Category: Tunisia

So, the Tabarka Jazz Festival is just around the corner, and everyone’s getting their plans ready to go to one concert or another.

The schedule this year is as follows:

02/07/2004 : Buena Vista Social Club
03/07/2004 : Billy Paul
04/07/2004 : Archie Shepp
06/07/2004 : Manu De Bango & Ray Lema
07/07/2004 : Mc Coy Tyner
08/07/2004 : Captain Mercier, Charlier Sourisse & Gnaoua
09/07/2004 : Romane
10/07/2004 : Liz Mc Comb

I’m not sure I’ll be going to any of the concerts, although I find the first two quite interesting and cool.

So we’re skipping summer this year in Tunisia, or so it seems.

Usually at this time of the year, the heat would be rising exponentially to reach it’s climax in August, we’d be sweating buckets, sticky with mediterranean humidity, gasping for air and dying for a good swim.

This year, this week, the weather is quite autumn-like; cold strong winds, loads of bucket sized rain drops and our jackets are out of the closets again.
In fact, yesterday it rained throughout the day and night. This morning we woke up to find water flooded streets and slow traffic jams because of it.

I’m quite sure though that once this low ends towards the end of the week, we’ll be going for a record heat ride.
Hold on to your clothes everybody, you’ll sure feel like tearing every bit of them off soon enough 😛

So, the Arab Summit will be taking place this weekend in Tunis.

Tunis is looking ever so beautiful. The flags of the Arab countries are flapping on every major street, trees have been trimmed, grass has been cut, beautiful flowers are everywhere, and all is perfect.

Security is high and tight already and a big part of downtown Tunis around the location of the summit will be totally sealed off starting this afternoon.

I’m curious to see what Arab leaders will come out with after this summit. There’s a lot of talk about reform of the Arab league and of the Arab countries, human rights, woman’s rights and more which is very interesting, but I’m not sure there can be one formula that fits for all Arab countries.

Whatever they come out with, I just hope this summit won’t be a failure and a dissapointment to the Arab people as all the previous summits were.

Tunisia wants to make this summit a successful and useful one and that gives me some hope.

The sky has suddenly turned Mirinda Orange and started raining mad bucketloads of water mixed wth red dirt.

All of a sudden, I feel like I’m living on Mars instead of on our blue Earth.

I wonder what the hell we have done to our dear planet to have stuff like this happening?
Is it normal or have we gone on and screwed things up big time?

I even hear some of my co-workers jokingly asking if it’s the end of the world.
Don’t think so, but well if we follow this same rhythm, believe me, we’re not that far away from it.

I’m quite sure some places will get flooded and that the street taking to my place will be even shittier than usual.
Our street is a really amazing one. They fix it and all is perfect. Not a week passes by and they’re back destroying the poor thing. Then they leave it like that for a few months until enough complaints pile up to start annoying them. That’s when they come back to fix the street again.
But, wait, the cycle goes on and a week later they’re back again…etc.
We’re currently in one of the ultimate destruction stages for the street.
And believe me, this rain isn’t going to make it any better.
I’ll just have to use the other way home today.

Two guys from the national census people passed by on Friday.
I was still at work but my wife had already made it home so she was the unlucky one who had to answer all their questions 😛

They had a list of around 50 questions targetted at knowing how many people lived in the household, their ages, education level, occupation, …etc.
They also asked a lot about what we had and didn’t have from cars to dishwashers to cellphones …etc.

What I found interesting are the questions about how many cellphones we had, how many regular phones, if we used the internet, how many daily hours we used the internet for, …etc.
I would be really interested in knowing the results they get for that. Shame the information collected is confidential.
Still I think they might release some general statistics and numbers.

Anyway, I hope the results come out to be good and that the government pushes even more for cheaper internet and telecommunications services and keeps encouraging wider adoption of new technologies.

The national census of the Tunisian population starts today.

The last census took place in 1994. The Tunisian population was then 8.7 million. It is estimated today at about 10 million. Thanks to the country’s family planning program, Tunisia’s demographic growth rate has shot down to less than 1 percent.

More than 14,000 trained employees will take part in the collection and processing aspects of the 2004 census operation, scheduled from April 28 to May 25, 2004.

So the first private Tunisian TV station, that was code-named Nasr TV, officially has a name and a launch date now.

The name is, hmmm, “The Hannibal Channel”. It should start broadcasting next October on the Hotbird satellite thereby covering most of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

According to Mr. Nasra (The owner of the station), about 30 % of the station’s programs will be dedicated to social topics and women’s issues. The rest of the programming will initially include entertainment, sports and culture. The content of the programs will “evolve based on audience demands,” he said.

Now that’s all great, and I can’t wait to watch this channel and see what new it brings to the Tunisian audiovisual landscape.
But, what’s with the name?!

I mean, ok, as a Tunisian I am proud of our history and heritage, but isn’t it enough about that already?
Why does every other company have to be named after Elissa, Hannibal or Carthage?
Not only in Tunisia, the same trend is mirrored all over the world; in Egypt it’s the Pharaohs, in Jordan it’s Petra, …etc.

I’m fed up of these over-used goal-less names.
Has human creativity run dry?

I honestly think that “The Hannibal Channel” is a bad name for a TV channel, it’s not cool, it’s not fresh, it’s not catchy, in short it’s nothing a TV channel’s name should be.
I’m already thinking about what their logo could look like and I don’t want to think no more, it’s simply a nightmare.

The other day I was zapping through satellite channels, and I ran across an Egyptian channel called Nefertiti. I just laughed at how stupid a name that was and passed.
I wish that wouldn’t have to happen to the first private Tunisian channel.

If anyone from The Hannibal Channel reads this, please consider changing the name while you still can.