weekend

Yes, I know it's tuesday already.

We (that is, mum, dad, my brothers and sister, and Roel's girlfriend) just had a nice weekend at the Belgian coast. We rented two small apartments of four beds each, and toured around a bit. Been to the sea, where the hurling winds did some nice things with the sand over there. Been to bruges (which was only 6km away), but all I did there was pay a visit to a local De Slegte 2nd hand bookstore for an hour and a half; I left with two 2nd hand DVDs.

For those interested, the DVDs were one of Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers (the 'special edition' DVD, whatever that means), and one of an 80s-era fantasy movie called Red Sonja. Starship Troopers is an okay movie; the plot is quite nice, but it's not really held up by the acting—one would expect that if you make a movie in which over half the main characters die, those deaths would get the director's and actor's attention they deserve, so that they would be convincing. They don't. I've never seen so many over-acted and unconvincing deaths in one movie, and they fail to bring the emotion of sorrow to the audience, instead making me smirk on occasion. Apart from that, it's quite entertaining.

The other one sucks. Nothing more to say about that. There is no plot; just a bunch of people who are on a trip and kill some others; and the current governor of California who gets on a girl with a sword. That's about it.

On sunday, the wind had intensified to a storm of the level where my brother's girlfriend got blown away if she got out the door, so we stayed in the house. I played chess and poker against Joris, which was fun to do.

Yesterday, I finished a small project for work, and in the evening, Roel and I went to the house of a friend of my father who happens to be my old Flute teacher, to rehearse the piece we're going to play on the wedding of Marian, my cousin. Did some good work there; we also had a nice chat over a glass of wine afterwards.