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VOLUME 101 ISSUE 2
Belgian Blogger and Tech Wiz in Texas
L
New immigrants “My advice to all newcomers to the US: try to immerse yourself in your new country and your new culture. Behave like you wanted the immigrants in Belgium to behave when you were still living in Belgium. Be grateful that your new country has accepted you as an immigrant. Don’t be too judgmental. When you were still living in Belgium, did you like it when immigrants boasted about how superior their native culture was? Did you like it when they continuously criticized the culture, the traditions and the customs of their new country? You didn’t like that, did you? Well, now you are an immigrant yourself. You didn’t choose your country of birth, but you did choose your new country.” PHOTO COURTESY OF LUC VAN BRAEKEL
uc Van Braekel (56) to the sea. But once your immideploying social media for their marketmoved to the US in gration plans become real and ing purposes. The company is still in its 2012 but he has alyou start looking at the financial early stages. At this time we are selling ways been a fan of the aspects, like real estate and taxPDF-based tutorials for LinkedIn, Twitter American way of life. It took es, you get a different picture. I and Facebook through our web shop.” him ten entries in the Diverhad visited Austin annually since sity Visa Lottery before he 2009 for the SXSW conference, LVB.net – Luc’s Blog could finally start building and I liked it a lot. I like Texas for “I’ve always liked to participate in onhis American Dream. One its economic dynamism, its spirit line discussions and express my opinLeentje could say he moved from of self-reliance and freedom. The ions online. So when blogging became de Leeuw one Texas (Waregem/South cost of living is reasonable. Ausa trend in 2003, I started my own blog, Correspondent tin is not a huge city like Dallas West Flanders where Luc LVB.net, with a focus on politics, media spent a big part of his life is or Houston but comparable in and technology. A bit to my surprise, the often called the Texas of Flanders) to size to Brussels, which means that it’s still traditional media discovered it, and from the other (Austin, TX). possible to keep an overview of what’s time to time they published quotes from Van Braekel: “Before moving here, I happening. And while most of Texas is it. They even called it a form of ‘journalhad travelled some twenty times to the flat, Austin is at the edge of the US for both business and pleasure. EvTexas Hill Country. I live in the ery time I returned from those travels, I hills northwest of Austin, the felt a little less Belgian and a little more landscape is beautiful, and it American. I have very outspoken ideas feels a bit like Tuscany. And of on political, economic and social issues, course, the typical friendliness and I didn’t like the direction in which of the people in the South is a Western Europe was and is evolving. The big plus. The only disadvantages ‘nanny state’ has become all-pervasive, of Austin are the hot summers, and it’s not only presented as the only and the fact that it’s far from the choice by the politicians and the media, sea.” but taken for granted by a large part of the population. Entrepreneurship is Career tolerated at best, or seen as something “I graduated as a civil engineer that is the result of ‘stimulation’ by the in computer science at Leuven government. What I like most about the University in 1982. I worked US and its people is the optimism, canat the university a few years, do spirit, the sense of self-reliance, new then became an IT consultant technologies, low gas prices and conat PriceWaterhouseCoopers sumerism. And I’m sure that some read(called Coopers & Lybrand at ers in Belgian will be shocked when I say that time). In the nineties, I beAfter annual travels to Austin for conferences, that I even like Fox News and conservacame a self-employed consul- Luc van Braekel now calls the Texas city his home. tive talk radio….” tant. With the rise of the internet, I became a founder and co-founder ism’, something I wasn’t aware of when I Diversity Visa Lottery of a few internet companies between started my blog. The last three years, my “Somewhere around the turn of the cen1995 and 1999. As most of these were blogging has become a lot less frequent: tury, I made the decision that I wanted subsequently acquired by larger compaI’m now using Facebook, and, to a lessto move to the US. But: my criteria were nies, around 2000 I began working as a er degree, Twitter, for venting my ideas high: I wanted a visa for permanent resiself-employed consultant and software and opinions. My blogging also received dence right away and I wanted to condeveloper again. My work was such that I some attention in the US. For example, tinue to work on a self-employed basis. could do most of my work from wherever when Condoleezza Rice visited Belgium That meant that the most obvious visa I wanted, for customers from all over the and her diplomatic security agents were choices, like H-1B or E-2, were out of world. So, in the US, I mainly do the same rebuffed by Belgian protocol, I wrote an the question. So the annual Diversity work as I did in Belgium: IT consulting article about it, titled “Rice with Belgian Visa Lottery was one of the few options and software development, for customers Fries, Please!” http://lvb.net/item/845 left. I started participating in that lottery in Belgium and in the US. The software I that was picked up by some American in 2002, and I won in 2011. I moved in develop is mainly focused towards the reblogs and was read by tens of thousands October of 2012.” porting and monitoring of large-scale GPS of people. And when Flemish singer Raytracking data. That software is used for mond van het Groenewoud made a song Austin, TX fleet management by companies, but also “Weg met Amerika” (Away with America), “Even though I had known for a long time for some niche applications like the trackI wrote a critical piece that was picked up that I wanted to move to the US, I didn’t ing of movements of migrating birds, for again by US media, and I was interviewed choose the exact place until the very last scientific purposes. Apart from that, I’ve live for a full hour by talk show host Denmoment. Ten years ago, I would have choalso founded a startup company, Notorio, nis Prager in his nationwide radio prosen San Diego: an ideal climate, and close that is offering assistance to companies in gram.”
Back to Belgium?
“My only annoyance with the US is specific to my situation: I still have personal and business bank accounts in Belgium, and I’m still a majority shareholder and director of some Belgian companies, which results in a lot of paperwork to be filed to the IRS. I plan to phase out those Belgian interests, but it takes time. While taxation in the US is certainly at more reasonable levels than in Belgium, the paperwork and bureaucracy is at an equal level. But I knew that already before I moved.” “But this doesn’t mean that I miss Belgium. With the internet, Skype and FaceTime, it’s easy to keep in touch with friends and family, and stay informed about what’s happening in Belgium. I’m still visiting Belgium three times a year, each visit lasting two to three weeks. When I’m there, I try to eat mussels and grey shrimp. And I visit the Belgian coast, where the beaches are cleaner than anywhere else in the world, and there’s a special atmosphere that’s hard to describe.” “However: I don’t intend to move back to Belgium. I have been here a little over two years now, and so far: not a single moment of regretting this major change in my life. Of course, from a cultural point of view I remain a person with European, Belgian and Flemish roots. But one thing I’ve learned is that you can only truly appreciate your roots and the culture where you come from by stepping outside of it and watching it from a distance.” – Leentje de Leeuw from-chicago-with-words.blogspot.com