Not too long ago, I published a few million words on FSInsider about my role demonstrating Flight Simulator X to His Royal Highness Prince Philippe, Duke of Brabant, Prince of Belgium. For those of you that read me here but not there <Hi, Donna! – ed.>, here’s a link to the article:

http://www.fsinsider.com/team/Pages/UsetheHatSwitchtoLookAround,YourHighness.aspx

This particular article was, I report with happy confusion, quite well received. So much so, that a number of people were compelled to comment via electrical mail.  In order to keep my perpetual vanity machine well lubed, I thought I’d share excerpts from two of my favorites here.

The first was from a gentleman in Germany, who said:

Gentlemen,

I’m a (mostly silent) fan of the Flight Sim since Version One was released on 5,25" disk, later swapped to the Amiga and returned to the MSFS with version 4.

Normally I prefer to stay silent but Hal’s very honest and subjective report about this incident is really a rare PR stunt with more benefit for the company (MS) than a few millions of normal (and likewise stupid) advertisement for those, who can’t read anyway…

Hal, I bow deeply and "Chapeau" for this great article!

As someone who knows a thing or two about stupid advertising and PR stunts, all I can say is Vielen dank!

My other favorite came from an actual Belgian, who wrote:

As a Belgian resident I can safely say that Hal Bryan’s ”A tale of a Royal visit!”  is by far the funniest FS related story I have ever read. BTW, in Belgium the prince is also known as <no need to reprint it here – ed.>, but let us not be too disrespectful (anyway, he prefers to be called <skipping this one too, just in case – ed.> ).

Also, Hal forgot the “accent aigu” in chargé d’affaires – but otherwise not bad for a ‘yank’ 😉   And his Dutch is excellent – “eenvoudige missies” indeed, “te eenvoudig zelfs!” 🙂

Best regards!

For the record, it was Sharepoint Designer <no need to reprint my occasional nicknames for it here – ed.>, that stripped the accent aigu, but I should have caught that and fixed it after the fact. Excellent eye, safely anonymous Belgian customer! Excuseer me en Dank u!