1 year "Trainees Consilium 2006", 1 year of blogging!

Dear consilium trainee,
Our blog has an anniversary: 1 year! Can you imagine :)))
In order to celebrate it, we just moved to the New Blogger version. Yes, my dear trainee, if you want to continue to post, go to the old Blogger http://www.blogger.com/migrate-login.g and complete two simple steps:
1. Sign in with your old username and password, then accept the Terms of Service

2. Sign in with your Google username and password. If you don’t have a Google account, you can create one or ask JM, Filipe, Ricardo, Martin or Atanaska for an invitation. Your name will appear in the "Contributor" sidebar module on the blog. That’s all. And now, enjoy the match Real Madrid vs Bayern Munchen!

Paris in Vienna

For those who really want to know what happened with Paris in Vienna:

Hotel heirhead Paris Hilton had trash and lipstick tubes thrown at her during a publicity stop at a mall in Vienna. Paris left the stage in tears but later said the incident was "no big deal." Though a throng of screaming fans greeted her when she first appeared on stage, the event soon soured when other shoppers started throwing cigarette cases, tissues, and other objects at the girl.
Paris shouted, "Hello everybody, it's so good to see you. Happy late Valentine's Day!", and was quickly whisked away by security guards.
The Simple Life star was in Vienna to attend the prestigious annual Opera Ball with married geezer billionaire Richard Lugner. Predictably, Paris, who claims to love classical music, was reported to be very bored at the ball.
As for the garbage tossing incident, her host Lugner, who compared her to Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, simply told the press that it was sometimes a little rough being a celebrity.
After attending the Opera Ball, Paris and her parents are headed to the Tyrolean ski resort of Ischgl for her 26th birthday bash.

Happy Birthday Xiana!

"The Vienna Opera Ball" - "Alles Walzer"

The Vienna Opera Ball (Wiener Opernball in German) is an annual Austrian society event which takes place in the building of the Vienna State Opera on the Thursday preceding Ash Wednesday (tomorrow). Together with the New Year Concert, the Opera Ball is one of the highlights of the Viennese carnival season. The dress code is evening dress: white tie and tails for men; floor-length ballgowns for women.
Each year, almost overnight, the auditorium of the Vienna State Opera is turned into a large ballroom. On the eve of the event, the rows of seats are removed from the stalls, and a new floor, level with the stage, is built.
Austrian businessman Richard Lugner has attracted famous people as his guests to the ball. Among them have been for example Sophia Loren. In a joint venture, ORF and BR broadcast live from the ball for several hours each year.
The Opera Ball was first held in 1936, but was suspended during World War II. It was revived after the war; it has been held annually ever since, with the exception of 1991, when it was cancelled due to the Persian Golf War. Since 2001 Elisabeth Gürtler has been the chairlady (supervising organizer) of the Vienna Opera Ball.
In recent years, the Opernballdemo, a left-wing demonstration along the Ringstraße against the kind of capitalism represented by, as the protesters see it, many of the well-to-do guests at the Opera Ball, has regularly taken place on the same night. There have been occasional outbreaks of violence.
In 1995 Austrian writer Josef Haslinger published a novel entitled Opernball in which thousands of people are killed in a Neo-Naz terrorist attack taking place during that society event. The novel was the basis of a 1998 made- for-TV movie by Urs Egger with the same title.
The only ball officially associated with the Vienna Opera Ball is the Dubai Opera Ball. A similar, however not affiliated with the Vienna State Opera, ball takes place in New York City.

Debutantes at the Vienna Opera Ball

A lot of greetings from Vienna

Chris

One Year!

Coming soon... 1 year consilium trainee

Bianca!!!

happy birthday ale

Breaking news : EU (birth) day

Breaking News
World’s famous lawyer José-Miguel Bello Villarino (aka Miguelito, a former consilium RLS real legal service lawyer) left NY and moved to the woods!
“¡ ¡ ¡Joder, macho, joder! ! !”, said the mayor of New York City. “His decision represents a huge financial cost for us, because we organized a big party… and he ran away!”

I'm tired of being famous, Miguelito said at the airport. Because of my celebrity status, I have to make many personal compromises (…actually, I’ve already done that before - see the fraud case!). I’m gonna spend that day far away from here. Yeah, far away from here, I’ll leave this all behind… I want to run… and spend that day with my family and friends.
Happy birthday Miguelito!
¡We miss you!

Surfin' Playa del Hombre

Hi,
who knew that Martin was a surfer?
check it out!

SOFIA - New EU Capital

If you had had the chance to be on top of Vitosha Mountain on New Year's Eve, you would have seen the true beauty of the fresh EU membership...

Happy New Year 2007

Happy New Year my dear consilium trainee! May the 2007 bring only happiness, love, joy and prosperity to you and to your family.

As you probably know, Germany takes over the EU presidency from Finland on 1 January 2007. One of the German presidency’s top priorities is to revive the Constitution.
"We need to think about how we make the constitution a success. I want the constitution, the German government wants the constitution" , Ms Merkel said!

For more information, please find the work programme of the forthcoming German EU Presidency.

From: Wisher – José-Miguel BV

To: Wishees

GREETINGS OF THE SEASON

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive,gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/seculartraditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious/secular traditions at all.

As well, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onsetof the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respectfor the calendars of choice of other cultures and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

DISCLAIMER [As a good lawyer I couldn't forget this]

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting the following terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and it is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting,whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas guys(only for who will go to
bed early tomorrow night)! For the others, as
I'm the new trainee of Santa Claus, see you soon!
If after all this time someone forgot me, this
other picture will help him to remember who I
am quickly.

EU Council 14-15/12/2006

Presidency conclusions (en) (fr)
For more information, click here


consilium

Chris has moved on...

L.S.,

I'm sorry, but it looks like Chris has moved on: http://vps-bmaa2007.blogspot.com. (Only in German, I'm afraid.)

ditka & giuseppe

We miss you...

Stagiaires National Parties!? Do you still remember!?

They just re-started…and what a start!…with a Portuguese / Spanish party! The idea of celebrating a National Party bringing together Portugal and Spain is that in 1986 both countries entered into the European Common Market. Therefore, 2006 highlights the 20th Anniversary of that important event.


Of course…Mr. Filipe Ortigão-Neves and Mr. Ricardo Agostinho… were present as special envoys of the Trainee’s consilium EU 2006, with the great responsibility of evaluations, taking notes and report to you ;)

The final evaluation is…the party was really nice…we had a lot of fun…but we miss you…

Flashback: Ze trip

Hey!

Hey!

No Santa Claus until Wednesday!

POST 200

Dear Consilium trainee, this is the post n°200 of the blog.
To commemorate this "anniversary", we decided to make some personal remarks about the courageous consilium artists

86 posts Atanaska : denigration, plagiarism, copyright infringement, music piracy… How come she’s not in prison yet??? (…because she’s waiting for the season 2 of prison break!)
29 posts Martinned Hollanderman : Mr copy/paste
16 posts Angelina : very successful start, but now she’s lost forever, doesn’t read the blog! why?
11 posts Anna : our new favourite, original posts, new ideas...
10 posts JM (El Creator) : la fuite de cerveaux vers les Etats Unis nuit au blog, au bloggeurs et aux bloggeuses !
10 posts Olivier : mais que fais tu mon petit Oli? Après un début ô combien prometteur (food safety ou la viande de stagiaire), on attend toujours de tes nouvelles, surtout la partie II de l’épisode missing !
6 posts Zenaida : Zenadia Zenadia jeje ;) funniest posts of the year!
6 posts Franzi : O Solana! Future Foreign minister of Yurop!
5 posts Ricardo: young artist that we admire, excellent choice of layout and content!
5 posts Jojo : Jojo gave us our first photoshop lesson. thank you!
3 posts Chris : enormous potential! excellent choice of layout and content as well! now he can even photoshop pictures with someone who’s putting a laminate ;) and tries to make us believe that he can do it by himself.
3 posts Ale : great sense of humour, do you remember the vodka post? :D
3 posts Filipe : Doesn’t keep his election promises ! Remember his first post? March 1, 2006: I am now finally on the blog. Yes, there is little chance to avoid me=)))… there is a chance on the blog! Nice posts, but… can do better!
3 posts Julian: tu te caches mon petit goujat? faut que tu bloggues plus !
2 posts Melinda - ditka barabitka! (eh oui, elle est à la base de tous les posts de citka, because she is citka’s alter ego). Elle a fait une entrée fracassante dans le top 17 avec le poste « Rocco »
1 post Alex: il va y avoir du sport!
1 post Bianca !!! Where are you??? I still remember your post, the picture was very important for the collective memory.

Thank you all!

...and thanks for the comments ;) one can be an artist in a comment, like Francesco, Fiammetta, Pelagia and Carla for example.

Janina's email of November 20

Dear all!

It felt really good to hear from you guys! And
whenever I read a mail of you, I remember how much I
miss the good old Brussels times!

I've just come back from a trip to the US, where I
visited my former Brussels-flatmate in Washington,
Miguel (thanks again!!) in New York and my sister in
Miami. It was a really great trip and I am super
relaxed now - and even a bit tanned:)

During my trip, I found out that I finally got the
PhD-scholarship I had waited for for such a long time.
So my lazy days are over and I'll concentrate on my
dissertation now.
Right now, I live in Hamburg (I just got a new
appartment there), but I will probably move around a
lot - so maybe we get the chance to see eachother!
I might work part-time in Brussels for a German MEP
focussing on ESDP (starting in January), but it is not
yet clear. And I also don't know, if I am ready to
leave Hamburg already - now, where I've just settled.
Most of my friends from University are still here, and
I started playing Handball again on a competative
basis, which is really great - although I certainly
miss plying soccer with you!!! (for Martin: football:)
So I feel pretty happy here right now.

As the summer indeed seems ages ago, I am super happy
to hear from you frequently.
And I hope, we can organize a little reunion some time
soon!

Liebe Grüße aus Hamburg
Eure

Janina

Rome...the eternal city!!!

What about some days in the company of friends, with a great weather, and a wonderful city to visit? I think that is a very nice idea…that’s why I spent some days in Rome...

...where I enjoyed the company of Francesco and Carla.

I had a great time there with them… Special thanks to Carla for the company…for the good suggestions…for the great dinners…for the bars…and for the guided trips…specially our Rome by night…was great!!! Hope to come back soon!

Martin's email of November 16

L.S.,

@Michael: Master's Thesis? Weren't you already doing that when we were in BXL? It seems a lot like my story. I haven't turned in my final version either, and I've been "working" on it since September last year.
@Zeni: How did I get stuck with the reputation as the universal spell check? I'll try to live up to it and write this email flawless. (I already wrote September without the capital letter just now, but I noticed that in time.) Anyway, I'm glad you're now making the big bucks...
@Franzi: Say hi to Violaine for me. As far as I know, she's in Chambéry, the next prefecture to yours. And don't feel too bad, I've been to Annecy and it's a very beautiful place. You could be stuck in Brest, remember...
@Filipe: Feel free to punch Luca whenever you feel the urge. He did that mugger thing to me once, too, at 1 in the morning, at a not particularly well lit piece of street. (Near Arts/Loi, I think.) He almost gave me a heart attack... Anyway, I'm glad to see you've decided to offer some humanitarian aid to your country's upcoming presidency. Do they have a new deputy reper yet? As far as I remember, the guy that was there when I was in BXL was only a temp, and usually these guys get parachuted in at least a year or so before the presidency. Oh, and would you be working with Joana's husband by any chance. I think he's in CFSP, and with your background I'd expect you to run into each other.

As for me, I'm still reading everything with letters. It's really cool to be reading the originals of all these great thinkers, without having to care about the fact that I'm technically supposed to be an economist. So I'm not only reading the great economists like Schumpeter, Robbins and Knight, but also stuff like Weber, Rawls, Dworkin, etc. I still can't believe they're actually paying me for this. Unfortunately, it also means that at some point I'll have to figure out what exactly I will be contributing to the existing knowledge of mankind. The goal is to have a detailed research proposal by March next year. (I already had a basic proposal, which was written before I was even hired in order to obtain the research grant from the government, but that needs to be rewritten, extended, etc, in order to make it something that is really interesting, worth while and possible.)

Apart from my work, my social life is eminently boring, just the way I like it. Upcoming weekend I'll have some festivities, but it'll be the first time in ages. (And no, it's not even my birthday party.) Oh, and by the way, I notice that Skee-Lo song struck a nerve with our esteemed goddess of blog. Thank you, sweetie...

Martin

P.S. I just took the liberty of sticking the emails of yesterday and today on the blog, just for the people who didn't get them. Given that they were sent to a large number of people, I figured they were essentially meant to be public. Obviously, if the author objects, any post can be deleted at the press of a button...