Jeroen V

What country is Brussels in? You’re wrong - the answer is Belgium. That’s the place where I grew up and became the wunderkind I am today.  Or sort of. I’ve spent a lot of time kicking it in the USA.  I hope America has influenced me in some of the right ways and not all the wrong ways. Still don’t wear baggy jeans. Still don’t listen to country western. Don’t go knocking on people’s doors telling them that Jesus loves them.  But I do smoke Marlboro 27’s, go rock climbing every weekend (no rocks in Belgium), and eat mad hamburgers. I also sequence DNA in a laboratory at MIT.

 Anyway, it’s a pleasure appearing here in the inaugural edition of !nstant. Not a big fan of my profile pic, but as long as my GF doesn’t find out about it I should be ok. And in closing I will say: America, stop wearing baggy jeans. Stop wearing cargo pants. Stop wearing pants with inseams two inches too long. We don’t do that in Belgium, but more importantly, you won’t do justice to an !nstant t-shirt. 

Nancy H

Born in Guangzhou, China into a family of high ranking government officials and grocers, I have divided my time between the halls of power and aisles of ramen noodles. For you Americans unfamiliar with your great neighbor to the west, Guangzhou is the 17th largest city in the world, with 12.78 million inhabitants and .3 cars per person. Anyway, as a student I did Mao proud by earning the prestigious “Three Good Student” award. As my parents don’t read English, I can reveal that I had my first date while at No. 7 Middle School, which nearly led to a “Three Minus One Good Student” award. My next move was to get accepted to the GuangDong Experimental High School, which is sort of like Philips Exeter Academy, but with machine gun training instead of polo practice. I chose ‘Politics’ as my elective course there, and while they taught me that Mao was essentially God Incarnate, there was more truth to it than ‘Politics’ as practiced in America. While at Guangzhou University, I played in a heavy metal band called Smithereens. It was named after my keyboard skills.
 

So what brought me to the US? A marketing degree at Emerson College in Boston. I recently read that Boston is the No. 1 worst-dressed city in this country, and even with my marketing degree and a billion dollar ad campaign I could not change that. Only a flood of Biblical proportions would work. (Or if !nstant deposed Mayor Menino…) In conclusion, America has been good to me and it gives me a lot of dreams. I wouldn’t mind being a reporter at Phoenix TV back in Guangzhou, or a marketer in the film industry. It would be nice to...read more