Archive for
January 28th, 2006
Stories
Turkey is Typing…
This week's post will be shorter than normal, please bare with me….
Turkish Torque celebrates his 1000th post this week, congratulations! Ugur has translated an excellent article about how the media and entertainment world is destroying Turkish culture and comments on rumors of Muslim reformation. He also writes about the new political chess game being played by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and how it is reacting to the election of HAMAS in Palestine.
Talk Turkey writes about a future United States of Eurasia that has created quite an interesting conversation and comments about the new Kurdish judge to replace the other Kurdish judge to try Saddam Hussein.
A quite funny post from The Need to Know asks for the world to leave Iran alone, she wants a big bonus.
Zen in the Kitchen writes about onion and garlic helping you to remember your left from your right.
Mavi Boncuk returns with a post about Ataturk's adopted children. Snow is the subject of a post from Metroblogging:Istanbul and well as one from Erkan's Field Diary, well actually not just one post, but two and three.
Amerikan Turk wrote about the big snowstorm in Istanbul as well, but he also covered other items such as bedbug infestations, Turkish hostages in Iran-a story missed by the main stream media coverage, and (my personal favorite of the week) a piece about buzzword word games in office meetings.
Find of the week: We Are the TURKS, a new blog dedicated to interviewing and writing about prominent Turks in American business and culture.
We Love Cooking!
#1: All Indian food does NOT taste the same!
From the UK, We all live downstream explains this popular belief that find its roots in the lack of adventurous spirit of some when executing this natural, vital and recurrent activity. What kind of Indian food do you get when you go out? Northern Indian probably.
Not that all Northern Indian food tastes the same, but to assume such a diverse country has similar tasting food demonstrates the following: First, people usually order the same thing over and over, being shy to try something new. Second, there are not too many good exponents of Indian restaurants out there, and third, most Indian restaurants offer a limited menu which won't go further than the North Indian cuisine.
If your hunger for authentic Indian food has taken you overseas, to the heart and house of this movement, do not miss your opportunity to visit Panchvati Gourav in Bombay. There you will be able to enjoy an "all-you-can-eat" meal for Rs 145 (approximately a little bit less than $4 US) and more than 20 different dishes are served including 5 types of yummy breads!
#2: It is fried whole-fish time!
From Oman, My Dhaba features a delicious and incredibly easy recipe to prepare "Silver Pomfret Fry". If you've got a bagful of cute silver pomfrets and still have not decided what to cook with it, head over to his blog because this is the first of a series of great recipes where you know who is going to be the star! And, when you are there, please do not miss his slow-death Halwa recipe. It makes me want to go to the kitchen and prepare it right away!
Revolutionary Awareness in the WSF
Bloggers attending the World Social Forum in Caracas have been speaking out with constructive criticisms on organizational pitfalls. Issues related to transportation, the youth camp facilities, and information problems have been widely addressed by critical bloggers.
A Berkeley student recounts her journey across Caracas’ city parks and surrounding natural reserve parks in what turned to be a camp on the move. Ten Bard College students co-authoring a collective blog coined the word (dis)organization to summarize the event’s pitfalls.
A Muslim blogger points out different opinions among attendees about Venezuelan government intervention in the Forum. The issue is related to the critical debate focused on the WSF's future path of political action agenda-setting, critical debate forum, or civil society meet up.
Latin American bloggers attending the event have been less vocal about criticisms, and more focused on praising the workshops and roundtables they have attended. Bloggers connected to the open source and the free software movements are excited about the Troll Party held in the Forum. Venezuelan blogger Luigino Bracci opines that the government agency in charge of promoting the usage of free software in Venezuela should follow this path, and hold similar events to disseminate the advantages of open source software among common people.
A group of Venezuelan bloggers against state intervention of the economy and welfare policies opened a blog devoted to report “grudgingly” about the deeds of the lefties attending the WSF. Meanwhile, US bloggers who are not attending the Forum are buzzing about Cindy Sheehan’s participation in an anti-war demonstration.
The odd piercings and tattoos that a person can get in Caracas are creating a fun side at the WSF. Venezuelan bloggers also report on a never-ending series of parties for both Forum goers and protesters.
The tragicomic note is brought by foreign Chávez's supporters wanting their picture to be taken mocking up the act of firing guns at Puente Llaguno, the place in which more than dozen of Venezuelans were killed when an opposition demonstration attempted to go to the government house to call for president Chávez's resignation on April 2003.
In any case, the Forum attendees appear to be gaining a lot from the discussions going on in Caracas. As one of the Bard College’s students says, “awareness is a revolution in itself, all else follows directly.”
Happy Chinese Lunar New Year
Today is the Chinese Lunar New Year's eve, which are regarded as the most important festival in China and mark the beginning of a year with warm spring coming, so it's also called Spring Festival. We are blogging and aggregating on the what Chinese Blogger are celebrating the evening, with photos, stories and more!
This year is called “Dog Year”. There is a cycle of 12 years in which each year was represented by a kind of totally 12 animals, and this year was for the Dog. People celebrating this holiday by fireworks, banquet, and family reunion in the 7 days off session. “Dog Stamp” and “Dog Year Wishing Card“
The most important part of the festival is the reunion dinner, where family members joined together in new year's eve, served with a banquet of traditional Chinese food like noodles and dumplings. Andrea of T-Salon have some photos showing how the food is like. Daxing Stef have the photo that explained the procedure of making a special kinds of dumpling called “Kok Tsai“. An article on Xinhua news agency reports the debate over a reunion dinner worth of $24444.
Firework is also the very interesting part of new year. When the bell rings at the 12 o'clock, the firework should be set, which means “Goodbye to the last year and Greeting with the new year.” However for recent years firework is prohibited or confined to certain areas for security and environmental reasons in major cities like Beijing. This year the prohibition was lifted and the Beijing police are sending short messages via cellphone to remind citizens of safety in playing with fireworks.
Sending SMS(Short Message) is also the rising phenomenon in China. People use it to send wishes and blessings to their friends, colleagues and relatives. It was estimated that during Spring Festival which will last from Jan29 to Feb4, there are more than 10 billion short messages sent over the country.
After the dinner, came the “Spring Festival Eve Gala” by China Central Television. For last 20 years, it has become one of the major entertainment of Chinese, featuring many star, singing&dancing and traditional folk performance like cross talk. But due to the abundance in means of entertainment, the audience's passion has dropped dramatically. Raymond Zhou, a blogger and movie critics tells you why. He uses the word “Camp” coined by Susan Sontag to describe it.
BingFeng gives you some suggestions in New Year if you are in Shanghai and he is doing his New Year Blogging.
Wayne, an American who lived in Xiamen, China wrote a great post about his understanding of Chinese New Year and suggested on helping foreign people mark the festival like a native.
Laoluo, a very famous blogger, wrote his news year's wishes. China Digital Times has translated part of his post.
Benetleong teaches you how to read and pronounce Chinese idioms and characters that you usually says when you meet someone in the festival.
See more photos via Flickr cluster, including the clothing, performance, paper back, and parade in China town.
Find more posts via Technorati and Icerocket.
Links for Sat, 2006-01
According to Danshamouzaen Mobarez (means Fighting Students) more than 350 bus drivers & workers, who wanted to start general strike today, got arrested (Persian). Some other drivers were beaten by security forces and got forced to drive their buses. Several leading members of Bus Syndicate had already been arrested.
Baghdad Dweller posts some photographs of the rain-swept streets in Baghdad “Millions Dollars spent on “Iraq reconstruction” and the situation as you see in the pictures.“
He also links to the list of Iraqi academics that have been killed, threatened or kidnapped. “Iraqis without exception will not benefit from assassinating educated people.” he writes.
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