May 31, 2006
Sad news from Zimbabwe... Zimbabwe is introducing a bank note worth 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars, to help consumers as inflation exceeds 1,000%. The note will be worth about $1 at the official exchange rate, but only $0.30 on the informal market. The 50,000 Zimbabwe dollar bill, introduced only four months ago, is not enough to buy a loaf of bread. Zimbabwe is suffering from shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency. In April, inflation passed 1,000% per annum for the first time. [Source: BBC News] News like this truly breaks my heart. I remember a beautiful, great, stable, ever flourishing Zimbabwe...
Continue reading this entry...
Toot have gone on and launched their first blog design competition, a step which I think is good because it emphasizes good design as much as it does good content. All the blogs on toot, apart from the ones that belong to toot team members, are nominated, and the 3 blogs that win the highest votes will get prizes (digital camera, iPod Nano and a $50 Amazon gift certificate). Here is where you can vote for the best designed blogs on toot. As my blog is on toot, it is one of the nominated blogs. So, if you like my...
Continue reading this entry...
May 29, 2006
I've written a bit about homosexuality here and there in the past, mainly commenting on a piece of related news or something, but I never got around to writing a post just about homosexuality in the Arab world. This is my attempt at writing that post. First of all, let's start with the general fact: Homosexuality exists. It has existed for ages and ages, and will continue to exist for ages to come. The Arab and Muslim world is no exception. Homosexuality exists in our societies and is a lot more widespread than we think it is. We and our...
Continue reading this entry...
May 28, 2006
Yesterday, while shopping around in Carrefour, yeah I know I said I would never go there again, but well it's right next door and I've sort of figured out the best times to go. Anyway, while I was shopping around and checking out the tech stuff, I came across the shelf with the CD-Rs and stuff, or "CDs Vierges" (Virgin CDs) as they call them in French. Seeing these piles of CD-Rs reminded me of my long planned, yet never done, format of my laptop. I mean, I've had this laptop for 4 years now, and it's never been formatted....
Continue reading this entry...
Well, it was more of a press conference really, with dozens of gay people coming out and showing up, part of a three-day event organised by Helem, an Arab gay rights organisation, to coincide with International Day Against Homophobia, which marks the day in May 1990 on which the World Health Organisation took homosexuality off its list of mental disorders. Plus gay pride parades have been taking place in Israel, which is in the Middle East, over the past decade, the last of which they wanted to hold in Jerusalem. Still, this being in one of the Arab countries of...
Continue reading this entry...
May 26, 2006
Posted on May 26, 2006 10:29 PM under:
Memories
Summer is here, it means the most to children, soon school will be over for this year, and all the different summer activities will begin taking place. I remember how great it felt when summer came at last, promising us a 3 month break from school, and the rigid serious routine we had to keep up with for a whole 9 months. I have many great summertime memories that I might get around to sharing here, but in this post, I'm going to write about a specific memory that flashed back to me a couple of days ago. As a...
Continue reading this entry...
Most of the times when we have a certain project in our heads, and it fails, whether it be something related to work or to our personal lives, it's because we did something wrong along the way. The internet and bookstores are full of websites and books telling you how to succeed, but the following is a list of 10 steps that will guarantee the failure of any project in your life: 1. Make your goals vague 2. Make your goals difficult to visualize 3. Think and speak negatively about your goals 4. Avoid planning incremental steps 5. Don't Do...
Continue reading this entry...
May 24, 2006
Spray cans filled with oxygen have gone on sale in Japanese supermarkets - an addition to "oxygen bars" that already started springing up across the country. The air-in-a-can, which is 95 per cent oxygen compared with 21 per cent in normal air, is for use at the first sign of yawns or sighs, indicators of a drop in bodily oxygen. I saw this bit of news on CNN today in my lunch break, and other than thinking "what the hell are these Japanese going to come up with next?", it also reminded me of a funny story that happened with...
Continue reading this entry...
Posted on May 24, 2006 12:02 PM under:
Cinema
Just like I predicted and hoped for in my review of the book "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code", the book is going to be made into a movie too, following the success of "The Da Vinci Code" movie in cinemas. The Da Vinci Code movie took $224m around the world in its first weekend, despite poor reviews and controversy over its religious subject. So now, Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the film, has ordered an adaptation of Angels and Demons. Akiva Goldsman has been drafted in to write the script, having penned the...
Continue reading this entry...
May 22, 2006
It's weird how as our life goes by we keep hanging on to all this stuff from the past, these bits and pieces that belong to different eras of our life. Most of the time, it's a bunch of useless crap that we no longer have any use for whatsoever, but still, for some reason, it's crap that is very dear to us. The other day I had one of those moments when something dawns upon you, and you suddenly understand a certain thing about your nature, and about human nature in general. I think that in our present, we...
Continue reading this entry...
May 19, 2006
Microsoft has revealed the minimum requirements a PC will need to run its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system, and to be branded 'Vista Capable' and 'Vista Premium Ready'. A 'Vista Capable' PC will require at least an 800MHz processor, 512MB of system memory, a DirectX 9 capable graphics card, a 40GB hard drive with at least 15GB of free space, a DVD drive, and audio and internet capabilities. The only extra requirements for a 'Vista Premium Ready' PC are a 1GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1GB of Ram and a graphics card with 128MB of onboard memory capable...
Continue reading this entry...
May 17, 2006
One of the songs that really touched me when I first heard it some years ago was "If Tomorrow Never Comes" by Garth Brooks, covered by a number of others too. It's a love song in which the singer asks "If tomorrow never comes will she know how much I loved her?" But the song didn't make me think of that only, I mean of course it got me thinking about whether I showed my feelings enough for the one I love, but it also got me thinking about a bunch of other things. It got me asking myself the...
Continue reading this entry...
May 16, 2006
Posted on May 16, 2006 12:36 PM under:
Music
A very fun song I'm basically in love with these days is "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean, off her album Oral Fixation Vol. 2. It's only a slight remake of the original "Dance Like This" by Wyclef Jean featuring. Claudette Ortiz from the soundtrack of "Dirty Dancing - Havana Nights", which I really love too. In fact, that whole soundtrack is amazing. I think I must have listened to it thousands of time up to now. This remake just adds a layer of Shakira on top of it all, adding to it's coolness. The lyrics aren't much,...
Continue reading this entry...
Posted on May 16, 2006 11:44 AM under:
Tunisia
The Tunisian national team Roger Lemerre announced at a press conference in Tunis yesterday evening the list of 23 players who are to participate in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. They are as follows: Goalkeepers: Ali Boumnijel (Club Africain), Hamdi Kasraoui (Esperance Tunis), Adel Nefzi (US Monastir) Defenders: David Jemmali (Bordeaux, France), Hatem Trabelsi (Ajax, Holland), Mehdi Meriah (Etoile du Sahel), Anis Ayari (Samsunspor, Turkey), Alaeddine Yahya (Saint-Etienne, France), Radhi Jaidi (Bolton, England), Karim Hagui (Strasbourg, France), Karim Saidi (Lecce, Italy) Midfielders: Jawhar Menari (Nuremberg, Germany), Adel Chedli (Nuremberg, Germany), Mehdi Nafti (Birmingham City, England), Sofiene Melliti (Gaziantespor, Turkey),...
Continue reading this entry...
May 15, 2006
In the wake of all the negative posts that have been talking about our Tunisian blogger meetups, I've decided to write a post about the issue, explaining my point of view, especially that I'm the person who started the whole meetup thing in Tunisia. The main idea from the meetups was, and still is, to give Tunisian bloggers a chance to get to meet each other, talk, maybe build some new friendships, feel somehow encouraged to go on blogging, maybe create a certain sense of community around blogs. Of course, some people would rather remain anonymous, and that is totally...
Continue reading this entry...
Mecanbe is an Australian start-up founded by Adam Korbl that will enable you to track your goals in life. It still is in development but will be launching a beta soon. Mecanbe is a service for self-coaching and self-improvement. You'll be able to easily create a list of goals (eg. loose weight, write a good blog, run faster) rate them and publish them on your blog and if you don’t have one Mecanbe will provide one for you. It will also enable you to track your overall performances and ongoing progress. You'll also be able to share your goals with...
Continue reading this entry...
May 14, 2006
Posted on May 14, 2006 08:09 PM under:
Books
I just finished reading "Saturday" by Ian McEwan, who won the Booker prize for his book "Amsterdam". This is the second book I read by him after his other bestseller "Atonement", that I read almost a year ago. This book follows an ordinary man throughout a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns a bit nightmarish. Henry Perowne–a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children–plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne's day is...
Continue reading this entry...
May 13, 2006
It's amazing how much we take our lives and the things we've been given for granted sometimes. We just forget how lucky we are for it all. Maybe we just get too carried away with the details of our lives and we become somehow self-centered, thinking that our problems are the biggest, that our jobs are the most tiring, that our dreams are the ones not coming true, that we're the ones who are accomplishing the least in the world and the depressing list goes on. But we have to stop and look around us every now and then, to...
Continue reading this entry...
May 11, 2006
I just came across this link on Kassus' blog that gives you the #1 single in the UK charts on the day of your birth, making it a song your parents could have probably been listening to. For my day of birth, the #1 single in the UK was: "Tragedy" by The Bee Gees. Hmmm, honestly, I'd really like to think that my parents weren't listening to a song called "Tragedy" on the day of my birth, a bit depressing for me, if you know what I mean....
Continue reading this entry...
Google introduced four new services/products, which are the following: Google Co-Op: This new product lets users improve search results by syndicating their knowledge. Individuals or organizations can now label or categorize Web pages and make those labels available as a subscription. For subscribers, these labels and associated links get added to search queries when relevant. Google Desktop 4: This version has added Google Gadgets, small applications that can live on users' desktops or inside the Google Desktop environment. Google's answer to Apple's Dashboard widgets and Yahoo's Konfabulator. Google Trends: This gives users access to compare the popularity of certain topics...
Continue reading this entry...
May 10, 2006
Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah has been arrested alongside 10 others while peacefully demonstrating in support of the independence of the Judiciary in Egypt and the release of previous demonstrators who were detained 2 weeks earlier. Alaa and those arrested with him are now arrested for 15 days "pending investigation", which could be renewed indefinitely if the state so wishes. Currently there are about 48 detained, 6 of them are bloggers, and 3 of them are women. Being the most famous of the captured bloggers, a 'Free Alaa' campaign has been started to amount pressure to release Alaa and those...
Continue reading this entry...
May 09, 2006
Posted on May 9, 2006 11:42 PM under:
Music
Belgian-born Middle Eastern singer Natacha Atlas has just released her latest album, by the title "Mish Maoul". The album is a blend of western beats and middle eastern forms and influences, mainly sung in Arabic and English. I was introduced to Natacha's music a few years ago, 1999 to be precise, with her hit song "Mon Amie La Rose", from her album "Gedida". This album experiments with the fusion of different musical styles from west and east, and is quite an interesting listen. Through Subzero Blue, Natacha's record label Mantra Recordings/Beggars Group will be offering 10 copies of her new...
Continue reading this entry...
May 07, 2006
Posted on May 7, 2006 09:17 PM under:
Islam
"All mankind is from Adam and Eve, No Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab. Nor does a white man have any superiority over a black man, or a black man any superiority over a white man except by piety and good action." -- Prophet Muhammad, in his Farewell Sermon....
Continue reading this entry...
Posted on May 7, 2006 09:16 PM under:
Tunisia
A breathtaking view from the Zaghouan mountains just 55Kms outside the capital Tunis. [Click on photo for larger version]...
Continue reading this entry...
May 05, 2006
This is one of those few forwards that are actually good. Thanks to my wife who forwarded it to me after she got it from a friend. You know you're an Arab when: - Your mother yells at the top of her lungs to call you to dinner even if you're in the next room. - You arrive one or two hours late to a party and think it's normal. - You are standing next to the largest suitcases at the Airport. - You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house. - You say bye...
Continue reading this entry...
May 04, 2006
I truly believe that over 50% of what makes people laugh at a joke is how it's told, and I'm sure most of us have witnessed a really hilarious joke reduced to a failure by someone who didn't know how to tell it well. These are just ideas of rules I think should be respected when telling a joke. 1. Make sure you know the joke well enough to tell it. Stopping in the middle of the joke to remember the rest just screws the whole thing up. 2. Keep it short. People's joke attention span is very short, stretching...
Continue reading this entry...
May 03, 2006
It's morning again; you subsconsciously know, because the birds that have chosen to build their nest behind your air conditioners' engine are chirping away ever so merrily, stretching out their wings, getting ready to face a busy day of doing whatever it is that birds do. A few of the sun's rays have also managed to make their way through the blinds to teasingly tickle your face, attempting to promise you a beautiful day outside. The bloody alarm clock will start beeping like crazy in a few minutes, teasing you with every bit of energy it holds within its triple...
Continue reading this entry...
May 02, 2006
"Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy." — Martin van Creveld, Professor of Military History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Via: Lawrence of Cyberia, Je Blog]...
Continue reading this entry...
A man gets home, screeches his car into the driveway, runs into the house, slams the door and shouts at the top of his lungs: “Honey, pack your bags. I won the lottery!” The wife says, “UNBELIEVABLE! What should I pack, beach stuff or mountain stuff?” “I don’t care. Just pack and leave!!!” [Via: 2:48AM]...
Continue reading this entry...
