Subzero Blue

If Tomorrow Never Comes…

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 question: What if tomorrow really never comes…?!
Which leads to yet more questions, I’d be asking myself if that happened, like:
What is it that I wanted to make out of my life but never got to make?
What is it that I wanted to do but never got to do?
What is it that I wanted to say but never got to say?
Where is it that I wanted to go but never got to go?
Who are the people I cared for but never got around to showing my feelings for?
And the endless list goes on…

We always get too carried away with life to stop and think that it could all end so suddenly, and that there might be no tomorrow, that those things we’ve been putting off till next week, or the month after, or maybe a couple of years into the future could possibly never come true.
Even though we know we’re mortals, we often forget it and plan as if we’ll be around forever and we’ll have all the time to do everything we want, say everything we want, express our feelings for everyone we want, …etc.
But that’s not true… And we know it…

So I guess what we should do is to follow the wise quote that tells us not to put off today’s work to tomorrow.
If there is someone we want to say something to, we might as well do it today; if there’s someone we want to hug, we might as well do it today; if there’s someone we want to confess our love to, we might as well do it today; if there’s something we want to do, we might as well set a plan for it in motion today; if there’s somewhere we want to go, we might as well start planning for a trip there as soon as possible; … etc etc etc

Good luck with your lists…

Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean: Hips Don’t Lie

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, but the rhythm and the tune are fantastic and so much fun. A great and cool summer song.

Tunisia’s Germany 2006 World Cup Team

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), Hamed Namouchi (Rangers, Scotland), Karim Zdiri (Rosenborg, Norway), Yassine Chikhaoui (Etoile du Sahel), Riadh Bouazizi (Kayserispor, Turkey), Issam Jomaa (Lens, France), Kais Ghodhbane (Diyarbakirspor, Turkey)

Forwards: Francileudo Santos (Toulouse, France), Ziad Jaziri (Troyes, France)

The Carthage Eagles are in Group H with Spain, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, who face them in their opening match in Munich on June 14th.

I hope we’ll see a great performance by the boys in this World Cup and maybe a passage to the second round. Keeping my fingers crossed.

The Tunisian Blogger Meetups

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 their choice and right. No one’s pushing anyone to attend a blogger meetup if they don’t want to. Every one of us blogs for a reason and about certain topics, and I totally know that going public with your identity takes away your ability to write about some things you could write about before. And so, that is a very important issue to think about before deciding to come to a meetup or not.

A point that I’ve read many times is the idea that the “old” bloggers have formed groups and that new bloggers feel they’re unwelcome.
Instead of denying or confirming that, all I want to say is that we don’t go to meetups to talk to the old bloggers or the new bloggers, we go to meetups to talk to Tunisian bloggers period, no matter their age in life or in the blogosphere.

Up to now we’ve had 13 blogger meetups, that span over a year, obviously the people who have come to the meetups many times have had the chance to get to talk and know each other very well over this period, and some friendships have formed here and there, just like they do anywhere in life. Very normal.
Yet some “new” bloggers join for a meetup, then another and another and they too get to know other bloggers, they talk, they have fun, they enjoy themselves and build relationships and friendships too. And others either don’t come or come once, and then they just say that Tunisian bloggers are split into groups and they didn’t feel welcome and all. But in reality the door is wide open for everyone to join in, and many already have.

I personally never snobbed anyone or looked down at any other blogger because I’m one of the first Tunisian bloggers around. I’m always happy to see and meet new people at these meetups. And even if I don’t get the chance to talk to them in one meetup, I keep looking forward to the next meetup for a chance to chat with them.

I know that what I’m writing won’t necessarily change the ideas and perceptions that some have in their minds. But this is how I see it all and I thought I’d share it.

Again, going to a meetup or not is a personal choice, liking certain people or not is a personal issue, and it’s totally up to each person to decide for themselves.

All I know is that these meetups will go on as long as there are Tunisian bloggers willing to go out and meet for a little nice chat over a cup of coffee and that everyone will always be welcome.

Mecanbe, Life & Self Improvement

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

Saturday – Ian McEwan

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 thrown out of course.

As with “Atonement”, the first chapter of the book goes very deep into character development, with almost no introduction of any plot, getting you to know the main characters almost inside out.
After he’s done with that, he launches into the story and starts weaving the plot together, pulling you into the smallest details, making you live the day with the main character.

I still can’t get over how much detail he gets into about the characters and events in his writing, without giving you a sense that it’s useless information or boring, in fact you feel it’s all very interesting and quite related to how the rest of the story will unfold, even if it doesn’t.

It’s a pretty good read that I recommend checking out. And if you haven’t read “Atonement“, I recommend that book too, maybe even more than this one.

» You can buy “Saturday” here.

Taking Our Lives For Granted

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 think and see how well we’re doing in our lives.

It happens to me almost daily; I’ll be stressed out because of a number of different things, from work, to family, to money to all the other stuff, and I feel myself getting lost in it all and starting to fall into that negative spiral of thought; but then I pass next to someone, our eyes meet, and I find myself living their life for that split second, discovering their conditions, imagining all the details, only to realize that I’m lucky to have the life that I have now, with all the happiness and success that I’m living everyday.

These people I pass by aren’t just people who are unlucky or poor, sometimes they’re people who seem to be better off than me in life. But in that split second, when our eyes meet, I see how I would never give up my life for theirs, if only for the fact that this is my life, a life I am proud of, and that I worked all these years to build.

At moments like that, I realize how much I sometimes take my life and everything in it for granted, and I remember that we should thank God everyday for blessing us with it all.

Charts Number One On Your Birthday

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.

New Stuff From Google

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 and search terms on Google. The user can enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time. Google Trends also displays how frequently these topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often.

Google Notebook: This should be available next week. It is a scratchpad application that lets users store and share URLs and other data copied from Web pages.
Google describes it as “a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online.” It’s really more of a reimagining of how browser bookmarks should work.

Now, let me go give these babies a spin…

Egyptian Blogger Arrested; Free Alaa

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 with him.

Supporters of the campaign have also launched a Google bombing campaign by linking the word Egypt to the Free Alaa campaign, in order to raise awareness of the issue internationally.

For more information and ways to help, check out the Free Alaa Campaign.