Rafael - Living live a day at a time

Belgium

Pils: The name comes from the town Pilsen in Bohemia (currently Czech Republic) where it was made for the first time in 1842. It's a beer of low fermentation, golden pale ale with a slight bitter taste. It is always filtered and saturated, has an average of 5% alcohol and is drunk cold. They represent currently more than 70% of the beers drunk in Belgium.

Trappiste: These are beers manufactured in the community of an abbey, the life of these monks is shared between prayer, reading and work. Thus the monks manufacture beer, cheese, meat products, bread and even fruit and vegetables.
They are generally a strong alcoholic strength (6º to 12º), they could be blond or brown and have a second fermentation in bottles.
There are only 6 brands which can carry the Trappiste name: Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle and Westvleteren.

Beers of Abbey: Although the abbeys remain as the recipe's owner, and they give the name to the beer, over the years they have entrusted the brewing process to independent breweries.
The Beers of Abbey are high fermentation, strong, malted, fruity and quite round ones. The term "Tripel" indicates a pale beer of approx. 7-9º of alcohol and the "Double" a dark beer of aprox. 6º

Czech Republic

Turkey

Slovakia

Egypt

India

Other

I received a email forwarded by a friend about a dyslexic artist who was able to create the most amazing art pieces in microscopic scale, his name Willarg Wigan. So of course I thought it was one of this internet era urban legends, but I was proven wrong!!

He was born in Birmingham, England in 1957 and his work is ground-breaking - partly because of the astounding beauty of vision which challenges the belief system of the mind and partly because it demonstrates that if one person can create the impossible.

He works in total solitude at a quiet retreat in Jersey mainly at night when there is a greater sense of peace in the world and less static electricity to interfere with the immeasurable precision and tolerances required to create the pieces.

The smallest sculptures can only be measured in thousandths of an inch which is why they can sit, very delicately, on a human hair three thousandths of an inch thick. When working on this scale he slows his heartbeat and his breathing dramatically through meditation and attempts to harmonize his mind, body and soul with the Creator.

He then sculpts or paints at the centrepoint between heartbeats for total stillness of hand.

Have a look at some of the pictures attached or on his webpage and be amazed.

Elephant on a pin

Girl with balloon walking an eyelash

The Statue of Liberty in the eye of a needle

Although the weather was not the best for sightseeing as it was rainy a good part of them, having some friends over visiting is always a good and refreshing way to spend the weekends.

This time it was Liz Adrianza and her boyfriend Koen who were visiting. So it was a weekend of catching up, her playing around with Daniela, Koen practicing some Spanish and we catching up on our lives.

It's just really interesting how things evolve and change because I met Liz in my first AIESEC Conference (SCL 2000) while we were both delegates and newies in AIESEC, now 6 and a half years later we meet each other again in another continent and still enjoy the friendship that started in that event. That's the kind of thing I love about AIESEC

Last Thursday (17/08) we invited 12 people for a little get together in our place in order to finally inaugurate our apartment and showcase a bit of our Mexican and Venezuelan cuisine.
For the night my wife and me cooked:

• Pollo al Mole: Chicken in a mole sauce. Mole is a typical Mexican sauce which is composed of between 17 to +30 ingredients (depending on the Mexican state or taste of the cook)
• Pollo desmenusado: Chicken breast boiled, then minced into small pieces and cooked with spices
• Empanadas de Pollo y Queso: Empanadas are a typical Colombo/Venezuelan dish made of corn flour shaped as a semicircular and filled with Chicken or cheese (those were the 2 fillings we had) and then fried
• Chicharrones: Normally fried pork skin but in this case they were made out of flour
• Arepas: Typical Venezuelan dish made of corn flour in a round shape, they are normally eaten instead of bread or filled with anything available.
• Tacos Dorados: Tortillas filled with potatoes and then fast fried for it to be crusty

Of course that all accompanied by 3 different types of spicy and non spicy sauces, it was definitely a very good dinner.

Next one should be in the end of September or early October as I will be out almost all of September so Maria and Goncalo, please let me know when you guys are available.

This past weekend Brussels' Grand Place (or Groete Markt in Dutch) was beautifully decorated with its famous and traditional Flower Carpet. It's a tradition that started in 1971 by the landscape architect E. Stautemans, who having already made several flower carpets in other towns in Flanders took the challenge of building the first one to cover almost all the Grand Place with Begonias.
It has been instituted as a tradition ever since and every 2 years for a weekend this beautiful square shows off a new design and is covered in Begonias and grass in a predefined pattern, to see all previous design click here. This year's Flower carpet was inspired in the Alchemy of the Middle Ages and is the first time that it includes moving parts.
See here some of my own pictures and a couple I borrowed from other flickr users.