Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

HappyNews.com: Solution or Problem?

A lot of people complain about how they get depressed whenever they watch or read the news; Wars, starvation, natural disasters, plane crashes… and the long list goes on in our mad world.

A new website called HappyNews.com takes another approach to news, reporting only the upbeat and happy news, leaving out the depressing bits.

Personally, I’m not too into the idea. I understand how sometimes the bad news gets too overwhelming and that it just depresses people how much bad stuff is going on in the world, but well the solution is not to turn a blind eye to it all and act like it’s not happening.
If we all did that, all these bad things would keep going on and getting worse, maybe till there comes a day there are no happy news left.

A big problem in many places of the world today is how societies ignore the problems within them and act as if they don’t exist, not facing up to them and trying to find solutions for them, sort of trying to wish those problems away, but that never works, and the problems just keep mulitplying and growing until they result in a crisis, which is harder to face and solve.

Air France Arabic In-Flight Instructions

After years of air travel, I’ve basically developed a deaf ear for the presentation of in-flight instructions that they have to play before every take-off, as I know every little detail by heart.

Anyway this time travelling to London aboard an Air France flight, I found myself listening to this weird recording of the in-flight instructions in Arabic.

It’s not that it was in Arabic that shocked me, that’s only normal as it’s a flight to/from an Arab country. What I found weird was how it was recorded in a broken Arabic language mixed with a certain North African accent, that made it both sort of funny and somehow unprofessional.
I mean Air France is a worldwide carrier, that has many flights to and from the Arab world; couldn’t they have found someone better to record well-formed, well-structured, well-pronounced Arabic in-flight instructions?

I know I’m being a bit too picky and that it’s good they have Arabic instructions in the first place, but well it’s a bit Amateurish for such a big airline company, and if they’re doing it, they might as well do it right.

Just my 2 cents…

London, London, London…

My recent trip to London was the first time I ever set foot there, and I wanted to use every single moment I had to discover this amazing city.

Our hotel was in the Paddington area, which I thought was a great place to go out from to discover London.

The first place we discovered on our first night in London was Edgware road which we were astonished to find full of Arabic restaurants and stores. There were even campaign posters for the upcoming Iraqi elections there.

In the days after that we went on to Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street, Picadilly Circus, Strand, Knightsbridge…etc; checking out all the shopping malls and stores.

We visited both Regent’s Park and Hyde Park, which were both so very beautiful and breathtaking. It was so relaxing just spending time in these parks with the amazing nature and scenery around.

We checked out the famous Mme Tussauds, which was really cool. Some of those wax figures look so damn real you think they’ll move at any time or that you nearly miss them because you think it’s someone real standing there.
At Mme Tussauds we also went on this little ride called “The Spirit Of London” which took us through some of the landmark events and people in the history of London. It was nice to find Mahmoud El Fayed featured there.

We also went to the London Aquarium which was really nice and well, you know, full of fish. I especially liked the sharks, they looked really cool.
Something funny was when we were checking the different items that were found in the Thames river and we found a Tunisian 5 millimes coin there.

Right next to the London Aquarium, we hopped on to the London Eye which is really cool, overlooking the Thames and offering a great sky view of London. It goes slowly giving you the time to fully take in the city from above.

Big Ben looked better in real life than in photos I previously saw, and it was really interesting seeing the people standing in front of the parliament with all their banners opposing the war in Iraq and the government’s policies.

We thought going to London and not seeing at least one musical would be a great shame, so we went to The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s theatre. It was superbe, beautiful, amazing, out of this world… We absolutely loved it!
We left the theatre singing the songs all the way back to the hotel. It’s such a great experience.

Being a cinema freak, I had to go to at least one movie in London, which was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, that we saw at the Odeon cinema near Marble Arch.
I wanted to see The Chronicles of Narnia too, but there wasn’t enough time.

We walked a lot, basically more than the 5 past years of my life put together. But we also tried out the buses and the underground which were so cool. We were lucky we got to London just before they pulled the old Routemaster double-decker buses off the street and that we got to ride in one.

I took a load of really nice photos that I’ll start putting up online soon.

In short, this was an amazing week that I truly enjoyed in a city I fell in love with and wish to get to visit again.
The only downside to it is that it’s a very expensive city. Other than that everything simply rocks.

Tunisian Blog Awards 2005

Tunisie Blog Awards 2005The first Tunisian blog awards Tunisie Blog Awards 2005 started today to promote the Tunisian blogosphere even more, encourage bloggers to work more on their blogs and give credit to the bloggers who are doing a great job.

The process will be going through 3 phases:

Phase 1: Blog submissions for each category (12 – 18 December)
Phase 2: Jury votes for top 5 submitted blogs in each category (19 – 25 December)
Results: Results are announced (26 December)

I’m one of the members of the jury in these awards, so for reasons of fairness my blog won’t be running for any of the awards.
Anyway, I will be accepting bribes. (just kidding of course, unless it’s something really worth it :P)

So everyone get over to the Tunisie Blog Awards 2005 site and start submitting your favourite blogs.

Anti-Arab Violence in Sydney, Australia

Racial tension sparked violence on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia yesterday when around 5,000 people, some yelling racist chants like “No more Lebs (Lebanese)”, attacked youths of Middle Eastern background, saying they were defending their beach after lifesavers were attacked there last week.

Violence then spread to a second beach, Maroubra, where scores of men armed with baseball bats smashed about 100 cars.
More than 20 people were injured and 12 arrested.

Police said a group of Neo-Nazis and white supremacists stirred on the drunken crowd at Cronulla.

Arabic and Muslim leaders said the violence had been expected as Muslims had been subjected to racist taunts, especially since the Iraq war and bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali where many Australians were among the dead.

“Arab Australians have had to cope with vilification, racism, abuse and fear of a racial backlash for a number of years, but these riots will take that fear to a new level,” said Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour.

[Source: Yahoo! News]
[Via: Je Blog]

Lebanese MP and Journalist Gebran Tueni Killed

A car bomb explosion killed anti-Syrian member of parliament and journalist Gebran Tueni in Beirut today.

Tueni is Publisher, Chairman of the Board, General Manager and Editorialist of the Arabic An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon.

Three other people also died and 10 were wounded in the explosion that blew up Tueni’s armoured SUV car as it was driving in the Mekalis area of mainly Christian east Beirut.

Lebanon has been rocked by a series of bombings and assassinations since the killing of the former Prime Minister, Rafik al-Hariri, on February 14th.
May Shidyak is another journalist who was a victim of one of these bombings a few months ago.

These attacks are totally unacceptable and should be stopped. The truth about who is behind them should be found out and the one’s responsible held accountable and punished.

[More: Reuters]
[Via: Sabbah]

Global Voices 2005 London Summit

So, I’m back to Tunisia after a wonderful week in London, that I’ll be getting into further detail about later. This post is about the Global Voices 2005 London Summit that I was there to attend and how it went.

First of all, it was great meeting all the really interesting bloggers from all over the world who were there for the summit. It was such a pleasure and so much fun getting to know them all and talking about our local blogospheres among a bunch of other issues.

As for the summit itself, it was really exciting and many interesting points were raised that are open to an ongoing conversation that will continue after the summit.

The main points that got me thinking and that I will be posting about individually soon, are:

– Bloggers vs. Mainstream media
– Bloggers complementing mainstream media
– Global Voices, what next?
– Projects around Global Voices
– What makes a successful blogosphere

These are all very big and general issues that we could go on forever talking about and discussing. Anyway it’s good that they were all opened for us all to think about and talk about further through our blogs, on irc and when we get to meet.

I’d personally like to thank everyone involved with the organization of the event, who did a great job; Reuters for being a very generous host; and all the people who took the time out from their busy everyday lives to come to London and make it a success.

For more details about the summit, here are some interesting links:

More From London

Going around London feels like one big game of monopoly.
All the streets, squares and stations that you’ve gone through and bought while playing the board game are there, only this time it’s in the real world and you’re walking through them, discovering them, bonding with them.

There’s so much to see in London, and you get this feeling of not wanting to miss any single bit of it, and we’re doing our very best not to.
I’m sure that in these past 5 days in London, I’ve personally walked more than I have in the past 5 years of my life.

We’ve been all around London, visiting its landmarks and attractions, walking in its breathtaking parks, discovering its streets, taking photos of every corner and doing every single thing possible in this amazing city.
We’ve done so much in so little time that I feel that I’ve been here for ages.
It’s amazingly easy to get around and get by in this city, and so much fun too.

I’ll be writing in more detail about all the places we’ve been too and all the great stuff we’ve seen.
Till then, I’ll leave you and go back to enjoy this beautiful city that I’ve totally fallen in love with.