I’ve been living in Brussels, Belgium for the last seven and a half years — time flies when you’re having fun! I try to not remember the bad parts of Brussels (thousands of cars everywhere, aggressive drivers, very few bike lanes, pollution, climate, humidity, dirt, smoking in bars, “wild west attitude”, bureaucracy, lack of space, lack of organization, lack of information sharing, linguistic divide, political deadlock and so on). Instead, I’ll remember only the good parts: fries, beer, chocolate, open-minded people, multiculturalism, festivals, art, central location in Europe, nice bars, excellent restaurants, great job opportunities. Belgium wouldn’t exist without Surrealism. Belgium is surreal!

I’m grateful for having been able to explore Belgium and many European cities in the last years. I’ve met many wonderful people and learnt a lot professionally. Belgium has earned a special place in my heart, but now it’s time to move on, to beautiful Copenhagen, one of the world’s most environmentally friendly and bicycle-friendly cities (according to Wikipedia article about Copenhagen). Thanks for everything, Belgium — à bientôt, tot ziens, bis bald!

Spotify

Spotify music streaming service was launched. This is clearly a major step forward for online music distribution. I hope more and more record companies will join the service — actually, these companies have no choice but to adapt to the new business model in order to survive. Spotify is currently invite-only, with free accounts available only in some European countries (currently UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain and France). Spotify Premium (not free) is available in many more countries, including Belgium. You can have your charts sent to last.fm. too.

Web stuff

Foxmarks Firefox add-on that syncs and backs up your bookmarks and passwords across multiple computers. I can now access all my bookmarks and add new ones from any computer. It’s perfect, just what I need.

Ubuntu Linux with VirtualBox and Wine. In 2008, I made a transition from Windows XP to Ubuntu (before that, I had Gentoo Linux and Ubuntu installed on separate machines for testing and learning). If I ever have to use Windows anymore, for any reason, I use it virtually, using VirtualBox. I also have Wine installed on Ubuntu for Windows-only software. My 12′ PowerBook is used only occasionally. This setup works very well for me.

Music

La Monnaie production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. A fantastic performance, this is ageless stuff.

Work

At work, 2008 was an interesting year. I had the pleasure to work for three different employers, participating in various projects, learning plenty of new things about web industry. Looking forward to learning and contributing even more this year!

Extras

I don’t have so much time to write long posts anymore, so lately I’ve been concentrating more on micro-blogging instead, posting short random thoughts, mainly on Twitter. I have continued uploading photos to Flickr, and checked microformats, JavaScript libraries (mainly JQuery), and more.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year 2009! See you in cyberspace.

• You have wind from the sea blowing heavily, but you have no sea.
• You have some of the ugliest buildings in the whole Europe, but you also have some 1200 beautiful Art Nouveau buildings.
• You have one season instead of four, with small variations in temperature. Sometimes you have all four seasons in one day. If you see the sun, go out quickly.
• You have the capital of Europe, acting as the model of European integration. But you also have people who argue which language should be used in national media and politics. Some Belgians get angry or disrespectful if you don’t speak their language. A country where people from different language areas speak English to each other, and behave like they were living in two separate countries, can hardly be a good example of European integration.
• You have millions of private cars every day in a very small geographic area, polluting the air and blocking the roads, making life very hard not only for the drivers themselves, but also for people who want to use public transportation instead (or walk or cycle). Many people with cars seem to like spending hours looking for parking places in a city which clearly can’t cope with the high number of cars. In Brussels many people do what they want and don’t care too much about environmental issues.
• You have many people freely smoking in bars and cafes (still in 2009!), while in many other countries full smoking bans have been successfully introduced already years ago.

Finally, let me say that in Belgium there is no point in asking “why”. It is just the way it is — and probably will be for some time. We all love Brussels (and Belgium) for its good things. And there are plenty of them; it can’t be a coincidence that Belgian artists have contributed so much to Surrealism.