Les photos n’ont pas de langue, même si les commentaires sont en anglais! J’ai bien bossé ces derniers jours, et j’ai le plaisir de vous présenter les nouvelles galeries suivantes:
Category: Culture
Everything cultural that interests me: music, reading, science, arts in general, news, photography…
Photos I [en]
Here we are! the photos section has been revamped, with addition of two new galleries: flowers and Akirno.
The new design still breaks in IE5Mac – do let me know if you have any suggestions!
Site [en]
Somebody told me you were waiting for photographs of India. Well, I’ve heard you. The first batch is up, with a new layout too: welcome to Markal.
I’ve implemented the new layout for Lausanne too. The gallery index is not complete though, and might land in empty directories (depending on where you try to go!).
Paroles [en]
Les histoires d’amour finissent mal…
Les Rita Mitsouko
Munchausen [en]
If the Kaycee fiasco raised your interest about cyberpathology, here is a very interesting article on cybersickness (exploring Munchausen and its consequences).
A day in my life [en]
Before going for my last French exam this afternoon, I half-heartedly revised a few texts in the company of an over-excited cat (hungry and kept inside so I could monitor his tummy troubles).
I arrived at university early. My pre-exam nightmares usually have to do with having forgotten to prepare for the exam, or turning up late. So I usually arrive rather in advance. I waited in the sofas of the French department for an hour, feeling adrenalin accumulate in my body and my heart rate going steadily up.
My teacher greeted me with a sly grin: “So, we’ve picked a difficult subject for you – because if we give you a normal one, you’re going to be bored during the preparation time…” I winced and groaned of course, but in the same time felt quite relieved. She wouldn’t be doing that if there was the slightest chance of me failing my exams – and she had most certainly already had a look at Monday’s written performance (which, of course, I wasn’t happy about at all, as always).
After eating out with my brother to rejoice about the “end” of my exams, I went to listen to Eve Angeli’s free concert near the lake. The supporting act was a very young girl, eleven or twelve years old, with a very beautiful voice. At the end of the show, I went to buy Eve Angeli’s CD (it was on my “to buy” list, anyway, and I’ve finished my exams, haven’t I?) and queued for an autograph.
I was really astonished at how aggressive some people can become for a name on a postcard or a CD. I waited patiently while the crowd around me got more and more compact, and ended up carrying the weight of a fair amount of people on my right side. One woman was encouraging her children to push and squeeze to get in front. I finally gave my bag and umbrella to the mother next to me while I kept an eye on her young daughter and she left the crowd which was becoming frankly oppressing.
I got my autograph rather easily, as it was on a CD. Young Joanna was not so lucky, and I found myself doing something that makes me want to shrink into the earth in embarrassment when I think of it now.
I noticed that one of the bodyguards had picked up a dropped poster and told the owner he would get it back after. My misinterpretation of the situation made a bright idea flash through my head. I grabbed my protégée‘s poster and prodded the bodyguard: “Er, could you get this signed for Joanna, please?” The look he gave me as he answered “no” made me want to vanish on the spot and wish I hadn’t opened my mouth. My only consolation is that I would never have made such an inconsiderate request for myself, or anybody else than the nine-year-old girl whose head barely made it above the safety barrier, and who was desperately clutching a poster of her idol as she was trying to make her voice heard above the din.
I took the bus home. I usually go around by car, but tonight was an exception. I used to take the bus a lot before going to India, and I hadn’t realized how estranged I had got from the public transport system in my own town. A year ago already, when I had just landed home after a year abroad, little plastic cards had made their appearance in people’s wallets. You could use them to pay at the ticket machine instead of cash.
So this evening, I learnt that ticket machines do not return change anymore. I learnt that bus drivers no longer can sell you a ticket if you do not have change for the machine. And I chatted with the bus driver all the way home. About his job, about India and the strange time that country lives in. About being on time and buying tickets before getting on the bus. About 40-hour train journeys. About getting chastized for being one minute late on his schedule.
I got off the bus, took off my chappal (indian sandals, made of leather, do not like pouring rain) and walked home barefoot, to be greeted by a phone call from my brother telling me that the long-awaited contract from orange had arrived in his mailbox. Good news!
Mars and Venus [en]
After a long and fruitful phone call with my sister, we have reached the following conclusions:
- we both are “John Grayish” in our way of viewing relationships
- most women who think John Gray is a backwards machist keen on bringing relationships back to the previous century have enough anger stocked up against men to last them a rather long time; the same phenomenon can be observed for a certain type of “man-hating feminism”
- most men who think John Gray is a brutish machist with no sensitivity have enough wagons of anger against women at their disposal to last them a rather long time; they also seem to have a healthy load of anger against men, too, and to have dismissed a good part of their masculinity
- inspired by the previous observation, we notice that the women stated above tend to have a troubled relationship with their “inner woman”
- all this brings us to believe that the healthy development of one’s inner man is dependant on one’s overall relationship with women, and vice-versa
The observations above are generalities based on our personal experience. There are (and will always be) exceptions. Please do not feel free to flame if you disagree.
; )
India [en]
One of the things I missed the most when I arrived in India was the long evenings. Today, at something past 10 pm, the sky has only just become black.
The first day I arrived in Pune, we went out to eat around 7 pm. My plane had landed at 5 o’clock, I had had time to dump my stuff in my room, have a bath, and get changed. We stepped outside and it was pitch black. All of a sudden,
it felt as though my internal clock had broken down: it couldn’t be dark already!
I learnt to live with it. Being closer to the equator, India sees less difference in night length throughout the year than a country like Switzerland. It’s logical, it makes perfect sense, but I never would have thought about it. Not before it hit me straight in the eyes. I guess
Switzerland sounds to Indians like Scandinavia sounds to us.
One thing Indians tend to find really weird is the fact that we don’t have a rainy season. “You mean it rains all year long?” Well, of course it doesn’t rain every single day here. But it can rain at any given date. Simply enough, the idea of living in a place where there is no monsoon must sound quite incredible to the indian mind – just as we have trouble
imagining what the monsoon can be like before we have lived (swam) through it.
Today was the last lesson of my class on “Visual Hinduism”. We explored architecture, iconography, miniatures, but also rituals (hence my presentation on indian weddings) and finally even cinema. The teacher, who was doing this kind of “visual” class for the first time, was curious about our feedback.
Actually, I thought it was a great idea. Academic teaching often neglects the realm of the eye – unless you are studying history of art. And the visual world is very important for grasping indian culture.
I remember the first time I saw real pictures of India. My interest for India came late, as I was studying, so I had never spent much time looking at books, documentaries or other hippy friends’ photographs. All I had seen were photographs by Benoît Lange (or similar artists), which are
beautiful pictures but hardly prepare you for what you are actually going to see in indian streets.
So the first “real” indian photographs I saw were pictures of a pilgrimage that my teacher was giving a conference about. I had already started planning my trip to India, although it was still a long way off, and I can remember the surprise of seeing the stretch of brown earth, the
rickety stalls next to the road, and people scattered everywhere. “Gosh, it looks like that over there!?”
During my first days in India, my most intense culture shock was visual. I wasn’t prepared for it at all – I couldn’t have prepared myself, had I even wanted to. Everything I laid my eyes on was new and
unknown. Nothing made sense. All I could see was a mass of colours and shacks and rubbish and puddles and dogs and people. I just stayed there for hours on end, stunned, perched on my small terrasse above the street, looking at the strange world outside and trying to get over the
indigestion.
Paroles [en]
Depuis ma plus tendre enfance, j’ai la vicieuse
tournure d’esprit de me considérer comme différent du commun des mortels.
Cela aussi est en train de me réussir.
*
Les ânes voudraient que j’observe pour moi-même
les conseils que je proclame pour les autres. C’est impossible puisque moi
je suis complètement différent…
Salvador Dali, Journal d’un génie
Le fait que moi-même, au moment de peindre, je ne
comprenne pas la signification de mes tableaux, ne veut pas dire que ces
tableaux n’ont aucune signification: au contraire leur signification est
tellement profonde, complexe, cohérente, involontaire, qu’elle échappe à
la simple analyse de l’intuition logique.
Salvador Dali, Oui
Flot [en]
L’intégralité de l’oeuvre de Maeterlinck a été mise à l’Index, si jamais vous aviez des doutes. Ils ne sont pas beaucoup à avoir eu cet “honneur”.