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Sitting on board this TAP-Flight which is taking me from Amsterdam back home to Portugal, I can’t stop thinking of you Erik, my friend. Yesterday, your family and friends said goodbye to you. Your spirit was amongst us, while your body was still in Saudi-Arabia where you died so unexpectedly. Karin, your beloved wife told me that you are going to be repatriated today, probably at this very moment. So we might both be 35000 feet up in the sky, me flying south, while your body is going home up north.

We all cried because you are no longer with us, we all laughed because the memories we all have from you will never be forgotten. We were angry because of the injustice, we were thankfull because we had known you.

Speechless, that’s what I am right now. It just makes no sense. It doesn’t feel right, knowing that we will never hear your voice, hear your laughter again.

Erik, you have always been a very special person. You were always ready, on time, whenever or wherever we were supposed to meet. But yesterday, at your remembrance service, your “funeral”, it struck me, as it struck some of our mutual friends that your body was not present. As if you wanted to make a statement that somebody had made a terrable mistake by calling you out of this life far too soon and that you did not agree with that. Your “funeral” was certainly the only one I have been to where the deceased person was not present. As I already said, you were a very special person, even after your death, yes indeed.

Erik, whenever you found out that one of your friends was facing a problem, you only needed two words: “Where?” and “When?”. You couldn’t wait to meet with your friends to help solve their problem! That was typical for you. No mountain was too high, no obstacle too difficult, no bridge too long. You simply would not rest until you had found a solution.

Knowing that you have lived your life to the fullest, realising that you sucked everything out of each and every minute, out of each and every second of your life only brings little relief. Although you have lived through enough experiences and adventures to fill up three lifes, and thus it seems to me like you have lived for 138 years instead of 46, it also brings little relief.

Peter Melders, one of our mutual friends stated it perfectly during his speech yesterday: “We can only assume that the one who has called you out of this life must have had a serious reason for having done so. Otherwise, you will be making a lot of trouble up there!“.

Erik, thank you for having been my friend. To me, it sure was an honour and a privilege to have been one of yours.

Farewell my friend…

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I came home this afternoon to find some real bad news in my e-mails. Erik Ostrycharz, one of my best friends has died while playing squash yesterday in Saudi-Arabia where he lived and worked. He was only 46 years old. He leaves behind his wife and two daughters. We met about twenty years ago in Soest, Germany. He was one of the officers of the Belgian 1st Grenadiers Regiment. Almost immediately, we became very close friends and we saw each other on a regular basis.

A couple of years later, he left the army and started working in various countries. I think it was about two years ago that he got an offer he couldn’t refuse to go working somewhere in Saudi-Arabia. Only last week, I was thinking of him and I wanted to give him a phonecall to chat a little bit. Unfortunately, something came up, and I forgot to call him. Stupid me. Now I can never call him anymore.

I called his widow immediately after I heard the bad news. She’s getting on a plane to Saudi-Arabia tomorrow morning, in order to go and collect the body, hoping the Saudis will let her take him with her. Apparently everything goes pretty slow over there.

While I am thinking back, I can’t recall when we met for the last time. It must have been while I was still living in Belgium, so it must have been somewhere in 2002 or early 2003. Despite that fact, we kept in touch, calling each other every now and then, and writing each other e-mails. But we kept close, very close. Damned, why do these things happen?

One thing is sure: I will never forget Erik. I will always remember him as a very enthusiastic, optimistic person who was always willing to reach out and help each and everybody when it was necessary. He was always ready to work very hard and professionally, but as soon as the job was done, he was ready to party as well. It is said that a person has got less than five really good friends. Today, I have lost one of those five.

Erik, buddy, Cher Ancien, rest in peace.

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Over the past couple of months, I repeatedly asked myself the same question over and over again. Does real justice exist? Being a Belgian, I can’t help but follow the Belgian news through the wonderful technology of the internet. Earlier this week for example, I watched online the live launch of the Sojouz capsule bringing Belgian Frank De Winne to the International Space Ship where he will stay for the next six months, and where he will become the first European commander of the ISS from October onwards. So far the good news.

I also learned the astonishing news how a 64-year-old woman was robbed of her purse (with only 50 euros in it) by a bunch of teenagers who kicked her repeatedly on the head and the body, and who left her behind at her doorstep with permanent brain damage and no hope for recovery. Belgian police arrested a couple of teenagers, and freed them almost immediately, as they had nothing to do with that particular robbery. They had only robbed some other elderly ladies who fortunately have survived the attacks. A couple of days later, the real robbers were arrested. There is no doubt that it will take a very long time before they will be brought to court.

In September of 2007, Simon Wyffels, a Belgian teenager was stabbed in his neck twice by two Russian school boys who were illegally staying in Belgium. Simon was lucky to have a policeman in the neighbourhood who saved his life. The two Russian brothers were arrested, and freed by the justice department a couple of months later, only to go on the run again. They left Belgium and are now living in Israel. They were supposed to appear in court earlier this month. They did not show up, and they will never pay for their awful crime. Simon and his family have been going through hell over the past twenty months, but this victim is now being punished a second time by the official bodies who are supposed to protect our society.

Earlier this week, a Belgian judge in an Antwerp court room refused to send a burgler to jail. Why? This burgler had appeared on various occasions before the same judge, the last time in February of this year. At that time, he was convicted to eighteen months in prison for burglary. The justice department however did not send him to jail, but let him free. Almost immediately, the guy committed another crime by breaking in into a car, got arrested and appeared again in court. The judge made a political statement by not convicting this guy again. In my humble opion, this is a complete insane statement and a wrong signal. As a result, even more people will lose their faith in justice.

On February 7th of 2009, a good friend of mine, Peter De Wolf, made a mistake. He was involved in a car accident. He left a party, and instead of calling a taxi, he took his car to get back home. He was drunk. He was the Chief of the Ghent Police Force. He called a couple of his officers, and they tried to cover up the story. Another mistake. One month later, the truth came out. Immediately, Peter was on trial by the Belgian press. Several times he has been on every front page of every Belgian newspaper, and he was the main topic in a whole lot of news journals on television. During the past two and a half months, Peter has received a bigger press coverage than Kim De Gelder, a young Belgian lunatic who stabbed two babies and one adult to death in January of this year, one week after he had killed an elderly woman as well.

And guess what? All of a sudden, the justice department is able to work very quickly. Peter had to appear in court last Friday. Less than three months after the truth came out! He knows that he has made a mistake, and he is aware that he will have to pay for this mistake. But how high will the price be? He risks to be put away in jail, to lose his civil rights, to lose his job and to lose his pension. While he is one of the most capable police officers in the whole country who served his community over the past couple of decades to the best of his capabilities.

Fortunately, he has hired one of the best lawyers in Belgium. And apparently, due to the rush in which the Justice Department wanted to work, they made some mistakes as well, using methods which are illegal to get to the truth. According to Peter’s lawyer, due to these mistakes, he should be freed. The verdict is due to come on June 19th.

I hope Peter’s lawyer is going to win the case. Having known Peter since 1983, I know he is not a criminal. He is a normal human being who has made some mistakes. But haven’t we all?

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A couple of weeks ago, I published a post that was written by my good friend Bruno Goffin. I met Bruno in the early days of 1993 during one or the other business meeting in Brussels, Belgium. Since then, we have become good friends. We kept in touch, despite the fact that, over the past sixteen years, Bruno has been living and working in Belgium, Austria, Spain and South Africa while I was working and living in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, Ireland and Portugal. It is very special to have a good friend like Bruno. I wrote it here before, but I will never forget what it meant to me a couple of years ago when I was in hospital recovering from a serious heart-attack, and he, after finding out, just jumped on a plane in Johannesburg, South Africa, to fly all the way to Portugal to come and visit me.

Bruno has recently moved back from South Africa to Spain. We are now living a bit closer to each other, instead of 8000 kilometers, the distance between us has now dropped to only 800 kilometers. Due to his immense experience in communicating with other human beings, he has developped a peculiar view on life in general. He loves writing, and I am very proud and honoured to be able to announce that Bruno is willing to write some posts on this blog on a regular basis.

I am pretty sure that you will enjoy his posts on various topics that will be published over here in the foreseeable future.

Bruno and I, during a visit in the beautiful city of Obidos, Portugal, November 2007.

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It happened thirty eight years ago today, on May 8th, 1971. It was my dad’s 37th birthday. As a treat to himself, he had bought a brand new bicycle, a light brown coloured “Peugeot”. At that time, one of the most modern bicycles that was available on the market. I had just become eleven years old / young. The whole family, my parents, me and my sister (my younger brother was born only five and a half years later) went to pick up the bike at the local bikeshop in Aalter, Belgium. Very proudly, my dad jumped on his bicycle and rode it all the way to his parents, who were living about ten kilometers away. My mom was following him while driving the family car, and we were all watching dad, riding his brand new bike as if he was racing a time-trial stage in the Tour de France.

A little later, me, my dad and my grandfather were sitting next to each other on a bench in his garden full of flowers my grandmom was so passionate about, admiring his new toy. I remember exactly my grandfather’s words: “Son, enjoy your life to the fullest, because once you have become thirty seven years of age, the years will be passing by very, very quickly!”. My grandfather was 63 at that time. He passed away in 1994, aged 86.

Somehow, during all my life, I have never forgotten these words, and from time to time, I stand still and take a moment to think about my grandfather’s words. I am now forty nine, twelve years older than my dad was in 1971. As an eleven year old kid, I couldn’t quite catch the meaning of my grandfather’s words. But now, I must admit he was right. Every day is going faster and faster. I’m just making the best out of it each and every single day. Life’s far too short not to enjoy it to the fullest!

My dad is celibrating his 75th birthday today. So… happy birthday dad. Make it a BRILLIANT day today!

My parents and me at their 50th Wedding Anniversary Party on 4th of April of this year.

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Early this morning, I saw a clip on Youtube. My business partner, Jerry has made a record. He’s got a great voice, and apparently got some ambitions to become active in the show business. There’s no business like show business! If you want to book him for a concert, just drop me a line, I might be able to get you a great deal! I hope you’ll like his voice!

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In life, one doesn’t have a lot of friends. Maybe a lot of acquaintances, but not a whole bunch of friends. I’ve had a whole lot of “friends” in my past that, for one or the other reason when things went a bit backwards in my personal life, all of a sudden stopped being a friend. I honestly believe that these kind of people who stop being a friend, have never been a friend in the first place. It’s as simple as that.

Fortunately, there are still some exceptions. One of my close friends is Bruno. He’s a Belgian just like me, and we met somewhere in the early days of 1993. So we’ve known each other for more than sixteen years right now. I remember that, when I was having a heart-attack three years ago, he was living in South Africa at that time. As soon as he found out that I had some serious health challenges, he jumped on a plane, and flew all the way from Johannesburg to Lisbon and the Algarve to come and visit me! I will never forget what that meant to me at that time.

Bruno has moved back to Spain a couple of years ago, and is now living some 800 kilometres away from me. Every now and then, we visit each other and during long walks through the Spanish nature, we brainstorm together on how we could change the world. I come to think of it, it’ll be one year this weekend since my last visit to him, so one of these upcoming weeks, I’ll jump in my car and go and visit him again.

Since 1993, Bruno has been studying everything about dogs. I have had a couple of wonderful dogs when I was still living in Belgium, and during those days, he helped me understand my dogs. I don’t know anybody else who knows that much about dogs but Bruno. Since he returned from South Africa, he has an “e-mail training course”, and through the internet, he helps hundreds of dog owners around the world on many topics about how to have a better relationship with their dog.

A couple of days ago, Bruno sent me an e-mail, and I like to share the content with you. Here it goes:

Hi Gino,

Today I want to talk to you about the most powerful dog in the world.

It is not a Mastin de Leon, a Rottweiler, a Newfoundlander, a Dogo Napolitano or a Saint Bernard. Most of them are mere gentle giants.

Let me unveil to you the secret about the most powerful dog in the world.

Because of our thirst for gossip we are addicted to stories about famous people. The media are more than willing to feed us with a never ending stream of so-called news about the rich and famous.

Our gossip society is very interested in all the details of the private lives of famous people. The more trivial, sordid, debased, sensational or shocking these details are the more we love it.

American presidents are famous people.

We see them every day on the evening news when they are performing a ritual. A few examples of these ritualized shows are: walking to a car/plane/helicopter; stepping out of a car/plane/helicopter, speaking during a press conference, shaking hands, waving at crowds and showing of their dogs.

Do you remember Lyndon Johnson and what he did to the Vietnamese people?

Do you think he did not want to be re-elected because of the war in Vietnam? I will tell you the shocking truth. One day he was shown on the telly lifting up his small dog by its ears. Americans were so scandalized by the cruelty of their president that he immediately stepped down.

Since then American presidents do not pick up their dogs anymore by their ears.

At least not in public.

I do remember the Clintons just like I do remember the Flintstones. Sometimes I liked the Clintons better than the Flintstones, especially when Bill Clinton was saying things like: I did not have sex with that woman.

But Bill and Hilary also had a dog. As far as I remember it was a chocolate coloured Labrador. Many times I saw Bill walking over the lawn of the White House. When he was not having sex with that woman he was certainly being pulled along by his dog.

I loved it.

It was magnificent.

Here we had someone called the most powerful man in the world and his dog pulled him along.

This must be one of the best kept secrets in world history.

I am now going to announce it publicly for the first time.
The most powerful man in the world was pulled along by a Labrador weighing 32 kg. The man thought he was in charge. But he was wrong.
We know that if a dog pulls a person along, the person is obviously the follower and the dog is clearly the leader.

Bill never knew the truth about his position.
His dog did.

Now you know it also.

Bill was not in charge.

His dog was.

The other day I read an article in the Spanish paper El Pais {The Country} about the dog of the Obama family.

I haven’t seen brother Barack walking his dog but chances are that his Cao de Agua Portuguès {Portuguese water dog} will become the most powerful dog in the world.

Drop me a line if you see a picture of that dog pulling along his president.
What could this mean for us and the future of our planet?

It means there is still hope for humanity when this dog takes charge.

We know that dogs are not as intelligent as human beings.

They never go to war, never lie, cheat, pretend, blame, moan, criticize, judge or condemn.

Yes there is hope for humanity.

Kindest regards from Brunothedoglistener

Well-educated dogs are obedient dogs.
Obedient dogs are happy dogs.
Happy dogs have happy owners.

www.brunodogs.com

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Next month, on the 5th of April, the Tour of Flanders for professional cycle racers will be held in my home country. For me, it will be a very special day, as I will be in Belgium again, and will be watching this race on television, together with some friends and family. Forty years ago, in 1969, Eddy Merckx, the greatest champion in the history of professional cycle racing won this race in heroic circumstances. The organizing Belgian newspaper “Het Nieuwsblad” is inviting all fans of Eddy Merckx to send in pictures of him.

The picture below was taken by me, when I was a 12-year-old kid, using my father’s camera. The picture shows my father on the right, at that time aged 38, together with his idol Eddy Merckx. My father will become 75 on the 8th of May of this year, and will be married to my mother for fifty years on the 2nd of April. We’ll celibrate this anniversary on Saturday 4th of April, the reason why I’ll be back in Belgium that weekend.

My youngest brother sent in the old picture I took in 1972 to the newspaper that published it on their website.

I thought my dad would love to see his favorite picture on my website as well. So here it is…

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If the new American President Barack Obama can use YouTube in order to address his fellow Americans - and by doing this, the rest of the world, I thought by myself I could use YouTube as well in order to wish my mother in Belgium a Happy Birthday. Today, she becomes 71, so I decided to put into practise the new media on the internet in order to congratulate her. Obviously, as I am speaking to my mother, I am talking her language, which is not English of course. Anyway, Happy Birthday Mom! Een Gelukkige Verjaardag! Make it an unforgettable day.

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Last Thursday, it was the last Thursday of October. As usual, and as I have mentioned before on October 14th in the post “Business Club”, every last Thursday of the month we have our dinner with a bunch of Dutch speaking business men living in the Algarve. Last Thursday, I organised the dinner at Sabino’s, a restaurant in Vila Nova de Cacela. For once, instead of driving, I could just walk to the restaurant. Sabino’s is throughout the Algarve a very well known restaurant for its steak and “porco preto” - black pig on the stone. This means that the customers do have to prepare their own meat in front of them, on a hot stone. Maybe the chef chooses for this option in order to avoid any complaints about the meat being too done or being not “seignant” enough. Whatever! My friends enjoyed playing chef for one night. I, as usual, had a nice fish, which I did not have to prepare myself.

We started with a couple of drinks, then we had the usual Portuguese entrees, followed by the main dish, dessert and coffee. I had specifically asked the owner of the restaurant to serve us a wonderful Alentejo red wine which could not be found in the local supermarkets at very inexpensive prices which unfortunately is done too many times by other restaurants. Well, I must admit, the wine was excellent. Maybe a little too excellent having seen all the empty bottles afterwards.

I put in some pictures of that night, just as a little remembrance for the friends who came. Also to show to the others who did not show up what they have missed. The pictures are not the best quality as I had forgotten to bring my normal camera and therefore I had to take them with my cell-phone.

As usual, last Friday morning, life was pretty challenging!

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