taxi in Bombay

Mira and her dad in a taxi in Bombay. After 1,5 weeks at home with the flu, I found the strength to put these last photos from our India trip online (click below). The album below starts in Delhi, via Bombay, (where we stayed at Parul's friend Puuja's place), and Istanbul to Belgium. The main bit shows Bombay, which is a happy place with an amazing energy, I was happy to get to know it better, including a nice sunset at salt water grill. When I see movies about Bombay now I recognise much more. Last we saw Munna Bhai, a great comedy with a serious message too. I never laughed so much with a Hindi movie :)

I am slowly getting better, recovering from this flu. Mira is asleep and healthy and Parul is working at the ANEC annual report.

Bombay transit album

Tiring bike ride

On Sunday we went to my parents place for a reunion, my youngest brother Bram is back from 5 months in Italy. We biked over after installing Mira's bike seat. She was singing at the beginning but ended up falling asleep. Bram hadn't seen Mira since September and really liked her earrings. He took the picture of her in sepia.

Mira chasing

A silent movie in which Mira shows off her crawling skills chasing a balloon. When motivated she is quite good, if there is nothing to chase she prefers to try and pull herself up to stand.

Ik vraag het aan

bi- or trilingual?

Many people ask us what language we speak with Mira. We both speak our mother tongue, Dutch and Hindi. We sometimes also speak English to each other, a language she is bound to pick up.

Apparently babies learn to distinguish between the sounds they need to know for their mother tongue. More on the matter in the article itself.

Zondagslunch in Wattman na de lichtmis

Lichtmis is celebrated 40 days after Jesus`s birth, his parents brought him to the temple for blessings so we did the same with Mira, our princess. Mira's Belgian grandparents came too and after the mass everyone had pancakes, very social.

The priest in Zurenborg (where Mira was baptised in June) was happy to see Mira and remembered her Australian grandmother with happiness.

life goes on

Jeroen here, life goes on without too much time to write about it. It is worth sharing some things though, especially Mira's latest development, so let me try.

Now that Mira is 8 months old she loves crawling around. During our three weeks in India crawling was still new and her technique didn't allow her to shuffle off and try and eat plugs, wires, plants or other things. But soon after we got back she started moving around on both knees really fast. We didn't even need to look up the guide "How to make your baby crawl in 6 steps" available on the web :)

We are changing the house around a bit so she can't access too many dangerous things. I really love the way she silently plays and observes all these new objects. Observing is the wrong verb since she will always taste it, chew is and if it is good chew it some more.

I am back at work at Handicap International and we have our New Year's party tonight (even though it's Feb). I like doing communications for an NGO and with some luck we can push some states to ratify an international ban on cluster munitions this year. Israel has recently apologised for having used these weapons in Lebanon, weapons that mainly hit civilians. Peres admitted yesterday to Al Jazeera that it was a mistake to use them. You can help too by signing the petition online. You can check on the website whether you know any of the famous Frenchmen or others who have already signed for a ban on these weapons.

Meanwhile other battles continue, like the one for our second-hand car, which is under warranty repair at a garage that closed down two weeks ago. He probably closed his business before officially going bankrupt and we will not see much more than the unrepaired car. Lawyers advise me to forget the warranty and the repair costs and to be happy with the vehicle itself. Lawyers giving me lessons in resignation, I like that.

Parul has a new boss who has a Narnia cupboard in his office, but I 'll let her write an update too. I am afraid that will have to wait until our sleeping experiment with Mira is over. We are trying to make her sleep through the night and teach her how to fall asleep on her own in her own bed. We adults can all do it, but it is really hard to teach someone how to do it . Hence the reason for very little blog traffic.

take care and keep commenting, tips are welcome!
Jeroen

EU debating banning the Swastika, originally an Indian Symbol

Hindus opposing EU swastika ban

Hindus in Europe have joined forces against a German proposal to ban the display of the swastika across the European Union, a Hindu leader said.


Source BBC



Parul was interviewed about the topic by Inne from De Standaard. Here is the article with a reference to Mira's mundan that we did two weeks ago in India.

donderdag 18 januari 2007

Hindoes verzetten zich tegen Europees verbod swastika

Voor hindoes en boeddhisten staat het hakenkruis al duizenden jaren symbool voor vrede en geluk.

Duitsland wil als EU-voorzitter het Duitse verbod op de ontkenning van de Holocaust in de hele Unie proberen in te voeren. Ook het verbod op het afbeelden van de swastika of het hakenkruis, dat de nazi's gebruikten als symbool van het Derde Rijk, zou tot het pakket maatregelen behoren dat Duitsland in de Unie wil invoeren.

Hindoes uit België, Nederland, Italië en Groot-Brittannië zien zo'n verbod absoluut niet zitten. Ze willen campagne voeren om het oeroude symbool niet uit de Unie te bannen.

De swastika, een woord uit het Sanskriet dat ,,geluksbrenger'' betekent, is inderdaad het heiligste symbool van het hindoeïsme en het Jaïnisme, en het komt ook in het boeddhisme voor (zie tweede foto). Maar het symbool bleef zeker niet tot de oosterse cultuur en religie beperkt. In Egypte en Zweden zijn swastika's gevonden van minstens veertienduizend jaar oud. Het Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Keulen telt verschillende Romeinse swastika-mozaïeken (derde foto). En op het Griekse eiland Kreta kwam de swastika al rond 3.500 voor Christus voor.

Sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog kampt de swastika in het Westen echter met een gigantisch imagoprobleem. De swastika draagt sinds het nazi-tijdperk een duistere connotatie van haat, racisme en dood. Moet het symbool daarom in de hele EU worden verboden?

,,Je kunt dan net zo goed het kruis verbieden omdat de Ku-Klux-Klan het ook gebruikte'', zegt Parul Goel, een Indiase uit Antwerpen. ,,De swastika is een vredessymbool dat misbruikt wordt. Het hakenkruis nu verbieden biedt geen oplossing. We moeten eerder van die negatieve connotatie af en iedereen aan de oorspronkelijke betekenis van de swastika herinneren.''

In het Oosten wordt vooral het spiegelbeeld van de Duitse swastika gebruikt, maar het kruis wordt in beide richtingen afgebeeld. In India verwijzen de twee verschillende swastika's naar de zonsopgang en -ondergang. De swastika die de wijzers van de klok volgt, symboliseert vooruitgang.

Het dagelijkse leven in India is doordrongen van de swastika, zegt Parul Goel: ,,Als je een nieuwe auto koopt of in een nieuw huis trekt, wordt de swastika als geluksbrenger ergens op getekend. En een bedrijfsleider tekent met nieuwjaar een swastika op de eerste pagina van het jaarboek.''

Onlangs hielden Parul en haar Belgische man in India een hindoe-geboorteceremonie voor hun dochtertje. ,,Daarbij werd haar hoofdje kaalgeschoren, als een soort zuiveringritueel. Toen ik mijn grootvader vroeg wat hindoes nog meer doen, zei hij dat we met rood poeder een swastika op haar kaalgeschoren hoofdje moesten tekenen. Maar zo lang konden wij ons dochtertje niet rustig houden. Het had anders wel een geweldige foto opgeleverd.'' (lacht)

Van onze redactrice Ine Roox

back from meeting family and travelling in India

Mortsel-Istanbul transit

We had a nice pre-Xmas dinner in Belgium and on the 23d we left for India via Istanbul.

We spent 3 weeks in India, the first week at Parul's cousin's wedding in Pune (close to Bombay). Mira was an attraction for the whole family.

Kedar and Urmila's wedding (India trip 0607

In between the various functions at the wedding I (Jeroen) had the chance to visit a Tata power dam with my kaaka (uncle). Tata runs a few social projects for the local villagers, I was very impressed. Did you know that Tata Steel, for example, began the eight-hour work day for employees in 1912, long before the US or Europe, and a year after Britain accepted the 12-hour day. Read the article about Tata, integral part of Indian life.

Tata Power visit PUNE

Happy 2007

 

New photo album

Mira december

A selection of pictures of Mira turning 6 months old, learning to eat solids and wearing sunglasses.

Thu 14/12/06 - On Wednesday evening the Francophone public broadcaster RTBF interrupted its normal programmes with the news that Flanders had declared independence.

(see also this article ). While some people are amused, most were shocked, however Belgium is still one country.

Meanwhile Mira has gone through a series of difficult nights because her first tooth has finally declared independence. She's been playing with it with her tongue all day long!
She's also started 3 'meals' a day- kiwi, banana, apple, potato, carrot, zucchini... We try and give her bite sized pieces, instead of mashing it all, and she can drink water from a cup (slightly assisted of course).

diamonds kill in Antwerp

At a dawn raid on Thursday, December 7, the Antwerp police raided the house of Indian diamantaire Nikhil Manilal, who at the time was at home together with his wife Sujata and his father. When confronted with the police detectives he was struck by a heart attack and collapsed. Only when it was apparent that the 46-year old diamantaire had passed away, some ten to 15 minutes later, an ambulance was called.

The version of this news is quite different from the one on the Belgian news, stating that an ambulance was called within one minute of the attack.

The Indian diamond community is outraged and already spoke to the prime minister about the incident.

Sint

De Sint is langsgeweest en omdat Mira een half jaar braaf is geweest kreeg ze een lekker houten speelgoedje. Het is nu 11 uur vrijdagavond en ze ligt onvermoeibaar naast mij te spartelen, soms os ze echt niet in slaap te krijgen. Maar het goede nieuws is dat ze vandaag voor het eerst echt gegeten heeft met een lepeltje, ik bedoel dus dat wij haar het lepeltje in de mond staken en zij de appel ook echt opat. Het concept eten dringt tot haar door, want daarvoor was het enkel sabbelen op een lepel of kauwen op wat eten en niet de twee samen.

The meatrix

Really funny movie about a disastrous truth:

http://www.meatrix.com

12 November 2006, wedding anniversary brunch

Time flies and so much has happened in these two years. We had some friends over for a brunch last Sunday to celebrate this. Here you can see Dorien and Lisa trying to feed Mira a giraffe and an apple at our brunch :) Sarah took a few nice pictures too.

Wapenstilstand/ Armistice Day

Mira got her first shots yesterday- a Polio and Tetanus cocktail. She took it quite well, much better than the anxious mum :-)

We picked up our new (second hand) car today. Finally...

Album with some pictures of our 5 month old daughter

Mira oktober Click to see the album

After a few weeks without a phone nor internet (thanks to the liberlalised phone market in the EU) we are back online. Our daughter turned 5 months and started to roll over on both sides and can almost sit up straight. Going to the creche three days a week is a joy, apart from the colds she keeps getting there. Right now she is sitting next to me in a bumbo baby chair making lots of lionlike noises, roaring and squeeling. She is 6.8 kilos!

Amy came to visit from Australia, just like she did last year in September, when we had just found out Mira was on her way. This time she was here for a shoe fair in Paris and a holiday in Croatia. You can see her pictures here

4 maanden Mira en papa's verjaardag

Yes I am 6,2 kilos and proud of it



Verjaardag van Jeroen, Christophe aan de BBQ.

Covering the world

People often comment on how much I have travelled, or how I must be used to being in foreign countries and not having a fixed home.
but I've only covered 12% of the world :-)
So much more to see...
Parul



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

My map looks quiet different and yet there is a lot of overlap : )
Jeroen



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide