Last night Eva and I had her brothers over for traditional Spanish tortillas (which I would call onion and potato omelette). Joris (the oldest of the brothers) cooked, and we all headed to a movie afterwords in town--Joris deciding to join Eva and I for a drink after the show. He's majoring in economics or something, and always has an educated view of the goings on of the world, and besides this, he's a traveller at heart, and I'm always hoping that even more of that spirit will rub off on me. Not that I dont' have the bug...it's just sometimes daunting. The world is small and big at the same time.

After many a beer we head into world economics (again) and somehow we get talking about oil, taxes, you know stuff like that. I bring up drilling for oil in alaska, and he says something that I hadn't thought of, but understand completely.
This is a very poor paraphrase:
"Basically, any country, whether it claims to have "moral" or "ethical" or "environmental" concerns will never act on those concerns if they go against what is "good for their country." For instance, though the ban on drilling in alaska looks like an environmental win, the result continues the spiral of supply and demand in the Middle East. No country is going to burden it's people by acting on moral, ethical, or environmental concerns...to put it lightly, it's all about power, money, and politics."

Furthermore he shed light on one of the cycles that has spanned world history...
for the most part, the wars that are being fought around the world have little to do with ideology (communism vs. democracy) or territory (one country expanding its borders) it has a lot to do with religion (the belief of one set of people wanting to destroy another group for their beliefs--not leaving much room for tolerance.)

This sort of conversation at 3 in the morning is always healthy...but after so many trips to the bar for refills, it was time to go home...

When Eva and I are literally 100 meters away from our house we hear music coming from the direction of the house of one of our friends. We enter and don't come out again until the sun is up and it's 6 in the morning. Good people, fun time, dancing, drinking water, and some of the most friendly non-native english speakers I've ever met.

In reference to the night, as my dad would say, "A good time was had by all." Eva and I retired into our bed before 7 and got up again at 1 only to fall asleep on the couch again at 3 to get up again at 5. No, it wasn't a productive day, but it was nice. Though we missed a gorgeous afternoon, it was somehow worth it. Basically the only thing we accomplished today was sleeping, helping Joris with his thesis, eating some fritjes at the best frituur in the whole of Belgium, and returning home. Oh the wonders of lazy Sundays.

Only one thing left to record:

It wasn't completely dark at 9.

Walking back from an erand this evening, Eva remarked on the coolness of non-city, city spaces. Sure enough, an expance of fencing, marking off the distance between one building and the next, the sort of removal of buildings that leaves the wallpaper on the side that used to be wall, and you can see stair marks from where there used to be stairs... Well this space is barely 21 steps by, but walking by it tonight it was like a miniture climate change. Not only was it frangranced by a spring blooming plants, but cool. Leaving the protection of 3 familied buildings stacked side by side and then space...coolness...then back to storefronts and studios, houses and bakeries...warmth.

The same as looking up on occasions where I'm always looking down...it was nice to be aware of this space. A non-city city space. Nice sentence. :)