Subzero Blue

My Wishlist

If you qualify as one of the following:

You have this weird itching desire to buy me something.
You have certain “issues” or mental problems and you want to prove to the whole world that you’re the nicest person ever.
You are one cheap ass who wants to buy someone something and keep boasting about it and reminding them of it all their life.
You’re stalking me and you want to keep sending me things to haunt me.

Then, I think you’d be interested in knowing that I’ve just created my wishlist on Amazon, and you can find it here.

Just kidding 😛
I know nobody’s going to buy me anything. But well, it’s good for me to keep track of all the stuff I want to buy. I always forget.

Tunisian Weddings

It’s summertime in Tunisia, the season of the sea, beaches, parties, clubs, coffee shops but most importantly weddings.
Yep, there’s certainly a lot of love in the air this time of the year.

As soon as the summer starts, invitations start floating around the country, and wherever you go, whoever you visit, there seems to be an invitation waiting for you for the wedding of the brother of the cousin of your grandmother’s half sister’s distant relative. In short, someone you never knew existed.
And wait, you’re actually expected to show up.

So, what should you expect at a Tunisian wedding?
Oh, a lot really. It’s like there’s this secret competition only people who are organizing weddings know about, in which by the end of the summer people are going to vote which wedding had the most money spent on it, which was the noisiest and loudest one, which had the ultimately worst singer, which served the sweetest sweets and which one featured the most barely dressed girls.
But that’s on the long term, on the short term you should primarily expect a headache, a stomachache and most probably diabetes.

Weddings are also an opportunity to get ready for the next wedding season and fill up it’s schedule, so girls put on all the makeup they have, wear as little clothes as possible, show as much cleavage and thighs as they can and dance until they drop in an attempt to hookup with one of the single (or married but ripe for divorce) perverts at the wedding.

Weddings aren’t all about celebration though, they’re also a war between the two families to prove who is classier and better.
And behind all that loud music, there often are a number of little fights going on because someone got served before the other or because someone sat closer to the bride and groom.

Ah…
There’s nothing quite like a Tunisian wedding.
Beneath all the madness, chaos and noise there lies a bit of the great and unique Tunisian culture that I love so much.
It’s Amazing…

World Court: Israeli Wall is Illegal

Yesterday the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) at the Hague published its Advisory Opinion on Israel’s West Bank Wall. The court ruled in favor of the Palestinians, condemning those parts of the barrier that effectively annex Palestinian land, and calling for its dismantling in the Occupied Territories.

The opinion also found that Israel was obligated to return confiscated land or make reparations for any destruction or damage to homes, businesses and farms caused by the barrier’s construction.

The ruling was the second against the barrier in the past two weeks. Israel’s high court ruled June 30 that a section of the barrier under construction must be rerouted to avoid infringing on the lives of 35,000 Palestinians.

Of course Israel is refusing this ruling and saying that it’s non-binding and that they don’t have to comply with it even though it indicates that Israel is in violation of international law and of international legitimacy.

Israel is claiming that the wall was built to bring them security and that since the barrier was built less and less attacks were happening against their people.
But wait, shouldn’t a wall built for Israel’s security actually have been built between Israeli and Palestinian land, not between Palestinians and their fields, schools, jobs, medical service, and family members?!

There is talk that sanctions could be seeked against Israel to force it to comply with this ruling. But obviously, the US would veto that without thinking.

Anyway, even though this ruling won’t really mean that the wall will be brought down, it still is an important step for the Palestinians. It will help put pressure on the people who defened Israel no matter what it does and it will give Palestinians more international support, something they really need.
It also comes an important expression of solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are suffering the effects of the illegal barrier, and with the thousands of Palestinians and Israelis who have been peacefully protesting against it over the past months.

So much for democracy

Seventeen months after the Anglo-American invasion in which President George Bush promised to bring democracy to Iraq, the country’s American-approved Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, yesterday introduced legislation allowing the Iraqi authorities to impose martial law, curfews, a ban on demonstrations, the restriction of movement, phone-tapping, the opening of mail and the freezing of bank accounts.

[…]

Iraq therefore entered into another fatal chapter of its history yesterday, and it didn’t look much like democracy.

Robert Fisk

[Via Je Blog]

Satin Rouge

Yesterday I finally got to see Satin Rouge by Raja Ammari, a Tunisian movie that got a lot of great reviews when it was released back in 2002.

I heard and read so much about it, and have been wanting to see it for a long time, but never really got around to it.

Anyway, after seeing it, I understand why it got all the great reviews. It’s a really nice and well done movie. Maybe one of the best Tunisian movies yet.

It’s the story of a widow who’s raising her adolescent daughter on her own and who’s leading a pretty boring and depressing life. It’s like her life stopped when her husband died and she’s just there to take care of her daughter now.

Circumstances later drive her to a cabaret in search of her daughter where she discovers this whole new night life of dance and pleasures. It excites and attracts her but also worries her.
Nevertheless she is sucked in slowly as she builds a friendship with one of the belly dancers there and starts frequenting the place more only to become a dancer herself too.

She ends up caught in the middle of being a perfect mom that she no longer is and a belly dancer that she still isn’t yet.

Of course there are other events I don’t want to get into so as to not spoil it for anyone who’s going to see it. But what I can say is that it’s really worth the watch.

The directing, cinematography and photography is really good too. I truly enjoyed the shots that were taken, the angles, …etc.

I give it a 8/10 as a movie.
You should really see it.

Kill Bill 3

So, it seems like there’ll be a third part to Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga.
But don’t get too excited. It won’t be out for another 15 years.

Quentin Tarantino said Monday he plans to shoot a third part of the Kill Bill vengeance series.

“I have plans, actually not right away, but like in 15 years from now, I’ll do a third version of this saga,” the director said at a news conference to promote “Kill Bill” Vol. 2, which opens in Spain next month.

Tarantino said part three would focus on the daughter of a hired killer that Uma Thurman’s character bumps off early in her revenge spree.

Now this is real cool…
It’s a shame we have to wait so long for it…

The Wall and Israel’s Aims

If the goal were security, Israel would have built the fence a few km inside its borders. It could then be a mile high, patrolled on both sides by the IDF, mined with nuclear weapons, utterly impenetrable. Perfect security.

The problem would be that it would not take valuable Palestinian land and resources (including control of water), drive out the population, and lay the basis for still further expansion as Palestinians flee from the dungeons that are left, like the town of Qalqilya. So to interpret as a land grab seems appropriate.

Noam Chomsky

Linklog

I’ve been wanting to start a Linklog for a long time to take the place of the occasional Link Dumps that I post and enable me to share links with you guys.

And well, today I finally got around to creating one. It’s somewhere on the left column.

The solution I opted for is a combination I put together using del.icio.us and feedroll.

I use del.icio.us to bookmark and comment interesting links I find when surfing and then feedroll to access my del.icio.us bookmarks rss and display them here.

It’s a simple clean solution which I think is very effective and cool.

I hope you enjoy the links I’ll be posting there 🙂

Jay Leno on presidential campaigns

These are some hilarious comments by Jay Leno on the presidential campaigns:

“What was it 91-92 degrees today? Man, I was sweatin’ like President Bush watching ‘Fahrenheit 9/11.”

“John Kerry has picked John Edwards as his running mate. … The New York Post reported John Kerry chose Dick Gephardt. But at the last second, John Kerry decided to go with a candidate with eyebrows.”

“As you know John Edwards is a former trial lawyer. Which is a smart move considering the last election was decided in court. Kerry may need him to step in and sue or something.”

“Political strategists said they thought Kerry was going to choose an older more financially successful running mate, ya know, like he did when he picked his wife.”

“The attacks have already started. ‘John Edwards is too inexperienced to be president; he’s too flashy; he’s not up to the job.’ And those are just the things John Kerry said in the primary!”

LOL…
Jay Leno rocks…

[Source: SFGate]

A Day To Remember

July 7th…
Now, that’s one day to remember for me…

July 7th 1998, in the summer course, after finishing my morning lectures, again I was faced with that scheduled hour of nothing to do.
No one I knew was free in that hour, everyone had lectures, and everytime I’d end up wandering around the University campus listening to my walkman or scribbling something down.

But not that day.
As I was walking from the faculty of science, past the square, past the university restaurant on my way to the languages center, there she was.

Ok before I get into that, I have to give you some background info.
Earlier in the year, towards the first semester and as I was sitting around with some friends of mine from the faculty of arts, I saw the most beautiful girl in the University of Jordan.
I didn’t know who she was, what her name was, what she did, nothing. All I knew is that I instantly fell for her.
I saw her more often from that day on, but she was always in a hurry going to a lecture or going home or something.

Anyway back to July 7th 1998.
There was that amazing girl and with her was a friend of mine.
They were walking my way too.
And we met, our common friend introduced us to each other, and things got better and better from that day on.

Now, that girl is my wife.
And that’s all because of that one fine day 😉