Gas cloud on the internet

Some panic in the beginning of the seaport of Ghent this afternoon: an installation in a factory for artificial furtilisers caught fire with a gas cloud as result. Ghent is not a big city, so my appartment is no more than 5 kms from the burning factury at the Dampoort . Not a pleasant thought if there is really a toxic gas cloud.

I just read it in the Standaard newspaper when Jan told me about it as well. The gascloud was blown by the wind out of the direction of my appartment and soon afterwards it turned out to be non toxic, just slightly irritating a bit if you were on the spot itself. So it really was nothing and hardly in the news in the evening anymore.

The incident just made me realise once more how small the world had become due to the Internet. Mind you...Jan was telling me to watch out when going home, while he was working in the Emirates!

Then I get a flashback of '96, when I made my first steps in the Internet and e-mail world. I just came back from my exchange in Canada and I was e-mail a lot with my different host families. Mark (4th family) was in Vern's home room at school (2nd family). I remember that at one point Vern asked me if I knew where Mark was, because he'd been absent in school for a couple of days already and I could answer him that Mark was home with the flu. :p . I still think that was funny.

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