Good Laugh

Yesterday afternoon was nice, after going home from work, then going back to fix a stupid error the client created by overwriting their database, and then going home the second time, i had time to play more “C&C : Generals”, which was cool, more of me crushing the terrorists with the Chinese Army…

At about 8PM i remembered i hadn’t eaten anything all day long, so i went out for some fast food and returned the DVD i had & rented a new one in my way.

After eating i went out with a friend of mine who’s in Tunisia these days, he studies Information Security in Russia.
It was really fun, as we had a lot of catching up and laughing to do, talking about everything from us and our lives to our friends and our friends’ lives, lol.

We had to leave the caf

Stuff

The past couple of days i’ve cut back on the number of movies i’ve been seeing, as i was afraid i’d soon run out of movies, and that wouldn’t be a good thing ๐Ÿ˜›
So i’m basically seeing only one movie a day now, and spending the rest of my time out with friends or family or sleeping, lol.

I finally caught “Harry Potter : Chamber of Secrets” at the DVD rental place, and jumped on it right away, as i’ve been wanting to see this movie for a while, i saw some of it yesterday at 2AM, but got too sleepy i couldn’t finish it, so i’ll finish it today after work.

Talking about work, i shouldn’t even be at work today, it’s “Woman’s Day” or something, and it’s an official holiday, but well, since when do we tech people know the meaning of holidays, especially when the word “deadline” is involved, often preceded with another nice word “Tight”…

Sunday Time

Sunday was actually quite similar to Saturday, lol, more of me filling my time with anything. I watched 5 movies, played “Command & Conquer : Generals” using the Chinese army this time, visited my parents and surfed the net a bit.

The movies i saw yesterday were:
– Friday: at last i got to see this one, but i was dissapointed, i mean it’s a good movie, but with all the hype it had around it back when it was released, i expected something better and funnier.
– Tomcats: This was better than i expected, quite a good movie, was fun watching it.
– The Hot Chick: I love Rob Schneider, he’s hilarious, and this movie is so cool too. keep them coming Rob.
– Jawbreakers: This one was ok, but not that good, didn’t enjoy it much.
– Dracula 2000: This was better than i expected too, at least at the beginning, as it kind of loses you half way through the movie. it was quite good though all in all, compared to all the shitty vampire movies coming out these last years.

Now back to “Command & Conquer : Generals”, i just got this game a couple of days ago, and it’s really cool. It needs a bit getting used to, as it changes how some things were done in Red Alert, Red Alert 2 & Yuri’s Revenge, but it takes you to a whole new level of strategy gaming.
There are 3 main sides you can choose from: US, China, GLA (Some terrorist organization).
I’m still in my first stages playing and enjoying the game, and will most probably talk about it more on here in the future as i uncover it’s features more.
What i find a bit annoying though is how the terrorists are made out to be like Afghan Muslims or something, it kind of reflects the reality of the world today, in which by just being a muslim you’re branded a terrorist, which is the total opposite of how things should be. Oh well, i guess you can’t blame EA for that.

Passing Time

Ever since i came back from work late yesterday, i’ve been trying to fill up my time with anything so as to not feel lonely, i’ve watched 4 movies already, listened to a load of mp3s, played “Command & Conquer : Generals”, burned a new music cd to play in the car, gone out shopping, rented 4 more movies, and now i’m back home, with more time in my hand to waste, lol.

The 4 movies i saw were:
– What Dreams May Come: which was an ok movie, the special effects were good, but it was bit boring.
– LXG (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) : which was quite good, but not as good as i hoped.
– Soul Survivors : ok, they tried to make one of those complicated movies were they want to keep u not knowing what’s happening till the end, and it’s true u don’t, but by the end u don’t really care, lol.
– Dog Soldiers : Special effects sucked, looks like it came out from somewhere in the 80s, but it was ok, not too bad as a movie.

I’m thinking of starting an open source project on SourceForge.net, but i’m still undecided about the idea, as usual, i have a ton of ideas, and instead of putting them to work, i waste all the time choosing and thinking, lol.

I haven’t eaten much today, so i’m starving. I’ll go have dinner now.

Alone :(

Well, my wife has gone to visit her family in Jordan, and due to work obligations i wasn’t able to go too, and so i’m left all alone in Tunisia.

This is not the first time i’m alone in my life, but this time it’s so different, it feels like i’m the only person left on earth.
It’s the first time we’re not together ever since we got married last year, it sucks big time, and it actually feels really weird, as if some part of me is missing, a part i’m so attached to.

I’m kicking myself in the head because i was the one who convinced her to grab the occasion and visit her family.

I can’t wait for her to get back, so we can do everything together again just like it’s supposed to be, just like it makes sense and has a meaning and taste to it.

Anyway, i’d better get going now, i’m so sleepy and exhausted after last night and working till 6:45PM today…

Calypso

Last night was a great night out, we went to a club called “Calypso” in Hammamet (which is one of the best clubs in Tunisia) with some friends, and we partied like crazy and danced till the break of dawn.

The music was amazing, the beats were hypnotizing and the bass was out of this world, in short it was impossible to even think of sitting down, your body simply wouldn’t let you.

Everyone was jumping around and dancing like there was no tomorrow, kind of reminding me of the rave party scene from “Matrix Reloaded” ๐Ÿ˜›
Damn, i’ve been watching too many movies lately, lol.

We had dinner there too, which as you can imagine, is served in a big plate with a tiny portion floating in the middle, but with a big number showing up on the bill later on in the night, when you’re too exhausted to ask why, lol. Anyway, at least the food tasted good ๐Ÿ™‚

We left at around 4AM, and got home at 4:45AM, with only a couple of hours left for me to try and get some sleep before i get up for work. Of course that would never be enough, and that’s why i’m now at the office, looking like a retard with psycho red eyes who is high on some weird crap, and raving about this in my blog, lol.

Yesterday Fun

We were invited at a friend’s place yesterday, he’s someone who went to the same school as i did in Tunisia, and whom i met and knew better in Jordan when i was going to university there.
The cool thing is we also lived in the same building, became good friends, went through the internet bubble together, spent time with a lot of common friends, but the coolest thing of all is that our stories with our wives are very much identical, we both met them at around the same time in university, got engaged at around the same time, got married and moved back to Tunisia and both work in the internet domain, lol.

So just by imagining how many similarities there are between us as couples and how much history we have behind us, you’d imagine how much fun stuff we had to talk about, from our experiences as a married couple and what we go through, to the amazing insects and crawling species we have in Tunisia, to the stuff our wives find weird in Tunisia, lol.
Of course no such talks go without uncovering some funny past secrets along the way, lol.

After talking and laughing for a couple of hours, the talk turned to food, and our stomachs started rumbling at the thought of some local Jordanian fast-food “Falafel” that we haven’t tasted for so long, and so we suggested to go to this lebanese restaurant called “Baalabak” that serves some quite similar dishes, and so we did.
The food was good, and our conversations and fun went on.

By the time we finished eating and talking, we were too exhausted to even blink, so we thought that was a sign that we should at least try to get home, but of course not before a half hour talk in the parking, in which we men talked about launching a web startup, and our wives talked about whatever they were talking about.

In short, it was some real cool fun, and hopefully we’ll be hanging out together more in the future ๐Ÿ™‚

Summary of quiet period

I thought i’d post a blog entry summarizing the past period, so here it goes ๐Ÿ˜‰

Basically, it was more and more of the usual, lol, work from 8AM to 3PM, lunch at home, sleep or watch movie, go out or watch movie, have a cool night out or watch a movie, lol…

But, there were some rather cool things that happened, which are:
– We got a DVD player as a late wedding gift, so no more movie nights watching DVDs on my laptop, from now on we can use the TV, which is one of the bedroom accessories now after the AC was installed there ๐Ÿ˜‰
– A friend of mine got married (he’s actually a brother of a friend of mine who became my friend), and that meant days in a row of nights out, sleeping late, and going shitfaced to work in the morning, lol.
– We went bowling at last with some friends of ours, something we’ve been wanting to do for ages and just putting off for no reason, anyway it was like a curse, my whole game was a series of 9 points, and i only got strikes in my last 2 shots. good thing though is that i won, so it wasn’t such a bad curse after all ๐Ÿ˜›
– We went out to the beach at Hammamet with some friends of ours, and it was pretty cool and good fun.
– We saw a number of cool movies: “Not Another Teen Movie” which was awesomely funny, “Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle” which was really good and better than the first one, “Pay It Forward” which was really nice, “Hulk” which had really good special effects but was a bit boring story-wise …etc.

I guess that about sums it all up…

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 ๐Ÿ˜‰

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…