Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,700 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Today is the last day of the year.  I want to wish you all a wonderful happy new year and to share few thoughts;

I know it’s not thanksgiving but I want to say that I am thankful for 2011 for bringing the Arab Spring, for the end of some dictators and dictatorships.  I am very happy that in 2012, and after the death of bin laden, there will be one less monster haunting the earth.  I am thrilled that big eyebrows are back in fashion, and excited that reality TV never been more successful (yeh I am excited, I am not joking).

I am sad that I had to come to Africa to discover a different level of being poor, a level that I never thought ever existed.  I am sad to see that people can kill an entire village for a sheep stolen by a tribe, but never hesitate to slaughter one in front of their children….

On a personal level I am so happy that this year I discovered two new hobbies:

using a professional camera and horseback riding.  I am so grateful for my trainer Jane-Anne and I hope she knows how much I admire her charity work.  I am grateful for my husband whom I love and adore. Happy new year my friends!

I feel your pain, I feel this moment when the daylight seem to be turned off and an orange cloud fills the air.  It feels as if you are trapped in a bubble of dust.  You can’t breath anymore because the air is so dense and the smoke, mixed with the rubble, is blocking your nose.  I was there before, when a bomb hit my room, I was in the same place as you.  The worse part is that this dust is so sticky you cannot remove it with a simple shower.  Watching this picture, people might think that you were covered with fine powder but it is not, it is like cement, so difficult to get rid of.

This is the physical description of what happened but the emotional part is that you will feel like a zombie for a long time after the dust is gone.  You will feel that death was very close to take you, and that death will be lingering until it gets you.

Who said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? I still can’t stand to hear an explosion or even fireworks, I can’t hold a weapon or see one.  I wish every one who went through war felt like me, so wars will stop one day.

It is a new website where the best artwork photographies in the world are posted. I recently opened my account and posted some of the pictures I took during my recent trip to Beirut, check them out, this is the link: Mirella on 500px

I know Charlie and John will enjoy it a lot. Holly is already a member, but need to post her beautiful pictures It is free and you can join anytime. Believe me you will love browsing the pictures, especially what they call “Popular” and “Editor’s Choice”.

Years ago, sometime in 2001, Amnesty International, in an effort to reward young human rights activists who risk their life reporting about the injustice happening in their country (which is Lebanon in my case) decided to send me to “monitor the trial” of Saad Eddine Ibrahim  in Cairo, Egypt.  I was thrilled! I was going to save the world.  I had no idea that they choose me because it was much easier to send a young Lebanese lawyer with an Arab passport, than to send a westerner, a Caucasian flashing a democratic passport….

I received few instructions about my duties from Amnesty International’s researchers, who at the time were Sudanese, and they explain to me about what shall I wear and where should I go, but what I was not expecting was a lesson on “how to mitigate” the Egyptian secret service’s impact on my trip and during my stay (kind of soft James bond 007 “a l’Egyptienne” sort of tips) one of the advices was: “don’t even try to close your suitcase when you leave it in the hotel, because when they will go into your room to search it, they will break the lock anyway…” I was wondering if it works also for the lock on my room door that was opened anyway all the time because the hotel was old and falling apart, Amnesty has made it clear that their budget for a human right trip should not exceed a $20 a night, as if we were not suffering enough.

To make the story short, I went to Egypt and was followed non-stop from the airport to the hotel and then to the court where the trial was held, by one agent (who I thought at the time was just a random admirer of Lebanese women) who occasionally would take my picture (I also thought it was because of my too-short-for-Middle-Eastern-custom cute summer dress that I was wearing)

To make the story shorter, I met with Saad Eddine Ibrahim, one of Egypt’s most prominent human rights activist, who gained world attention when he was arrested in 2000 by the secret service of Hosni Mubarak’s regime on the charges of using European Union funds for monitoring elections and defaming Egypt’s image.

It was hard seeing this intellectual professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo being held behind bars, not even bars it was more of a cage as you can see in the picture….

Guess who is today in this same situation? PharaohMubarak! Of course with more serious charges like killing peaceful protestors.

I wonder how Saad Eddine feels right now looking at Mubarak behind bars?

——

In the picture above, Egyptian human rights activist Saad Eddine Ibrahim stands behind bars during his trial in a Cairo court 21 May 2001 (CNN)

Below Hosni Mubarak yesterday (Washington Post)

The first pictures were taken this morning, it was almost raining.

The last picture was taken few days ago during a sand storm (Haboob).

Check out the farm website for more pictures http://www.ridingschool.blogspot.com/

]]> http://mirellamccracken.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/animals/feed/ 8 mirellamccracken DSC_0050 DSC_0041 DSC_0026 DSC_0058 DSC04236 http://mirellamccracken.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/equilibrium/ http://mirellamccracken.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/equilibrium/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:15:56 +0000 mirellamccracken http://mirellamccracken.wordpress.com/?p=2857 Continue reading »

“La nature n’aime pas le vide” (Nature doesn’t like emptiness or hollowness), my skin doctor once told me after he treated my injury. I was wondering at the time if my wound will ever recover.  Since then I realized that his theory was true; nature restore what is missing and create a natural balance or what I call “equilibrium”.  Things always end up the way they should be or meant to be.

I have been contemplating the strange development in the Middle East, the uprising and the unstoppable freedom movement in the region, and wondering why now? What made them ready? What kind of force is driving people to say enough is enough, time for a change? And the only answer I could get was “equilibrium”.

I also witnessed few years ago the birth of social media and I am closely watching how it is evolving, admiring this outstanding phenomena that is defying all rules and growing like a mushroom out of nowhere.  No language, no age or social barrier is stopping people from exchanging ideas and opinion.  This is the only room where people can speak freely with senior audiences, richer, younger, different.  It doesn’t matter what the gender is or the country they come from, they are all in the same cyberspace, on the same level, communicating with each other on an equal ground. The need for a new language also grew; hashtag, tweets…. There is a need that has to be filled; this is “equilibrium”.

I was also watching the outbreak of all those stories of infidelities in the news; actors, politicians, leaders, athletes. Infidelity is affecting everybody no matter how smart they are.  Cheating is not new news, people have been cheating since the beginning of times and this is, unfortunately, unstoppable too. We can easily condemn cheaters, however if we want to be rational, we can say that maybe the set of rules imposed on us by religion or other form of social organization is no longer valid.  Maybe the institution of marriage or the concept of faithfulness should be reconsider, and we should establish an equilibrium to prevent lot of suffering and misunderstanding.

It is obvious that suddenly pre-fixed rules stopped working and people are driven by a strange force. Fear doesn’t seem to be preventing anyone from doing the right things or even the wrong things.  Universe has no definition of what is right and what is wrong. We set the rules and if the universe doesn’t like it, it will change it. Life at the end wants the “equilibrium” restored in order for humans to grow.

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After seeing the beautiful pictures taken by Holly, Charlie, JP and John and reading their very positive feedback about my pictures (that I take usually with my iPhone, because it is so practical and easy to download) I think it was about time to get myself this new toy.  I’ve spent yesterday night reading the 200 pages manual just to be able to find out how I can activate the digital screen.

If I manage to learn how to use it, I am going to take it with me today to the sunset sand safari trip…. Stay tuned for exciting sand dunes pictures… or not.

I am 45 years old…. let us do some recapitulation:

I think 45 is not too old since I am planning on living 100 years like my grandfather… which means I still have 5 years to go before my mid-life crisis…

I still have the chance to celebrate one day 50 years of marriage (honey if you keep up and stay in shape)

I can still work enough years to get a decent retirement…

45 years in this world… not too bad, with still 50 years to go!

Let’s see what I acheived so far: I made it through 20 years of war, through law school and my jailed clients, through immigration as an “alien”, and now hopefully will come out from Africa without malaria…

I’ve learned few things:

“Nothing last” good things and bad things they both vanish eventually.

“Love keeps you alive” and mostly “keeps people around you alive too…”

“Developing a new skill is the most aphrodisiac activity you can ever have”

“You are what you are, not more, nor less”

“You can never be alone enough… but the worth is feeling alone when you are with somebody else”

“Life is a constant surprising process”

“Don’t try to be a philosopher when you are writing a blog, it bores the reader”

Thank you for reading it anyway…

Now I am going to go and celebrate surviving 45 years and loving it.

He allowed me to make this short video to share with you his beautiful shots of the sand dunes.

Enjoy!

Big thanks JP.

I don’t know about that, but I know that they looked good and I took good pictures.

I was one day caught in a very awkward position in a meeting at work, a pretty bad situation.  I found myself about to start crying and this was the last thing I wanted to do in front of my colleagues and boss.  I decided to hide my feeling, which is pretty hard for me to do usually, and to pretend that I am not affected.  My instinct told me: “go to a happy place” , it was the only strategy to keep a good face and stay calm throughout the meeting.  At this moment I had no choice but to find this happy place right away and to escape mentally.  I was not prepared, I never thought about my happy place before and I had to come up with one, so I tried to think about the happiest feeling I had lately and what provoked it… and I found it! It was not an exotic place nor Paris (lol) it had only to do with a situation that makes me feel overjoyed, it was… (well I am not going to tell you and share on the internet my happy place.  Did you really think that I was going to tell you? Ha!) anyway my happy place is how I feel every time I am in this particular situation…

I know that “happy places” are for some people the way they feel every time they hear from a loved one, like for my husband when he hears from his daughter.  It can also be an email or this red number on the inbox in your Facebook page telling you that there is a private message waiting for you.  A happy place can also be sharing a smile with someone you love,  seeing your family or friends at the airport…

One person once said “we remember people not for what they did to us but for how they made us feel about ourselves”, and I think it is true, this is the first thing that comes to my mind when I try to remember someone; how they made me feel about myself.  We are rarely objective when we describe people, we only see them the way they make us feel about ourselves.

“What is your happy place?” Try to find it, it may be easier than you think and within your reach.