my grandad passed away yesterday. so i'm going home. tomorrow i leave leuven at 8.30am for dusseldorf, germany. from there i fly to dubai, then singapore, then brisbane, then auckland, arriving at noon wednesday (nz time).

i saw the movie 'big fish' last night. most probably it's been out in new zealand for ages. but belgium is a little behind when it comes to new releases. but belgium? i forgive you, namely for the reason that the movie theatre chairs are the most comfortable chairs ever (except for the lazy boy in my lounge at home). i didn't want to get up at the end.

anyway, the chair thing was a tangent. i wanted to talk about the movie. and an exceptional movie at that. i was a bit nervous to begin with, because i had absolutely no idea what it was going to be about - which is rather odd when you think about it. generally you have some inkling of an idea about some type of storyline and some type category - whether it be action or romance or horror. but no. i went in with not the vaguest hint or clue.

and perhaps this is the type of movie that is best when you know nothing about it. which is why i shall not disclose its secrets but instead urge you all to check it out. however what i will say is that it did make me jump, laugh outloud, and cry (though really, these can in no way be seen as hints, as those who know me well enough know that i have cried in full house, jumped in macgyver and laughed outloud with tigertaperia).

yes. quite delightful. the type of movie i would see again. though, due to my student budget, next time it will be on the little screen (by 'little' i refer to the classic laptop size which is our only means of watching such things).

spring has sprung
the grass is gris
i wonder where
the birdies is

indeed. you know it's funny. before i came to belgium i did a little research. to find out about the weather and things. to know what to expect. to know what to prepare for. and the biggest conclusion that appeared everywhere i looked was the rain.

when i first arrived here i was told by some of the orientation guys that once it started to rain, it wouldn't stop until may. and that it would start sometime in october.

however i don't think belgium knows what rain is at all. truthfully the last two days have been the first two days in months that it has properly rained. good old real rain. rain you can hear on the roof. rain that you can see on your window. rain that creates puddles in the streets. in fact, without exaggeration, i honestly think it has 'rained' (by my definition) no more than 7 days maximum since i arrived here. i know! this may be quite hard to believe but rain over here is not 'rain'.

what i think is regarded as 'rain' in belgium consists mainly of grey skies. occasionally a light misty wetness will emerge from the greyness above and cast a gentle scattering of something that i could not even define as droplets. sometimes this lasts for half an hour, maximum, and then the grey skies continue to be grey skies and the ground continues to be dry. this is a large part of belgium weather, often mistakeningly referred to as 'rain'. none of this heavy pelting down of large drops that splash as they hit a surface, forming runoff down the streets. nope.

the last few days have been wonderful! i've stayed indoors writing my thesis, and have had real auckland rain keeping me comfort. doing work when the elements outside are fierce is somewhat enjoyable.

nothing much else to say. sadly my life now consists mainly of work-related activities. but in a few weeks i will be landing on spanish soil which shall be a nice, and hopefully by then, well-deserved, break!

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation"

- Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905).

i like this quote. but the thing is, does me liking it and posting it on here somehow conclude that i am just another one of those 'most people'? hmprh. how about i clarify by saying that despite liking the quote, it isn't one of my passions? maybe it just proves there is truth behind such a statement, despite how much we like to believe otherwise.

for a long time i have been very cynical about the media.

to be honest, i think it began when princess diana died. i can distinctly remember a particular scene where you see the car she was in going into a tunnel, and you can see all these motorbikes with video cameras chasing after the car. and i remember that the voice over spoke about how you could see the reporters and how perhaps they had something to do with the accident. and i got so angry. because the coverage we were viewing was not intended to be a video camera video-ing these reporters and their actions. it was a video camera video-ing the car that princess diana was in. the video the news reporter had used as an example of showing the reporters chasing the car was so hypocritical. and it upset me.

when september 11 happened i also got angry with the way in which reporting was carried out. every night the same footage would be shown of the plane crashing into the building, time and time again. it felt like i was watching a hollywood movie. the hype that was built up by the media was quite overwhelming. of course i was genuinely upset by the event, but many events around the world cause numerous deaths, and it is up to the media to determine which of those events we feel most sorry for.

the media can be so biased and slant things into any angle they wish, or someone higher up the scale, wishes. ever seen the movie 'wag the dog'? brilliant movie that always summed up exactly how i felt about the media and the control they have over so many things.

however in this last week i have realised that perhaps i had become over cynical. i have not watched tv since i left new zealand last september. i do not read any newspapers, and only very occasionally do i go to a news website and find out what is happening around the world. due to this i have become lost in my own little life, due to this i have become ignorant to those events occurring around me and due to this, i have realised how important the media can be.

when the bombings occurred in spain last week i did feel sad and upset for those of my friends who are spaniards, those of my friends who have friends that are spaniards, and those people in spain who have been affected by this tragedy.

however, in my ignorance at not reading the news, i have not been affected very much at all by this event. until today. before today i felt saddened, but in no way felt threatened. people have emailed me worried, as they know i am going to spain in a month or so. but i don't feel threatened because i have not been paying attention to the media. i have not heard all the facts. i have not seen any footage. i have not seen any pictures. i have not read much with regard to the tragic stories. without the media, i have become unaware of those important things that i should perhaps be more aware of.

today all of europe held a one minute's silence at noon. we had a lecture and we stopped in order to do this. and it was at this moment that i suddenly realised, suddenly put things into perspective, suddenly discerned where in the world i was and what in the world was happening.

perhaps i disagree with some of the techniques the media use to portray world events. but without them i have fallen into ignorance which is not acceptable.

in the joy of rediscovering weetabix i accidentally missed the first hour of my lecture. i have julian to thank for finding me a supermarket that has enough initiative to be fully stocked in such a great cereal. i have naomi to thank for sending me a text reminding me that i do have classes to attend and that perhaps i should make an appearance.

today i shall gorge on nothing but the divine goodness of weetabix. not as good as the classic kiwi kid 'weetbix' but the finest substitute that exists to my knowledge.

it will be a wonderful feast.

firstly, however, i think i am in need of a nap. it's nearly 4pm afterall. definitely the hour when naps should occur.

i have THE coolest brother and sister in the world. no, seriously. SERIOUSLY. note the capitals. and note that i never use capitals. that must mean something.

here i am on one side of the world, sitting at my computer in utter despair on saturday morning (belgium time) as i cannot figure out how excel works and how to get little graphs to graph stuff that needs to be graphed.

and there is my wonderful brother on the other side of the world, sitting at his computer on saturday night (nz time), about to save my life.

i send him my little excel file. he opens it. there we both are. opposite sides of the earth. in front of two computers. looking at the same data.

then he proceeds, via msn (a simply marvelous lifesaving contraption), to tell me step by step how to make graphs. he says things like 'okay, now highlight these columns, and then press this button'. i follow his instructions. when i get it wrong, i.e. what i end up having on my screen is nothing like what he has on his screen, he figures out what i did. and how to fix it. then he proceeds to say things like 'hang on, let me see, i think this might look even better' and takes me through a different range of instructions that gets me a different graph.

four hours later it is 1pm here in belgium, 1am there in new zealand. my very cool brother just spent his entire saturday night helping me with maths. from one side of the world to the other. i then saved the little msn window dialogue box and used it for the rest of the weekend to remind me how to do stuff. brilliant. absolutely brilliant.

and then there's my sister. also very cool. who just saved me about 20 hours of work. literally.

i have these numbers in a table that was created in this programme i use. the numbers have decimal points. with a '.' point like is used in new zealand. however belgium have this weird system where they use the comma instead of the point in excel. i needed the data in excel to make graphs. so i thought i had to go through and change every decimal point into a comma so that excel recognised it as a decimal. this probably makes no sense. oh well. the point is (ha ha ha, the point. get it? obviously you can tell i'm tired and have spent far too long on this computer when i start making jokes like that!) that i have 35 tables, each with 50 rows of numbers and i was going through one table at a time, converting each decimal point to a comma, on every single row. this takes a long time (hence the bad jokes).

rachel came online. i sent her one of the tables and she said she would see what she could do. two minutes later (yep, only two, actually probably not even that to be honest) and she had the solution. man. now it takes me one second, one button, and suddenly all my points are commas.

i could (and perhaps should) say that i am so glad that such technology exists that i can communicate with no time lapse at all from here to home and back again. and i am glad. however despite technology having good points, it also causes me to want to rip my hair out (more often these last few weeks then ever before in my life).

on the other hand, i am very glad that i have a brother and a sister who are quite happy to interrupt their day or night to help me solve dilemas, that, despite not being such a big deal to them, mean a huge deal to me. and save me from going insane.

so thanks. :)

once upon a time, back when i was a young 18 year old, i was browsing through booklets containing stage one university courses (the whole website thing was not so mainstream back then - lucky, because i always liked highlighting and circling interesting classes - something that cannot be done online - but i digress...).

and my wise father said to me "you know rebekah, statistics will always be handy to have" and notably pushed me in the direction of doing a little stage one course on the aforementioned topic. at the time i was not too eager. coming from a family of mathematicians, it's sometimes nice to be out of the loop and do my own thing. however he persisted, i wavered, and the next thing you know, there i was, 8am, five days a week, semester one, first year of university.

since then i declared i could escape the clutches of the subject. i went off onto tangents involving greek monumental architecture and egyptian hieroglyphics. i pursued geography and how natural and cultural processes throughout the earth mix and mingle. i wrote, i drew, i painted, i lived outside in the dirt discovering what lies beneath the surface we live on. yet, somehow, no matter how hard i tried, statistics always reappeared...

imagine wandering the ruins of ancient greece, taking in the beauty of an ancient estate, that handled olive production for the nearby region in 500bc - only to have the bubble broken by being shown a greek script in the form of a ready reckoner table (to this day i still am unaware exactly what such a table is, however i am fairly confident that it has something to do with maths and that perhaps my former teacher, mr poleki, once mentioned it in class, interrupting my attempts at opening a calculator with my keyring screwdriver).

imagine being on the most beautiful beach in new zealand, with only two other people in the near vicinity. a beach that stretches for 7km in a gentle curve, bright blue sky echoed by a deeper blue ocean. and to suddenly discover that in order to understand the reason for thousands of stones strewn high up above sea level on the dunes, statistical sampling techniques need to be put into action (for your information, the stones are believed to have arrived via a large tidal wave caused by a volancic eruption off the coast many hundreds of years ago).

imagine living in a tiny town of weaving cobbled stone streets and canals in the very centre of europe. where bells chime every hour in delightful tunes of all varieties (just the other day i was reminded of that very humourous musical feat involving bell type instruments, the merrimans, the haines and stella), and where it snows the perfect amount so that it is never all slushy and muddy but allows for snowballs to be thrown. imagine this, and then to find that the supervisor in charge of the dominant piece of assessment due for the year - expects statistical analysis to be understood and calculated for my little village sites in the mountains of turkey.

just as clark kent's destiny was to save the world, it seems that the merriman family's destiny was to be surrounded by numbers. my rebellion on the matter seems not to make the slightest bit of difference.

time on your hands?

check out my two favourite procrastination sites on the right. the penguin one is relatively new to me and is simply a fun game. try and beat my high score of 319.3. as for homestar - strong bad's emails are worth checking out.

meanwhile, tomorrow i'm giving a one hour lecture about soil erosion in greece. the articles i read were ridiculous and i'm looking forward to ripping them to shreds. little does the lecturer know i did four years of physical geography and am not easily fooled by researchers writing biased articles to try and prove their hypothesis.