If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid [Epictetus]

Valentines’ week: 

cheesy movies on TV and bakeries throwing free donuts at your head so you can surprise your love with a huge sugarbomb in the morning (who said the food-sex strategy was only for chimpanzees and bonobos?).

To get in a romantic mood I started the week with watching Nymphomaniac part 2. It becomes painfully clear that you can be as free as you want until love comes into play,…wonderful, thinking about all these beautiful dark twisted fantasies (yes, I do like Kanye West) that we as decent human beings do not dare talk about. So thank you Lars von Trier!

To snap out of it, I finished the week with 'Serendipity', explained as 'fortuitous happenstance' by etymologists. Interesting how Jonathan and Sara want to control their beautiful clear sane fantasy on meeting again years after they first met. 

How can you not love this day?

[Antwerp city, view from the MAS]

What's next?

Spending time travelling and working in projects around the world during the last couple of years I realise I have a backpack full of crazy stories and beautiful pictures which are often put in a corner when coming back. 

I don't want to bother everyone with my stories, nor organise evenings showing all my holiday and chimpanzee pictures. However, last week I had the opportunity to talk about my work as a researcher in primatology to a class of enthusiastic children. It was amazing seeing their eyes lighting up when I talked about all the endangered species in the forests of Cameroon, Uganda and DRC. They reminded me of myself, when my father took me to see Jane Goodall and how it completely changed my life. A girl asked me how a simple Belgian girl got the chance to work in such extraordinary circumstances...good question!

I guess anything is possible if only you want it enough...

[Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, sitting in a tree in the Budongo Forest, Uganda]