A Jihad for Love

I am a sucker for documentaries, and since they don’t generate as much $$$ as Hollywood productions, I’ll show my support and write an article about “A Jihad for Love” from Parvez Sharma.

“A Jihad for Love” took five years before being its first screening. If you haven’t already heard about it, well, it’s a documentary about homosexuality within the muslim community. While this is a controversial topic, the documentary is rather engaging. For the islamic believers, it challenges their belief and their interpretations of the koran, and for the rest of us, it engages us in understanding how one of the main religion in the world tackles the still taboo subject of homosexuality.

!مرحبا

It’s been a few weeks since I started learning Arabic, and I am quite enjoying it so far, but why Arabic?

Is it because:

a. I want to better understand Islam.

b. I have too much free time.

c. I want to impress my relatives back home who all speak Arabic.

[kr] 파리의 연인 – [en] Lovers in Paris

I’m falling for it again, despite their completely unrealistic plot, I am once again becoming addicted to korean love drama!

Lovers in Paris (2004) is a pretty loaded story, and has a pretty unusual ending, but overall, very good to watch.
The scenes in Paris are cute, and it’s nice to see a korean drama taking place elsewhere than the usual Seoul.

Meetic: the Match.com with a French touch

I don’t know why but I love learning about entrepreneurs, and the story behind their startups.

A few months ago, I discovered the persona that is Loic Le Meur, a french entrepreneur now in San Francisco. I was looking through all his podcasts, and found one that was especially interesting.

The Sunday week review

On the brunch menu today was a warm spinach salad. It consists of a bed of spinash leaves, tomatoes, sizzled red pepper and salami, and an egg on top with the yolk 3/4 cooked. The dish was accompanied by goat cheese toast. I was going for a chèvre chaud, but kind of put too much goat cheese, so didn’t get the result I wanted. I’ll post a picture when I succeed. An orange juice to go along, and my stomach was set to go out.

San Francisco Pride 2008: United by Pride, Bound for Equality, my first Pride event. It was quite something to see the Castro pacted with people partying on Saturday night. On Sunday, Civic Center was really the place to check out, the square was transformed into a party square, entertainment on the main stage, and two DJ’s jamming on each side, lots of people and fun! Most of all though, you could really see and feel the love there. I was really happy for all those LGBT people and thanks to them for throwing an event like that!

Meanwhile, eight hours away, the Euro 2008 final, Germany and Spain disputing the title, with Spain coming out on top with a score of 1-0. I don’t follow sports events so much anymore, but it’s always cool to see all the fans supporting their teams, and celebrating!

Lots of happiness in the World this week-end!

French news in France

On a daily basis, I go to LeMonde.fr to see what the latest headlines are in France. It’s interesting to see what’s happening in this country from the outside, and I especially get a kick at reading articles about America and its crazy society… they often make it sound worse than it really is, really! I am also still loyal to the Yahoo! News, mostly simply checking what headlines are on to keep up to date with the current latest news or other weird stories that they feature.

If you are looking to practice some French and want to get an insider view at what the french society, take a pick from one of those popular online news sources…. and just like with the american news media, all the articles may not be the most kosher source of news

[Music] Trahison by Vitalic

I have this track playing in continue right now.

I actually came across its while browsing the movie selection at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The music is used in the trailer of the french movie, “Water Lilies” (Naissance de pieuvres).

Iremember that as soon as I heard it, I immediately felt transported into another world, completely absorbed by hypnotizing the tune, almost feeling like in a trance..

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the showing, but am glad I discovered a new artist, Vitalic.

my pre summer tune

Gmail vs. Yahoo! Mail vs. Hotmail

Update 6-19-2008: addition of a video at the end.

I remember creating my first email account, it was in 1997, with Yahoo! I still have that account, but it’s filled with thousands of junk emails so it is seldom being used nowadays. Following that, I created a bunch of Hotmail accounts, I have forgotten all of them.

I remember when Gmail started, what a buzz it was! Being content with the email service provided by my university, it was only after graduation that I started using Gmail as my primary email, this was in 2004. The unlimited storage was the greatest thing, and also the new user interface was interesting, but here we are now in 2008, and here’s what I have to say about the three main mail services used in America.

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The unlimited storage is still great, but it must be the only thing that’s still stands out for me. I have never really bought in the Gmail Chat, but it does serve as a nice backup in case I do not have access to my MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger or Skype. The service is still good and I never thought any new mail service could do better, but Yahoo! proved me wrong.

I liked Gmail simplicity and usability, but its simplicity is now lacking some spice, and I am starting to feel creeped out with how it’s trying to guess whether I have an event going on or a package being delivered to me.

So Yahoo! came out with a new interface a couple months ago. It took a while for me to switch to the latest version, but ever since, I have really enjoyed it. It’s nice to see that Yahoo! didn’t try to copycat Gmail, instead, they went a different route, and the idea isn’t actually all that innovative. The new Yahoo! Mail now resemble a desktop mail application. It’s new, yet feels familiar.

I like the colorful interface, the tabs, and particularly the fact that there are not a bunch of services attached to my Yahoo! account.

Not much has changed since back then, and it doesn’t even have unlimited storage. I am not sure why I have account with Hotmail, oh right, I created one for my MSN Messenger.

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This is a rather simple review but I just wanted to say that in a time where everyone is “googled up”, I am starting to think about switching to Yahoo! Mail… this should only be a matter of time.

I wonder how everyone else will welcome the new Yahoo! Mail vs. the already popular Gmail.

To spice up this post a little bit, here is a Yahoo! Mail vs Gmail comparison from Veronica Belmont.

“Free” Tibet

In July 2006, I had the opportunity to visit Tibet. Here are my impressions of it.

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Tibet remains the place I prefer on this small planet. Not only because of the amazing landscapes and the colossal cultural background, but also for its singular political and geographical situation.

When I look at this picture of Lhasa, I feel like a gap between the city and the landscape behind. Does the mountains noted that a lot of chinese modern style’s new buildings where burgeoning almost everywhere in the city? Hehe…

I’ve been lucky enough to visit the Budala Gong with local Tibetans. We went where tourists can’t go, which made it even more interesting. It’s forbidden to take photos inside. There are a lot of golden Buddhas statues and it’s still possible to visit the appartements of the former Tibetan government.

Actually Tibetans are still going there to practice their religion, but most people are chinese tourists. Seeing an old woman trying to pray in front of a statue while a tourists group was quickly and noisily passing behind her, I suddently felt ill at ease: I was actively participating to Tibet’s transformation into a big folk museum for consumers… Then I wondered what would be the situation if no tourists were visiting that place…

For sure, I was deeply impressed and moved on that day.

This street is located at the base of the Budala Gong, there are a lot of Tibetans restaurants and you can easily find yak meat dishes and the local butter tea, which is really delicious!!!

In 2006, there was still no McDo in Lhasa…

Supporting Tibet’s cultural freedom

For those who have taken a stroll by the Golden Gate Bridge, you all know how windy it is out there, so looking at what some people did today. I say big THUMBS UP!

Seriously, of all cities in America, choosing San Francisco for the (Beijing) Olympinc torch to run by was clearly not a smart idea. The organizers would have been better choosing a place where no one cares about the Olympic Games. No protests would happen this way.

Only a few months away from the Olympic Games in Beijing, but it’s already ugly. I really wonder how it’s gonna be like during the games, especially with the journalists and reporters, who part of them support Tibet, and most importantly the freedom of expression.

The majority of protesters seem to vouch for an independent Tibet, however, this is not really the Dalai Lama’s message. Most important for Tibetans is to have the freedom to live in their lands like their ancestors used to, and be able to keep following their traditions and cultures. This is our freedom of speech in America, so even though our country may be sending troops over to Irak, we, as americans have the right to be against and be open about it.

As I think again about one day moving to China, I wonder how I would be able to get excited to live in country that’s developing so fast, but yet, doesn’t allow its residents to freely express themselves.