Tunisia trip: my shopping

My honeymoon in Tunisia didn't lack shopping, here's what I bought:

A French-arabic dictionary:

Muuuch cheaper than the only Arabic dictionnaries buyable in Poland. This dictionnary is intented for pupils (Tunisian children learning French), which is absolutely okay for me.

Two issues of AlJamila:

One issue of Saydaty:


A home deco magazine but it's called "Home" or something like that and it's a hell to google.

A Northern-African cookbook by Haydée Tamzali:


A shiny golden camel and a few shiny colofrul boxes:


Some belly dance stuff:

A few satin nightgowns - so pretty I can't find accurate pictures on the web.

A long part dress, and that should be it. Good thing I didn't take too much luggage with me, so we didn't exceed the weight limit.

[Picture credit, credit, credit]

Things are really wrong when BBspot is right.

BBspot is my favourite fake geek news site and you most probably have read their legendary article "Microsoft purchases evil from Satan":


Good one. Some time later, BBspot wrote about Microsoft forcing users to upgrade from XP to Vista. On a serious note, a friend is making good cash in the UK helping people downgrade. But back to the point. BBspot quoted Vance Fredericks (whoever that is) saying:

"This project is targeted at XP users who don't see the benefits of upgrading to Vista. The first change will be to install a desktop wallpaper of a naked Steve Ballmer during the next update. Customers will be unable to change the background, unless they upgrade to Vista."

Now that's some serious blackmailing.


But that was supposed to be a joke, right? As it turns out, not entirely. Microsoft is working on a special edition of Windows 7 for netbooks (the sweet tiny computers that might save Windows XP), "special" not having a positive meaning here, and in that version, you won't be able to change the wallpaper!

Now, that wallpaper probably won't be a picture of Steve Ballmer. But it might be that:



Or that:


Which makes that wallpaper look really cool:


BBspot was right, so things are really, really wrong. Still, the worst question is: how many sick ideas will Microsoft take from BBspot?

Tunisia trip: overview

I just got back from my honeymoon in Tunisia. The trip was really great, here a little more about it.

We stayed in Sousse:


...in a hotel as fancy as this:


...with a pool with slides as cool as this:

The shopping in Sousse and chilling at the hotel sums up what we did in a vast majority of our time.

We also did a bit of sightseeing, which included the Bardo National Museum in Tunis:


Carthage:


(do follow the Wikipedia link, as I'd have to post at least two dozens of images to give you the whole picture of this site) and the lovely town of Sidi Bou Said:


Another cool thing we did was driving quads in Port El Kantaoui - they have really great tracks between hills and olive trees (the desert is about 600 km to the south from there), totally separated from the streets. For 30 Tunisian Dinars (about 20 USD), we got an almost 2-hour ride with a really cool guide - absolutely worth checking out.

Okay, finally, the food. Basically, if you go to a country this far, you're not accustomed to the local bacteria, so you're really at risk of food poisoning - and that's what happend to us the one and only time we stuck our noses out of the hotel. So, our travel agencies only book all-inclusive trips and in our hotel, we were absolutely at no loss not eating out. The food was really great and there were many dishes to choose from: some "international", some local, but all really great. The best thing was the meat, grilled just before serving, by this very friendly staff:


Okay, that's all for now, I will post a few more specific posts on some specific subjects (for example, how I survibed haggling....not!)

[Picture credit, credit]

I'm going to Tunisia

I promised myself never to write a post where I apologize for not blogging (because if I don't write, I don't write and that's all) and promise to do better (because better would be getting to the good stuff right away).

Well, I apologize and hope you understand how busy I have been recently. (I also got hit on the forehead with a wii-mote, but it's not related.) About that doing better part, however... better will be later. Right now, I'm going to Tunisia on my honeymoon, so I can't really commit to producing blog content. But here's the good news: I'm intensively using Google Reader and try my best to pick the best stuff and share it, so if you want something fresh and geek to read, check it out here.

Besides the usual feeds, my reading list now contains lots of Tunisia-related content. Namely:

1. Tunisia on Wikipedia
2. Tunisia in the CIA World Factbook
3. Tunisia.com
4. Tunisia on Wikitravel
5. Tunisia on Travelistic

Travelistic, by the way, is "the YouTube of worldwide destinations". I was planning a daydreaming session on this site, by the way. It could be great to see all the places I'd love to see for free. I'll do that someday.