Month: July 2003

Outlandish Aicha

We were having lunch at a fast food joint yesterday, when a familiar tune started playing on one of the music channels, it was “Aicha” by Khaled, but this time around it was sung by 3 guys i never saw before and it was in English.

It turns out these guys are a group from Denmark called Outlandish, with roots from Morocco, Pakistan & Honduras.
I like their cover of the song, and they have quite good voices, but the original remains a favourite that is hard to surpass…
What is great though is that i think this is the first international cover of an arab/rai song, and hopefully there’ll be more in the future.

Khaled is one of the most worldwide famous arab stars, and one of the pioneers of RAI music from Algeria, with hits like : Didi, Nsi Nsi, Aicha, Sahra …etc.

Aicha was written by the great Jean-Jacques Goldman, who has written some of the best music ever for superstars like Celine Dion, Florent Pagny, Patrick Fiori and more…

My advice is get both the original and the cover and enjoy this cool song 😉

The Recruit

Just finished watching “The Recruit” featuring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell, and i must say it was quite a good and entertaining movie. I was a bit worried when renting it as i read some posts on IMDB likening it to Spy Game, but this one was better.

I liked the way they kept twisting the story, it has the most twists i’ve ever seen in one movie, but what’s cool is that they were able to carry them through without making the movie stupid.

Al Pacino was great as usual, and Colin Farrell is proving movie after movie that he’s a very talented actor (who’d think that irish guy from “Ordinary Decent Criminal” would get this far, but well he deserves it).

What i liked most though was the message : “Nothing is what it seems”, even though they meant it in another context, i think it holds when we look at our world, everything is one big act, one big game, one big layer of lies hiding the ugly truth that lies beneath, insulting our intelligence over and over again…

The one big shame though is that there are some people who continue to deceive themselves and believe the obvious lies, i just wonder if they do it willingly or not…

AC in, Heat out :)

Well, yesterday was a good day, our AC finally got installed, and the bedroom became heavenly cool 🙂
It really was worth the wait, and even though these days aren’t that hot in Tunisia, i just know we’ll be needing it more and more as we go further into July and then August, and hell starts opening its doors again…

It was a noisy procedure installing it, and one of the neighbours started shouting out of his balcony, but it’s ok, i just ignored him, which is something really easy to do with all that drilling noise. what annoys me most is that this guy is supposedly a distant relative of mine, and yet he’s the only one who made a fuss out of it…

So last night was the first night since summer began that we could sleep comfortably, in fact i was so comfy and loving it, i had a hell of a time trying to get out of bed and to work in the morning 🙁
Don’t you hate work ??!!
Can’t wait to get home, get hold of my laptop and sit in bed doing whatever and enjoying the cool 🙂

On another note, we rented a cool movie on Monday called “Say it isn’t so!”, it’s one of those fun movies to watch, featuring Heather Graham and one of the guys from the American Pie movies, quite enjoyable…

ATM Nightmares

Have you ever allowed yourself to spend every penny in your pocket, feeling safe that you have money in your bank account and that you can use your ATM card at any moment to get the cash you need ?
and have you ever gone to an ATM with an empty pocket and that feeling of safety only to be turned down because of a connection failure or whatever other reason and then hit by the fact that you’re totally out of money and that even though you have money in your bank account, you just can’t get to it ?
It’s one of the worst feelings ever, and it sucks like hell !

Well that’s part of my everyday life with my bank, i put my money in, spend the money i have, go to the nearest ATM (and every other one i know about), and it doesn’t give me anything !!!

What annoys me most is that it seems to only do it when i really need the money, when i’m really out of money, and when it’s a weekend, so i’m left with no solution to get my hands on some cash…

I’m seriously thinking of changing banks, the only problem is that i know it’ll be the same shit, just a different taste, so the big question is : am i ready to change the taste i’ve gotten so used to ? loooool…

Trinidad Club

We went out to a cool club in Gammarth on Saturday night called “Trinidad Club” with some of our friends.
It’s very stylish, very cool, very high class, and of course you can only imagine it’d also be very expensive, the thought that drove me close to a heart attack as soon as i walked through the door, especially as i only had 20 Dinars on me, lol…

The place has a swimming pool, a caf

Overcrowded Madness

Have you ever been to a place so overcrowded you end up stepping on your own toes ? Well, if not, then you obviously haven’t visited Carrefour in Tunisia (a Mega Mall we have here) on the first day of the month.
Everyone just got their paychecks, and they’re all out there at Carrefour to spend every millime (cent) of it like crazy on stuff they mostly don’t need, but are buying anyways because there’s a big red and yellow sign saying “PROMOTION” on it.

Suddenly, the laws of physics don’t apply anymore, and you actually can fit 15 adults in 1 square meter, not to mention their shopping carts and kids, who act as if this is the first time they actually step out their home doorstep and see what the outside world looks like, not wanting to miss one moment of it without proving to everybody how insanely active they are.

Another amazing phenomenon is what happens at the cash registers, it’s incredible how everyone totally believes they were standing in that queue before you or that they deserve to pass first, multiply that by 30 cash registers, and then believe me you’ll start thinking twice before using the word havoc in the future.

Oh well, i think its obvious i made the stupid mistake of going to Carrefour on this cursed shopping day, only to find that every other Tunisian beat me there, lol…
Anyway, i’m ok now, i just have this darn headache, a raging temper and god knows what else boiling inside of me !

Today was the first day in what we Tunisians call “S