Tourbillon by Soha

I love the cultural mix, Afro-cuban beats, Spanish, and French. A perfect mix to dance and brighten the day. I love her elegant and unique style in this video. Soha is Algerian and Ethiopian and French from Marseilles!!!
Yes!!
Enjoy!

Erykah Badu - Out My Mind, Just In Time

OUT MY MIND JUST IN TIME from Creative Control on Vimeo.

jacked from: A Shaded View on Fashion

Book of the Week: Cultural Internationalism and World Order by Akira Iriye

This book is currently on top of my book wish list!
I like the fact that Akira Iriye analysis goes beyond traditional diplomatic history by incorporating cultural perspectives. I like the term of "cultural internationalism", I am not sure about world order but I will read this book!! As an international student, I found out that your cultural imprint goes beyond  "diplomacy", at the end you learn to adapt while understanding others. Akira Iriye seems to have a very liberal view. He is encouraging "cultural internationalism"beyond the traditional understanding of international relations as competition for power and wealth. His book was published in 1997 but I think the issue is still current!

Artsy peeks of the week

Lino Tagliapietra

Tsang Cheung-shing

Holly Lentz

Darra J Family-Baayi Yoon

This is one of my favorite african group. They are from Senegal. I love the fact that they stayed authentic to who they were.  I love this video!!!Enjoy ...

Openness and emotional duality

As spring is blessing us with all her peaceful beauty, life is sweeter than honey. Flowers are blooming, opening to keep life alive. It is not just about beautiful colors. It is about survival and procreation.   Flowers beautifully represent our emotional duality and desire to be open.  Openness is crucial to our crystallized intelligence. According to Wikipedia, Crystallized intelligence is described as a person's depth and breadth of general knowledge, vocabulary, and the ability to reason using words and numbers. It is the product of educational and cultural experience in interaction with fluid intelligence.

I definitively love spring because it encourages everyone to open up. It is a peaceful time to reflect about life.  Open can be synonym to naïve. However, naivety in children blesses them with a profound openness that adults tend to envy.  Even the naïve flower after opening up to release her scent to attract insects, she will close back to conserve resources at night. She will not waste her delicate perfume and will compete with others flowers to attract wandering insects. So openness does not always equate to credulity. 

Duality is the essence of life. Our terrestrial, emotional and moral lives are all about duality. Openness is a personal approach to life. In my opinion it gives a better chance to reach balance. We are trained to appreciate all natural dualities such male and female, light and dark, and positive and negative. 

However, we are scared to embrace our emotional duality while secretly praying for neutrality.

In high school, I start liking physics when we did learn about Newton’s law of action-reaction. “The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear”. It made sense; life is a succession of actions-reactions.  Ironically, I became aware of the multitude of reactions for my actions. Nevertheless, I realized that being aware did not prevent me from being open. Later in college, teachers always preached the famous “think outside the box”. After years of formatting fluid reasoning, openness was required to solve problems from the “box”. I realized that “my box” was diverse, eclectic and messy. So for me the “think outside the box” meant “open your box”. Openness did allow me accept my emotional dualities. Of course being blessed with many spring, helped me mature. Time is a blessing. Enjoy your spring, live and love your dear life.

Peace…

Armando Manzane and Concha Buika-Nos Hizo Falta Tiempo

Concha Buika captured everything, I love about growing up in French Catalonia along Gitanos (Spanish Romani people). Her voice has that sensitivity from raw and real emotions. Her voice is as rough and gentle as life. She is a born Spanish from Equatorial Guinea.
We are all nomads!
Nos Hizo Falta Tiempo so live your dear life!!
Enjoy!!!
Same Moonlight for Our Dreams...

Dr Augustus White on Tavis Smiley about "Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care"

Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley are the few shows, I stay up for. Last week, I stayed up late enough to watch the interview on Dr. Augustus White by Tavis Smiley. It was about Health-care, race, and health disparities in USA.  In his memoir,"Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care"; Dr. White addresses the issue of cultural awareness in medicine. He talk about all biases, not just race.  He believes that we need to address our own cultural biases to be more compassionate.  His argument reminds me of my father.  He did teach us that in term of health we are our best advocate.  At a very young age, we went to some doctor consultations alone because he wanted us to be responsible of our health.  Dr White emphasizes that patients  must be trained about cultural disparities as well as health-care disparities.  Dr White also talked about how he became a doctor coming from segregated South. It is delicate issue that is still current for many among us due to Socio-economics segregation. In my opinion, the message  is about  awareness of our flaws and prejudices.

Thank you Dr. Augustus  White and Tavis Smiley!

Watch the full episode. See more Tavis Smiley.