Moving from US to Belgium during a pandemic

We moved our family from the US (Maryland, just in case you didn’t know yet) to Belgium - no big deal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in July-August 2020 - now we’re talking … I wrote this post to document our journey. We were (and still are) extremely privileged to have been able to do this, in the conditions we did it. The journey is not over. I’ll update and continue to document it until we fall back into something more “normal” … [long post]

August 6, 2020 · 9 min · jepoirrier

Holi hai!

March 7th, 2012 is Holi! It is first a Hindu spring festival celebration but it is also known as the festival of colours. The main day is celebrated by people throwing scented powder and perfume at each other. Bonfires are lit on the eve of the festival ( more info on Wikipedia). Now compare how a movie showed Holi in 1981 (" Silsila"): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZNTbobkg-I] With a movie showing a Holi celebration in 2010 (" Action_Replayy"): ...

March 6, 2012 · 1 min · jepoirrier

Chúc mừng năm mới!

In three days (Jan 23rd, 2012) it will be the Vietnamese Tết. This year is the year of the Dragon. Happy New Year! For those interested there will be a celebration at Théâtre Marni in Brussels on January 28th afternoon. And BelVietnam is mentioning three celebrations in Brussels on January 21st, 29th and February 12th. Photo credit: Dragon boats resting on Sông Hương river, Huế, Vietnam (from my photos on Flickr, licence CC-by-sa)

January 20, 2012 · 1 min · jepoirrier

Calendar of events about India in Belgium

Although its presence in Belgium is more discreet than China or other European countries (for obvious reasons in the latter case), India has always something to show in Belgium. I decided to put some (most of?) events related to India in Belgium in a calendar so everyone can be aware of them. Here you are: [googleapps domain=“www” dir=“calendar/embed” query=“height=350&wkst=2&hl=en_GB&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=09d2i9naunu5fpkm6sdeqsikvs%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%238D6F47&ctz=Europe%2FParis” width=“500” height=“350” /] ...

July 16, 2011 · 1 min · jepoirrier

Powerplant screensaver

Do you know your local powerplant chimney can be a screensaver? (movie taken in October 2009 in the South of Brussels, Belgium) [youtube &hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

October 15, 2009 · 1 min · jepoirrier