MONOCLE

While enjoying a sunny Amsterdam Sunday cycling near the canals, I've stopped at the Athenaeum Boekhandel and the American Book Center to check some travel guides for this summer and I found a magazine -nothing to do with travel, although its writers move all around the world- called MONOCLE. The atypical, chic and easy layout just made me wanted to take it, but I also found the title of the magazine in itself attractive: MONOCLE. A Briefing on Global Affairs, Business, Culture & Design. Then I read the headline: MONOCLE reports from Ashrafieh: home to Beirut's most resilient residents and their curious community that just won't quit. I had a quick look inside and just bought the magazine. I think I'm going to follow it every month. It also has a quite complete website: www.monocle.com with articles and video programmes. Also in this month's issue are articles about Art Dubai, the Faroe Islands and the North Cyprus Turkish Republic. Oh, and at the end of the magazine is a Japanese comic/manga Kita Koga exclusively produced for MONOCLE in a modest studio of Tokyo. The making-of pictures of the manga are quite nice. I think a found the almost perfect monthly for me!

LOST?

One rainy Sunday afternoon, with no will to go out even to get some groceries, ordering food in and watching Kate, Sawyer and Jack's adventures on a faraway island. It sounds silly right? Well, that's what I thought, enough of these silly stories, what the f... is that black smoke on the island, and why the hell are these "Others" treating our nice heroes so badly? So I just stopped the DVD of the third season of LOST to get something to eat and to read some news... and guess what, the real world sounds even sillier! EL PAIS and The Guardian are writing about the possibility to make primary school children eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behavior indicating they may become criminals in later life. If that's the way it was working in Belgium when I was a kid, my parents would for sure be in serious trouble since I had a kind of hobby knocking guys out in the schoolyard (I stopped soon enough, don't worry, I loved to play the fearless garçon manqué). Anyway, I thought I might read about what was happening in my native country and moved to Turkish paper Radikal where I read a short article entitled: "Alkolsüz türkü üretildi!". It can be translated as: Alcohol free türkü (a type of Turkish folk song) has been created and it explains how during the celebration of "Health/Medicine Day" the members of the Choir, coordinated by the Ministry of Health, have avoided the words "alcohol" or "drunk" in all the türkü's they sang, replacing them by the word "doctor". So the line 'Sarhoşlar geliyor eli şişeli'/ "The drunk are coming bottles in hand" have turned into 'Doktorlar geliyor eli şişeli' / "The doctors are coming bottles in hand".
I'm just going to leave my international-online-newspaper-tour to watch some tattooed doc' kept prisoner on a faraway island.
Some people really don't need to get drunk to get LOST.

Stay switched on

Since the last 3 years, I have been living without a television. My parents both have TVs home and I used to live with its sound when I was sharing their house. I must say that I even enjoyed watching it a lot... all the series, cultural programmes, news broadcast, documentaries, movies... But let's face it, most of what's on TV is... JUNK. And now that I am spending the week in a TV friendly environment, I just feel I get more headaches. Only the sound of it is disturbing me. I feel like my head is full of unnecessary noises, no matter what they are. Music, commercials, series... I don't need the television to know about what's happening in the world or to watch a good movie. Here I have experienced once again how happy I am not to have a television. It's a personal choice, one that gives me more space to read, write, enjoy the company of my lover, converse, go out, meet people, discover the world. I'm glad I can do it all without having a TV. I intend to keep it that way. And I don't feel I know less about the world. I'm always switched on so I can better see what's around me and far beyond.

Before the tempest

November 1st, the streets are so quiet you can even hear birds singing. Cars seem to have stopped moving, the atmosphere is gray. A perfect day to go to the cemetery, just that I don't like cemeteries. Nobody's perfect! So I'm keeping it simple for today, a not so early but still not late wake-up, a very simple breakfast with coffee, followed by tea, then head on to BOZAR for a interview afternoon with Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri (Syria's Frank Sinatra they say... we'll see on Saturday evening) and several journalists working for Arabic medias here in Brussels. A preview for this weekend's tempest of concerts and encounters. Looking forward to it!

Face to Face?

I've never been a real fan of online social networking, and certainly not when I see what kind of horrible pictures people like to post (I won't give any example, just have a look by yourself, it can sometimes be hilarious). I once registered at yonja to find old Turkish friends online, which hasn't been so useful since I'd already managed to keep in touch with friends I really like... Anyway, I started this blog -ok, this isn't social networking but blogging- and still don't know exactly how many people around the world are really interested by my modest posts (I guess people who like to go to gigs?). Still, I like writing so it can't harm anybody and certainly not myself.
Invited by friends, I've finally accepted to register at facebook. I must say I'd never heard of it before, and since the lovely person I happen to share my life with happens to be a new media specialist, I've been able to learn more about it in a very short time. Thanks to facebook, I found very old friends I lost from sight and who now live in Canada and who I might see this summer in Turkey! Only for that, I'm very happy to have discovered this communication tool. It is an incredible tool when you really use it well, that is (for me at least) to communicate, and not to add millions of people you will never want to hear from in normal times just to fill in your list. It will never replace face to face communication, or even voice to voice, or any other physical closeness for that matter, but it certainly works to make the "face to face" go on or happen, and vice versa. The thing is, I guess, to be able not to become the tool but keep on being the user.