Pro-Choice

Making the new Friends after work or in your vacation.

A time to be creative together with others. **Bring whatever creative project you would like to work on** \- your sketchbook\, bullet\-journal\, crochet/knitting or embroidery project\, your creative writing piece\, etc\. The theme is your own free choice\. 👉 Participation is free but **at least one drink or food consumption is expected. 👈** There are materials available in the café if you currently don't have your own project.

**\#\# Dance & Meet Experience – Afterwork pour danser et rencontrer 💃** ***Scroll down for EN*** **📅 Jeudi 25 Juin** **📍 café Flora** **🕖 18h – 22h** **Et si on changeait la façon de faire des rencontres à Bruxelles ?** **Bienvenue à** **Dance & Meet Experience**\*\*, un concept original qui mêle\*\* **danse, rencontres et bonne énergie** **dans une atmosphère conviviale et élégante.** **Inspiré de la nouvelle tendance des** **soirées dansantes en début de soirée**\*\*, cet événement vous permet de profiter pleinement de l’ambiance festive\*\* **sans devoir sortir toute la nuit**\*\*.\*\* **Après le travail, venez vous détendre, bouger, rencontrer de nouvelles personnes et partager un moment vibrant — tout en gardant votre soirée libre.** *** **\#\#\# ✨ Le concept** **Dance & Meet Experience** **n’est pas simplement une soirée.** **C’est une** **expérience sociale autour de la danse**\*\*, conçue pour favoriser des rencontres naturelles et authentiques.\*\* **La soirée combine :** **• une atmosphère chaleureuse et ouverte** **• de la musique entraînante pour faire bouger tout le monde** **• des rencontres spontanées** **• une énergie festive mais détendue** **Pas de pression, pas de formats artificiels :** **la musique et la danse créent naturellement les connexions.** *** **\#\#\# 💫 Ce qui vous attend** **• une ambiance internationale et conviviale** **• un dancefloor accessible à tous** **• des rencontres simples et naturelles** **• une énergie afterwork positive** **Que vous veniez** **seul(e) ou avec des amis**\*\*, l’atmosphère est faite pour que chacun se sente rapidement à l’aise.\*\* *** **\#\#\# 🕺 Pour qui ?** **Pour les personnes à Bruxelles qui ont envie de :** **• rencontrer de nouvelles personnes** **• danser et relâcher la pression de la journée** **• vivre une soirée élégante et différente** *** **👗** **Dress code :** **smart casual / chic décontracté** **📍 Lieu : café FLORA** **📅 Date : Jeudi 25 Juin** **⏰ Horaire : 18h – 21h** **🎟 Ticket gratuit + boisson Gratuite\***: OFFRE SPECIALE GRATUITE !!! La boisson GRATUITE sera pour les 150 PREMIERS PARTIPANTS!! \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\***S'enregister sur ce meetup + s'enregister sur ce lien :** [https://tr.ee/O9B-Bvk-3D](https://tr.ee/O9B-Bvk-3D) **✨** **Danser. Rencontrer. Ressentir l’expérience.** **\# 💃 Dance & Meet Experience – Afterwork Party & Social Vibes** **📅 Thursday 22 June** **📍 Café Flora – Brussels** **🕖 6pm – 10pm** **Looking for a different way to meet new people in Brussels?** **Welcome to** **Dance & Meet Experience**\*\*, a fresh social concept where\*\* **music, movement and connection** **meet in a relaxed and elegant atmosphere.** **Inspired by the new wave of** **early-night dance events**\*\*, this experience offers the joy of dancing and socializing\*\* **without the late-night exhaustion**\*\*. The idea is simple: come after work, move your body, meet inspiring people and enjoy a vibrant evening — all while still having your night ahead.\*\* **✨** **The concept** **Dance & Meet Experience is not just a party.** **It’s a** **social dance experience designed to spark authentic connections**\*\*.\*\* **The evening blends:** **• a friendly and stylish crowd** **• uplifting music to get everyone on the dancefloor** **• spontaneous encounters and conversations** **• a vibrant yet relaxed atmosphere** **No pressure, no complicated icebreakers —** **just music, energy and human connection**\*\*.\*\* **💫** **What to expect** **• A welcoming international crowd** **• Great music to dance and connect** **• A social atmosphere where meeting people feels natural** **• A vibrant afterwork energy** **Whether you come** **with friends or alone**\*\*, you will quickly feel part of the experience.\*\* **🕺** **Who is it for?** **Professionals, expats, creatives and curious minds in Brussels who want to:** **• meet new people** **• dance and release stress** **• enjoy a classy yet relaxed social evening** **💡** **Dress code:** **Smart casual / stylish** **📍** **Location: café lux** **– Brussels** **📅** **Date:** **Thursday 25 June** **⏰** **Time:** **6pm – 10pm** **🎟 free Ticket + Free drink \***: FREE SPECIAL OFFER !!! The first 150 registrants will receive a FREE St. Germain Spritz! HURRY UP8 \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\***Register on the meetup + register to this link :** [https://tr.ee/O9B-Bvk-3D](https://tr.ee/O9B-Bvk-3D) **Come for the music.** **Stay for the connections.** **✨** **Dance. Meet. Experience.**

Feel free to join us to play any games !

Socializing and Networking 🛜🆕 at PLUX on Thursday. Making new friends and drinking 🚰🎈🎉🚿🌊. Everybody Welocme, locals, expats or new 🆕 in town.

Join our next meetup on June 25th! We will have 3 talks and will share some food and drinks while networking **Location:** Infrabel, Rue des Deux Gares 82, 1070 Anderlecht, Belgium **Agenda:** 17:45 : Doors open 18:00 - 18:40 : Drinks and pizza 18:40 - 18:45 : Welcome 18:45 - 19:00 : Elastic @ Infrabel 19:00 - 19:15 : Real life never-seen-before railway project 19:15 - 19:55 : From unknown and raw to real value 19:55 - 20.20 : What’s new in Elastic v9 20:15 : Wrap up **Talks:** **Elastic @ Infrabel** In this presentation, we will explain how Infrabel uses Elastic today and how it supports our current needs. We will briefly outline some future optimizations and the integration of OpenTelemetry to further strengthen and extend our Elastic platform. To showcase how we use Elastic for addressing real business use case, we will demo a never-seen-before application build in collaboration with Elastic Belgium. *Safia Souabi – Big Data Engineer at Infrabel* *Olivier-Désiré Muhimpundu – Big Data Engineer at Infrabel* **Real life never-seen-before railway project** *How Elastic helps ensure the punctuality of rail services by detecting and correlating events in real time to anticipate disruptions, ensure operational continuity and optimise the flow of rail traffic."* *Vanessa Coeurnelle – Cyber Resilience Data Analyst at Infrabel* **From unknown and raw to real value** In this talk, Chris shares how he transformed a legacy log ingestion pipeline into a structured, scalable, and insight-ready ELK-based system. Starting from loosely indexed XML/SOAP logs with minimal configuration, the project required rebuilding the data model to handle multiple message types, complex nested structures, and inconsistent field representations. Without the luxury of a full upfront redesign, Chris adopted an iterative, data-driven approach: combining exploratory analysis with dynamic mapping strategies to progressively shape the data into a usable format. He will discuss how this led to the design of flexible ingestion pipelines, including XML parsing, normalization, and generic handling of heterogeneous payloads. The talk also covers practical techniques for managing sensitive data, reducing storage overhead, and improving query performance—such as selective data retention, hashing and fingerprinting strategies, and the use of data streams. Finally, Chris will touch on how structuring the data effectively enables higher-level capabilities like anomaly detection and automated alerting. This session is aimed at practitioners dealing with messy, real-world data and looking for pragmatic ways to make Elasticsearch pipelines more robust, maintainable, and valuable. **Bios** **Christoph Evers** is a Senior Data Scientist and Data Engineer based in Brussels, with over 15 years of experience in data systems, search technologies, and analytics. He has been working with Elasticsearch since its early days, contributing to the project between 2010 and 2012 and applying it extensively as a search engine, document store, and log ingestion platform. At OpenLex, he designs and builds advanced data solutions for legal research, including full-text search engines, NLP pipelines for entity detection and anonymization, and large-scale analytics systems. His work also includes operating and optimizing ELK-based observability stacks in Linux and Docker environments. Previously, Chris held roles spanning software engineering, data science, and R&D leadership across sectors such as social media analytics, mobility and market research. His experience combines hands-on engineering with business-oriented data applications, delivering scalable systems and actionable insights for both startups and multinational clients. He mainly focuses on search relevance, data observability, and the practical use of ELK in production environments. **Olivier-Désiré Muhimpundu** is a Data Engineer at Infrabel, where he has been working for more than three years on large-scale data platforms and data projects. He holds an engineering degree from University of Mons Faculty of Engineering and a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence. In his current role, Olivier focuses on designing, operating, and evolving enterprise data platforms based on technologies such as Apache Kafka, Elastic Stack, and Cloudera. His work spans data ingestion, real-time processing, monitoring, observability, and platform engineering in a large-scale railway environment. **Safia Souabi** is a Data Engineer with 6 years of experience at Infrabel in Brussels. With a BSc and MSc in Physics from London, she combines a strong analytical background with expertise in building and operating large-scale data platforms for mission-critical operational and asset data. Experienced with Apache Kafka, Elastic Stack, and the Cloudera ecosystem (Hadoop, Spark, Hive/Impala), she delivers scalable batch/real-time data pipelines and optimized ETL/ELT workflows. She works closely with stakeholders to translate requirements into reliable data products, with a strong focus on data quality, governance, security, performance, and platform resilience.

How do we connect to people? What is so great about being different? Is love selfless? Should we be dreamers or realists? What values are we losing? When are we at our best? Does childhood ever end? Is morality a matter of convenience? What makes a person beautiful? Such questions, and many more, await you Sunday at Sister's Cafe (second floor) . After introductions we will collect questions from the group participants, choose one by voting then discuss it for an hour. Then most of us stay for drinks and bizarre conversations :-).

Hey Folks, Sunday seems like it's not going to be super hot :)) We can do for a light hike (8-10km). Let's make the most of the sunshine, enjoy the fresh air, and spend some time in nature! You can bring your own food and drinks with you, and then we will enjoy it next to woodpeckers at La Cambre. Very much looking forward to seeing you guys! P.S. Be on time, we leave at 10:10 Cheers Yifei

Hello, readers ! In June we are reading She Who Remains, by Rene Karabash. We will meet at Maison de Quartier Malibran, Rue de la Digue 10, 1050 Ixelles. **Please keep your RSVP up to date** and happy reading!

*Due to the summery weather forecast lets meet in Parc Royal instead. Find us at one of the tables at Woodpecker. If you cannot find us call* me via 0032 485 38 09 23 ----------- Let's read and discuss non-fiction together. In **June** we will be discussing "The Pragmatist’s Guide to Life: A Guide to Creating Your Own Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions" by Simone and Malcolm Collins. For more information about the book check out goodreads: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38452905-the-pragmatist-s-guide-to-life](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38452905-the-pragmatist-s-guide-to-life) How it works: - 10-15min Introduction round - 1 - 1,5h Free discussion around the book - 10min selection of the next book. (We will vote between three possible books. I bring two suggestions and we select a third one from the group. So if there is a book you like to discuss feel free to put it forward.) Don't worry if you cannot finish it in time. Just join us for a coffee or tea and a good conversation. :) Happy reading!

**27th June Nude Art Class – Drawing and/or Painting – Grand Hospice** Welcome to the June session of the nude drawing and painting classes, which will take place at Grand Hospice, in Brussels city centre! When: **Saturday 27th June,** **1.45 - 4.30 pm**. The class will focus on drawing and painting the human figure, using both previously seen and new live models. We will continue studying the human figure, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, with multiple poses and different posing times. Objects will be integrated in the composition. Whether you're an experienced artist or just starting, this art class is open to all skill levels! This time, we will have a male model. Fitness equipment will be integrated in the composition. Two tickets possible: only with **drawing material**, or **drawing + painting** material. Limited "**pay 1 get 2"** tickets have been added: get them quickly! Please book via **this Eventbrite link**. Only Eventbrite tickets will count as participation, due to limited capacity: **https://www.eventbrite.be/e/1991473780687?aff=oddtdtcreator** Where: **Jardin Hospice**, **Rue du Grand Hospice 7**, 1000 **Bruxelles**. Meeting point: at the **main door** of Jardin Hospice, **at 1.45 pm**. The group will be guided upstairs. **The session will start at 2 pm o'clock**. If late, please contact Elio via WhatsApp: **+39 324 62 17 652**, in order to allow the other participants to start on time. This is the last session before the summer break; we will restart again in September. Refreshments and finger food provided as usual. Hope to see you soon at Grand Hospice!

**Join us for a relaxed Sunday morning meetup at Caffè Leopold in Porte de Namur!** We’ll meet from 11:30 to 13:30 to enjoy coffee, brunch, and easy conversations in a friendly atmosphere. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people, practice English or French, and spend a nice Sunday morning together. Everyone is welcome — whether you come alone or with a friend. Just bring your good mood and be open to meeting others 😊 After the meetup, for those who want, we can also continue with lunch in a nearby place 🍽️ **📍 Location: Caffè Leopold, Porte de Namur** **https://maps.app.goo.gl/UvTUU1H59J4yatS86** **🕦 Time: Sunday, 11:30–13:30** **☕ What to expect: Coffee, casual conversations, friendly people, and a relaxed Sunday vibe.** Join the WhatApp group: [https://chat.whatsapp.com/EimXMXyRBjo7PfHRoVc1j7](https://chat.whatsapp.com/EimXMXyRBjo7PfHRoVc1j7) Personal number: 0471695419

* ***An artistic workout with musicality.*** This beginner and intermediate ballet class is designed for adults who are curious to explore movement, artistry, and self-expression through classical dance. * ***No previous dance experience is required.*** You will be guided through fundamental ballet movements, posture, coordination, and musicality at an accessible and enjoyable pace. *This class is not about perfection—it is about **discovering movement, building confidence, and being part of a creative community.*** * *Why not plié to Audrey Hepburn's Moon River?* You will dance to songs from Hollywood classics and beloved musicals, creating a unique and inspiring atmosphere in every class. Wear comfortable clothing, similar to what you would wear to a yoga class. For more information and insights from my ballet classes, sign up for [the newsletter](https://substack.com/@balletbrusselsbahar?utm_source=user-menu) or follow us on Instagram: **[@bahar.ballet.brussels](https://www.instagram.com/ballet.brussels/)**

Join Voice Over Pros Of Ohio for an exciting morning of networking, and exploring opportunities in the world of voice acting. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this event is perfect for expanding your network, learning how to start a VO business, and for honing your skills. Connect with fellow voice actors and VO experts, that will help you succeed in your voice over business. This event will feature discussions on professional development, entrepreneurship in the voice over industry, with tips for navigating the world of voice acting. Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn from others, collaborate with like-minded individuals, and take your voice over career to the next level. Join us Saturday, March 28, from 10am - 12pm and learn how to start or grow your voice over business. Let your voice be heard! The $10 fee covers refreshments and door prizes.

Some trained COUNT volunteers work together once a month at RMH (http://www.rmhc-centralohio.org/volunteer.php) as Housewarmers (usually on the 1st Sunday from 1 – 5 PM). Some schedule other shifts at their convenience. You may try this out with less fuss by following a "Fast track" or go through the normal process. Fast track • Arrange a time to shadow a COUNT volunteer. Call Dave Nohle at 614-268-9558 (cell). • Show up and try it out. • Complete application, etc. later. Normal process • Complete an online application (http://rmhc-centralohio.org/volunteer/). • Attend orientation in advance. • At orientation you will complete forms agreeing to keep family/patient info private and allowing a background check and tour the facility. • Complete one training shift. Daily shifts are: morning 9 AM - 1 PM, afternoon 1 - 5 PM and evening 5 - 9 PM. • Schedule shifts online using the on the RMH scheduling system (http://www.volgistics.com/ex/portal.dll/?FROM=32895). The Ronald McDonald House (RMH) provides housing and meals for families with sick children. The Columbus RMH is the largest in the world with 137 rooms. COUNT has been volunteering there since May 2014. Housewarmers work with RMH guests to provide a home-like environment - greet, assist with family needs, answer phones, give tours, assist with checkin/checkout, prepare guest rooms after checkout, clean facility, laundry, restock supplies and staff the front desk. RMH Housewarmers volunteer at least one four-hour shift a month. All Housewarmers must complete an application and agree to a background check before they can be full fledged volunteers.

Whether you've never done improv before, or you've done it for so long you were quoted in *Truth in Comedy*, or anywhere in between, come join us! Swing by *Gresso's* for the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup**! The idea behind improvised comedy is to create entire scenes from scratch. A suggestion is taken from the audience and laughter is built on the spot. This can be done in game form, like *Whose Line Is It Anyway, Make Some Noise,* or *Wild 'n Out*; it can also be done in a longer way, to tell a complicated story, like *TJ & Dave*. Our meetup, which is central Ohio's longest running (and FREE!) weekly comedy event, brings the games for you to play in a safe, supportive, and compassionate environment. Afterward, many members will hang out in *Gresso's* itself and get to know each other. Not only is this a lot of fun, but you get to work on thinking faster on your feet, your public speaking, plus it's an excellent way to meet new people and build relationships that will last a lifetime, and you do that while laughing your butt off! Ask yourself if you want to join the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup**, and say "*Yes, And*" that you'll have a blast!

Our next much-awaited **COLUMBUS** meetup is **Tuesday June 30th from 7-10 pm EST at ACE OF CUPS**. Meet patients, cultivators, processors, dispensary managers/staff, physicians, home growers, educators, activists, nonprofits, artists, attorneys, business owners, writers, students, and supporters to network, share our knowledge, collaborate, support each other and make new ones! Hope you will be there too! Save the date and pass the word. **Please RSVP** so we know who is coming and how many to expect. Find us to say hi and we will introduce you to others. We should be easy to spot. (The happy-looking group wearing cool nametags! See photos from our past events.) Sign in, grab a name tag, start your own bar/food tab, meet old friends and make new ones! Everyone is welcome. SEE YOU THERE!

Come attend a free in-person seminar where you will find out why you: -Feel isolated -Can't express yourself openly -Get nervous or anxious in front of people -Run out of things to say or feel tongue-tied -Feel introverted -Don't feel comfortable in any social setting -Can't make more friends -Are shy and miss opportunities to connect in a meaningful way And we cover what you can do about any one, some or all of the above. This seminar is the weapon against loneliness, isolation and boredom, come join us! COME TO THIS SEMINAR AND LEARN THE SECRETS TODAY This seminar is brought to you by the Dianetics & Scientology Life Improvement Center. 1266 Dublin Road, Columbus, Ohio 43215

Open Shelter has teamed up again with Red White and Boom! Friday, July 3rd & we are looking for volunteers to run the event’s alcohol booths. Proceeds from sales go to the Open Shelter’s organization. There are two available shifts: 12-6p & 5-11p. There will be an ipad-like device to process transactions in addition to cash. Everything will be in bottles or cans, so transactions should be very easy. Must be 21+. There are multiple beverage stations along the Civic Center Bridge. The stations are covered and also have beverage trucks next to them, so volunteers can cool off in the trucks. As far as parking, it is suggested those who are coming from the east use the Columbus Commons Garage, and those from the west use the Belle Street Garage. Harry from the Open Shelter will be your contact. (614)562-2169 mailto:harry@theopenshelter.org More information about the event: https://redwhiteandboom.org/ More information about the organization: https://theopenshelter.org/