(My brother-in-law is Belgian, and my American sister was fluent in German before she married him, but she still had to learn Flemish).

We had a hefty influence of French post-1066 which changed our originally Germanic language dramatically(compare the Anglo-Saxon of King Alfred or Bede with Shakespeare, for example).

Regarding the vid, very funny indeed, and I’m glad to hear they compensated Mathieu afterwards, too. I’ve just been watching the next episode where they crack the ‘solve the maths puzzle’ code. Excellent stuff!

Yes they did – it was a recursive retroactive gift. A container office delivered to his address.

the bomb squad would have simply blown the container up

I guess thats why they’re called the Bomb Squad. What do firemen do BTW?

The group doing all these things is called “Neveneffecten”.
This translates to “Side-effects”.

They have an absurd, surrealistic sence of humor.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world its only in Dutch.

One of them is Jonas Geirnaert. Look at this link to understand who he is. http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Geirnaert (in dutch, but you can use google translate to get a readable text).
Jonas is related to “Morris” the author of the Lucky Luke strip.

Unfortunately, it could never be accomplished in the litigious and
paranoid USA, without severe repercussions:
1) it might be assumed to be a terrorist plot, with all the
complications thereof;
2) even if it were seen to be benign (say, if it were done in a
smaller city, and not NYC), the organization would be more likely
to call the police, and the pranksters would suffer the legal
consequences of criminal trespass;
3) the company could claim that its 2000 employees had
had their productivity reduced and perhaps would sue civilly for
the putative costs incurred by the stunt.

Only in the land of fantastic sparkly unicorns with swell-to-fit dildoes would the person on the phone have been the CEO.

And if it makes anyone feel any better, Mathieu was the unwitting actor in a drama that gave a very warm satisfaction to hundreds of thousands of us by enduring the same crotch-grinding tricks a telecom firm plays on us every time the company drops service or befucks our billing.

Finally, since Mathieu is just one of us, but ON-the-clock, he got paid for enduring what we all endure, OFF-the-clock, multiple times a month. He’s fine. And he got an extra shrimp.

I’d be ecstatic with an extra shrimp for every third time I had to listen to crap phone-muzak while waiting for Kumkrust to rectify my connection so that I can participate in the early morning video conference I needed to make my paltry ducats. I’m not a greedy pawn, just one who heartily enjoys a good joke played on the man every now and again.

I’m curious. Do you English speakers really need captions to understand Flemish or are you just being lazy? Your languages are almost identical, except in spelling, that is.

I am a native English speaker. I had a special listen to the video after I read your comment. I have to agree that it was possible to make our a word here and there. Parts of it sound like an English speaker putting on a really bad imitation of a German accent. If I knew in advance what they were up to I could probably understand a fair amount of what they were saying.
Its a bit like I generally know what my wife is talking about in Cantonese even though I don’t really understand the language. Context and the occasional English word fill in the gaps.

There are people who post a status on their social networking sites (encouraging others to re-post if they agree) “I am an American and I should not have to “press 1 for English”. This whips the common folk up into a patriotic frenzy. I want to reply “Dear god please don’t ever travel to Europe”.

Yes. Americans are VERY lazy concerning English. We have been horribly enabled.

Broxibear

Normally they probably would’ve taken legal action but because of public opinion, it wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do because it would’ve surely backfired.

live in Hong Kong and I cannot remember how many times I have had the same problem with Hong Kong’s biggest phone company : PCCW , I HATE those option menues that take at least 10 minutes until I can get through to a “warm body” who really handles my problem. ( But I must say that when I do get though to a warm body the problem is quickly solved )

I feel for poor Mathieu from Security Mobistar, though — he’s the guy who took the abuse, and (presumably) is not in a particularly strong position to fix his employer’s customer service. I hope the pranksters sent him the 50-euro gift thing.