"I didn’t know I was this geeky until I discovered the online world through my office’s 2400 baud modem back in ’93." Highlights of Antwerp
A Flemish waiter and customer discuss the rowdy Brits in the square. ‘I thought the Dutch were loud, sir, but the English, they are worse, eh?’
The Filipino barman in the hotel lounge starts talking to me simply because he can see I am ‘Asian’. An ex-policeman, he isn’t proud of his former employers and corruption in general. Glad to be making an earnest living, aiming for citizenship in four years time. Very American dream-ish. But in Belgium. Says he: ‘You were lucky to be born here.’ I am?
Young Englishman on stag night sticks head around the corner to tell us, restaurant guests, to go ahead and hurl abuse at the Brits at the other tables. Followed by older Englishman who says: ‘That’s not my son.’
Long, rambling and mostly unintelligible monologue by James Hong look-a-like, trying to get me to eat in his recently opened restaurant: ‘seats 120′ and ‘from Hong Kong’ is just about all I understood of his broken Flemish.
A 12-minute film by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken at the Photo Museum. Shot, by himself, during the final stages of his illness, he prepares to say goodbye to the viewers. He has become too weak to work: ‘Be well, all of you. Be strong. Do your best. Show who you are. Bye.’
