Sumpta

Hey, dont underestimate your beer industry But yea,that pretty much sum it up.. :D Oh yeah, that's true. It just isn't as much of an export product as chocolate. For some reason the world prefers Heineken over the good Belgian stuff. Always hilarious to feed Duvel beer (= "devil", and it's named like that for a reason) to unsuspecting Americans :D.

Oh please, children, knock it off. Striker, don't pretend you don't like irritating us all. You do, it's why you're here. All the rest, don't pretend you don't like having Striker here, without him, we'd all be agreeing so much and being pleasant and telling each other how much we like each other, which would be fun for a day and drop dead boring the next. Haha and now I'm gonna be flamed -very understandably and reasonably, I'm sure- for being the newest noob here who doesn't know a thing and should shut up altogether :lol:.

Hey Homer, I haven't been on for a while, but I've seen you progress at an alarming rate through the high-scores! In case you've tossed me off your friends list by now, I'll still try and make it to your party if I still play by then :D. Good luck on your goals!

No, C̮̫̉̉te d'Or is Belgian. Callebaut is Belgian too. The basic rule is generally: if it's good chocolate, it's Belgian, hehe. Our one and only pride as a nation. Oy, you're from Leuven? Well whaddayaknow, I'd never have thought to find a fellow Leuvenaar on Tip.It :D.

*Gasp* You don't mean to say, dear sir, that there can possibly be any other reason to human life than procreation? Seriously, people, sex is also fun. You know, pleasure? Not simply guilty sin? There's nothing quite so nice as a good giggle between the sheets.

Guylian chocolate is indeed very nice, but when you're in Germany, try to get your hands on chocolate with this label. It's the chocolate we keep for ourselves for daily use and it's divine. Oh and it's true. On Christmas we get together with our families shortly after noon, simply to eat and drink our finest and to talk all day through. It's a bit stressful for the cook though, because he/she has to show off their skills for the whole family. And then we repeat the whole thing on New Year's Eve with our friends. Most people have to go on a diet when Christmas/New Year is over or suffer from indigestion. That Aussie barbeque does sound good though, my brother spent a few months in Australia and loved them... we're having the most awful summer for barbeques here this year.

I plead guilty :oops:. Our chocolate is the main reason why I wouldn't want to move abroad. Seriously. Also, remember how my mother's an excellent cook? She's also an excellent baker, and I've inherited many recipes... I follow my mother's tradition of baking something every Sunday. So umm, healthy? Yeaaah, up to a certain point. I fear we Belgians do live Bourgondic lives, as we say it here. We have a huge eating and drinking culture, similar to that of the French. The saying goes that the Belgian cuisine is as fine in taste as the French and as large in quantity as the German. Luckily, I'm blessed with a good metabolism :D.

Pault, if you think my post was empty and sad, you're going to have a tough time with the rest of this thread. I didn't feel like expanding on the bullet points, because a) it's been done before and B) it's done a lot better than I could, since I'm not as knowledgeable on the subject as I could wish to be and c) I'm at work and shouldn't be browsing forums - lol I merely handed out a start of conditions that should be taken into account and that I know will not be taken into account by most who will visit this thread. Yes, it's lazy and pessimistic, but frankly, if you are really looking for an in-depth intellectual discussion, why in the world are you doing it here? One point I will expand on, though. Your guesses about what I meant were all more or less correct, except the one about Bush. He doesn't have an individual policy, that is true. Although American presidents can push their personal beliefs a lot more than happens in the political systems of other countries. Anyway, when I talk about "Bush's policy", I really mean the president and his entourage/administration. A big reason for Bush's international policy, in my humble opinion, is that he needed to steer his people away from internal difficulties in the USA. Bush is not known for a strong social policy at all, while this is one of the things that, again in my view, the country does need. Poverty, crime and the educational system are or should be hot topics in the US, for which Bush can offer no solutions, tied as he is with huge industries such as the warfare industry. So yes, I do think that this is an important aspect. One of the many. In this respect, 9/11 is extremely important, because it made the average American look abroad as well. 9/11 created the political climate that was needed to be able to make the external international policy the most important one. That's why there are so many conspiracy theories (which I don't buy, btw)... it was exactly what Bush needed to do what he went on to do after 9/11.

Oh man, that's like putting a kid in charge of the candy shop! I'm going a bit green with envy here. My heart lies in culture and the arts, but my talent is organisation and coordination. My next job will be with the government, to work for the department of social development. I'll be having a bit of a battle between my one self who wants to do very practical, direct stuff and my other self who likes to work on the broader level of policy making.

Oh dear. Before any of the rest can butt in to flame, I'd like to put a disclaimer on this discussion. Nothing in politics is ever simple. There's a whole political constellation in which this kind of event happens and there are a lot of conditions and reasons for this war. You'd need to be a good student of politics and history to begin to grasp complex situations as these. Important elements are: - Bush's policy of external politics to evade internal issues in his country - The aftermath of 9/11 - The long economical war with the Middle East - The long political history of the West with the Middle-East, with Israel/Palestina as an important catalysator - The end of the Cold War as well as the external politics of Russia in the Middle East And I'm sure lots of other factors can be added.

You ate McDonald's for the first time after 15 years? Did your parents tie you up and lock you inside your cupboard? 15 and you finally ate McDonalds? Serious?! :shock: Umm, yeah, I'm serious. I'd never had kebab, take away/frozen pizza, nor any of the typical fried meat junk before I went to university at 18. My mother stems from another era, I guess, and she's an excellent cook, so she always cooked our meals herself. If we went out for food, it was usually at restaurants with 'decent' food. After that bad encounter at 15, I wasn't too hasty to try any of it again when going out with friends. By now, my stomach does hold the stuff, but still... pizza's my favourite junk, but the rest, I could easily live without. You know, my visit to the USA was a bit of a culture shock in that respect. They have fast food chains with places on every corner of every street, it seems. Not just McDonalds, but loads of others too (like Starbucks and that doughnut place, don't remember its name). In Belgium, we have our fair share of McDonalds restaurants as well, but there are more alternatives, I guess. In the USA, we sometimes had no idea where to get 'decent' and affordable food, like a simple vegetable/cheese sandwich (made out of bread with grains, not the mushy stuff). It was especially difficult because we couldn't go to some places because we weren't 21 yet.

Non-alcoholic: * Spa Citron: Lemon flavoured soda * Apple-Cherry Juice (Looza) * Water (Spa) Alcoholic: * Ginja (Portuguese cherry liquor) * Amaretto

Funny (and exasperating) stories indeed. But I can't help to rush to the defense of (some of) these people on one point. Their jobs don't require them to think. I mean, it's not like they're getting a lot of brain practice. Uneducated people land themselves in these kinds of jobs and they haven't the slightest chance of ever getting out by doing that job. Maybe they should force these people to start their days with some sudoku's or something :D. Another point in their defense, sometimes people just get distracted. I mean, I know I've said and done a lot of stupid things myself in the course of my life, that made me go red with shame. However, these people never seemed to come to the point of realising their sillyness... :-k

Same here. I ate McDonalds food for the first time when I was 15, I was on a fun weekend with my class. Threw it up a few hours later (no booze involved). So very uncool :cry:. On a trip to the USA a few years ago, I had not much choice but to try it again. If you're not 21, and without your parents, it's hard to evade the food for a full 3 weeks. On the bright side, I didn't throw it up again. But I can't say I was particularly enchanted by the taste of the stuff.

Stolen from people before me: O Brother Where Art Thou Le Fabuleux Destin d'Am̮̩̉̉lie Poulain Requiem for a Dream I'd like to add: La Reine Margot & Black Cat White Cat (both scores by Goran Bregovic) Gosford Park Strictly Ballroom & Moulin Rouge

For the simple matter of fact that for every 4 xp you get in combat (1 damage) you get 1 xp in slayer. You'd have to kill 4 times the monsters to get a 99 in slayer than to get a 99 in any combat. And since you need to keep making trips to slayer masters and getting new assignments, it takes even longer. if you take a look at the runescape official poll for april 2nd, you'll see that the most popular skill among members is slayer(13% of the community enjoys it most, with 1000 votes more than the second favorite). if they enjoy it that much, they probably don't mind killing 4x the monsters and taking breaks to bank and change tasks. And because a skill is enjoyable, getting 99 in it is not admirable? Okay wise guy, before talking nonsense like that, just try and get 85 slayer, which is only 1/4 of the total xp needed for 99 slayer and then we'll talk again. Where 85 in any skill isn't altogether that daunting, in slayer, it's massive. The xp/hour rate is the 2nd slowest in the game (only RC is slower). Slayer experience is slow, unpredictable and going to 99 is one of the biggest -if not the biggest- achievements in the game. It's probably also the most respectable way to train combat.

No. I'm agnostic. Nevertheless, when something bothers me, I do wander into a church sometimes and light a candle. I like the peace, quiet and 'out of this world' nature of the place and for me the candle symbolises the problem I'm having. It helps me contemplate things, stand still for while and figure them out. But the main actor in the whole is always me, me changing what I don't like, me figuring it out, not begging someone else or a god to do it for me.

These two thoughts combined are highly dangerous: 1) marital sex will work out just fine 2) only non-married people rape Because 1 = a fairy tale. Yes, sex can be a most wonderful thing between two people, and we humans crave for both the physical and emotional aspect of it. But sexual incompatibility definitely does exist. I'm sure you can work at it in some cases, but it doesn't always work out fine, especially not if you've never discussed this before with your partner, nor experimented before marriage. These sexual problems will lead to a lot of sexual frustration, misunderstanding and unhappiness. This might culminate in sexual agression over time. Oh dear, and that brings us straight to 2, does it not. Rape is not a privilige of unmarried men! Oh and Striker, the more posts I read by you, the more I love how you just don't get women. At all.

I think the author missed the main educational use of runescape: vocabulary. Even native speakers must be expanding their vocabulary by playing Runescape. I'm probably going to take a German language course next year, so I've been playing RS on the German servers lately to get used to the look and feel of the language. After all, I learned English from television, films and games as well, so... :D

Very well put. Sex is an act of intimacy between two people (at least if it's done within the borders of a relationship). It's one of the ways of bonding and it can be a very emotional thing, both before and in marriage. If things don't work out between the sheets, you can be pretty sure things won't work out in the relationship. It works the other way around as well, if things go badly in the relationship, chances are that things aren't working well in bed either. There are exceptions, obviously, but it's very naive to think that sex is unimportant. And as for me being shallow, that's really funny. I have very high demands for my relationships, I take them very seriously, even though I have no intention of getting married soon (if ever). Just because someone engages in premarital or non-marital sex, does not make them a [bleep], shallow or bad. As for the statement that the world would be a better place if people didn't have premarital sex? I believe the world would be filled with a lot more frustrated people. We are physical beings, we do have physical needs. Sex is as much part of us as eating and drinking.

Premarital sex? Yes, please. I couldn't imagine the opposite. What if you don't match in bed? If there's no spark, or your partner prefers activities you don't or the other way around? Yipes. I don't see why the wedding night would lose any of it's special value either. From what I've heard from the elder generations, that first wedding night was quite dreadful. So much tension, not quite knowing what to do. I'd rather have a wonderful night with the person I chose to spend my life with, without the pressure and knowing him and his body well.

Well, I try to do my part of helping society in my job, but I'm not so naive as to believe I will be remembered for it for all eternity. I hope that when I die, there will be a few people who will be able to say that they loved me, and I them in return. It sounds mellow, I know, but it's important to me, as I'm often believed to be difficult, harsh and a bit too rational.

Sheesh, what's next? Cup sizes?

I have no religion, but I'm not an atheist. I'd put myself on the shelf of agnosticism (I cannot claim to know the Truth, as the truth is very likely inherently unknowable). Doesn't take away the fact that I can understand the value and meaning of practising a religion and that I have drawn big parts of my moral system from christianity/catholicism. But it's just not in my personal nature to be religious. But I agree, we've had our share of flaming religion topics here. Please, no more.

A nice dress + dvd's or a city trip to Lisbon/Barcelona/Istanbul.