One of the great things of working in an organisation made up of over 30 nationalities is you get to meet some interesting people.

Today, for instance, one of my Polish colleagues marched into the office looking a little startled.

“My wife has just fainted on the street in Brussels. I must go to her”

Obviously.

Being the caring sort my Canadian colleague asked:

“Why did she faint? Are you not feeding her enough”

My Polish colleague looked thoughtful for a moment before replying with:

“You think I should leave her with the key to fridge?”

I`m still not sure if he was serious or not?

It is true though that working with such a mix of people lets you see the best and worst qualities in each nationality. A group of us were discussing the other day over lunch what would be the best and worst place to work in the world.

The worst we could manage was a place where:

The cooks are English.
The police are German.
The comedians are Danish.
People have the humility of the French.
People are as flexible as the Americans.
Everyone works as hard as the Greeks.
and everything is organised by the Italians.

Then we realised that this pretty much sums up where we work. At least in my office anyhow.

No updates this past weekend, thats because on Friday I went to the 40th annual SHAPE Oktoberfest. I `ll be posting something about that in the week, but just to give you an idea of how that went consider this:

I remember walking home through the forest.

There is no forest.

Anyhow, on to strings.

The other day at work I had to do some programing in C++ … eeeeek. I`ve not programmed in C++ for …. for ….. too long. It was pretty simple stuff that I had to do, just converting a BString to a CString. Surely there was a method built into the CString class to do such a thing … surely …..

So I googled for C String. Click on the link or do it yourself.

Its not exactly what I was looking for.

In case you are in any doubt check out this link - BUT NOT AT WORK.

So there you are.

Something to add to the shopping list for Christmas.

Perhaps I should program in C++ more often.

Last week I started my French language lessons …. what other kind of French lessons would I be taking? Most of my work is done in English so its not necessary for my job to be able to speak fluent French, its just that you do tend to stick out like a sore thumb if you dont.

Its true that here in Belgium they have 2 languages. Flemish, mostly in the West of the country, and French.

Or at least a form of French.

Having studied GCSE French until the age of 16 I already had a pretty good grounding in the language. I can hold basic conversations, order what I want in restaurants and generally get by pretty well.

Or so I thought.

The other day I was buying something in a shop. When all my items had been put through the scanner I asked how much I owed…

The response was just one word:

Nonante

Huh?

I dont mean to blow my own trumpet, but I`m pretty hot on French numbers and I had absolutely no idea what this girl was talking about.

After a few puzzled looks and a few more ‘Qua’s I asked the girl to write it down.

She wrote down ‘90′

Ah!! I said triumphantly, you mean quatre-vin-dix!

Smugly I paid up and walked on my way.

Until I got home and found out that there are quite a few words in Belgian French that are different from regular French. Mostly the numbers 60 through to 100, but other verbs too, such as eating and the names of the main meals of the day.

I was speaking to a Belgian about this the other day and asked how they cope with this when they are speaking to someone from France.

The answer was good.

“thats easy ….. we dont speak to the French”

A motto my mother would be very pleased to hear.

Today I feel pretty good.

Which is not what I was expecting at about 11pm last night after I had been given a drink by every member country in NATO.

Yesterday was SHAPE Fest 2009. Basically just a big party held at NATO HQ every year where all the NATO member nations put on a show and each have a stall to provide food and drinks from their home country. Very cosmopolitan.

And also extremely dangerous if you feel its your duty to try something from each and every one of them.

Starting off with the sangria probably wasn’t the wisest of choices. Then heading straight over to the Danish tent where I was told it was rude to only have one drink, instead I should have one for each leg to prevent me walking around in circles.

It all seemed to make sense at the time.

Passing through Poland, Belgium, Italy, Czech Republic, Germany, USA, Slovakia, Slovenia and others I ended up at Hungarian tent.

Just to give you an idea of how far off the ball I was at this point, I walked away from the Hungarian tent having bought 2 bottles of Hungarian wine.

Hungarian wine?????

But that was not the strangest ting that happened yesterday.

In the middle of all the festivities was a car. It was in pretty bad condition and I did think initially that it was a car that had been bombed in somewhere like Afghanistan and had been brought as an example of the dangers people who work for NATO face while on active duty.

I was wrong.

It turns out the car was there to be smashed up by children.

Yep - for 1 euro you could have your very own child be given access to a pickaxe and let rip on, what was at the start of the day, a brand new car.

hhhhhmmmm - I`m not really sure if that was a good idea.

Lets hope the parents dont have tools available in their garages at home.

Yesterday I went to the annual Lille Flea marketwhich is claimed to be the largest Flea market in the world and has been held every year since medieval times.

To be honest when I woke up I wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. The day before I went out with a few of the boys to try a few more Belgian beers. I already knew that the Belgian took their beer drinking seriously, but a couple of things happened which caused me to raise my eyebrows.

Firstly I ordered a bottle of Chimay Blanc. The waiter brought it over and poured the bottle into a Jupiler glass. I thought nothing of it. The Belgians I was drinking with nearly caused a riot.

It turns out that serving a beer with the wrong glass in Belgium is very very much frowned upon and you are supposed to send the beer back and ask for a new one.

Then the waiter brought over the correct glass.

Once again the Belgians sent back my beer. This time because the lettering on the glass was not put down on the table facing me, which is also totally unacceptable here in Belgium.

Anyway, after a few cups of tea to recover from Friday night we set off to Lille.

They say that there are over 200km of market stalls in Lille and over 1 million people visit over the 2 days.

Having been there I wouldn’t doubt it.

I have to say though that Lille itself was a wonderful place and being no more than 50km of where I am living I can see myself going back there fairly regularly.

I even managed to pick up a few bargains. Having learned my lesson the day before about serving beer in the correct glass I felt obliged to buy some glasses.

Twenty one of them to be exact.

oh and something to put in them.

like fifteen bottles of wine.

Its a good thing that there no less than 3 gyms for me to use on site at work, because for the past 4 weeks I`ve been eating the finest foods and drinking the best beers in the world.

More or less constantly.

Even at work where they have 3 full time bars and even the canteen bas beer on tap.

I`ve been back to my favourite restaurant in Belgium 4 times already. table du boucher is a place I visited when I was here for the interview, but this time around I was enjoying the food having not just arrived from California and spent the whole day in exams and interviews.

The food was better than I remembered.

Firstly the duck

Then a couple of days later one of their steaks.

The beer here in Belgium could quite easily double up as rocket fuel, and no meal in Belgium would be complete without trying a few bottles.

Even it seems for breakfast.

I was chatting to a Belgian at work the other day and we were discussing beer and how poor it is over in America. He was telling me that on a recent trip to New York he told a barman over there that the beer was terrible and that the Belgians wouldn’t even drink this for breakfast.

I thought he was joking.

Until I turned up on Sunday morning, at 9:30am at Brussels Midi train station and went to the nearest cafe to ask for a coffee.

Every single person in there, and there were quite a few, were all drinking Grimbergen Blonde. This stuff is over 11 percent!!! Outside they even had an advert which was a picture of a bottle of Grimbergen next to a croissant.

Only in Belgium.

Anyhow, after the food I still managed a good few ales then home to the castle to enjoy some fresh Belgian chocolates.

So all in all, things are going pretty well here in Mons. I should be back later this week to tell you tales of my crazy pet ducks which I seem to have inherited.

But for now, just sit back and enjoy the view of my new home town: