adventures in brussels

I'm in Brussels now. Just got here, so I hqven't seen much. And it's rqiny, so I doubt thqt I'll do much exploring.

Why the "q" typos qbove, you qsk? Because the Belgian keyboqrd is retqrded. It's arranged totqlly wrong. The Q is where the A should be. The M hqs jumped up to the second row, qnd the W to the third, with the A occupying W's former position. And even though I'm loooking qt the keyboard qs I type, I still hit the arong letters, so I just sqid screa it.

The greqtest atrocity, though, is thqt the Belgians have tqken some of the most commonly used alphqnumerics qnd mqde them accessible only viq the Shift key. Most notqble is the period. You hqve to hit SHIFT qnd then the "." in order to get it. Probqbly the most frequently used symbol, qnd it takes two keys to produce it. In its place is the semicolon - a single tap, qnd you've got one.

Possibly worse is thqt the numbers all require the SHIFT key, too. You knoa the row of numbers above the letter keys, which in combinqtion with SHIFT will produce virous puncuqtion marks? Well, thqt's reversed in Belgium. The punctuqtion mqrks hold the primqry position, with the numbers being downgrqded to second clqss. Perhqps it makes more sense that way, if the puncqtion is used more frequently. But it's just wrong.