On Saturday, we participated in the ISAL Christmas party. I did a 15 minutes presentation on Belgium for our Indian friends, Shreyas did a mime game (with some very funny participations) and Alam came dressed up like Santa Claus :-) Some photos are available on the ISAL photo album.
This evening, we went to see Mallika Sarabhai dancing Kuchipudi at Bozar. Kuchipudi is a dance from South India. It looks a little bit like Bharatanatyam (with my non-specialists eyes) but with more contact with the audience (or is it the way it was performed by these specific dancers?). I think that if you want to see only one dance from India, you have to see Bharata Natyam. If you want a gentle introduction to Indian dance, Kuchipudi can be more accessible.
Yesterday, we went for the Bazaar organised by the Bozar. While people were selling Indian bibelots and food ( yummy!), Nandini set up a “Spice Corner” where she exposed and explained everything about Indian spices (you could even taste Pan Masala!). She had quite a success but, unfortunately for some visitors, Nandini did not sell anything. Our famous Peter also had a table for Rose vzw that was represented by Swapna (they were still there on Sunday). ...
ISAL is inviting you to the annual Christmas party, full of spices and fun. It will be held on Saturday, December 16th 2006 (19.00 hour = 07.00 PM), at Holy Spirit College, Naamsestraat 40, B-3000, Leuven. You can find the menu (veg and non-veg) and other details on the Christmas party webpage.
On Saturday, we went for the Rose Dinner 2006. Rose is an independent not-for-profit organization run by volunteers. Its mission is to support and foster primary education for children from economically disadvantaged rural communities in developing countries (mainly India), primarily by improving basic facilities in primary schools. Yesterday, its impressive team of cooks offered us great food (thanks Swapna), there was a good atmosphere. It’s good to see that people that actually do something in an effective manner. :-) ...
The vim text editor always produce a file ending with a tilde (~) as a kind of backup of the currently modified file (this is a default behaviour). On my MS-Windows machine (Pentium M, 1.73GHz), I was tired of manually deleting these files so I first used the “Search” option in the File Explorer. After some time, I got tired to wait for the results. So I wrote a Python and a batch scripts to find all these files. They are going much faster than the Search GUI. The first time I launch them, they are still going slow (but faster than a GUI). As you can see in the graph below, the second time I launch these scripts, they went at least 10 times faster. I’m not a specialist but I guess it has something to do with caching at the OS level. For the first run, the batch script is 20% slower than the Python script. After that, the Python script is 50% slower than the batch script (but between 3.7s and 5.6s, the difference is not big). ...
It’s Sunday, let’s rest a little bit … I really liked this Al Yancovic’s video " White & Nerdy". To fully understand it, you need some basic technical background and a friend that looks like the white & nerdy guy in the video. Because, of course, you are not like him ;-) " Dont’ download this song" is also great (some background about DRM is welcome). " It’s all about Pentiums" is not my music style but some lyrics are good. ...
On Saturday, after the Kolam ritual, we went for Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, organized by the ISAL. It was very nice to meet people we already met on previous ISAL “functions” and to talk with them. And I think that ISAL is attracting more and more people, both of Indian origin (working in Belgium, for example) and of non-Indian origin: this time, people from Belgium, China, Poland, Russia, Spain, etc. were there. As usual, I took some photos.
On Saturday, we went to see a Kolam ritual at Bozar. Kolam is the designs the Pulluvans are drawing on the floor for a lot of occasions, using multicoloured sands, rice and spices. Here, it was supposed to be a ritual for a family (“supposed” only because it was a demonstration for the public and no family was specifically involved). In this ritual, two women in a trance erase the drawings and answer questions the family is asking. The whole ceremony is linked to snakes that are supposed to have been in Kerala before men and that should be pleased in order to peacefully live together. ...
Today, we were required to vote for the Belgian town and province elections (voting is mandatory in Belgium). A certain percentage of polling stations used an electronic voting technique. After identification, a person gives you a (presumably blank) magnetic card, you enter a voting booth, insert the card into a computer and, with a stylus, you point on a screen. The screen mimics a paper used in the old-fashioned way of voting: white circles on the left of a candidate’s name. After you voted, the computer gives your card back and you simply put it in a ballot box. If you want to know more about potential problems with electronic voting, you can look at Poureva, Recul démocratique and the Wikipedia article about electronic voting, e.g.. ...