The newsies today and our memories in past tense
What do you remember when you read "news" ?
It’s a fascinating thing isn’t it? Memories?
(No worries , no animals were harmed in the creation of that photo. But this one just to get you started about what you remember when you take in new information called… news)
I remember dressing up as a purple Teletubbie at some point , when I was responsible for running one of the most awesome teams in IT ever , since I built it completely from scratch myself.
The human mind has an incredible processing capacity , and a fascinating capacity to learn things. And it’s actually capable of coming up with something that has never before been seen or heard from.
But those things are always based on things you’ve experienced or have learned about though.
And a lot of people love to keep talking about where it all came from and then we’re all trying to convince someone else of that.
I hope you’ve noticed I’m not really trying to convince anyone of anything.
What I am doing however is simply share what I see and remember from things , and funnily enough it’s usually different things than anyone else.
Once every few days I brush up on “The news” , and since it’s a wonderfull sunny day here in this place where I live, where everywhere I walk I am greeted with smiling faces , rolling vistas and the promise of enormously tastefull locally grown foods… Today I felt I’ll share what I see, and feel… and most importantly… what I remember when I “scan” the “news”.
My newsfeed is a carefully curated list with representations from each continent. which I sort of feel I need to do , since I’ve visited each continent several times through the course of my lifetime.
From Post Inferno Tomorrowland : Belgium
There was this article on their government funded news website about a boat capsizing in Halong Bay in Vietnam. And I myself was born and raised in Belgium, and remember my visit to Vietnam vividly too.
(At one point I dove really deep into local culture by being invited into a community that basically lives on the streets of Hanoi… and for a few days I was basically treated as one of them for one reason and one reason only. Because I was extremely curious and asked a couple of questions they were only to happy to share their answers too. And their answer was… “Well… We’ll show you all of it then” .)
Hanoi as a name basically means “In the river”. And boy was that a wild ride.
This news article was hidden way down , below a lot of other local news about a big party with thousands of people doing all kinds of drugs and the podium burned down before the party even started but nobody cared and the party just considered a bonfire pre-show.
That event is called Tomorrowland.
Belgians are so good at making things you see?
But here’s the article I’m talking about.
I was once on one of those exact kind of boats so I had vivid memories of how that scene could have or might have unfolded while I’m sure that most people who read that have no freakin clue at all.
Yup… That’s me flying off of that kind of boat in Halong Bay.
True story.
It was really fun.
I dove off that boat headfirst so many times I ended up with a mild concussion , but boy was it worth it. My highest dive that day was from the 4’th deck of those kinds of boats.
And for those from around the world… I’m sure you know Vietnam , and have some strong opinions about it , and about what happened there.
But what do you know of Belgium for instance?
Belgium is that little sliver in Europe nestled in between The Netherlands, France and Germany that was created as a compromise , with some pieces taken from all three so that its natural resources of Coal and Iron could be extracted and used without anyone else butting in.
One of it’s main economical staying power in addition to Coal and Steel has always been the production and use of weapons and their largest economical contributor is FN Herstal , the raw material suppliers of them.
Their series of weapons they have produced are some of the most advanced and efficient weapons of murdering people…
But then only for when you really want to get close and personal with as little personal risk as possible of the opponent having anything to say about it.
They’re not that big on rockets and stuff. But boy can they make guns!
It’s why their range of guns are amongst the favourites of the most elite killing teams in the world with armour piercing marvels delivered in perfect accuracies and speeds and such.
One of their most revered meme’s was this one for instance
And they followed up that glorious social media campaign with things like these.
Or… You all remember “MiniMe” from Austin Powers right?
Guess what… Belgian! :)
I mean… the possibilities are endless growth , and they’re really good at that. Just take a look at their entire catalog here.
List of weapons developed by FN Herstal - Wikipedia
And just as a little sidenote…
At some point its king also happened to privately own the territory in Africa called Congo… Which is literally the richest deposit of natural resources including all rare earth minerals in the entire world. That was that guy named Leopold II , and he literally just personally owned that place like it was his back yard. That was it’s legal status. It wasn’t a country back then…. It was his private golf course resort filled with rubber plantations which was also a nifty product to start mass producing. And boy was the labour for all of that… ummm.. “cheap” ?
When counting the sum of value of natural resources in Congo today… It is undoubtably the richest country in the world.
Just like it was, when it was privately owned by one person called Leopold.
The king of Belgium.
What’s Congo anyways?
When counted in how much money they actually make… that GDP thingy?
It’s one of the absolute poorest. And it always has been ever since it became a country.
Those are just a few random things I remember from Congo… Since I’ve been there too. Deep into the jungles of it even. We like to call it “the brousse” in Belgium.
So any mention of it, brings back a lot of vivid memories for me too.
(I actually went to school there. Or to be more precise… I helped some schools there. And a hospital , and an orphanage and just… stuff … you know? )
Honestly , I remember that to be the only classroom in my entire memory that ever felt comfortable, and felt like I was actually learning something at the same time.
And I was going to continue this article with a few other headlines from all over the world and show people what sort of things come up with an article that struck my fancy from each continent…
But you know what?
I suddenly felt like going for a walk , and this is enough for today…
I’ll spam you some more with other stories tomorrow!
And I’d love to hear back from you, what sort of memories you entertain when you read the news these days?
Always ready to talk about that!
This article was written in my head ,while sitting here in my auto-adjusted air-conditioning system with air-flow-through technology while everyone is complaining it’s too hot… But i’m not even breaking a sweat really.
