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Unless you've been living in a cave or have just woken up from a long coma like Schumacher, you know the football world cup has started in Brazil. Tonight Belgium is playing Algeria, and even if I had no intention of knowing this fact I do because this "info" has been forced down our throats all day long on the national "news." All day long the national radio and TV "news" report opened with amazingly long featured about the football match. This so appalling to me as this is not newsworthy and as far as I know the world has stopped so everyone can focus on the football. Where are all the journalists? Probably in front of their TV. Thousands of people have been forced out of their homes at gun point in Rio in the name of football and entertainment, thousands have been massacred because they didn't want to leave. But that, the "news" don't talk about. The world is silent. And the "news" don't mention how not a ...

Yesterday marked my final day  of work, and in five days, I'll be heading home . You cannot imagine how happy I am to have left work!!!! Don't get me wrong, I consider myself to be a hard worker but the conditions under which I have been working in the last three months can be described as bullying, professional harassment, psychological harassment, etc. These words come from my colleagues and there is a consensus, people have left after two, three weeks and another is leaving very soon. But now, on to better things. Today I will visit an NGO , an umbrella group that focuses on helping the Palestinians in the Jerusalem area, because they are often forgotten by the international NGO's which tend to focus more on Gaza and the West Bank, and the Palestinians here are residents but not citizens. I am currently deleting all my files on my old PC so I can give it to them to give to a needy family. This week is Pessach so it will limit me in my previously planned travels ...

My work experience in Israel is getting to a close... Juste a few more days of work left, a couple of free days and boom, back to Brussels. Wow. Has it really been that long? Almost three months have gone by but sometimes it feels like it's just been a couple of weeks. What to say... This experience has been incredibly enriching, eye-opening and a real challenge. Many a time did I want to quit, a couple of times I ended up in tears after a long day of not being treated very well (not to be rude...). But I couldn't give up, not when I was so close to the end. I don't like looking back on things, looking forward is the way! But in the situation that I don't actually know what is to come yet, I guess that gives me the time to look at these three months. I won't bore you with a deep analysis and will rather opt for a short list of points... Work:  Exhausting. I am trying really hard to think of what I have learnt but nothing is coming to my mind... I have m...

When talking about homophobia and horrible countries that pass anti-gay laws we often think about Putin's Russia, Uganda, Mugabe, and such. These places are more or less far and their society are perceived as traditional, old fashion, nothing like our Western society that is so amazing. Yet we needn't look so far from home... We forget homophobia is on the rise everywhere, even in Europe. I feel awful whenever I tell my girlfriend I can't hold her hand when we're walking in the centre of Brussels, the capital of Europe. She doesn't hold it against me but I get angry at our society where I can't feel safe because of who I love. A week after Kansas almost did the same but gave up at the last minute, Arizona passed a bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve or give medical treatment to gays on religious grounds . First off if you want to get biblical, according to the scriptures, you should hate the sin, not the sinner (Matthew 5:43-44, 6:14-15, ...

Many of my friends and some members of my family don't understand this but I don't like going to Brussels town centre or taking public transport in Brussels especially the underground transportation. They tell me I'm being unreasonable, paranoid and weird. A few days ago, Sofie Peeters, a Belgian film student released her short movie/documentary that raised a lot of debate. The film, "femme de la rue" depicts sexism in the centre of the capital. I don't consider myself to dress in a provocative way, it is not my style, I don't like women that do not because it is (they do what they wanna do)  but because in my humble opinion it is vulgar, I don't want to see a girl's chest on the same account that I don't like low cut jeans that show off men's asses (and often women too) because I don't need nor do I want to see people's attributes other than in an intimate context. Many people say that victims of sexual harassment in the str...