About two weeks ago, in a conversation with a friend, I mentioned that I wasn't aware of anyone around me who had been diagnosed with HIV.
My friend replied to me that HIV had almost totally disappeared anyway.
Surprised of this answer, I questioned them on this statement and I heard that it was not really present in the UK anymore and anyway, no one die of it anymore. My friend added that the use of condom today is mostly a contraception method.
I was a bit surprised to hear this speech but while my friend was talking to me I realised that not once in 5 years I saw a campaign about AIDS in the UK, which is probably the reason why my friend was minimising the reality.

The reality of AIDS in the UK is the following one (figures from AVERT):

Around 86,500 people were living with HIV in the UK at the end of 2009, of whom a quarter were unaware of their infection.

In 2010, there were 6,136 new diagnoses of HIV, contributing to a cumulative total of 114,766 cases reported by the end of December 2010.

As of December 2010, there have been 26,791 diagnoses of AIDS in the UK, and 19,912 people diagnosed with HIV have died.

If it's true that today, in our occidental countries,  treatments can slow down drastically this progressive disease, there is however no cure to AIDS. The treatment consists of drugs that have to be taken every day for the rest of a person’s life, where every missed dose increases the risk that the drugs will stop working.

And no, using condoms is not JUST a contraception method. It's still today, the ONLY WAY TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM HIV.

The fight against AIDS is not over. Protect yourself.

Read more about Aids:
- International AIDS Society
- NAT (National AIDS Trust)

Yesterday French President Sarkorzy announced an increase of general VAT to 21.2 per cent from 19.6 per cent.
As expected, people are not happy about this change.

This morning, I read a tweet from Valerie Pécresse, the Minister of the Budget (@vpecresse). She said
'13 pays sur 27 en Europe ont des taux de TVA > ou = à 21%. Plus intéressant encore, les pays les plus "sociaux" Danemark, Suède sont à 25%' (=13 pays in Europe have VAT = or > 21%. In some of the more 'social' countries like Denmark or Sweden, the VAT is 25%).

Is this tweet supposed to make the French increase ok? 'Oh, that's fine, we won't be the country with the highest VAT'.

Whenever a government makes a decision that increase taxes or lower benefits, they seem to always justify and explain the changes by comparing the situation to other countries.

When I was a kid and I was having bad results at a school test, my parents never accepted that I justify my bad results with comparisons to other pupils. They were telling me that they didn't care if everybody in the class had failed their mathematics test, they wanted to know why I wasn't prepared enough for the test and why I failed it.

After reading Valerie Pecresse's comment I thought exactly the same... no one cares that half of the countries of the European Union have worse or similar results. What you need to explain is why you were not prepared enough to avoid such a bad result and what you are planning to do to make it better next time. That's what really need to be explained.

I believe I had not much of an understanding of what yoga was until I moved to the UK. None of my friends in Belgium or France were doing this activity and therefor I never questioned what it was.
About 4 years ago, a friend of mine here in Bristol started yoga. And it became fast an obsession for her. She was doing yoga a few times a week, was buying and reading yoga books, became a vegetarian, stopped drinking booze and for a while, she couldn't talk about anything else than yoga. She became a true miss Yogi Yoga. It reached the point where I sometimes was avoiding to see her because I couldn't bare hearing about yoga anymore.
Based on this first meeting with yoga, I got the idea that yoga was a kind of obsessive mediation activity for wannabe hippies.
I never intended to try myself, thinking that I was way too down-to-earth for it.

With time, I met more and more people attending weekly classes. Some seemed totally obsessed by it, some seemed just to be normally enjoying it.

Last year, my friend became a yoga teacher and started to teach in town. I declined the invitation to join her class but I was very happy to see her doing well in the field of her passion.
Yesterday, she flew to India where she will be teaching and practising yoga for a few months. She won't be teaching in Bristol until this summer.

Her last class was last week. And I finally went.
The idea of yoga had grown in me for so long, it was about time that I get a real opinion on this activity.

And I must say that yoga is nothing of what I thought it was!
I went to my friend's Ashta Led class and after just 10 minutes of practice I started to think that my body would never survive 90 minutes of such intense activity.
If yoga has something of meditation due to the attention placed on breathing, it is however rather an exhausting physical activity. It's proper sport!
I had to stop a few times to drink, to rest and I thought a few times that I would just pass out on my mat.
Now I shouldn't probably have joined an improver class for my very first lesson.
My body hurt for a few days but I felt good after the class. And I discover that my friend is a very good yoga teacher.
She is now gone for a few months but I am thinking to join a beginner class until she is back.
And maybe when she returnes, we'll have a chat between misses Yogi Yoga.

(Picture: http://www.travelvivi.com/yoga-tours-worldwide/)

Earlier today I realised that I haven't blogged for over a month when I thought it had been 2 weeks or so.
It had been a few days that I was thinking that I should write a blog post about something. But whoever has a blog would know that 'trying to write a post about something' is a tough job on a blog.
Either you feel like blogging, either you don't.
These days, I don't feel like blogging.

Blogging is an exercise requiring to stop, look back, analyse and comment.
These days I just feel like being and living.
Of course I am living things that I could comment about,  such as how ashamed I feel about my home country right now or how much I dislike every sentence starting by 'You should have...'.
I could come up with a funny post about the Christmas traditions in the UK and wondering why people keep bothering eating turkey and Brussels sprouts on Xmas day when clearly everybody would love to eat something else instead.
But as much as I am still a world observer, I don't feel like being a world reporter right now.
This will come back, most likely.

Over the last year I have sewed stuff, written stories, made fimo modeling, made animations movies, made hula hooping videos, made bags, made lomography pictures and many other things, By doing all these things I learned one thing about myself. I learned that I only can do these things when I feel like doing them.
I can't write a story or make a bag if I am being asked to do so.
I can't force myself.
And right now, I don't feel like making things.

Right now I feel like eating chocolates and drinking wine. There is a time for everything, he!

The name Wassily Kandinsky might not ring any bells to you but the chances are that you have already seen some of his art in some of your friend's flats.
Indeed,  reproductions of his painting 'Farbstudie Quadrate'  - image used to illustrate this article - are (used to be?) sold at Ikea and are (were?) a very good seller.
Kandinsky is a Russian painter who was born in the second half of the 19th century (and dead in the 20th) and who is credited with painting the first purely-abstrack work. I personally like a lot some pieces of his work and if you don't know anything about him, I would recommend that you check his work - make a search in google and you'll find many results.

Kandinsky did not only paint during his life. He as well produced some theoretical writings about art, based on his own experience and his observations of other artist's work.
In his writings, he analyzed the geometrical elements which make up every painting: the point and the line.
'Everything starts from a dot', wrote Kadinsky in one of his book.

It's true, everything does.

From the first drawing of a child to the master piece of a well known artist, from the X signed by an illiterate to the best selling novel of the year, from a music note to Edvard Gried's Peer Gynt, from the first step of a baby to the 100 meters world record.

A few weeks ago, I saw my sister-in-law showing to my niece how to draw circles. She was drawing a dot and telling her daughter to draw a loop from the left of the dot to its right and come back to the dot. A tough job the first few times for a 3 years old child.
I had forgotten that a circle starts from a dot. From that learning, I only remembered the final result: the circle. But a circle starts from a dot. And to be able to get a circle from a dot, it requires work, time and perseverance until one day, when we start drawing circles effortlessly.
The same goes for everything in life, every project, every challenge, every relationship, every story, every achievement.

Yes, everything starts from a dot.

Until a week ago, I had never heard of double rainbows. I didn't know it was possible at all to have double rainbows.
But in the last 7 days, 3 of my social networks contacts saw one in different cities and posted online pictures of this phenomenon.
Last Tuesday in Paris, end of the week in Bristol and Sunday in Reykjavik.

(download)

Click here to download:

Double_rainbows.zip (327 KB)

Beautiful, arent' they?

But how do double rainbow work?

Does it mean there there are two pots of gold?

I'm afraid that no, there aren't two double pots of gold. There is actually even not one. Because..

But with or without pots of gold, they are beautiful!

I have been censoring myself for months on this blog but today, that's it. I can't stay quiet anymore on this topic and I have to tell you how big my issue is with that one.
Guys.
Here is the truth.

I don't understand people who loves cats.

Oh don't take me wrong, I have nothing against people who generally like cats as an animal. No, I'm cool with that.
I personally like cats. I think cats are charming pets and I used to have loads of them when I was a kid.

What I really don't get is people who loves cats but seems to ignore the fact that cats are animals and they behave with their cats like if they were human beings.
Here are just a few of the things that totally puzzle me:

People who sign for their cats on the xmas cards they are sending every year.

No your cat is not wishing me a Merry Christmas.
Actually your cat doesn't know what Xmas is. Or if they do, they certainly believe that Xmas is that cool period of time where they can play in trees IN the house because they owner brings one inside the house! And because their owner loves them very much they even hang some red and silver toys on it for them to play. Wow, Christmas is really cool!
Ahem!
But even if cats had an understanding of what Xmas is all about, cats don't write. So don't sign for your cats.

People who try to make their cats walking on 2 legs only.

Cats have four legs and need to use the four of them to walk.
Stop trying to make them walk like men. Once again, they are animals. If you want a pet at home that will one day walk on 2 legs, make a baby. Babies are human beings. Cats are not and all you will manage to do by forcing them to be on two legs is to injure them. If you love cats - and I know you do - avoid hurting them.
A few years ago, a friend of mine was training his cat to stay on 2 legs for long period of time. The cat eventually got a lumbago and required drugs injection to get the pain relieved. True story. He of course didn't dare saying to the vet what happened to the cat. I am however pretty sure that vets all get similar cases.

People who confuse their cat being rude with their cat being cute.

If your cat jump on the table every time your start eating your dinner, sorry but it isn't cute. It's rude. So don't tell me : 'My cat is so so cute. She always wants to taste my food before I can eat' (yes, I really heard that one!).
Your cat doesn't want to 'taste' your food. Your cat wants you food. Point dot com (as heard on the TV this weekend).

People who kiss their cat on the mouth.

Your cat is not your lover.
Don't kiss your cat on the mouth, it's disgusting. Or if you do, keep it quiet and don't do it in front of your guests. You know that your cat spend their days licking their body and even, their er... ass. Would you kiss a man/woman if you knew that person had spent the entire day licking their bum? No you wouldn't! So why would you kiss your cat's mouth?

People who would prefer not sleeping ok than having to kick their cat away from bed.

You let your cat sleeping on your bed - ok fine. I won't waste my time commenting on that one.
But please, don't let your cat  invading all your space and stopping you to sleep properly. A cat is tiny and don't need much room. Don't let it sleep right in the middle of the bed if it makes you having bad nights. If your husband/wife was taking all the space in your bed, you would tell them, surely?
Why behaving differently with your cat? (Not that I am suggesting that you should have a talk with your cat... your cat wouldn't understand.. because your cat doesn't understand the words you say. Sorry)

No, I don't get it.

But the truth is that I wonder if there is not something wrong with me.. Because I sometimes feel that 99.5% of the population seems to be totally cool with these above behaviours.
I don't have a cat anymore, so who knows,  if I had one, maybe I would sign for my lovely one on my Xmas cards...
But I swear to Bastet* that you never will get me kissing a cat on the mouth!

...unless it's a very cute one ;-)

*Bastet is a feline goddess of the Ancient Egyptian religion

Note: this post is a bit exaggerated, of course - its point is just to be funny.

It's true that I don't fully get why people are so crazy of their cats but I have no issue with that.
I had a few dinners with friends in the last months where easily one hour of the conversations each time were all about stories of their cats and I couldn't help to think that these people should start having babies. Because all these stories would make more sense if the word cat was replaced each time by the word baby. This gave me the idea of writting this post.
I like cats and I like my friends who have cats.