catholic and there is some overlap in cultural stuff in that. We both live a more 'bourgondisch' compared to Northern Netherlands. But we Brabanders are still Dutch so we still have that directness in us. The main difference is, is that everyone is really closed up here it seems. You very rarely get personal questions anywhere. I've worked in several different places and I rarely talk to my coworkers about my weekend for example. It's difficult to become friends with Flemish people let alone find a friend group to get into.
Most of my friends here are Dutch lol. They experience the same issues so it's not like I am unlikeable or something. Belgian people have explained it to me as Belgian people getting 'stuck to their local church tower' in that all of their friend groups and most of their lives get decided by where they are born and they are hesitant to break free from that, so it's very hard for people at a later stage to come into existing social groups.
Maybe it's the same for people coming to The Netherlands as well, idk. It's not like The Netherlands is perfect or something. But in my experience at least the Belgians are far more reserved than I am used to as a Dutch person.
Also, hierarchy is much more respected here. Where at home I would regularly chat with the ceo's of the places I worked at, that is not done here. At my first job here I just walked into our CEO's office to ask him a question and he seemed mortified lol. And I think that results in some rigid social structures as well where a lot of people seem sort of helpless or incapable of finding solutions themselves if an authority figure is not present. Idk you have to experience working here to understand it I guess. Some sort of 'we've done this for ages now and we can't change it' mentality, even if things get outdated.
For the first time since migrating I sort of miss home. Belgian people are really hard to connect to and they seem to be stuck in a perpetual state of misery for large parts of their lives. And that can be exhausting. I went home to celebrate my football team becoming champions yesterday and I realized I really miss dicking around with the people over there.
I wouldn't mind doing it all again or even migrating elsewhere again though. It has been an interesting experience. But I increasingly wonder what I'm doing here exactly. I will never be Belgian. I will never really belong here. And I will never be able to get used to whatever mentality prevails here. And I'm a white European too. Can't imagine how much more difficult it must be for non European migrants.
Anyway, tomorrow there will be a big strike again for the fifth month in a row. I am at a point where I wonder what the next step will be if nothing changes.
It's my go to for everything Asian I cook. So much better than the standard supermarket things. I never knew so many flavors of sambal existed before I went to our local toko.
State radio this morning suddenly started talking on Ibrahim Traore and Russian ties and my partner all of a sudden called it bullshit lol. Did not really expect it from her but she saw lots of comments on Dutch state media Instagram defending the man so the people know what's up it seems.
Eurovision as an outsider must be strange. 'Here is a song about milkshakes, followed by a song about Laika the dog, followed by a song about the Pontian-Greek genocide, followed by Latvian folklore'
Belgian public sector Union is showing a Palestinian video on multiple occasions throughout the Eurovision broadcast. Which I guess is something, at least.
SlayGuevara @ SlayGuevara @lemmygrad.ml Posts 4Comments 261Joined 6 mo. ago
A socdem elected official will visited my place of work soon for god knows what reason and I am contemplating calling in sick that day because I feel like I will explode with rage for some reason