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By invitation of the Motos Scooters Club des Falaises - the local branch of the Vespa Club de France - and together with the Classic Car Club Normandy we got a top spot at the quay in QuilleBeuf to park our cars.

Arriving very early in the morning, we got ourselves installed ahead of the huge crowd that struggled to find a free patch of grass near the river bank to watch the ships go by, have a glass of cider wine and stroll by the motorcycles, oldtimers… and Bluetooth cars. It was a lovely day and the atmosphere was cheery, the ships were stately, the oldtimers plucky (both the cars and the foursome playing cards at a picnic table next to us) and our enjoyment very, very, véritable.

Doors, steering wheel, gasoline, check!

2000 Watts sound system and subwoofer, check!

Roof, check!

Crazy driver, check!

Mudtrail, check!

This car is officially ready… Landcruisers can eat our mud.

What better idea to get noticed than driving around in a flashy car? Well… driving around in three flashy cars! Beside our trusted Lotus, we took the Parrot MG out of the stable and added to that a Landrover Lightweight. Greasemonkey had to work until the last moment, and then some, to get the old boy (born in 1980) in shape for the trip.

Although, in shape? With a maximum speed of 80 km/h, it’s not exactly a bullet on the road… more like a boulder. But it does get you noticed. And when an Aberdeen-Le Mans classics race passes by, you get quite a few nods (’one of us’) and consenting salutes from old Jags and Bentleys. Cool. Pity about the weather though, it was raining cats and dogs all day… glad to be inside now in front of a glass of cider wine, the local specialty.

While driving around in Geneva, I became the living proof that - when talking about telephone calls and music - Sony Ericsson makes sure you are connected wherever you are in whichever way you want. Headsets, handsfree carkits, stereo headsets, audio dongles, fm transmitters, audio speakers and phones with shake control ensure that you can make calls safely and comfortably and that there is no place on earth where you cannot listen to your music.
I have been listening to Chet Baker at the shore of Lake Geneva today and calling my dad from a traffic jam (Dad! Coool cars!).

I’ll be streaming Chet again tomorrow morning via the Music Receiver audio dongle on the dodgy old Denon amplifier in the apartment here and knowing who’s calling me then before I have my phone out of my pocket. The future is now, and it is wireless. It also still has traffic jams, but they’re a bit easier to tolerate now

A lot more pictures can be found on Heliade’s picture site here.

And it goes so well with my Hermès handbag… oooh, suit you sir.

When I was about 14, for some reason I suddenly really got into cars. I kept files of as much car brands as I could and tried to know all the models out on the market. Later on, it faded away until I couldn’t care less and I actually never owned a car until I was 28. Now I enjoy driving, but I know nothing about engines compared to some of the car nuts in my direct environment.
But today, while being in Geneva to create some buzz for Sony Ericsson’s car accessories, we were allowed to visit the Car Show itself… and boy, that was AWESOME!! It almost made me go VROOOOOMMMM. But not really.
A sea of shininess, squeaky rubber and suave boothbabes. We saw so many stunning cars that I just don’t know which ones to post (they’re all here).

It was very obvious that Italian car brands still find it important to express their knack for style. The Alfa Romeo booth was dazzling, with cars in the bloodiest red, pitch black and iPod white, all caressed by elegant ladies.

The same was true for Lancia, the supercar brands Ferrari, Bugatti, Maserati and Lamborghini. Why, even Fiat did its best! And they won the prize for the cleverest hospitality suite with ease. Wherever you were in the gigantic hall, you always had the gigantic Cinquecento in the back of your view.

I am truly glad I had the chance to walk around the show today. The 14-year-old in me says it was kick-ass. And the Greasemonkey agrees.

I did my first official TV interview today (I think). It was internet TV from New York… or was it Canada? Anyway, internet-tv still counts. As you can see, there are worse things than being interviewed in our Lotus Eliseabout cool gadgets by a sassy tv-show host. I hope the message - that there are much more interesting Bluetooth applications for cars than one may think - got across.
Right after this interview, the funniest thing happened. I drove to the end of the avenue to make a (legal) U-turn, right where the Guardia Urbana police station is. A cop pulled me over, and I instinctively checked my safety belt (check!), headset (forbidden in Spain!!) and ‘I Hate Pigs’ t-shirt (left at home). To my surprise, officer Antonio asked me if he could have his picture taken behind the steering wheel. While his fellow traffic officers huddled around the car, the policeman slipped into the driver’s seat to have the snapshot taken. When I got back into the car, they asked the obvious questions about break horsepower, engine and top speed. However , when I was about to leave he and some of his colleagues blocked the complete road. ‘You show us now how fast the car accelerate!’
For a moment there, I expected the old candid camera trick. And the moment after that, I was sure this was a local trick to confiscate cool cars. But then I just hit the pedal and with the roar of a million smoker’s coughs, I bulleted away down the street. I guess I love my job.

Hot diggity! I did it… booked myself a holiday three weeks ago and here I am sitting at Schiphol airport, waiting for China Airlines (I have prepared myself for both a sweet and a sour experience) to take me to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. It it is possible, and if I feel like it, I will be posting pretty pictures and colourful tales of diarrhea on my travelog. Thankee.

now playing: Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia

What do you do when the e-mail server, the fixed line and the internet connection is down at work? Unless you have some off-line writing to do (like this morning), you can clean up your desk and cupboards or you can stare helplessly at a blank screen.
Or, you gather your stuff and you head to a place where you can get on-line again. In my case, the pub! Not to hang at the counter swigging beers, but to do the necessary minimum of e-mail correspondence.
You could’ve gone home and log in there as well, I hear you think… Why yes, technically that is correct. But: the neighbour’s kids are in the midst of their summer holiday and they are enthusiastically building a Harry Potter Pokemon Pirate’s nest in the yard, just below my window… they don’t do that in silence, I can tell you (and rightfully so). Besides, my other neighbour has decided it’s time to renovate that outside brick wall again, not to speak about the 16 Polish construction workers that are singing jolly songs while finishing a three-story apartment opposite our backyard.

While here, in the Roskam, there is nothing but the quiet rustle of the bartender behind the counter, a sporadic remark of the only other guest at the bar and some Westcoast cool jazz through the speakers. And an excellent free wi-fi connection. I am thinking of making this my office. They make a better cappuccino anyway…

Thanks to the generosity of one of the sponsors (thanks Tom!), I got a free ticket for the Graspop Metal Meeting, a festival that draws 100.000 visitors in three days who come to see all the different styles that are part of the music genre called metal. To me, metal is sort of a guilty pleasure. I really like certain bands, but I admit being ashamed if that would associate me with the dress code of most of its fans - spiked collars! denim jackets with patches that your mom stitched on! different shades of black!

Trying to explain what people like in metal music is practically impossible, because the genre probably only exists by the grace of others hating or not understanding it. If music is about emotions, metal focuses on the more negative stuff that hits your synapses and translates that into musical extremities, involving double bass drums, deep guitar sounds and a voice that in some cases resembles the sound of a heavy object being dragged over a concrete floor. Thematically, most bands stick to the usual stuff: death, mutilation, torture, various recreational types of bloodshed, an unhappy life and an even unhappier afterlife and the daily pursuits of Satan.

Some of these bands are downright silly, outdated, overly theatrical and therefore unintentionally hilarious to me… gothic metal is probably elevator music in the offices of the Evil One. Then again, those elements apply to bands in most other genres as well.
I can’t say I enjoyed the concert of the mighty Cannibal Corpse, but it was entertaining and it kept me wondering how these guys have managed to maintain a successful cult career of almost twenty years. I can definitely see how there is a crowd of people that is attracted to this type of music - full of disgusting, shocking imagery, just like horror movies have their trusted fans. But how the musicians themselves can keep going on with these performances, it stuns me. I guess it is the appreciation from fans and a healthy sense of humour. Without a good sense of humour, there is no way into metal music.

Best thing I saw? Mastodon, an atypical metal band of four technically very proficient musicians, who completely won me over with the 2004 album Leviathan, their complex musical rendering of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.