About the significance of ankles

“You can tell if a girl's young or old, beautiful or ugly by the way she walks, by her shoes, her hands, and her ankles. Actually, everything you want to know about a girl can be seen in her ankles,” says Abdullah¹. This reminds me of a moment during calligraphy class: accidentally I look to the ground and I notice a strict-looking girl wearing black sexy hoses.
I walk along the quiet side-street. There are two females in burquas ahead me. They wear spacious pleated skirts and high heels (how they manage with those fashionable shoes on a frozen and bumpy road?). Slacks with lacy borders of are flashing under their skirts. Bare feet - while I am wearing warm winter boots - can be seen while they promenade. Ladies are young and desirable, because young guys they pass by are whistling.
Females in Afghanistan are usually hidden. An image of a naked woman can even cause the feeling of physical sickness.
I remember a strange situation that happened during the flight from Kabul to Herat. Stewardesses wore short skirts. It would be hard to wear more unsuitable clothes in the airplane full of Afghans. One stewardess asked in a sternly loud voice one Afghan men to apply his safety belt. This guy looked really irritated: improperly dressed woman is shouting at him. What an undignified situation!
Swedish girl Ester was my companion during our hamam-visit. After seeing so many naked women who seemed to feel quite relaxed, Ester asked me: “ Isn’t it so that western culture is sometimes weird? These female here veil themselves in public, but they feel quite comfortable being naked in hamam. Western ladies are almost naked in public, but they are afraid to be naked in a bathhouse…"
--
¹Love and War in Afghanistan by Alex Klaits and Gulchin Gulmamadova-Klaits

EA introduces "Sims game" for laptops

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) - Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS.O: Quote, Profile , Research) on Tuesday announced a new line of video games called "The Sims Stories" aimed at the laptop-toting youth market as it strives to deliver a bigger proportion of titles based on more lucrative company-owned material.

Players of "The Sims" control virtual people called Sims as they sleep, eat, cook, socialize, buy things and work.

"The Sims" is the No. 1 franchise at EA, the world's biggest video game publisher, which has sold more than 70 million games globally since 2000. It also has a broader audience than most games. Half of its players are female -- unlike most commercial video game audiences, who are mostly male.

"The Sims Life Stories" is the first in the new series and is due in the United States and Europe in the first week of February.

"The Sims Pet Stories" and "The Sims Castaway Stories" are scheduled to ship in mid-2007 and late 2008, respectively.

EA aims to use the new titles to expand the "Sims" audience to more casual players and is targeting multitasking MySpace teens and consumers in their early 20s with the new games.

"The Sims Life Stories" has a comic-romantic plot and offers a new story mode, which runs through 12 chapters of a set story line, while also supporting the franchise's traditional open style of play.

All of "The Sims Life Stories" games are designed to run on laptops and do not require upgraded graphics cards, as many PC games do. The games can also be played for hours or minutes in a window while other programs, such as instant messaging or e-mail, run simultaneously.

Winter!

It is really frosty now. Every morning when I jump out from bed I try to put on my six layers of clothes as quickly as I can. There is hardly 9º C in the bedroom and the curtains are frozen to icy windows. While the sun is rising, the ice flowers are melting rapidly.
Cold is the main topic among Afghans and internationals as well. We suffer together. Afghans don’t seem to know what are double glazes windows, so we covered our windows with plastic. It is a common tradition here.
We bought two sawdust ovens made by local master. Actually they are just metal buckets with some decoration outside. We use another, smaller bucket to fill it with sawdust. Actually, I need to compress sawdust quite a lot. I put smaller bucket inside the bigger one, light fire and – voilá! – oven runs for eight hours. At least theoretically.
The water pipes are usually installed outside of house walls. During night time (ca –10ºC to –15ºC) they freeze. So, most of houses – and many offices as well – don’t have running water and sewage system is often frozen as well.
At the beginning of this year, I went to Noborja Fort, to photograph in the headquarters of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. Most of Kabul’s internationals left home for Christmas. Only fragile young lady Molly was left there, pushing local staff to solve the problems with frozen pipes and unusable toilets... I have some previous experience from hiking in Siberia during wintertime, but Kabul reality seems to me much more frustrating. Body gets tired of everlasting fighting with cold.
At the other hand it has been so nice: lots of snow, bright sunshine during the daytime and transparent air (no dust at all!). Of course, there is lots of work connected with snow as well: every day somebody must climb up on roof to tidy up snow (because snow is heavy and flat mud roof is not waterproof) and there are lots of problems with traffic (afghans do not use winter tires and suitable non-freezing car liquids).
We missed the Christmas, but we got the local holidays instead, Eid-e Quorban. Andres’s colleague Elias tells us the story from Holy Quran: God ordered Abram to sacrifice his son. When Abram was about to start the sacrifice, the God stopped him and ordered him to sacrifice a lamb instead of his child. God said to Abram that he just wanted to understand how strong is Abram’s faith.
During sacrifice holidays, there are herds of sheep everywhere on the streets of Kabul. And one can see lots of taxis stuffed with sheep on back seat. Our landlord sacrifices a lamb as well and sends us some meat. This is a good time for beggars and for poor: rich must provide poorer ones with food. And hordes of men with bloody knives and axes roam on the streets, knocking on the doors and asking for meat…

A rare thought

simplicity + depth = great advertising

Tools addition

I will be adding a few useful tools to the sidebar, currently I am adding a few symbol lists that is automatically updated daily and in CSV form. This can be used to track portofolio, create large scale stock scans and technical analysis. In the next few weeks, I will be adding some custom scans that I find useful in investing and trading.