Interesting tools...

Today I have been setting-up some tools for my blog that indicate the country from which my visitors come from... and I am very surprized about the results! I was wondering about my visitors from the US, actually. I couldn't find out from where they were exactly... First, I was thinking that as I'm writing the posts from Saudi Arabia, some people would be "interested" in the content of that blog, for any reason. Then I set-up another tool that gives me a geographical position of my visitors (I like this indicator very much) and I realized that they are not all coming from the state of Washington! So I am happy : my American visitors are not all working for the Pentagon! :)

Thanks also to the visitors from other countries, although I have never visited their homeland they give me some ideas for future holidays ;)

Best wishes for 2007!!

Well done! (please)

"Well done" is an expression I use when I go to this Steakhouse restaurant. I like it very much : American atmosphere, which reminds me of "Buffalo Grill" restaurants in France, friendly waiters, and most importantly, great great food. How to say.. The first time I went there, I was looking through the menu and was wondering what I would order. The choice is very wide and many meats (except pork meat of course, which is absolutely prohibited) are proposed... Beef, chicken, turkey, mutton... and also some fish, that I did not try. One feature of my personality is that I am very difficult and conservative about food, no one reading this post can say the contrary : neither the persons who know me well, and even less the people who don't know me :P You might think it's very silly to order a-l-w-a-y-s the same thing in a restaurant. But as far as I am concerned, I am a bit afraid of being disappointed with a changing. I know the value of what I'm ordering and I don't want to change. That's why I always have the same seat and the same dish. From my seat, next to the kitchens, I can see the waiters and cookers running here and there, filling the plates and so on. It is something we don't have in France. When you go to a restaurant there, the kitchens are hidden from the customers. Here it's not, and actually I prefer that.

In August, I decided that I would go to this restaurant once a week, every Wednesday after duty. Now, the waiters know me and know my order. It's like in France, when you've been living in the same town for a couple of years and are used to buy your baguette at the same baker shop, they know your name and your order. However, I don't consider staying here for years of course ;) And I know I will miss this restaurant and its food, for sure.

What is so special about it? That's simple : the quality of meat. In France, you can easily make the difference between the quality of meat that you buy at the supermarket, meat that you buy at the butcher's and meat you eat in a good restaurant. Until I reached Saudi Arabia, the best meat I had ever had was in those "Buffalo Grill" restaurants - even though the quality of their food has been decreasing those last years. To me, it was the highest level, the best taste. But now it's far behind what I experience here. The quality is incredibly good. I asked one manager about the origin of beefs; they are neither from the Gulf nor from Europe, but from Brazil. I was surprized.

I remember that after the affair of "mad cow" in Europe in the mid 90's, the French government had created a kind of "norm" such as ISO9001 but specific about Beef, after they discovered in the "Hard Rock Cafe" restaurant in Paris that they were keeping out-of-date beef meat in the freezers. This "VF norm" (Viande bovine Française) was supposed to "relieve" customers about the quality of meat they were buying. At that time, there was a huge phobia about meat coming from the UK, as if each piece of British cattle was contaminated with this "madness" !! But since that time, there has been a typically French paradox I still cannot understand. The Government insisted on important measures about freshness of meat, health of cattle, better tools to identify the origin of meat.. and in the meantime, quality has been decreasing. I'm not the only one who claim this. Meat is not as good as before, and I don't believe it's because of industrial methods of killing, because they haven't changed for 20 years; I have no clue that could solve this paradox. To conclude about french meat, I would say that such protectionist measures didn't provide us a better quality.. Brazilian beef does taste much better ;)

You may think that I have much time to waste, by writing about food. But if we look well into the topic, it's not just about food. It's generally about the way we (French people) deal with our own national products. It's not only about meat! Look at wine. For many decades now, the French has thought that the quality of their wine had no possible competitor all around the world. Bordeaux and Bourgogne vineyard's owners refuse to accept competition, but it's been there for a long time already. Five years ago, there was a wine worldwide contest. Each country picked its best wine and sent its best experts. Those experts, just by sipping some wine, could tell you about the country, the year, even the type of grape, the region, and many other details (that's why they are called experts :P). During this contest, of course, all the bottles were blindfolded, only 2 or 3 persons actually knew which label corresponded to which bottle. Each bottle had a number. So, after some rounds, the experts unanimously chose one bottle. They were all sure that it was one of the best Bordeaux ever but they were all wrong. It was a wine from Australia. I guess that a little wind of shame was blowing this community of "experts" that day.

So what? what is the relation between this wine contest and the quality of food? This relation can merely be called "illusion". This illusion is founded upon the old reputation of a French style that is nowadays completely obsolete. If French wine used to be the best, some years or decades ago, now the competition about quality is harsh and I have absolutely nothing against this; the instant when you start thinking that you are above any competition because your products have a good reputation, I think you start losing the point. Because in this competition, there are many guys who have enough energy to convince you that your reputation belongs to past. And I'm sure that this French touch already belongs to past....

Will you save Saddam?.... ehm.

Please don't take this question seriously. Even though I'm against death penalty, I won't give any personal point of view about this complicated topic, merely because I have no point of view about it. However, I still think we can make fun with anything so here is a little game. Enjoy!

Subsequently to what happened, maybe it's better to delete the game... and to change the topic :) Better listen to my weekly playlist ;)

Christmas memories...

There are some countries, maybe most of the countries in the world, where children's eyes will be illuminated in front of big displays of Santa Claus made of chocolate. But in Saudi Arabia, this does not exist... I mean, it could have existed but it didn't. This story happened in the supermarket (Hypermarket) Carrefour of the region. The department-Head for Food supplies decided to make a huge display only with Chocolate Santa-Claus, Kinder products like on this picture. The display was nice, prices were attractive and many people were filling their trolleyswith those red & white chocolates. But the issue was that some guys, wearing white and red suits but WHO WERE NOT Santa-Claus (look at the next image) but actually people called "Muttawa" came to the supermarket and asked to talk immediately to the General Manager. They gave him "fifteen minutes" to empty the display completely, otherwise they (the Muttawas) would call their colleagues and do it themselves. Of course, such a threat is not something to joke with... Why??

Because the Muttawas represent the religious authority here in Saudi Arabia. (5th of January : I have found the name of the Commission that hires the Muttawas : the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ... I will make no comment about this.) They have as much power as the police, maybe even more according to some sayings. Some years ago, the community of Muttawas pressured the royal family to get more power on people and companies, and they obtained satisfaction to their request. For example, in Saudi Arabia all the shops and companies stop their activities during prayer times, and the Muttawahs are in charge of "checking" that this rule is well observed. Subsequently, at prayer times, you will always find those guys with policemen, walking around and looking into the shops if anyone is working. And if they catch someone "red-handed", and if - this detail makes the consequences even more serious - the guy is Muslim... He could be beaten. Or his ass could be kicked until he reaches the gate of the Mosque. So... better not mess up with those guys. Also, if they see a woman who doesn't hide her hair, they absolutely have the right to make a remark to her. This is all about Muttawahs!

About my Christmas eve, it was how to say, less boring than a 14th of July :p No.. Honestly, those two days were interesting, I have no reason to complain. I received many phonecalls from relatives, friends, and was busy quite all the time. I celebrated the Eve in a nice bar-Club of Bahrain with Jais, it was the occasion to meet with some British and Irish people. They are incredible... So drunk that they could say "hello, where are you from?" 3 times to the same person in the same night. But very sociable and funny, when it comes to drinking. For one night I thought I was in the Rasmus Rask Bar, in DK. So... the atmosphere was good.

Today I went back to my office to correct the papers of my students... It took one hour all in all, which is not that much actually. My expectations as far as those exams were concerned were actually much lower than the results. I was well surprized by my students' papers, even though some of them are a bit weak at some points, they all made some efforts to pass it. I have no failing student this session. For level 1, particularly, students shew interest and motivation for language, even though they all have different aims. I have a 11-year-old boy, a British manager, and the 12 other students are Saudi doctors or engineers who will complete a postdoctoral program in France.

For the next days, I will try to enjoy some rest, but will go on working for private courses with a student who will attend a french school in Tours from next February and during 8 months. Then, he will be attending a speciality program in medicine at Hopital Cochin, Paris. On the 10th of January, 3 days before the beginning of a new session, I will invite my students from all the levels, here at the Institute. It would be an opportunity for them to meet with more experimented students, and also some managers from FR companies settled here. They are all complaining that there are too few occasions to implement their knowledge, to speak french in the region and that's true... So, let's try, we'll see the results.. Now I feel a bit hungry, i'll go and have dinner...

Seeya..

This blog is not dead

No it's not! Just that for some time, you know, I wanted to leave some things away, stop analysing all the time everything that was happening to me and live it 100%. I have to admit as well that the level of laziness was quite... how to say.. HIGH. But let's say that I managed to put up with this, and that i'll try to write here more regularly.

My last message was posted some 4 months ago, in the middle of August. At that time, I was just considering starting to write “seriously” my internship report which was to be handed one month later, when I would go for some vacations. Today, my need for some vacations is comparable to that former period, all the more since everyone around me (not geographically speaking, I’m talking about my relatives) is preparing Christmas. I don’t mean to complain at all about my situation here, since I will spend this period in Middle East – hoping that some 2 weeks will be given to me after the January-February Session – but it feels very weird to know that it’s Christmas period when absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g in your immediate environment reminds you of the events. No need to mention that in the Muslim context, 24th and 25th of December are not more significant than a 12th of April, unless one of those three days might match with an Islamic celebration. Even at my workplace, the students didn’t seem to understand clearly why I took the Christmas days “off”. “ But it’s going to be a hole in the session, isn’t it ?”,one said....
Yes, so what? Isn’t it me, the boss, after all? :)
It is in Bahrain that we find some elements, decorations that remind one about Christmas. Some big trees are decorated (Christmas palm trees are a bit... exotic but still, a tree is a tree even though it requires big balls.. ehm). However I still haven’t found the sandman with a carrot as a nose.
This “opening” to Christian culture in Bahrain is mainly due to the important community of filipino people. Some of them chose Islam, but they are not that many. I had long been wondering what was the connection between Filipinos and Christianism (Roman Catholicism). It’s thanks to – or because of, choose your point of view :P – the Spanish. Them Spaniards, again! They brought Catholicism there, and also had an influence in the forming of one of the main Filipino dialects called “Tagalog”. When you hear Filipinos speaking this language, despite their pronounciation which is typical from this Asian-Indonesian part of the world, it’s possible to recognize some spanish words such as numbers, for example...
So Bahrain is more tainted with this Christian tradition but we shan’t exaggerate : it’s still a Muslim kingdom and even though Christian churches are tolerated – contrary to Saudi Arabia that admit nothing but mosques – you will obviously find more mosques than any other religious temple. Another difference, as far as religion is concerned between Bahrain and S.A. is the belonging to a specific dissidence. In Islam, we mainly find two dissidences, the first one which is “Sunnite” and the latter that is “Chi’ite”. The Chi’ite Muslims have different mosques, their convictions are based upon the great tragedy of Islamic people in the History of religion. In Bahrain, the religious color is Chi’ite contrary to Saudi Arabia, where Islam was born. I’m not sure that the open-mindedness of Bahrainis is due to this religious specificity.. I’ll try to find some documents for next post about this and explain it better.
Today I found again my little book entitled “learning Arabic without pain”. So far, I’ve ignored the therapeutical virtues of learning this language. When you look more thoroughly into it, you realize that the title is a big joke, since its content seems to be very hard to digest. Still... This is a language I want to know more about. Now that I can read numbers (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩) and most of the arabic alphabet, it would be quite useful to grasp their meaning. To me, learning a language which looks like no one else has always looked exciting. I experienced that through my “very light” learning of Ancient Greek 4 years ago and I liked it very much. At that time, it was the changing of alphabet that gave a special difficulty and interest to the language. Now, the difficulty has reached another level above, since not only is the alphabet different, but the direction of reading is different. Another interesting thing is that letters, in Arabic, are not written in the same way depending on their position in the word : there are 29 letters in the alphabet, and each of them has 3 graphic variations : one variation if the letter is at the beginning of the word, another one when the word is in the middle of the word and a “final” version, when the letter is at the very end.
Let’s forget about linguistic stuff for a while... Some more news will be coming soon. For now, I will just go to bed, keeping some things to say – I mean, to write – in a little corner of my mind. I hope my “frequent readers” who were disappointed with this huuuuge break will excuse me.
See you..