ginovandewalle.com

The Belgian Minister of Defense, Pieter De Crem, also widely known as “Crembo”, has been in the news over the past couple of weeks. During a visit to the United States earlier this month, obviously with a whole delegation of his department, he visited a bar in New York. He was spotted by a Dutch woman who was working in that bar. According to her, the minister was very drunk, and one of his collaborators told her they had come to New York for a couple of meetings with people from the United Nations. Unfortunately, these meetings had been canceled a couple of days earlier because these U.N.-guys were having other meetings to attend in Geneva, Switserland, but the Belgians had decided to go to New York anyway, because it was so “quite” in Brussels and some of the members of the delegation had never been to the Big Apple before.

So Nathalie Lubbe Bakker, the Dutch lady, wrote about this the next day on her weblog. Somehow, the Belgian press found out, they wrote about it, the department of defense denied the story and called it gossip, collaborators of Crembo called the owner of the bar in New York, and Nathalie Lubbe Bakker was fired the next day she came to work.

Earlier this week, Pieter De Crem was invited to come to the Belgian parliament to tell the members of parliament what had really happened in New York. He used his time in parliament to make a pretty special statement, which has been translated into English by me to the best of my abilities: “I want to use this non-event to point to a dangerous fact of the society we live in today. We are living in a time-era where everybody can post anything he or she wants on a blog, without taking any responsability. This is even worse than gossip.” He then pleaded to the other members of parliament: “Together with you, collegues, I must admit that it is almost impossible to defend ourselves against this. Dear collegues, dear collegues of the parliament, collegues of the government, we are all potential victims. I urge you to think about this.”

I don’t want to talk about the fact that this minister has been drunk in New York. I got drunk in New York once as well. After all, it’s a wonderful city with lots of opportunities to get drunk. But I used MY money to fly to New York, and I paid ALL my expenses myself, with MY money. While I am sure that Crembo - he got that nickname because he’s sending Belgian soldiers to the war which can’t be won in Afghanistan - is making much more money than I am, he uses tax-money to fly all around the world with his collaborators.

I can tell you Mr. Minister, don’t bother to have someone of your department call my boss. I am the boss over here, and I have the right to say or write whatever I want. This phenomenon is commenly known as Freedom of Speech.

It is a real shame that so-called leaders of a country do need to shoot the messenger to cover up their own mistakes.

Share on Facebook

I have had a very full day today. It is now Wednesday evening, a little over half past ten, and I am rounding up today’s day. The alarm clock went off as usual, at 07.00am. The very first thing I see now that the days are becoming shorter, is a magnificent sunrise above that blue Atlantic Ocean. I can see it from my bedroom window, the sun comes up right in front of me. In summer time, it comes up more to my left, somewhere above Spain. I had a nice little breakfast, and at 08.30am sharp, the bell rang, and the cleaning lady came in. As she does every Wednesday. She is always on time, never comes even one minute late. I wonder if she is a true Portuguese woman. As this kind of punctuality is very unusual in this country.

I spent my morning in my home office, working on quotes, making some phonecalls to some customers that are late in paying their invoices (which gives us some problems as well - unfortunately, these kind of customers don’t realise that they are getting a sort of chain reaction in action), the usual administration things we have to do to keep our small company up and running…

It was almost noon when I left my house. I stopped in Faro, at the shopping mall for a quick lunch in one of the many restaurants, and took the opportunity to buy some fruit for in my office. It always astonishes me that it is almost impossible to find fruit or vegetables from first class category. Having lived in this country for a little over five years, I have only seen one supermarket in which the fruit and vegetables ARE first quality. In all the others, and I mean ALL OF THEM, they announce the groceries as “Categoria II”. What a shame!

I had a couple of meetings (both online through Skype as live in the office) during the afternoon, and before I knew it, night had fallen over the Algarve. In the late afternoon, I received a phonecall from the dealer where we bought our company van, two and a half years ago. We had a special platform installed on the back of the van, as the safes which we sell are sometimes pretty heavy, not easy to handle metal boxes. Last month, all of a sudden, the whole thing broke down, with an unexpected cost of € 270,00 to fix it. This guy wanted to know if everything was fixed all right, and if I was satisfied with their service. Now, don’t get me wrong, the people who work at that dealership are very friendly people. They do their utmost to satisfy me as a customer.

Unfortunately, last Monday, I used the platform for the first time again since it had been fixed. And guess what? The whole thing broke down again. Exactly the same damage as one month ago. Somebody did not do a good job last month. When I told this story to the guy at the other side of the line, I could hear how embarrassed he was. He did not have anything to say, and just hung up… What a service. Portuguese productivity, part III. Just incredible.

Tonight, I had a long conversation with a Belgian friend through Skype. We talked about business, about women (men amongst each other…), about the snow in which Belgium woke up last weekend, about the small things in life…

As a matter of fact, it was an almost perfect day today…

Share on Facebook

Eduardo Oliveira Costa is a Portuguese journalist and publisher of several newspapers across Portugal. He is on the board of several organisations, and has a keen interest in the press, among other media, and the business environment. I came across an article from him which made me think a little bit…

Let’s do a little excercise. In the middle of the bankrupcy of large banks, American and also now European, and of a financial crisis that is the worst in living memory, he asks the following interesting questions:

What would it be like if our poor state (Portugal) had one million euros to invest each day?

How many surgeries would be paid for, ending the interminable waiting lists?

How many medicines could be given to those who cannot afford to pay them?

How many more young people could be helped through University?

How many better hospitals could we have?

How many old people could benefit from a better quality of life?

How many children could have better food?

How many decent meals would be given to those living on the breadline?

How many families could it help to give decent living conditions to?

In fact, one million euros per day would be enough for our poor state to do a lot more for many people!

But, our state prefers to spend one million euros a day so that SIC and TVI have another TV channel to compete wiht, called RTP!

Eduardo Oliveira Costa even likes RTP. But, when he sees what could be done with an extra 365 million euros per year, he is left with doubts as to the public’s need for its existence.

Of course it would be a nuisance to a handful of Portuguese who temporarily occupy the chairs of power: they would no longer have their own channel to broadcast what they think all the time.

But, then again, it is a very expensive luxury for a poor country.

Share on Facebook

Who do they think we are? When I read the newspapers or the international newssites on the internet, it always astonishes me that the CEO’s of the big companies are allowed to do such unacceptable actions and still come away with them. Just look at what happened earlier this week in the United States. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors are in trouble. One of them even considers to go for Chapter 11 in order to continue in business. So what do the CEO’s of these companies do? They fly to Washington in private jets in order to go and ask the American Government for money. Flying commercial is not good enough for these guys…

Take Fortis, the biggest Belgian bank who has been there forever, and who got into serious trouble at the end of September. Basically, they got help from the Belgian Government, who sold a big part to the Dutch and the rest of the bank to the French. Thousands and thousands of “little” Belgians, who put all their savings money into stock of this bank, have lost everything. The shares aren’t worth anything anymore, and the Fortis name will soon disappear. What happened? The ex-CEO of the Fortis bank took his resignation, for ruining the bank. BUT he got a nice little bonus of € 4 million (4.000.000 euros) when he said goodbye. € 4.000.000 for ruining his bank!

They have a new CEO right now. He’s signed a contract and will earn € 800.000 a year, + bonusses! While so many people are suffering to make it to the end of the month, they just carry on.

The difference with the guys in the clip below is that these guys normally go to jail, and the CEO’s are just getting away with it. Even a little bit of respect for the working man is too much asked for…

Share on Facebook

Wonders of technology. I am writing these words (and publishing them a little later) while I am traveling on board of a fast train between Lisbon and Faro at a speed of 220 kilometers per hour. As I have written earlier this week, the Alfa Pendular is the way to travel in this country, in between Faro in the South, over Lisbon to Porto in the North. I had a wonderful day today. Traveling to Lisbon is always nice, and especially today. A day to remember, a day to be framed on the walls of my memory.

I came by car this morning, together with Jerry, my business partner and John, a Dutch friend who helps us from time to time in delivering safes, or if we need some help on the technical department. Jerry nor myself are good when we have to solve technical problems. Fortunately, we have John’s expertise. Both Jerry and John solved the problems in Lisbon (one of our customers had a robbery, and the robbers tried to break into a Gifoa-safe (they did not succeed - but damaged the electronic lock), while I was visiting a new customer who had arrived from Costa Verde this morning. Alberto is a former police officer who runs a security company on the islands.

We had lunch together, and he told me everything (or at least, a whole lot of things) about his beautiful country. We both had a wonderful fish (sole), but he assured me that also the fish has an amazing taste over there! Apparently, it’s only a three and a half hours flight from Lisbon, to arrive in one of the paradises of the world. Nine or ten islands in total, all pretty close to each other. The economy is growing very fast. According to Alberto, Cabo Verde will become one of the next touristic paradises of this world. As a matter of fact, I’m already looking forward to jumping on a plane and fly to that destination to see it with my own eyes.

We spent quite some time together today, he bought a couple of our safes which we hope to be able to put on a boat that leaves Lisbon next Monday evening. Which is going to be a challenge. It was Friday afternoon, and our contacts with transportation companies situated in the Algarve had taken an early leave for the weekend today.  Every time we have a pretty special delivery, we are facing challenges to get these things organised. After all, this is Southern Europe. But if necessary, I will take the safes personally to Lisbon next Monday with our company van.

It’ll be another trip to our wonderful capital. With only a minor traffic jam just before crossing the beautiful Ponte de 25 de Abril. This bridge always reminds me of the two visits I paid to San Francisco, back in 1988 and 2001. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Ponte de 25 de Abril are twins…

And now, while still on board this fast train (we’ll be arriving in Faro at around 22.00h), I am going to relax a little bit and watch a movie on my laptop.

Share on Facebook

I’ve been told this is a true story. On a recent weekend in Atlantic City, a woman won a bucketful of quarters at a slot machine. She took a break from the slots for dinner with her husband in the hotel dining room. But first she wanted to stash the quarters in her room. “I’ll be right back and we’ll go to eat” she told her husband, and carried the coin-loaden bucket to the elevator. As she was about to walk into the elevator, she noticed two men already aboard.

Both were black. One of them was very tall and had an intimidating figure. The woman froze. Her first thought was: “These two men are going to rob me!” Her next thought was: “Don’t be a bigot, they look perfectly nice gentlemen.” But racial stereotypes are powerful, and her fear immobilized her. Avoiding eye contact, she turned around stiffly and faced the elevator doors as they closed.

A second passed, and then another second, and then another. Her fear increased. The elevator didn’t move. Panic consumed her. “My God” she thought, “I am trapped and about to be robbed!” Her heart plummeted. Perspiration poured from every pore.

Then one of the men said: “Hit the floor.”

Instinct told her to do what they told her. The bucket of quarters flew upwards as she threw out her arms and collapsed on the elevator floor. A shower of coins rained down on her. “Take my money and spare me”, she prayed. More seconds passed.

She heard one of the men say politely: “Ma’am, if you’ll just tell us what floor you’re going to, we’ll push the button.” The one who said it had a little trouble getting the words out. He was trying mightily to hold in a belly laugh. The woman lifted her head and looked up at the two men.

They reached down to help her up. Confused, she struggled to her feet. “When I told my friend here to hit the floor,” said the average sized one, “I meant that he should hit the elevator button for our floor. I didn’t mean for you to hit the floor ma’am.” He spoke genially. He bit his lip. It was obvious he was having a hard time not laughing.

The woman thought: “My God, what a spectacle I’ve made of myself.” She was too humiliated to speak. The three of them gathered up the strewn quarters and refilled her bucket. When the elevator arrived at her floor, they then insisted on walking her to her room.

She seemed a little unsteady on her feet, and they were afraid she might not make it down the corridor. At her door they bid her a good evening. As she slipped into her room, she could hear them roaring with laughter as they walked back to the elevator. The woman brushed herself off. She pulled herself together and went downstairs for dinner with her husband.

The next morning flowers were delivered to her room: a dozen roses. Attached to EACH rose was a crisp one hundred dollar bill. The card said: “Thanks for the best laugh we’ve had in years”.

It was signed: Eddie Murphy & Michael Jordan.

Share on Facebook

One of the big advantages of living in this godforsaken area in Southern Portugal is that we don’t have any traffic jams anymore. I always love the moments in the mornings, especially winter mornings, when - while sitting on the terrace in the backyard, picking an orange from the tree for breakfast - I hear the Belgian news on the internet radio, and the current state of traffic jams. “Heavy traffic between Gent and Brussels. 20 kilometers traffic jam between Gent and Antwerp.” It doesn’t stop. In the Netherlands, it’s even worse. The whole Dutch country is coming to a standstill, each morning, each evening.

Apparently, only in Belgium - a very small country - traffic jams have a cost of € 460.000 per day. Each and every day. According to a recently published study, Belgians spend about six million hours in traffic jams per year. Incredible figures.

I remember the time in the eighties that I had a weekly meeting in my second office at the other side of the country. My main office was situated in Gent, the second one was in Hasselt. I went there each Tuesday morning, to have a sales meeting with my collaborators. From the Gent-office, it was exactly 140 kilometers driving to the Hasselt-office, along the motorway. I used to do that traject in exactly one hour. Obviously, I did not keep myself at the speed limits to be able to get there in one hour. But all of a sudden, I realised traffic became more and more intense, and in order to be able to get there in time, I had to leave each month about 5 minutes earlier than the previous month. When I finally needed two hours to get there, I delegated this weekly meeting to one of the local collaborators. I haven’t got a clue what time I should leave today, in order to get there at 10.00am as I used to do…

I remember once that I needed four and a halve hours, to overcome a distance of only 135 kms on my way to Antwerp. Just think about it. What a waste of time. I have already heard a lot of promisses, especially by politicians that they are going to solve these problems. The only question is: how? By building new motorways? There is no money, nor space for that. By promoting a better public transportation service? They better get started with that.

But why should they care? Most of them are travelling in a chauffeur driven luxury car, while they are sitting on the back seat, doing the things they have to do. They don’t realise how many people are getting frustrated by all these wasted hours.

Over here in Portugal, once again, we don’t have a lot of these problems. Only in the Lisbon and Porto area, we have intense traffic. But on the way to Lisbon, from the south, we have a beautiful motorway, and most of the time, we are all alone on it. No traffic at all. Which is a real luxury.

But despite that fact, I mostly take the fast train to Lisbon. The Alfa Pendular is pretty comfortable, compaired with driving, it is incredibly cheap, and I can do a lot of things while on board of that train. Working a bit, surfing the internet, reading a book, having breakfast or dinner, sleeping…

As I said, pretty luxurious and comfortable.

Share on Facebook

A couple of days ago, I was watching a Belgian television news program on the internet. The topic was the international financial crisis. One of the Belgian “Ministers of State”, usually retired ministers who have served the country all their life, was interviewed. He once was a Belgian Prime Minister, as well as Minister of Finance - a guy who knows what’s going on in this world. He said that the international financial crisis has already a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand billion US dollars. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND BILLION! That is 250 with twelve zeros behind: 250 000 000 000 000! Only a couple of weeks ago, the Americans were searching seven hundred billion US dollars to help solve the crisis. And according to our Belgian Minister of State, this is the sum of the cost during this year! I honestly believe this is a crime against humanity.

Now it must be clear that I don’t like banks. I have already stated this several times in this blog, and I will continue to state this. Just another example that happened this week within my company. One of our customers had paid his safe with a cheque. We got the cheque after delivering and installing the safe in his bedroom, and unfortunately, he had made a mistake in filling it out. On the space where the amount must be written, he put our company name, and where our company name was supposed to appear, he wrote out the amount. Jerry, my business partner had collected the cheque, and didn’t think it was going to be a problem. Neither did I.

Until I went to our bank. They simply refused the cheque. They even told me that, if I put it into our account, it was going to be bounced, with an extra cost of € 35.00 for us to pay! No matter how much I pleaded to accept this cheque (I was certain the customer had loads of money), they simply refused it. Apparently, nowadays, banks don’t have human beings to check out a cheque manually. So I had to drive an extra 250 kms to go and explain this to our customer (the man is in his late eighties, so it was necessary to sit in front of him) and get another cheque from him. Thieves, that’s what banks are.

A very long time ago, there was a little boy living in the country side. He decided to buy a horse from the farmer next door. So he went to negotiate, and both the farmer and the little boy agreed to exchange the horse for 100 US $. The farmer was supposed to deliver the horse the next day.

The next morning however, the horse died when he was being fed. So the farmer had to go and tell the little boy that the deal was off. “No problem”, the little boy answered. “Just give me back my 100 US $”. “Well”, the farmer replied, “I can’t do that, because I have already spent all the money”.

The little boy started thinking, and told the farmer to deliver the dead horse anyhow. “But what are you going to do with it?” the farmer asked.

“I will organise a prize draw, and the horse will be the first prize!”, the little boy answered. “But surely, you can’t do that when your first prize is dead”, the farmer replied. “Oh yes I can”, the little boy replied. “I just won’t tell anybody that the horse died”.

The farmer decided he couldn’t care less, and delivered the dead horse anyhow.

One month later, he passed the little boy’s house and asked him how the prize draw had gone.

“Well” the little boy answered, “as I told you last month: it was a huge success. I have sold a total of 500 tickets at a cost of 2 US $ each, and made a profit of 898 US $”.

“But”, replied the farmer, “did nobody make any problems about the dead horse?”

“Only the winner”, the boy answered. “But I paid him back the 2 US $ immediately!”

It doesn’t come as a surprise that this little boy has now become CEO of one of the biggest banks in the whole world…

Share on Facebook

I remember a conversation I had with a couple of collegues which took place more than twenty years ago. We were having dinner together, and all of a sudden, we started talking about war. We were still in the middle of the cold war, when Ronald Reagan was President of the United States of America. A couple of my older collegues, who had experienced the second World War as a child, feared we were at the dawn of the third World War. I remember telling them that I was pretty convinced we were never going to see such kind of war in Europe again, but already then, I expressed my concern of terrorist actions through bomb attacks. After all, in Belgium, the CCC had just been arrested, and this terrorist organisation had shown the “power” of putting bombs in different places, and by letting them explode and killing innocent firemen who were just doing their job, they were taking a whole Belgian nation into hostage. I remember the question was raised what we could do to protect ourselves against these attacks, except for hoping not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Juval Aviv has strong ideas about that. He says that we need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens. However our governments continue to treat us, the citizens, like babies. Our governments think we “can’t handle the truth” and they are concerned that we’ll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. According to Juval Aviv, this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created a security test for the American Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major U.S. cities. The results? Not one single person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase.

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well “trained” that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizens who know to publicly shout “unattended bag”. The area would be quickly and calmly cleared by the citizens themselves. But the Western world hasn’t been yet “hurt enough” by terrorism for our governments to fully understand the need to educate the citizens or to understand that its citizens are the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children in the United States who were in preschool or kindergarten after 9/11, who were “lost” without parents being able to pick them up, and about schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. In New York city, this was days in some cases.

He stresses the importance of having a plan, that’s agreed upon within your family, to respond in the event of a terroristic emergency. He urges parents to contact their children’s schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel. Does your family know what to do if you can’t contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even the youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the U.S. government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off everyone’s ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.

How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak? You need to have a plan.

Just something to think about… but in the meantime, don’t forget to live and have fun.

Share on Facebook

Juval Aviv was the Israeli agent upon whom the movie “Munich” was based. He was Golda Meir’s bodyguard while she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At that time, O’Reilly laughed and mocked him, saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the United States will occur within the next few months. Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people on board will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke, that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.

For example:

1. Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.
2. He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes.
3. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can’t bring liquids on board anymore. He says he’s waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point security will have us all traveling naked. Every strategy is “reactionary”.
4. We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates. Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when and where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they go to the restroom, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even enter the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack on the Western world is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate (tourist attractions, sporting events, shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc…). The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5 to 8 cities, including rural areas. Aviv says terrorists won’t need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like any big hotel, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well know in intelligence circles, but the U.S. government does not want to “alarm” American citizens with the facts.

On an encouraging note, he says terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s effective. After all, they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to “meet their destiny”, and while doing that, taking with them as many “unbelievers” as possible.

He also says the next level of terrorists over which we should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad, but will be “homegrown” - having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities.

I remember while following the “Captain’s course” in the Belgian army in the early nineties, one of our collegues had made a study about how international terrorism had changed since the 1972 Olympics. This guy almost predicted literally what was going to happen later on. What Aviv is saying over here, my collegue already told us at that time.

9/11, Madrid, London… Unfortunately, we have witnessed many terrorist attacks over the past decades, and we must accept that terrorism, being the weapon of the poor, is here to stay.

Share on Facebook