The Devil and Miss Prym (Paulo Coelho)

I recently finished reading another one of Paulo Coelho’s books: The Devil and Miss Prym, which was a pretty good read.

As usual Coelho touches upon another important subject that leaves you thinking, re-thinking and exploring your inner self.

The book explores the parameters of Good and Evil, the eternal struggle between them, and their impact on the human soul, passing a message that there is no such thing as a person, or as humans in general, being inherently “good” or “evil”, all humans have both good and evil within them and what defines them are their choices, an idea that I totally agree with.

It might not be as powerful as “The Alchemist” or some of his other books, the characters might not be as full of life, and maybe the ending could have been stronger, but still the message does get across, and the goal of getting you to think is accomplished, something I love about Coelho’s writings.

I personally enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to people who have already enjoyed reading one of Coelho’s masterpieces.

My score for this book is: 7/10.

Buy it now!

Oscars 2007: The Winners

The Oscars were on last night, and here are the results for the main categories:

Best Picture: The Departed

Best Directing: Martin Scorsese for “The Departed” (At last!)

Best Leading Actor: Forest Whitaker for “The Last King Of Scotland”

Best Leading Actress: Helen Mirren for “The Queen”

Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin for “Little Miss Sunshine”

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson for “Dreamgirls”

Best Animated Feature: Happy Feet

Best Documentary Feature: An Inconvenient Truth

Best Music (Score): Babel

Best Music (Song): An Inconvenient Truth

Best Visual Effects: Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

For the full list of winners in all the categories, check the Oscars website.

The Hole In Man

… A Man sat alone, drenched deep in sadness.
And all the animals drew near to him and said: “We do not like to see you so sad… Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it.”
The Man said:”I want to have good sight.”
The vulture replied:”You shall have mine.”
The Man said:”I want to be strong.”
The jaguar said:”You shall be strong like me.”
Then the Man said:”I long to know the secrets of the earth.”
The serpent replied:”I will show them to you.”
And so it went with all the animals.
And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give… he left.
Then the owl said to the other animals: “Now the Man knows much and is able to do many things… Suddenly I am afraid.”
The deer said: “The Man has all that he needs. Now his sadness will stop.”
But the owl replied:”NO… I saw a hole in the Man… Deep like a hunger he will never fill… It is what makes him sad and what makes him want… He will go on taking and taking… Until one day the world will say: “I am no more and I have nothing left to give.”

That day isn’t too far away now…

[Quote taken from Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto]

[21/02/07] News Bytes From Tunisia

A round-up of some of the interesting news coming out of Tunisia these days…

Minister of education and training has announced that all Tunisian schools will have access to ADSL and WIMAX internet connections before June 2007.

A zero emission project, which is part of a Tunisian-Japanese cooperation agreement, is currently underway at the Borj Cedria technological park South of Tunis; it aims at creating photo-voltaic fields in order to generate some 260 kilowatts of energy, that can be used in several fields such as pumping of water for irrigation purposes, the recycling of used waters after treatment, the recycling of solid waste, the setting up of solar lighting lamps, as well as the building of a prototype for producing 1.5 Kilowatt of low-temperature wind energy destined to water pumping.

The neurology department of the University Hospital of Charles-Nicolle in Tunis, has successfully tested a new breakthrough surgical treatment which is destined to stop epileptic fits among patients suffering from this neurological disorder.

Tunisian lute virtuoso, Anouar Brahem will open the third edition of

Re-Evaluating Your Goals

Ten questions to ask yourself when you need to re-evaluate your goals and take a big decision on whether you should go on, simply change strategy or totally modify your goals:

1) What barriers and roadblocks are in the way of achieving your goal?

2) What 3 actions have you taken in the last week to move your goal forward?

3) Do you sense that your original goal might be flawed?

4) Do you struggle with the execution of your goal?

5) What resources have you tapped to meet your current challenge?

6) Does your original goal still put

Al Gore Announces ‘Live Earth’ Concerts

Environmental activists led by former US Vice President Al Gore announced plans yesterday for a 24-hour pop concert across seven continents in July to mobilize action to stop global warming.

The “Live Earth” concerts will be taking place on July 7th and will bring together more than 100 of the world’s top musical acts. The names of the performers haven’t been announced yet though.

The idea of the concerts and a new campaign under the name Save Our Selves (SOS) is to try and reach a global audience of around 2 billion people, through concert attendance, radio, television and Internet broadcasts, in order to raise awareness and mobilize people all over the world to take action.

I think it’s really good to have these kinds of events to raise awareness on very important issues like this, I just hope people all over the world start to realize how much is at stake and try to take actions to solve the problem.

More respect for Al Gore who is throwing all his weight behind environmental issues and global warming.

Update: The official website for the campaign and event is http://www.liveearth.org.

[Source: CNN]
[Via: Jimbo]

Blood Diamond

I finally got to watch the movie “Blood Diamond” yesterday, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou, directed and produced by Edward Zwick.

I’ve been wanting to watch this movie ever since it was released, mainly because I wanted to see how the issue was handled and presented, and secondly because Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role of a Zimbabwean diamond smuggler, with the accent and all, so yeah there was some nostalgia involved.

I really liked the movie, and I think it hits the right spot. As someone on imdb rightly puts it, this movie is a lot like Hotel Rwanda, another great movie which shows how terrible things are in Africa, and that the world is doing nothing to help; except that Blood Diamond shows that not only isn’t the world doing anything to help stop the bloodshed, but in fact is supporting and nurturing it.

The movie handles the issue of blood diamonds, otherwise known as conflict diamonds or war diamonds, which are diamonds that are mined in a war zone and sold, usually clandestinely, in order to finance an insurgent or invading army’s war efforts.
The story of the film is woven around the main characters to portray the sad reality created by the trade of blood diamonds.

The acting was very good, and I’m really appreciating Leonardo DiCaprio more and more as an actor with every new movie I see him in; Djimon Hounsou also gave a great performance as usual.
So it’s only normal that, among the five nominations this movie got for the Oscars, we find the nominations for Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou).
Movie-making wise, the film was really well done too.

I think movies like this one are really important to show people what others in some parts of the world are going through, and how their smallest actions could affect those people’s lives in a very big way.

Africa is an extremely rich continent which has been used, abused and thrown into suffering time and again by the leading powers of the world. It is unacceptable, it is important for the world to see and know this, and action has to be taken to stop it from going on.

Despite all the problems they’re living through, an old man in the movie tells Djimon Hounsou’s character: “just think what mess we would be in if we had oil!”
I can only agree with this old man; these days having oil is a curse for any country, it will only mean unwarranted attacks and wars launched upon its people.

In short, I recommend this movie, and while I’m at it, I also recommend watching Hotel Rwanda.

My score for this movie would be: 8.5/10.