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.

Note: my challenge for the next 12 months is to create a new design for a bag every week. Read more about this project here.
If you want a copy of this bag, send me a mail: me [at] cecfrombelgium. com and I'll make one for you for the tiny price of 5€/4£+ postage.

If you hadn't seen the other bags have a look here , here and here.
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Click here to download:

Xs_and_Os_a_user_guide_oneweek.zip (134 KB)

If you know some English speaking people, you will have noticed that they sometimes add x's and o's at the end of their mails, sms or messages on your facebook wall.
Sometimes they will sign their message with an initial and will add a cross after it, like this: Cx,
Or they could add the x before the initial, like this: xC
Sometimes they won't sign the mail or message, assuming you already know who wrote it and they will only end their message with a x.
Sometimes, they could end their message with 3 x and their signature: xxx,  Cecile.

You probably know this, these crosses are their specific way to send you kisses in written communications.
But why is it?
And what does it mean exactly when they use crosses, when in real life, as you know it, English people are not fan of kisses?

The origin
It seems that the use of x at the end of messages find its origin in the X used as signature by illiterates.

The religion, of course! Everything seems to find its origin in the religion. Even pancakes day!

How to use x

I questioned a few people and they told me they would use it at the end of a message to close friends, usually to girls and to members of their family.
Girls would avoid using them for guys unless their relationship as friends is clear already.
Guys wouldn't usually send x to other guys.
People wouldn't

send x to their boss or their colleagues unless they are more than just colleagues and unless they are colleagues that you would kiss on the cheek in real life.
In doubts, the usual way to tell if someone find a x inappropriate is whether they do it back or not on a reply.
Everybody seems to agree that x are sent only to people that you would greet and depart with a kiss or a hug when you seen them physically.

What about the use of multiple x's

People tends to send between one x up to lots depending on happiness and the content of the rest of the message they send, with an average of maximum 3 x's.

What about the o's

If everybody knows that they mean 'hugs', I personally don't know anyone who use them.
They seem to be used by Americans and younger generations.
There are some rules to use them:

My own experience

These x's can confuse me. When guys I barely know send me x's at the end of sms I always wonder how I am supposed to take these x's.
I remember that a few years ago, a colleague definitely not closed to me, sent me a text with a few x's at the end after a work dinner. It puzzled me.

I do generally think it is being overused since I see x's everywhere, almost if it was more a way to mark the end of a message rather than really sending a kiss.

And that's the story behind the bag #4 of my oneweekonebag little project!

Note: my challenge for the next 12 months is to create a new design for a bag every week. Read more about this project here.
If you want a copy of this bag, send me a mail: me [at] cecfrombelgium. com and I'll make one for you for the tiny price of 5€/4£+ postage.

When I was a child, my parents bought for my brother and myself some books written by a Danish team and officially called Rasmus Klump. They were not children novels, neither proper comics books. They were comic without speech balloons, the text being written below each image.
The books were telling stories about the main character, Petzi (the name of the books in French), a bear dressed in red dungarees with white dots,  and his friends Pingo (a.. penguin of course), Riki ( a pelican), Caroline (a little turtle) and Amiral ( a seal).
In one of the first books they build a boat that they use  in all the other books to travel the world all together.
In the second or third one, my favorite one, they all go to Petzi's home and his mom make pancakes for them.
Every time I have pancakes I have a thought for Petzi eating pancakes, I can't help!
I am surprised that no Petzi merchandising exist nowadays, I am sure someone could make some business with this lovely bear wearing dungarees! I have been looking for a Petzi printed bag or t-shirt but never found anything.

In Bristol, some people can have a very strong accent from the south west. It's not always easy to get what people says, especially when it comes from older people from the old working class.
'Y allreet, my luv' is a sentence you would hear a lot if you were visiting Bristol. All what people are meaning when they say it is basically 'hi'. It seems they ask you if you are allright, but it's just really a way over here to say 'hi'.

Petzi + Y allreet, my luv = the story of the bag of the week!

I am hearing your answers:

- At work earlier
- In my car on the way back to home
- When I was preparing dinner
- When I was writing a mail to a friend/updating my facebook status

And I would tell you : 'No, you didn't understand my question. I didn't ask you when was the last time you heard music. I asked when was the last time you listened to music?'
When is the last time that you played music not to have background melody while doing something, but really because listening to music is what you wanted to do? When was the last time you really paid attention to the music you were listening?

Until 1877 when the gramophone (phonograph) got created , listening to music meant watching and listening to musician playing live. You couldn't listen to music while cooking or working, Enjoying music was a whole activity itself that people had to planned in advance. Only if you were a king or something like that could you have got on-demand music at anytime of the day or night.
When the gramophone appeared in the 19th century, it was a revolution! Someone found a way to record and reproduce sounds!
But still during a while, listening to music stayed an activity as such, family members and friends meeting together around the device to listen to music.
Over the past 135 years, music recorders, players and technology evolved in a way resulting that today, music is everywhere, all the time. And it's a great thing! I love music and I love to be able to listen to music on the go pretty much when I want.
But don't you think that by consuming music just that way we are missing something?

Recording an album for an artist is time consuming. Months and years of work. Writing the words, composing the music, producing the album take times. And what is making the difference between a great album and a random one is in the details and in the patience of the artists involved.
By playing music while doing something else, we don't really listen to it and probably miss a lot of it.
Listening to music while doing something else is like listening to your son/wife/friend/husband while reading a book or coding some phone applications. You hear them but you are not really listening, are you?

What is your favorite artist?
Without thinking too much I would say that my favorite band is The National. And I like M83 a lot too.
When was the last time I really listened to them? Paying attention to their music? Doing nothing else than listening to music?
The last time was such a long time ago that I couldn't answer.

And you, when was the last time you listened to music?
If you can't answer the question but define yourself as a music lover, I think it's time for you to book some time with yourself and your favorite artist. When you are ready, put your favorite album in your player, turn off your phone and laptop, sit in your sofa or lay on the floor.

It's time to listen to music!

Last week I was writing here that my friend Hannah and I had submitted a casting video for a global hula hooping competition.
So how did that go?
We got selected together with 13 other teams (10 American ones, one from Australia*, one from Israel, one from London and us) and we got explanations together with details about our first challenge on Thursday afternoon.

What did we get ourselves into?

The Amazing Hoop Race is inspired by the American tv show Amazing Race, which is,  as I now have learned:

The hooping race will follow the same rules and will make us travel around the world as well, but.. virtually. We'll have challenges to make on our way that we'll have to document with videos.

What was the first destination?

Thursday afternoon, we got some information about the game and the first mission (see information here).
Not familiar with the the American game, we first got very confused. And I personally would have stayed confused if I hadn't had a clever team player to clarify the whole thing and understand the cryptic message.
It was easy to understand we had to make our way to the airport (virtually or not) but we couldn't get what else we had to do. We knew it was not just the airport thing but with only these sentences to enlighten us, we were a bit puzzled: 'Upon landing in our first Amazing Hoop Race location, you will need to find the Vista Point for this leg of the race. We have a feeling this first leg will have you going in Circularidades.'

Friday morning, Hannah sent me a text saying: 'I figured it out: we need to do a Brazilian Samba video, by Sunday!'
How did she find it?
She made some google search with the word Circularidades and she found this website with a message waiting for us! SICK. I would probably have never found out and we know now that days later, some teams haven't found this website yet neither.

Hannah and I met on Friday lunch time and we decided to make our Brazilian video on that night, in a Brazilian party in a club in town (lucky us, a Brazilian night in Bristol the right weekend!). I wasn't super enthusiastic by having to go in a club ( the doctor having told me the day before that, based on the x-ray, my broken toe would need 4 more weeks to heal) but I got my positive cap on and started to get organised for it.
Hannah got us tickets for the night and some feathers, I made us some team hoodies and we found someone to be our camera operator.

We met at the club a bit before 11pm and tried to get in. However, the doorman didn't like the look of our hoops and we got asked to leave them in the cloakroom!
When we got in there, there was some capoera taking place on the stage. We watched them for a bit and then went upstairs to get our faces painted.
Hannah went later talking to the organiser of the night, asking if we really couldn't make a tiny video on their terrace. He agreed and we got our hoops released!
It was a bit tricky to hoop there due to the lack of space but we managed to make some moves.
We then got downstairs and tried to make it on stage. A samba dancer who was about to start a performance together with the drummers told us she would love us to join her on stage. We waited with her for a while but after 40 minutes, we decided to call it a day and left the club.
We made a few more moves outside the club and that was it.
It took us about 3 hours on that night!

Here is the result (if the video doesn't play in the post, check it out on youtube):


What about the first challenge?

The first challenge was to get 20 people hula hooping in an airport.
Being pretty sure that it's forbidden to film in an airport, I called them on Saturday morning to ask authorisation to film just for a few minutes. They gave us their ok as long as we were there at the quietest time of the day for them: 1pm.
At 1pm, we were there with plenty of hoops! A security guy got asked to stay with us to make sure we were behaving well and we started asking people to hoop with us.
Hannah was very professional and highly motivated in her way to ask people's help and we easily got 30 people hooping with us. Travellers being in Bristol airport that day must have seen something unique happening there!

Here is the result (if the video doesn't play in the post, check it out on youtube):

So, what next?

The deadline to submit the videos is tonight at 9pm PST.
All teams will then be rated for
 1) The airport challenge (1 point/traveller hooping) /20 points
 2) The Brazilian video, rated by our 'host', the blog Movimento BamBamBam! owner / 40 points
 3) Public vote - we'll let you know when the votes are opened / 30 points
 4) How fast we were to make the 1 and 2 /10 points

The 3 teams  with the less points will be out of the game this week. I am confident we'll make it ok.
We'll then get new cryptic information (probably on Thursday again) to find out what our new challenge and our new 'virtual'destination are.

Our thoughts on the game so far?

1) Time consuming! We didn't know it would be so demanding! Together, the airport and the Brazilian video took us about 5 to 6 hours of shootage and about 8 hours of video editing for both videos. Hopefully not every week will be so demanding!
2) Money consuming! Tickets for the Brazilian night + feathers + airport parking + petrol = money! Next week we'll find a way to make the challenge without spending money.
3) It's fun and exciting!

Lessons learned so far?

1) Have a clear idea of the final result expected before filming. I had an idea before going to the club but it didn't completely work to plan. Next time will be planned better.
2) Don't talk when hooping > it looks crap on the video
3) Keep in mind we need space to hoop
4) Avoid dark spaces
5) Don't do stupid faces on the camera, it's gonna end on the web!
6) Give a rest to the toe if you want to be able to hoop/walk ok ever again in your life

And that's it for the first week!

Spread the word about this competition to all your friends and colleagues because we gonna need your help to get the maximum of votes!! We have a Facebook Fanpage to make it easy for you to follow us. Click here.

Go Go Go Team Bristol!

* Team Australia should be your second favorite team because... they are in Bristol!! Stacey relocated to Bristol a few weeks ago and Clare is in Bristol for a few weeks. So, if you get to vote for 2 teams, give them as well your support. Go Team Australia!

Sometimes we have days that feel so bad that if someone was asking us at the end of it 'How was your day' we could answer 'like a very bad week'.
At 7pm, emotionally drained,  there is only one thing we want to do: go to bed and sleep 24hours.

Yesterday I had one of these days. And when I came back home slightly after 7, I really felt I could just go to bed.
But I had planned to go to see a play with a friend on that night, so despite a huge wish to stay at home, I grabbed my stick one more time (oh yeah, I am now walking with a stick.. still the toe...) and I walked to the theater where I arrived just before the play started.

I have been to the theater a few times in Bristol in the past years and I never got impressed. Either I couldn't understand a word, either I could understand words but didn't get the story, either I could understand the story but didn't like it.
However, the play yesterday was at the circus school of Bristol 'Circomedia' and for having already seen a few circus shows there, I was hoping that this time, I would enjoy the play.

And indeed I did!

TELL THEM THAT I AM YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL by Marcello Magni & KP Productions is a brilliant, funny, touching play with the finest stage actors I got to see so far.
During two hours, the 4 actors on stage together with one musician tackled themes of love, friendship, truth, greed, and sacrifice and told us seven stories inspired by proverbs, old tales and real dramatic events. The dialogues are well written, the actors are fabulous, the director did a perfect job and so, when after two hours,  I realised that the show was over, I wished it was only a quick break before they come back on stage to tell us a few more stories.

TELL THEM THAT I AM YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL is still on tonight at the Circomedia and if I were you, I would go!
If all theatre plays were as good at this one is, I would be in theatres every nights!

Details here

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