Julie, my sweet, dear friend doesn't have any sisters and once in a while I am the stand-in. I love it, especially since we share a favourite evening activity: lying in the sofa - snug as a bug in a rug - watching a rented movie and drinking cocoa or tea. Or talking about work, sports and our love for the country side.

But yesterday we went to the theater to watch The Constant Gardener. A political thriller about Big Business abusing the African continent to increase the profit margins of the pharmaceutical industry. Not that I had never heard of abuse before. Not that I had never heard about raids on refugee camps in Sudan. Not that I am deaf or unable to appreciate a good love story.
It's just that I cannot cope with explicit injustice on television - be it fact or fiction. A boy running from his temporary home to get shot during a raid. A family walking home all night, all 40km long, leaving behind the body of their daughter who died of tuberculosis in the nearest hospital. Or a little girl in Pakistan who is about to freeze to death. It used to suffice to turn off the tv. But now I can't get the images out of my head. It started 3 weeks ago in Liverpool: an image from Port-au-Prince in the evening news. There's not much that can make me cry, but television and its images sure can.

The cocoa won't taste any worse or better than it did before. I accept and am grateful for being born here and spoiled. I'm a rational person and know I won't carry the weight of the world. But in a naive attempt to inject some meaning into my daily activities however I will look for sponsoring for an ngo when I run in the 20km of Brussels.