New Year Post

Just a totally random post as usual ;-P (By the way, I might be updating my blog a little less in January... we'll see...)

Anyway, firstly something that should have been in my Christmas post, but I was sent this link a bit late, so I'm including it in my New Year post instead:


Secondly, there's lots of end of the year articles, statistics, polls etc. few of which I find interesting ;-P (even the Bollywood ones don't seem to be holding my attention) But here are two exceptions to the rule...
This is a ranking of 100 strange facts compiled from BBC news stories in 2006.
And here's something for movie buffs - the IMDb Starmeter. Every year IMDb (the biggest movie database on-line) compiles a ranking of the most visited star pages, which may well be one of the best ways of determining who are the most popular film stars in the world...

Virgin births

Because I think virgin births are a very appropriate subject matter at this time of year, here is a BBC story concerning some. Flora's eight babies will be due around Christmas which makes this story even more appropriate ;-P And in case you're wondering Flora is a komodo dragon :D

A Christmas post

So, er, Merry Christmas everyone :D

Here's a Christmas card from Greenpeace (it's rather indoctrinating, but I still think it's nice ;-P).

This on the other hand is a rather amazing (and ridiculous) show of Christmas lights which my mum sent me a link to:

You can read more about it here.

And finally I wanted to link to PotterCast #68 (right-click on the link to download the mp3) which has some absolutely amazing Christmas Carols with Harry Potter lyrics (they start at about 0:33:30 on the file). My personal favourites are the one to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer about Moaning Myrtle (about 0:35:30) and the one which is supposed to be Snape singing (about 0:42:30). Of course they'll probably only be funny to those who read Harry Potter obsessively, but I still thought I'd pass the link on ;-P

Polish National Figure Skating Championships 2007 (Senior and Novice)

My more detailed skating impressions are in Polish on the walley forum where they belong. This is just a random post which pretends to be about skating, but is actually a very bad attempt at proving that I do have something that you might call a social life and that isn't confined to the internet (something that everyone including me seem to notoriously doubt). Just to keep up appearances though, here are the results of this event.

Anyway, back to my social life - here is the proof I have for its existance:

See, I am sitting with as many as four people (and a fifth is taking the picture), don't you think that's impressive? ;)

Ok, ok - I know I've not convinced anyone ;-P I am a sad, lonely person who doesn't have a social life and nobody likes me, so I keep writing a blog instead ;-P
I do however have a peculiar passion for watching figure skating and it can get so extreme that I go to watch skating events that no more than 5 other people (who aren't skaters, coaches, skating officials or families of a skater) want to watch and then I torment innocent people by putting up video clips of these performances on-line.
If you think you're up for the challenge, here are two clips from Nats (do you like my camerawork? ;-P). I uploaded them to google because youtube doesn't like me (either me or my firewall). There will be more vids on the walley forum, but this is all I'm putting on my blog from this event.

This is Ania Jurkiewicz who has made a comeback this season. She was once 5th at junior Worlds, but has not competed for the last 4 years or so. Me and the 4 people you can see on the photo above tried to remember when was the last time that a lady in Poland landed a triple flip at Polish Nationals and we had to go back to about 1999 or 2000... Therefore please enjoy the first triple flip performed by a lady at Polish Nats in the last 7 years or so ;-P (and the program is pretty good too, she won the senior ladies by a mile)


And this is the short program of Przemek Domański. I'm a huge fan of his. And while probably a major reason for my fandom is that he likes to tell us about how he keeps wiping his nose on his trousers during sit spins and what happens during a jump if he doesn't find a moment in the performance where he can wipe it (which apparently was particularly problematic at these Nats because the rink was very cold), he is also a very ambitious skater and I think this season he's skating at a truly international level. Proof of that is that he was not satisfied with this short program which he said was his worst this season (he had meant to start with a triple-triple combination, not a triple-double). He still won both parts of the senior men competition and ended up with a 20 point margin over everyone else.


So after having failed to convince anyone that I have a social life or that Polish skating is interesting (which it really is to me although sometimes even I'm surprised by this), I convey my Christmas wishes to all who are reading my blog :) I hope the one or two people reading it spend it very enjoyably!

NOTE (29.XII.2006): I would like to give credit for the wonderful photo I used to Magda :D (see the comments to this post). I have also been instructed to say that she is not in fact a blackmailer contrary to what I've written about her in the comments (but I'm not sure if you're better off believing her or me about it ;-P)

Very geeky article about how google works

A bit of a follow-up to my previous post. You can read a very geeky article about how google's search engine works here. I didn't read the whole thing (too mathematical), but even reading just the beginning where they explain about page rank I thought was very interesting.

My favourite part of the article is the opening:
Imagine a library containing 25 billion documents but with no centralized organization and no librarians. In addition, anyone may add a document at any time without telling anyone. You may feel sure that one of the documents contained in the collection has a piece of information that is vitally important to you, and, being impatient like most of us, you'd like to find it in a matter of seconds. How would you go about doing it?
Posed in this way, the problem seems impossible. Yet this description is not too different from the World Wide Web, a huge, highly-disorganized collection of documents in many different formats.

Something (from the article) that I found particularly cool to play around with is this page rank checker. It's only an estimate, but it's fun to play around with. Can you find any pages with rank 10? :D The only one I tried that got 10 was google itself ;-P But I found a couple of 9s (wikipedia, IMDb,yahoo).

Search Mash - the new Google (literally)

Google is always changing and developping (and it has to if it's to stay the biggest in its field). But of course whilst it's testing new things out, it can't afford anything to break. This is where Search Mash comes in. It's the bleeding edge version of google.
It's already quite cool, so you might want to try it out. If you want to find out more, check out this article.

The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves (1991)

I just watched "Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves" and had a really good laugh. It is a very Hollywoodish film (as in Robin Hood is your classic unflawed action hero), but I was surprised at some of the themes in it to the point of wondering how it's possible that censors and Hollywood producers (in the early 1990s no less) let that through. And then I visited IMDb's trivia page for this film and found out that actually they didn't let these things through ;-P
Don't get me wrong, it's not as if there's anything that shocking in it, but it's not what you'd expect of a light-hearted movie like this - particularly one which is aiming at rather low age certificates (PG in the UK, PG-13 in the US).

From what I can make out (based on the IMDb boards for this film), I was watching the extended British DVD version which has less cuts than the original theatrical release, but is still cut more than some of the DVD releases elsewhere in the world. The reason for this is that the British distributor wanted to retain a PG certificate for the film.

What does the Sheriff of Nottingham have to do with all these censorship musings? Well, that was the character that they cut the most of (this film is quite a different take on him). The cuts not relating to him were done purely because of excessive gore, although why they were excessive I cannot say because the version I saw didn't have them in ;-P (Although to give you an inkling - even in what I saw, this film is pretty heavy on medieval torture)
Most of the scenes relating to the Sheriff were thankfully (because I thought they were the best part of the film) left in my version, although I'm rather disapointed at not having seen him scheduling his whores with words such as "you! my room...10:30. and you! 10:45. and bring a friend." .
One of the most baffling cuts that were made to the version of the film that I watched is the removal of part of the famous spoon dialogue (it's so famous that WikiQuote has it on its spoon page). They kept the first line, but removed the other two. I don't quite understand this cut (why would those lines make a difference between a PG or higher certificate?), but see what you think for yourself - here is the quote:
"Locksley! I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon."
"Why a spoon cousin? Why not an axe?"
"Because it's dull, you twit, it'll hurt more."

I cannot continue writing without mentioning how good Alan Rickman is as the Sheriff and prewarn you that there might be quite a lot of gushing about him in the rest of this post ;-P I would have put in a video link here, but I haven't found anything suitable (the trailer is awful and has hardly any of Rickman in it anyway), so I'll content myself with a link to a picture of him as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
So first of all, one of the reasons to love the Sheriff of Nottingham in this film is that he has all the best lines ;-P There's some very black humour there (something that I think doesn't usually feature in American action films) and the way Alan Rickman delivers it is absolutely hilarious.
While the darkness of the character is maybe not portrayed that graphically, it is certainly one of the most perverse Hollywood villains I've seen in a while. Right at the start we're introduced not just to the atrocities he inflicts on people and his lack of anykind of fair play (quite classic elements to any Hollywood villain ;-P), but also to his total lack of sexual inhibition and perhaps most perversely (at least I was very surprised to see this and it didn't make the theatrical release) the film also shows him worshipping the devil.
But apparently, Alan Rickman wasn't playing a villain *grin* Here is something he says in the DVD extras:
I'm not playing a villain. I'm just playing somebody who has a certain checklist of things that he wants in life and he goes after them. And other people say, like Robin Hood decides, that's appalling and it must be stopped.
While the quote totally cracks me up, this is actually what I most loved about Alan Rickman's portrayal. Despite playing some things which are quite perverse when you start thinking about them, the way it's done there's just no judgement of whether the Sheriff is doing right or wrong, it's played as if whatever Nottingham is doing is the most natural thing in the world to do. This, as you might imagine, has a rather bizzarre effect in scenes such as a bishop performing a marriage ceremony while the Sheriff is holding his bride down on the floor and preparing to rape her in front of the bishop the moment the marriage is proclaimed (this was probably my favourite scene, although hardly the only one I loved).

On a final note, here's a thread on the IMDb boards that amused me a lot. I'm very obviously not alone in adoring Alan Rickman as Nottingham (the thread is titled "Did anyone else want the Sheriff of Nottingham to win?"). I doubt anyone will want to wade through the whole thing because it's very long. It's basically lots of people gushing about Alan Rickman and many of them saying he was much better than Kevin Costner (who played Robin Hood) and then there's people who think these people who like Nottingham so much are mad and saying Costner was way better and how can anybody find such an evil character sexy anyway. There are two quotes that particularly cracked me up. The first is by somebody who like me clearly enjoyed Nottingham a lot, but I find her wording rather amusing:
Its very impolite to want to cut someones heart out with a spoon but he makes it sound so funny!
And then there's a post by somebody who thinks all these people gushing over such an evil character are completely mad:
Lets's see...you guys are all rooting for a man who is a: murderer (of his own cousin and no doubt thousands of others); a would-be rapist; a devil worshipper; a contract killer (hiring Celts to do his dirty work); a pervert (with dozens of whores at his beck and call). Yeah, you picked a real upstanding criminal to admire and drool over. WELL NOT ME!

Freaky deaths

The BBC somehow managed to report three deaths that rather freaked me out in very short succession of each other.

Here's the story of Mariesa Weber, who was missing and then finally found dead by her family wedged upside down behind a bookcase in her room.

This is about a baby murdered in a microwave.

And this is about a boy who was eaten alive by a herd of pigs.

At first I read these stories in the way I would read a fictional horror story (I even once saw a film in which one of the characters was eaten alive by pigs). But then after a moment of reading and thinking about it I totally freak out - it's real! People really do die like that!

Random health issues

For some reason when I browse the BBC news site I end up reading a lot about developments in medicine (while I don't usually think much about this while I'm doing it, admitting to this now makes me feel as if I'm behaving like some old, grumbly lady - who else would be reading up on these things? ;-P).

Anyway, here's two articles that caught my eye (who knows, maybe there are more people like me who are grumbly, old ladies at heart and are reading my blog?).
The first is about smoking. According to statistics if you're a heavy smoker, cutting down does little to help your health, you just have to completely stop for it to have a significant impact.
Now while I do not smoke myself, the other article is one that veeeery much applies to me. It's about sitting in front of computers and the impact it has on your back. For some reason everyone always tells you to sit up straight - well apparently that's bullshit. Maybe I should bully my parents into getting myself a different chair for the computer - one which would allow my back a different angle ;-P

Gronkiewicz wins the local elections in Warsaw

Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz is now president of Warsaw with many saying this is because of the public support she received from Marek Borowski and Aleksander Kwaśniewski (before their support, it was Marcinkiewicz who was leading the polls).
I would have probably not bothered with putting this news up onto my blog (I can't say I'm particularly excited about it even if I'm happier that she's president rather than Marcinkiewicz), but I figured that since I had been following the elections and the left-centre developments in particular on my blog, it was worth noting the outcome. However, there is also another reason - I'm getting more and more of a kick out of news such as this being reported internationally. Yep, honestly! The BBC actually thinks news such as this is worth reporting, see here if you don't believe me ;-P And it's not just them either. See here for what a search on Google News comes up with, apart from Polish news outlets there are media reports about this from outlets based in places like Pakistan, Turkey, France, Bulgaria, Romania... I like this, I like the feeling that the world and particularly Europe cares about what's happening in Polish politics. Not because it makes me feel Poland is important, but because it makes me feel that there's certain things (like for example re-introducing the death penalty which PiS would very much like to do) that Polish politicians cannot get away with.

Dhoom 2

So because Bollywood trailers are the best (and besides - I must keep promoting Bollywood on this blog ;-P), here's the latest high tech offering from India. No Shahrukh in this one, but hey, Bollywood can be fun even without him (shocking, but true ;) ).
The biggest selling points of the film (and the first box office results in India seem to indicate that they have worked well) are Hrithik, Abishek, Aishwarya, dazzling action scenes (most of which Hrithik did himself after extensive training) and a shocking kissing controversy (Aishwarya is Abishek's girlfriend, but she has a kissing scene with Hrithik in this film).

Below are three trailers for Dhoom 2:



As usual *sniff sniff* because I doubt this is going to be released in Poland.

Security in Macs

Just because I can be a bit geeky about computers (that's what I'm studying after all), I thought I should introduce that side of me onto this blog as well ;-P
I came across an article about security in Mac computers and thought it was interesting. With adverts like this:

One does get the impression that Macs are much more secure than windows - this is not true. Every system (as the article underlines) has security threats.
However as I'm a biased Linux user, I'll just say that IMO there's one aspect of security that open source systems (like Linux or BSD) have over ones with closed code (OS X and Windows) and that's a much faster response to security threats (as the article tells us, Mac developpers are particularly slow, despite advertising security as one of their biggest assets).

The Kinsey Institute says Linux users have bigger penises

Clearly this is an excellent reason to use Linux rather than Windows - especially if you're female like I happen to be ;) Mention of this fascinating fact is here.

Borowski supports Gronkiewicz-Waltz

PO still don't seem to have made up their minds what their actual ideology is (some are supporting PiS, others are supporting LiD and yet others are not saying anything), Gronkiewicz-Waltz has however tentively stated that she might consider a PO-LiD coalition in Warsaw on the local government level which has prompted Marek Borowski to support her in the second round of the local elections.
Borowski explains his view further in a recent interview which you can read here. He is still rather derogative as far as the whole of PO goes, but has decided to support Gronkiewicz in Warsaw.
Links are in Polish, sorry!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer and more

So because the new Harry Potter film is soooo close to coming out (only 7 months more to wait! ;-P), the whole promotional campaign has started for good. It's no longer random photos and interviews from the sets, the first official teaser trailer is out:

I'm actually rather disapointed with it - I much preferred the stills that were released. The trailer is all action and high tension (the music is so over the top!), only Snape in the Occlumency scene gets me excited. I guess I have unrealistic expectations - I'd like it to be an art house film or something of the sort ;) (Cuaron wasn't that far from doing that with film 3 and there's more and more rumours that he might be back for film 6, so maybe there's still hope ;-P)
Anyway, I found a nice fan made trailer on youtube. It's just a slideshow of some of the stills that were released (but since I liked the stills that suits me ;-P) and it's set to the soundtrack of Requiem for a Dream:

There are some recent stills which weren't included in that fan made trailer and there's a few which I'm again excited about (kind of depressing that I keep liking the stills, but not the video ;-P). Here's Harry with his geeky Ministry hearing appearance (there've been similar stills around but this one I think is particularly nice ;-P) and then there's two pics which people are very excited about - Harry's hand after his detentions with Umbridge (pic1 and pic2). Of course what's disapointing is that in the books the line that Umbridge has Harry ingrain into his hand is "I must not tell lies" which I think is a much better line than "I will not break rules". Of course the book is so huge that they've definitely had to cut things out of it - so perhaps Harry's outburst in Umbridge's class was cut and that's why they had to change the line. I hope it's that, otherwise I think it's a horrible change ;-P
At least the visual side of the film should be very good and the person largely responsible for it is in fact Sławomir Idziak, so there's a nice Polish accent there ;)

But back to the official trailer - book 5 is dark and intense, so in a sense it's good that they have gone that way (the trailer certainly implies that it's going to be the darkest of the lot!), but on the other hand book 5 is probably one of the funniest of the series, so I really hope that comes across in the film as well (the trailer doesn't make me optimistic about that even if the photos implied it :-/). Anyway, just to show you how much darker this new Potter trailer look, check out the trailers for the previous four films.

1: Philosopher's Stone


2: Chamber of Secrets


3: Prisoner of Azkaban


4: Goblet of Fire


2nd trailer to 4:


While Goblet of Fire was the first of the lot to get a PG-13 certificate in the US rather than a PG as the rest had done, I think the trailer for Order of the Phoenix implies that the film could be darker even than that (that at least I'm happy about). But on the other hand I'm starting to wonder - is it still going to be marketed at children?

But back to video material of the new HP film - there's also a very short TRL preview available on-line (near the end Daniel Radcliffe talks about the kiss in a rather amusing way):


The best preview we've had so far though (even better than the trailer) is a preview that was shown on HBO:

One part that I'm absolutely loving is Imelda Staunton as Umbridge. She is just spot on! And it's not easy to balance an act like that, I mean it's a woman who is on the one hand supposed to be all sweet, dressing in pink all the time and talking to almost everybody as if they were 5 year olds, but at the same time being a really, really nasty cow who for example punishes students by making them cut lines like "I must not tell lies" in their own skin. And she's just brilliant - all this is coming across even in those very short clips :)
I'm sort of disapointed with the hightened drama of it all though. The interviews we've had so far have mostly been saying stuff like that David Yates has really tried to take it down, make it a bit subtler (which on the one hand I say yes to, but on the other hand I think it's damn difficult to do with this sort of material - the Harry Potter series is hardly subtle ;) It's the Bollywood of literature ;) ). Unfortunately - I just don't see it. Not in the previews we've had so far. I'm particularly disapointed with the clips of Sirius in this preview. Not only is he weighing his words in a way that makes them very over the top, but he is also out of character. Sirius is an energetic man with a short temper who acts fast and thinks later (or not even then sometimes) - that's what the books have made us to believe anyway. But the Sirius on the clip is a different Sirius :-/
Oh well - it seems like most of the film is going to be like that for me - it'll score on some points and disapoint on others :-/

Well, that's it for the moment. Just as a P.S. (because I don't think it's big enough to put in a seperate post and yet it's such a ridiculous piece of Harry Potter trivia that I think it's worth mentioning), here's the annual Forbes list of the richest fictional characters. Lucius Malfoy is on the list ;)

Prokofiev diaries published

Because I think my blog has become too serious and political, I've decided I must put in a few totally silly and senseless posts. And because I think all my readers will be utterly fascinated with this news, I thought it was worth putting in my blog ;-P
So, there you go, Sergei Prokofiev's diaries have been published.
And while I do own about 3 CDs of his music and think I might enjoy the read (if I ever get hold of the book which is doubtful), the true reason for posting this is because I thought it was a wonderful excuse to link to one of my favourite ever figure skating programs.

So this is Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat skating the Free Dance that won the bronze medal at the 1998 Olympics to Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet:

I think they are one of the most unique ice dancers we've had in the history of the sport. They introduced so many things into ice dance that we, the fans enjoy to this day - an image based on unmistakable hairstyles, theatrical expression that made the ISU amend the rulebook with rules that ice dancers should aim to perform dancey routines rather than theatrical ones and lifts in which it was Marina who lifted Gwendal rather than the other way round (it was in fact in this program that it was done for the first time ever in skating).

Islam and the West

This is a difficult topic for me to write about (although at the same time one I really want to write about). I've never been around Muslims or their culture, so there are many things that I might not understand about Islam and therefore also about its conflict with the West (if there even is one - there are those who say it is a purely political conflict and has nothing to do with culture or religion). But I guess that's why I want to write this (as I explained in my first post on this blog, this blog is a Pensieve ;-P so it's supposed to help me put random thoughts in order).
Before I get to the point, I want to underline very, very clearly that I'm writing this from a Westerner's point of view, which means this post is a mix of news tidbits from Western media, some stereotypes and then a few tibits I've come across which seem to go against what I've been made to believe about Islam.
I'm not going to write about terrorism - I don't think I have anything worth saying that hasn't been said a million times over by others. And anyway, I don't really understand what Jihad is and I don't believe an encyclopedic definition will help, but for all it's worth you can check out the explanation on wikipedia here. Clearly, it has a very wide meaning and many in the Islamic community think it's being misinterpreted by the likes of al-Qaeda and other such organizations, so lets leave it at that.

I've written a long disclaimer, so I guess I can start with the nasty stuff now... Here's an article which upholds all the worst things we hear about Islam. It's about honour killings in Germany - Muslim women (Turkish in this case) get killed by their own families because they adopt a Western style of life.
I've also come across some articles about women's rights (and rape in particular) in Pakistan. This is an article about Mukhtar Mai - a woman from a small Pakistani village who was gang-raped, but has chosen to speak out about it and has become an important figure in the fight for women's rights. To read more on what Pakistani women think about this issue, try this link - there's a wide scope of opinions presented.
Other than this (well maybe apart from all the recent stories about whether Muslim women in Western countries should be allowed to wear veils - but perhaps I'll write about that at some different time), the rest of the stories showing Islam in bad light are terrorist related I think and while one can't fully discuss the matter without mentioning terrorism, I really don't feel like going into detail on it. We all know the issue exists and we all have very strong feelings against it and that I think is as much as I'm going to write.

Of course the West has done some very horrible things as well. While Bush's war on terror needs no comment I think, there are other things that have happened on the West/Middle-East front since the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq that speak very badly of the West. One of the first scandals was when the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was revealed. It was a loud case, so most of you probably remember it. If you don't then here's an article from May 2004 that covers the issue in quite a lot of detail.
While that was curbed, there are still Human Right issues that to this day have not been resolved and in fact the present state of affairs seems to have support from the US government (there seem to be slow changes made for the better, so lets keep our fingers crossed). I'm talking about Guantanamo of course. Check out what Amnesty International has to say. I still ought to read up more on their site, but I think the Case-sheets are particularly chilling reads. Also check out the short interview with Moazzam Begg - while not as descriptive on the torture as the case-sheets, what he has to say is still very shocking and very much worth knowing in the global scale of things. He was one of the people who spent a few years in Guantanamo and then was released without charges.
And this is not the end of things either. Things like this are happening all the time, but perhaps not as loudly as the two above (although frankly, Guantanamo is probably receiving a lot less attention from the media than it should!). A recent story which I found quite shocking is this - a 14 year old Iraq girl raped and killed by US soldiers (not to mention her whole family being killed by them as well).
Then there's the Arab-Israeli conflict, which many say is a major culprit in the tensions in the world now.

If you're Polish (I think most of the very few people reading this blog are) and perhaps thinking that Poland is responsible only for supporting the USA in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, well think again. If there is or was a secret detention centre in Poland then for all we know similar horrors could have been going on there. Check out this article about a recent EU investigation into the matter. There is no proof of such a place existing, but there are certainly very fishy aspects to this story. It is about these sorts of places that Moazzam Begg talked of in the interview I linked to. Here's the relevant quote:
And I think that one of the lessons, if we can call it a lesson, that the USA has learnt from Guantánamo is that there places that you don't tell people about.
Guantánamo now is almost this place that is becoming acceptable because these other places are so much worse and so much sinister.

There is this opinion in the West that Islamic culture is more aggresive and less democratic than Western culture. And yes, it wasn't people from the West who killed 3000 people in the World Trade Centre attacks. We also don't have honour killings (or at least I haven't heard of any) and women have more rights. But is there not enough evidence in the articles I linked to that show our culture is also very brutal and agressive?
You might say that the people who have inflicted such abuses on Muslims are in the minority, but that is what Muslims say about their extremists, no? I think the reason that we see our culture as less aggressive is that we know so many other aspects of it. What other aspects of Muslim culture does an average Westerner know?

I recently stumbled across a Muslim prayer on-line and I was very surprised with it. Believe it or not, it's actually very much in line with what I keep writing on this blog (I mean the values in it). Here it is (copied and pasted from this site):

Muslim Prayer for Peace

In the name of Allah,
the beneficent, the merciful.
Praise be to the Lord of the
Universe who has created us and
made us into tribes and nations
That we may know each other, not that
we may despise each other.
If the enemy incline towards peace, do
thou also incline towards peace, and
trust God, for the Lord is the one that
heareth and knoweth all things.
And the servants of God,
Most gracious are those who walk on
the Earth in humility, and when we
address them, we say "PEACE."

One of the major reasons why I even started thinking about this and wondering if I'm missing something in how Islam has been potrayed to me is Bollywood :D (yes, even though this blog is becoming a lot more political than I had intended it, Bollywood and Harry Potter will keep getting inserted into it until everyone but me is totally bored of hearing about them ;-P)
When I started getting fascinated with Bollywood I quickly realized that a lot of the major stars in the film industry are Muslim. And because I find it very easy to connect to the films, this made me think. These Muslim actors were showing a sense of humour that is no different than what we have in the West, often promoting values which I agree with (and I think the West generally agrees with) and in general there was just so little of it that was truly foreign to me.
Just to illustrate what I'm saying (and because I can't resist the opportunity to show people yet another clip of Shah Rukh Khan), below are two clips from an interview with Shahrukh on a program called "Devil's Advocate". The part which is relevant to this post (where he talks about Islam) starts at about 4:10 on the first clip and then continues into the second one (anyone wishing to watch the interview in full should start with this clip and then continue to the two below).



Shah Rukh is very proudly Muslim (he mentions it so much in interviews that some accuse him of flaunting it, the other Muslim stars are mostly much more reserved about it), but at the same time he does some things that I wouldn't associate with Islam based on the information that comes my way from Western sources.
Firstly, he is married to a Hindu and they are bringing up their children in both religions. Secondly, he is actually very feminist (there are many examples, but for some reason the following one particularly amuses me ;-P). There's an interview about one of his films, Paheli which he also produced. He's clearly very proud of the film (it's a very female centered film, telling the story of a woman's loneliness) and he seemed to be genuinely excited about being the supporting actor for a woman rather than the other way round lol:
What makes Paheli so special?

Everything about Paheli is special. See, I am sounding like a doting father! First of all, it is for the first time that I have attempted a totally women-centric movie not only as a filmmaker but also as an actor.

For the first time and probably not the last time, Shahrukh Khan will be entirely dominated by a heroine.

While I kind of feel that I should give a meaninful end to such a long and rambling post, I don't think I have anything more to say ;) This post is very heavy, long and political so instead of giving a summary of my views (which are hopefully fairly clear by now), I'll just leave you on a light note. Here's the trailer for Paheli:

The trailer of course has absolutely nothing to do with Islam other than Muslims being amongst those who made the film (the main characters are Hindu not Muslim), but this is my blog, so I think I am entitled to finishing my posts in a totally ridiculous manner if I so please, so there ;-P

Borowski and the centre-left after the Polish local elections

To my shock and horror this blog is getting more and more political by the minute ;-P I didn't actually intend it that way, but oh well...

Anyway, after the local elections, the centre-left bloc Lewica i Demokraci (SLD+SDPL+PD+UP) have established themselves as the third most important political force in Poland (after PiS and PO) and I'm following the effect it has had on the political scene.

PO is refusing to form a coalition with LiD even on the local government level. Read about it on Marek Borowski's site in Polish here. I'm disapointed but not surprised.

And here's a very interesting interview with Marek Borowski.
Here are two quotes (in Polish, sorry!) that I liked best from the interview.
The first one I like because it amuses me (while at the same time it's so true):
Więc kto ma większe szanse na pana poparcie? Chyba jednak kandydatka PO?

Powiem tak: ta sytuacja przypomina mi oświadczyny. Przychodzi do panny dwóch konkurentów i każdy ją wychwala: jakie kształty, jakie oczy, jakie włosy – a tymczasem już wyciąga rękę po posag. Jak go złapie, to od razu zwieje. Ale my posagu dobrze pilnujemy. Proszę brać razem z posagiem albo wcale. Możemy po prostu stracić zainteresowanie dla wyniku tych wyborów. Mogą je również stracić moi wyborcy i albo zostać w domu, albo skreślić obie kandydatury

The second one I'm actually rather surprised at:
Nowy program wygładzi wszelkie różnice wewnątrz waszej federacji?

Nie. Będzie oczywiście część, gdzie musimy mówić jednym głosem, obejmująca kluczowe zagadnienia: zasadnicze kierunki polityki zagranicznej, podstawowe problemy społeczno-gospodarcze, walka z przestępczością oraz sprawne, uczciwe państwo. Ale różnice mogą pozostać na przykład w kwestii liberalizacji ustawy antyaborcyjnej, gdzie PD może mieć inne zdanie niż SDPL i SLD.

I would have thought that it's the economical part that they might have trouble getting a mutual agreement on. I'm surprised that PD has a different view on the abortion legislation, I thought they were rather liberal about that.

Polish Winter Sports funding

On page 12 of this pdf file there is an article (sorry, it's in Polish again) about recent happenings in Polish winter sports. Olympic level competitors are quitting because they're not getting the funding they need. The funding goes to young (junior level and below competitors), but hardly any money is spent on those who are on the highest level of competition (even Jagna Marczułajtis who was 4th at the Olympics in Salt Lake City has been forced to lose at least one season because she is not getting the financial support she needs).

10 year old film director

India's film industry is not only the most prolific in the world, but now it is also home to the youngest film director in history. Read more about it here.

More Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix photos

This is a follow-up to one of my previous posts. Rather than pictures from the set, these are screen captures from the film.

You can see the Dursleys here and I think they are absolutely brilliant. It's a bit like what Cuaron started doing in film 3, but better - it's kind of like a nightmare version of a typical British middle class family, don't you think? (and so true to the books I think as well!)

This is Harry fighting the Dementors at the beginning of the book/film (the Dursleys photo I think is after this fight - that would explain why Dudley is that pale). What I love again is the detail - that sort of graffiti on a very grey, dirty wall is how I remember a lot of London when I was little (that was the late 80s, early 90s which is more or less when Harry Potter is set).

And here is Umbridge firing Trelawney and they really do have her spot on - the clothes, the expression, just great! :D

Veer-Zaara in Poland

Veer-Zaara was released in Poland yesterday. For the first time a Bollywood film is being shown in a purely commercially orientated cinema in Warsaw (Wisła), though it is expected to run for only a week.
Since I think it is great news that we have the first signs of the industry trying to exploit a Bollywood film commercially in Poland (rather than in art cinemas which is what has been happening so far), I thought I would try to encourage people via my blog to go and see the film (it is important that people go to see the film if this trend is to continue) and therefore here are a few trailers :D

Here's a teaser trailer:


This is the teaser trailer for Main Yahaan Hoon (one of the songs in Veer-Zaara):


Teaser trailer for Aisa Des Hai Mera:


And finally what I think was the theatrical trailer in India:


The film itself (which I had the pleasure of seeing at a Bollywood weekend in Warsaw) is a huge romantic story with Shah Rukh Khan playing what he is best known for - a romantic hero (one of my earlier posts is full of Don trailers which is a film in which he plays a rather dark character and that is not really what he is best known for ;) ). He also does his trademark crying scenes in this film (love it or hate it - no other actor cries like Shah Rukh ;-P). And I'll add a word of caution - this film is veeeery soppy! (and not all Bollywood films are like that, so if you don't like soppy stuff, don't get discouraged from Indian cinema - it is as varied as American cinema) One of the film's strengths however are the visuals - it's absolutely stunning visually (I don't think those trailers quite do it justice) and besides that it's a lot of fun (some jokes are put in even during the soppy scenes lol).
It is the story of an Indian man in a Pakistani prison who refuses to speak to anyone. And of course his love story is behind all the mystery.

Banning books

Something which Harry Potter has introduced me to is the idea that people to this day try to ban books. While I sort of have the awareness that there are people who try to ban certain films, the idea that this might be happening with books in fully democratic countries was something I hadn't considered at all. But maybe that's just because I don't read enough to consider that a book might be offensive.

Anyway, here are the 10 most frequently challenged books of this century. Harry Potter tops the list. I must say I'm very curious that The Da Vinci Code is not up there somewhere with all the noise the film made!
This is a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books in the 20th century. Some of the titles puzzle me to no end - what is Roald Dahl doing on this list? lol (I do love his books, but I don't understand why The Witches or James and the Giant Peach are offensive lol)
Of course I think being included on this list is actually a big compliment (some of those names and books are quite something!). And certainly J.K.Rowling seems to be thinking along the same lines - see her comments about this in one of the news articles on her site. I think I might actually use this list as a way to develop my reading ;-P It seems like a lot of those would be really worth a read (Google's Banned Books page would probably be a good place to start finding out more about them).

Of course the reasons for people wanting these books taken out of public libraries are probably just as bizarre (and therefore interesting) as the lists of challenged titles themselves. Naturally, because I'm a rather pathetic reader, I have only heard of some of the stories of why people keep trying to ban Harry Potter, but if anyone knows any of the stories behind challenging some of the other titles on those lists, I'd love to know! :)
Some light on why books in general are challenged can be found here. And below are two articles on Harry Potter which I found very amusing.

Here is an article about Laura Mallory, who believes the Harry Potter books are trying to teach children witchcraft and are a major reason for some of the shooting tragedies that have taken place in American schools.

This on the other hand is a slightly older article. It features comments from the current Pope's chief exorcist which in itself amuses me, but the quotes are even better. Harry Potter is called the "king of darkness, the devil" and the characters in the books are compared to Hitler and Stalin.

More Polish politics

Sorry, again a link in Polish (click here). It's a short note about changes made in excise tax. Basically, after all of PiS's promises of helping the poorest, they've hit everybody big time. They've gotten rid of one particular excise tax, but in a market area that doesn't actually guarantee that those products will become cheaper and they've raised the excise tax in another area of the market which will effect many industries and therefore many product prices (including food).
I have no idea why this particular thing has hit me enough to want to tell other people about it via my blog (it sounds kind of boring, doesn't it?), but for some reason it has ;) Perhaps because it's so cynical.

A man for every woman...

The Polish elections for the local presidents, governors and the like are coming up very soon (the Warsaw ones are on Sunday, the 12th of November). Whether this particular campaign is real or fake, I don't know, but it's quite original to say the least. Unfortunately the link is in Polish, but I'll just say that Helena Miszkin's motto is "Work for every man and a man for every woman".
The poster for her campaign is here

Old Take That video

This is a video from I think 1992 (but I'm guessing from the hairstyles, I'm not sure) and I just have to share it cause it's made me laugh so hard ;) Anyway, here's Take That doing a kind of underwear fashion show ;)

"My Take" - Gary Barlow's autobiography

I started reading Gary Barlow's autobiography My Take yesterday and I got so hooked! I wasn't expecting that! I mean I was expecting to enjoy it because I'm in a Take That nostalgia phase at the moment, but not this much. Even though I started reading quite late yesterday, today in the afternoon I had it finished (and I'm not exactly an avid reader).

I mean it's probably not a book that somebody who has no idea who Take That or Gary Barlow are would enjoy, but I think there's quite a few people who are not fans, but would enjoy the read (and I think that's a big compliment to his writing). It's really funny in places, sounds very honest and at least for me (not knowing much about the music business) it was interesting also in terms of how this sort of work is done, what happens behind the scenes. There's also a bit of insight into the differences between the British and American music industries. Of course there's lots of scandal and drama as well ;), but as long as you keep it in the context of the book, somehow it doesn't sound cheap (well not to me).

I think I'm not breaking copyright laws or anything if I quote a few parts of the book - certainly some of the media have done it and in fact quoting it as if they were part of an interview not the book. At least I'm saying exactly where I got these quotes from and encouraging you to give the book a go if you think it might be for you :)

This is part of a chapter in which Gary details some of his stranger experiences of working in clubs (before Take That he had a solo act playing and singing in various clubs in the North of England):
some of the clubs in Yorkshire had a disconcerting way of showing their appreciation after you finished. The compere would get a mic and say, 'Come on ladies and gentlemen, show your appreciation for Gary. I think you'll agree he's well worth sixty quid.'
At another Yorkshire club, I was halfway through 'Love on the Rocks' when a guy got up on the stage, walked right in front of me, switched on the compere's mic and said loudly, so as to drown me out, 'Pies 'ave cum.'
Every chair in the place was scraped across the floor as, en masse, they all stood up and got in line for their food.
On another night I was on with a duo from London, a couple of black guys who were really good.
'Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a couple of darkies who've come all the way from London. We didn't really want 'em, but now they're 'ere, show 'em some appreciation.'
As I say, working the clubs was an amazing experience.

About Take That's first video:
Beforehand Nigel got us all together to reveal an amendment to the masterplan.
'Lads, we've got to get the video banned.'
How in the hell were we going to do that?
(...)
I have to admit that we loved the finished version, not that anyone ever saw it. To get something banned a TV station has to want to play it, and none of them ever considered the unedited version. All we could get played, and then rarely, was the clean version.

And here by the way is what Gary calls the clean version :D


And if you're wondering after seeing that video - yes, they were trying to appeal to a gay audience (they regularly did gigs in gay clubs in the early days of their career). And actually there's a lot about that aspect of Take That in the earlier chapters of the book (and it's mostly very amusing).

About fan mail:
Among the fan letters were a lot of naked pictures, but some were more off-beat. I had one fan, Ilona in Germany, who was a policewoman. She used to send me pictures of herself taking part in riots. She'd be all dressed up in combat gear, complete with truncheon, hitting people - that freaked me out.

Anyway, the book is really a lot of fun to read (as I think you can see from those quotes!), there's a lot more very amusing and interesting stuff in there! :) There are some sadder, more emotional chapters as well - like the ones about his unsuccessful solo career, but particularly the last one which details his experience of being on one of the trains in the 7th of July London bombings.
Part of what I think is so great about his story is that he seems to be a very ordinary guy in many ways - I don't mean that nastily. Just that if he had chosen a different career he would have probably been somebody with a very quiet and "proper" life, but instead he ended up a performer doing things like the Do What U Like video that I've linked to above ;) I think the contrast between the two makes his story somehow nicer (well to me anyway ;-P).

On a final note, here is Gary Barlow promoting his book on the Jonathan Ross show (the video is in 6 parts, but each is quite short).

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5


Part 6

Photos from the Harry Potter film set

The making of the fifth Harry Potter film (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is well underway now.

Photos from the set are available here. There's some things that I really like :D

Firstly, the much debated on-line Harry Potter looking like a geek look :D This is obviously for the Ministry hearing and I think it's great and very appropriate (most wizards in the books do not have a good sense of how to dress, so I think it's very appropriate that it comes out more when they have to dress for an official occasion ;) ). Of course lots of people on-line just think it looks horrible and that they shouldn't do that, but I love it ;-P

And here's a picture of Dolores Umbridge in her office (one of the meanest villains in the books). I think they've got her absolutely spot on!

Anyway, so far those pics make me feel very optymistic about the film :) From those pics it looks like they've understood the quirky sense of humour in the books much better this time, but we shall see! :) First trailer will be out on Novemeber the 20th I think.

SRK Circus scene

The Shah Rukh Khan vibes from my last post continue :D
Here's a scene from Circus, a TV series that Shah Rukh starred in in 1989, before he got into cinema. It contrasts very nicely with the Don promos I think ;) (on this clip he's trying to take a shower or something of the sort ;))

Don promotion

NOTE: Since this post probably has more youtube videos embeded than I should have embeded, if you have any problems with sound or anything then try refreshing this page. If that doesn't work then click directly onto the video - that will redirect you to the video as it is on youtube.

Don, the new Shah Rukh Khan film was released in India on the 20th of October. It is a remake of the 1978 classic with Amitabh Bachchan. It is also Shah Rukh's return to playing bad guys, he's not done that for the last 10 years I think :D
I have not seen it, so I can't tell you anything about it really. All I know is that it's getting mixed reviews, but doing rather well despite that - especially overseas.

The point of this post is not the film itself though, but the promotion of it which I think is great :D I don't think I've seen anything like this in Western cinema. Then again the only marketing of big Western hits that I follow religiously are the Harry Potter movies, so perhaps this sort of thing has been done before and I just haven't come across it ;-P But to me it is new and I really liked it, so I thought I'd share :) Perhaps the trailers on their own aren't that extraordinary, but I think the scale of the marketing is quite something :) (if you're not into the song and dialogue trailers, do scroll down to the Channel V trailers cause those are totally hilarious :D )
I've tried to put them in the order that they were released but I may have made mistakes, also there might still be some trailers that I don't know about.

The first teaser trailer that came out was this:


Then came trailer number two (and a recent law in India forbids depicting smoking on screen unless it's specifically stated that it's bad for you, so as you see - there is no cigarette in that final shot hehe):


And trailer number three:


At about this time I think, they finally released the theatrical trailer:


A veeeery (in Indian cinema terms), spicy teaser trailer number 4 followed:


And then there was a second "dialogue teaser":


And further song teasers:



And if this isn't enough for you, this is where the marketing got really, really hilarious. The promos on Channel V were really quite something.
Here's the first one:

And the second one (no English subtitles on this one, but they do speak quite a lot of English, so you should be alright):


And of course apart from the trailers, there was lots of merchandising as well. I've not been following that part of the promotion that carefully, but I thought the clothing collection was hilarious. Of course there was an official reception to unveil the collection, you can read a short article about it here
And you can see Shah Rukh wearing one of the Don jackets with the inscription "When I Die Bury Me Down So That The Whole World Can Kiss My Ass" here. And of course a sign of Don's presence at the reception had to be left as well! :D

On a final note - don't you think it's amazing that they've managed to make so many different sort of promos and yet one is still left pretty clueless as to what the actual plot of the film is? :D

Creative Writing

Have you ever tried to write creatively? A lot of us have I think. I'm currently working on something, but it can be rather frustrating work. Generally, I hardly ever finish the stuff I write (or show it to anyone) because after I've written it, it seems like most of it is rubbish (although depending on what mood I am in when I reread the stuff I wrote I tend to get to different conclusions).

Therefore it comes as great joy to me to find that much better writers than me have these sorts of problems ;-P
Here's J.K.Rowling's diary entry from the 31st of October and this is the relevant fragment:
I've just had a great writing week. There are few feelings more joyous than reading back over the week's work and thinking 'that's not bad at all', as opposed to the all-too-frequent, 'it's rubbish, I've wasted a week and I'll have to re-write the lot.' And if you think that's an exaggeration or false modesty, you are very, very wrong. It's perfectly possible to put in eight hour days and have nothing to show for them but a single idea that, if reworked completely, might be passable.

If the link takes you to a more recent diary entry then that particular one will be archived here.

Ice Dance is back in style :D

The Senior Grand Prix in Figure Skating has just started this past weekend and the good news is that it looks very much as if I'm going to start enjoying ice dance again :D It used to be my favourite discipline some years back, but the last 3-4 years (partly because of the introduction of the new juding system and partly because many of the biggest personalities retired) it's become too focused on the technical elements and not enough on originality.
Unfortunately, we still have very much the same kind of positions on lifts and spins being repeated by everyone so that they can get the levels of difficulty on the elements (and therefore points) that they want, but originality and polish (rather than stumbling through things just to get the highest possible level) seems to be coming back to ice dance, wheee :D
And perhaps for the first time since about 2003 or so, I have a program in ice dance that I absolutely love :) And here it is, Albena Denkova/Maxim Staviyski from Bulgaria (the current World Champions and first ever skaters from Bulgaria to ever medal at the World Championships) in their Original Dance (this season the prescribed rhythm is the tango) at Skate America 2006:



And what I love is not just the program itself, but I think also technically it's a really beautiful performance - especially considering how early in the season it is (usually at this point in the season all the ice dancers are looking very messy cause they still have 3 months to the European Championships and 5 months to the World Championships).
The Straight Line step sequence at the start of the routine is in beautiful unison (maybe apart from that Maxim covers a little bit more ice on the first twizzle, but I think that's the only part where you can actually fault it) and the one foot skating in it is fantastic - even after the twizzles, they look as if they could spend all day long without putting the other foot down (usually you see everybody putting their free foot down as soon as they finish a difficult step).
I love the first lift as well - even though all the couples seem to be performing a change of position into low balance kind of lift this season, I think this one if very original (and porny ;-P ).
The Diagnal Step Sequence again I think is great - most of the couples seem to be doing rather slow step sequences nowadays with all the requirements for what kind of steps one has to include to get a higher level, but theirs is at full speed and they've got a great one foot section in it as well.
I love the preciseness of the whole performance. They skate close to each other, use very complicated holds and hold changes and whenever they do a difficult step with a hold change it seems they end up in exactly the spot where the partner is expecting them to - they don't even have to look at the other person or adjust the position of their arm to be able to take hold of the other partner, it's great! :D

I'm really impressed with them - they weren't exactly convincing winners of the World Championships last season, only third in the Free Dance and the competition was very, very close (so whoever would have won wouldn't have been a particularly convincing winner I think ;-P ), but they really *do* look like World Champions now (usually whenever the expectations have been put on them, they've skated nervously). I hope they keep it up for the rest of the season!

Women's Rights in Afghanistan

Found an article on BBC about women's rights in Afghanistan. Here's a short quote of what was the most shocking thing for me:

"My message, really, to the international community is: you need to address specific security issues for women," she says.

"Women's rights activists are getting killed, women's NGO workers are getting killed, and that is not going to change unless some drastic action is taken," Ms Fernandes continues.

The entire article is here

If you're interested in the problem, there is a very good feature film about women in Afghanistan available. It is by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf and entitled At Five in the Afternoon. It's the (fictional) story of a girl who dreams of becoming the president of Afghanistan. It was shown in Poland by GutekFilm in 2004 and as far as I know has been released in many countries abroad.

How to save video from youtube, google etc.

I just found out that it's possible, so I'm sharing the info.
You can do this via a site called Keep Vid. Also apparently there is a firefox extension that does the same (but I haven't tried it).

The downloaded file will be in *.flv format which I think can be played by the vlc player in windows (in linux it hasn't worked for me, but there's a command line player called ffplay which works for me).

The Philippines and its film industry

Ok, here's a case of cultural isolation which I think is very strange. People in the West are now getting more aware that India is the most prolific industry in the world, but how many people know that the Philippines produce more feature films annually than the majority of countries in our part of the world?
I'm not sure exactly where they fit in on the world stage, but they are certainly among the top10 or even top5 most prolific film industries in the world (I'm told that in the 1970s they were 3rd after India and the USA). I am a person who watches more cinema than most and do you know how many films from the Philippines I've seen? Answer: One.
The film I saw was a big hit in the Philippines (it was apparently no.1 at the box office there beating many American films) and while very low budget, it is a really great film. It dealt with homosexuality which is an all together different topic in the Philippines than it is here. And contrary to what you might think, it is us who have the much more conservative attitude. The story is that of Maxi, a 12-year old gay boy who is brought up by his father and brothers and falls in love with an adult man - an idealistic policeman (and according to the Warsaw Film Festival catalogue idealistic policemen are much more rare in the Philippines than 12 year old gay boys). Anyway, the English title is The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, if you have the chance (which you probably won't ;-P ) then check it out! Here's a trailer I found on youtube:


We had a Q&A with the director after the film and some of the things he said were fascinating (well at least for me - this is the first bit of Philippine culture that I've ever come across).

So the thing is that the Philippines like Poland are a very Catholic country - so we found it quite odd that homosexuality is so much more in the open there than here. The director told us that perhaps it is to do with the traditions that were in place in the Philippines before christianity came there. Apparently shamans would usually be gay because it was believed that somebody who has both male and female "particles" is closer to God.
Another thing which I found weird and amusing is that unlike in Poland it's the lower classes that are tolerant about homosexuality, most of the intolerance is in the upper classes.
When asked about how it is that boys declare their orientation in the Philippines so early he said he doesn't know, but that he thinks it's because the society in general is more open about it.

Something else that the director told us which I thought was great was about the showing of his film at the Berlin festival where his film was shown in the children's section. He thought the children would find it quite boring and that there would be a lot of walkouts, but on the contrary - it was very well received. He did however get verbally attacked by a woman who was offended that such a film would be shown to children, so he asked the children if they felt shocked or offended by the film and the children said no and that they thought the film was very cool :D
Just to clarify - the film doesn't actually have any sex in it. There is a sort of strange romance between the boy and the policeman, but it's not physical.

On the making of the film, the director told us that the boy who played Maxi was actually straight. He did audition lots of gay boys (there is apparently a whole gang of queens on his street where he shot the film :) ), but apparently they all exaggerated it too much, lol. The boy he chose really was excellent by the way :)

Nigeria

Right, so I'm starting one of the themes that might be reoccurring in this blog - cultural interchange. I do feel that people (me very much included!) don't have enough of an awareness of culture across the globe and my belief is that it is one of the reasons for the tensions we have in the world right now. Our cultures are just too isolated from each other.
For me not knowing much about African culture is a reason for caring maybe less about Africa's problems than I should. Some of the things that happen there, if they were happening in Europe or North America they would leave me feeling shaken, but because they're happening in Africa I have little or no emotional reaction to them.
Anyway, the point is I think I have finally got the first seeds of developping some sort of reaction to whatever happens in Nigeria now :D And I want to share that.

I found this article on BBC about Nigeria.
I thought it was great in that it gave a lot of insight into what life there is like. The theme is Nigerian sense of humour and trying to fly out to somewhere from Lagos. Here's my favourite fragment (near the end of the article):

"The replacement aircraft is being serviced" said a cheery voice. "You'll be on your way just as soon as we've put the plane back together again."

Ibim and I - and the other passengers - collapsed in fits of thigh-grabbing, shoulder-thumping laughter.

We did get there in the end.


Of all the African countries, Nigeria seems to be the one that's been "following me around" the most in the last year or so.
Apart from meeting a Nigerian studying medicine in Poland about a year ago, during the summer I watched a documentary film entitled Workingman's Death which showed 5 very unpleasant jobs that are done in undevelopped places of the world. One of these jobs was that of butcher in Nigeria and something that caught my eye immediately was that of all the jobs the director showed, the Nigerians were the only ones who weren't depressed about doing it. They were just thanking God for having a job in the first place and totally satisfied with this sort of life (and mind you - the Nigerian part was the one which people couldn't stand so much that they started leaving the cinema - the way they were butchering animals up was really quite horrible, I think most people would absolutely hate to do that for a living in those conditions).
If you're interested, the official site for this film is here. As far as I know this film will be distributed in Poland by GutekFilm, so it probably will be shown in quite a few other countries as well.

Something else that my cousin drew my attention to is that Nigeria has a huge video film industry which is nicknamed Nollywood. It would be interesting to see something of their films one day (even though I expect the production values are probably bad, but I've been surprised before sometimes, so who knows? :) ). Of course at the moment in my part of the world seeing these films is pretty much impossible :(
Anyway, here's a trailer for a documentary about Nollywood:

Brokeback Skaters

LOL @ this video. It must be the gayest skating routine I've ever seen :D And these are all really well known skaters! I can't quite make out all the faces (there are 6 guys there), but I can definitely see John Zimmerman, Alexei Yagudin and according to the comments under this video on youtube the rest of them are Kurt Browning, Todd Sand, David Pelletier and Ilya Kulik. Apparently this was skated in 2003 long before the movie was made.

Freedom of expression on-line

While I'm not expecting this blog to turn into something very serious or political, I just want to draw the attention of everyone reading this blog (if anybody is reading it of course!) to a site called http://irrepressible.info/ which deals with freedom of expression on-line. It's a bit weird to think that there's people who are getting jailed for what they write in blogs like these (well not like mine because mine is rather pathetic at the moment - I think their blogs are mostly much better and more interesting!), but it is happening and I think it's important to support Amnesty International's campaign for freedom of expression on-line. Perhaps as somebody coming from and living in Poland, where the current government has started restricting freedom of speech (maybe not so much on-line yet, but certainly there have been some strange goings on in the media and then there's the case of Hubert Hoffman - a homeless man who called the president names and is now being pursued for it by the police!), it is all the more important for me that freedom of expression is defended. So for anyone who agrees, show your support by visiting that site and sign the petition! :)

My attempt at a blog

Ok, so I'm making another attempt at blogging. My last one was a bit of a disaster (aka, I just didn't update my blog at all ;-P), so I'm starting over...
I want to do some blogging because at times I'm getting to the point where I think I need a Pensieve... There's this quote from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" which goes like this:
'What is it?' Harry asked shakily.
'This? It is called a Pensieve," said Dumbledore. 'I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.'
'Er,' said Harry, who couldn't truthfully say that he had ever felt anything of the sort.
Now unlike Harry, I do feel like that (even though whenever somebody asks me how I am and what's been going on in my life I go completely blank and have no idea what to answer) and I think the solution is to write. The problem is that I'm useless at keeping a diary - I kind of need an audience (pathetic, I know). Regardless of if anybody actually reads this blog, I will have this feeling that I'm writing to somebody, so that helps. And that is why anybody visiting this blog will be subjected to my ramblings and youtube videos and articles I found interesting ;-P (that is if I post at least once a month which didn't happen in my previous blog attempt ;-P )