Christmas Holidays

We hope this blog post finds you all in good spirits and good health this Christmas-time. The four of us have much enjoyed being together at our Brussels home over the Christmas holidays, and have made good use of the opportunity to enjoy the activities that our European capital offers in winter.


Still, we have had time for reflection... especially at this time of year, we find ourselves bombarded with images and sounds that remind us of the people we love and miss back in Canada. Rest assured that we are thinking about each of you, and when the time zones align, we try to call. We've made frequent use of video conferencing, internet telephone, and email to speak with you, and that goes a long way to make us feel connected. Maggie has posted her thoughts about some of the positives and negatives of "keeping" Christmas here; if you haven't already, have a look.

But don't fear, we haven't been moping; in between the phone calls we've also taken the opportunity to reconnect in person with our Brussels friends. We had a huge curry feast with Jonathan and Kristin and the girls last night, with sag paneer (cheese and spinach) lamb rogan josh, tandoori turkey, chicken mandalay (an old Morrisburg Curling Club favorite), channa masala (spiced chickpeas) and a good supply of lime pickle, mango chutney, pappadums and Fuller's London Pride, courtesy of J and K and their recent UK holiday. I think I gained more weight in that meal than I did with the lobster and turkey dinners combined!


On Sunday past we went over to Kiana and Brian's in the afternoon for some eggnog and nibblies. While the adults socialized, the kids were captivated (and sometimes a little freaked out) by Rankin and Bass's 1964 stop-motion classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. What the Yeti, Burl Ives as a talking snowman, and an elf who wants to be a dentist have to do with Christmas I don't quite get, but I suppose we are all slaves to tradition in one way or another! Here are the boys at a particularly suspenseful moment...


This evening we have been invited back to Kiana and Bryan's for a New Year's Eve celebration with the kids, which I think we'll celebrate according to Moscow time (or two hours earlier than here in Brussels). That way we can wind things up around 10:00, and still have everybody home in time to get a good night's sleep. Isn't time travel wonderful?

We need our rest because tomorrow morning we're getting on the 8:52 train from Watermael station to Glons, to have a big choucroute with Nathalie and Tschi-tschi and the rest of the Cloes clan. The train ride is almost 2 1/2 hours, but the cost is minimal; 15 Euros return for Maggie and I, and free for the kids; that's about 6% of the cost of a two-day car rental, and we want to save our pennies for other things. I've received my final lump-sum pay-out from Bell Canada and so am officially unemployed - Happy New Year! - but that's going on our mortgage, and we already did some shopping this past week, heading to IKEA to finally get ourselves a new bed frame. Until now, we've been sleeping on mattress on the floor, and so everybody is excited at the newest acquisition. It's a queen-sized one so there's more room, a necessity since it's not uncommon on a weekend morning to awaken to find a couple of extra bodies snuggled in next to you.

We're coming back on the 2nd, to tidy the house up and get ready for back-to-school. The big sales only happen twice a year in Belgium, January and July, so we're going to do some clothes shopping for everyone before we to our routine on Monday the 5th of January. Maggie also has to continue her work on report cards; she's been extremely disciplined and has been working perhaps four hours each day completing them and preparing for next term. In fact, she's gone to Waterloo this morning to prepare for this coming Monday.


We've had some fun outings as a family. On boxing day we got bundled up and went ice skating at the place Saint-Catherine; Maggie and Malcolm haven't forgotten learning to skate on Lake Skootamatta, and we had a great time en plein air underneath the anachronistic juxtaposition of an ultra-modern ferris wheel and the ancient buildings that surround the Christmas market. I was pleased to discover that I can still do back cross-cuts in both directions (thank you, power-skating) but almost fell on my tuchas several times, as the rental skates all have picks. Weird.


Glühwein, Coca-Cola and orange Fanta were enjoyed along with a fantastic hot and savory tartiflette, before we headed back to the bourse (stock exchange) to catch the bus home.


That's all for today. I've got the champagne chilling for this evening, and some chicken soup from the bones of last night's chicken is simmering on the stove. Malcolm is upstairs reading The Golden Compass, Duncan is drawing pictures of superheroes while listening to Deep Purple's Greatest Hits (Space Truckin' is his current fave) and I'm finishing my second cup of coffee and making a shopping list for this afternoon.

Wishing you a very prosperous, peaceful and Happy New Year,

Matthew, Maggie, Malcolm and Duncan

I'll have a blue.... Christmas... without you...

We're getting ready for a quiet Christmas celebration at home. It's not terribly Christmassy-feeling weather; it's beautiful today, sunny and +10 degrees, quite a contrast with what we understand is going on in Canada right now. Maggie is out having coffee with Kiana at the cafe down the street, enjoying the sunshine and the girl time, and the boys are watching star trek (original series) on DVD for the first time... in the absence of broadcast tv, I realize I am raising them like it's 1978, although quite frankly the concept of a computer in every room, flip "communicators" and other technological advancements aren't quite as fantastic to them now as they were to me then. Still, I have to choose carefully which ones I show, and I have been watching most of the episodes with the kids; this morning it was the episode called "Amok Time" where Spock has to go back to Vulcan to meet his betrothed, goes nutzoid because it's the mating season, fights and (he thinks) kills Kirk. Actually McCoy has simulated Kirk's death with a neural tranquilizer to end the combat and save both their lives, but Duncan didn't know that and he sobbed for five minutes until the happy ending. Here's a 2'46" recap for those of you who need a refresher. While I do enjoy the Young Rascals' rendition of "Good Lovin'" this version does leave out the greatest fight music of all time.

We've found a nice big turkey for the 25th, and have reserved lobsters for the 24th; we're probably going to barbeque them. Not alive, of course; there are limits! We had raclette last night for dinner, improvising with our teflon frying pan to melt the cheese. I'm looking around for a raclette machine like the fantastic one our friends Phil and Sue have, that holds half a wheel of cheese, and heats the top layer, but so far I've had no luck yet. Malcolm went crazy for raclette but surprisingly Duncan was unimpressed; usually he's all for salty/savoury foods.

This morning Duncan made us laugh, while playing with the playmobil; the pirate meets the police officer and says "Hello, how are you?" and they exchange a quick bizou on the cheek. Nothing strange about that, that's how everybody says hello, right?


Earlier yesterday, Jonathan and the girls came over for a short play-date for the kids and coffee for the adults. Malcolm taught Lara how to play chess, and beat her; then they played checkers and she beat him. He made hot chocolate with steamed milk using our espresso/capuccino maker for the girls; baristo and bartending skills might turn out to be handy when he's older, and we are glad that both boys are eager to help out in the kitchen.

Sunday evening I went to the home of Malcolm's friend Simonas to give another guitar lesson to Simonas and his father Simonas, and the rest of our families met up afterwards for some delicious lithuanian Christmas sweets, plus Kidibul (a carbonated nonalcoholic apple juice) for the children, and a fantastic polish vodka with buffalo grass called Zubrowka for the grownups. I'm not much on vodka but this was delicious, with a mellow, delicate, almost cinnamon flavour. I remember that Bruce had a bottle back in Toronto, and we tried it then, so I know you can get it in Canada too. I might have to pick up a bottle for winter evening sipping.

We are missing our loved ones back in Canada, but will have Skype up and running over the next several days, so we have already scheduled some video conferences with my family for the 25th (what was that I was saying about Star Trek technology?!). If you haven't tried video conferencing with us yet, and have a computer with a camera, you might consider setting it up and giving it a try. Download the software for free and search for our Skype ID (mzadow).

Alternatively we are around most of the time, and are usually up until 11:00 our time (17:00 / 5:00 pm EST) and reachable at 416-406-2800.

Merry Christmas to all!

Moving the mail...

We have had a busy week so far as mail is concerned... first, we've been very pleasantly surprised to receive so many wonderful Christmas cards and letters from friends and family. We've left the composition and posting of our own pretty late, so no doubt it will once again become a "New Year" letter instead of a Christmas one. It does seem a bit like we'd be threshing old straw by writing one, since we've written frequently in our blogs, but letters are still better to give and receive than email, I think. I tried to write regularly during my stay in Ireland, and managed to write and post almost twenty letters during the month I was there (most of those were to my grandmothers, and to Maggie and the kids, in case you were feeling miffed at not receiving one). If you haven't sat down and hand-written a letter in a while, you might consider it; it necessitates a whole different kind of contemplation, one that we don't spend enough time doing in our keyboard-krazy world of email.

Secondly, some Christmas presents arrived from my parents in Belleville, already wrapped (no peeking, drat) and ready to go under the tree. The boys are excited and are counting down the days on their playmobil advent calendars. (If you haven't seen these, they make a great gift for kids). Other presents from our immediate and the extended family are in process of getting wrapped, so we'll be well-supplied with cadeaux when the 25th arrives.

Lastly, a purchase that I made on ebay finally arrived. We were given an art nouveau candelabra a few years ago by Bruce, who found it in an auction in Victoria, but it is back in our house in Canada. It looks like this:


Maggie and I were talking, because we used this piece most evenings for dinner in Toronto, and missed it here, so rather than shipping it over I did some searching around for a similar design, and found this complementary one, which arrived in excellent condition, from an antique collector in Arizona, of all places:


So we are feeling very proper and fancy AND illuminated at the table now. What's even better is that last night, while Maggie was sitting at the table, I had the golden opportunity to stand in the kitchen, hand our new acquisition to Malcolm and say those famous words...




"Take this candelabra over to mother, Malcolm."

If you don't recognize those words, then you need to look here:



It's amazing. "Wideo Wabbit" incorporates classical music, Groucho Marx, on-camera smoking, same-sex kissing, mockery of domestic violence, at least one deliberate assault with a pastry, electrical shocks, high explosives, massacres by native americans, cross-dressing, speech impediments... 1953 really was the GOOD OLD DAYS, wasn't it?

"Wideo Wabbit" also deals with candelabras, and auditions, and both topics were part of my day yesterday. I already explained about the former; for the latter I went to the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, or the Brussels Opera house, and met up with an agent who was in town to see the evening performance of Rusalka. He had heard me in Ireland, and it was a lot of fun to sing for him. Unlike most auditions we actually had almost an hour together, which was a luxury, and I feel good about how I sang, and what we discussed. More on this later... in other musical news, there are a number of projects shaping up, but nothing finalized, so I don't want to say more for the moment.

Now it's off to drop my bio/cv/photo/cover letter in the mail, to yet another director... gotta run before I miss the last mail pickup!

p.s. As always, don't forget to pay a visit to Maggie's blog, and please feel free to comment on anything I've written here. M.