Terrorist attacks in Paris, warm clothes, and date night

It was a profoundly horrific and sad weekend. I am still reeling from the events in Paris (which happened on their Friday night) and feel a deep sense of sadness for what had happened.

The multiple terrorist attacks on Paris was the 9/11 of Europe. At this stage, 132 people were confirmed dead. Terrorists either blew themselves up or shot at people at public places, including a restaurant, a stadium, and within the close confines of a concert hall. The utterly barbaric and unforgivable acts were punctuated by these terrorists telling people to lie on the ground and then proceeded to shoot them anyway. There were no words for the heinousness of these crimes.

Friday evening

There were only the three of us on Friday night because the other boys piked, so Sam, Jake, and I had dinner at Grill'd together. Afterwards, I grabbed another Airport Extreme from the Apple Store and went to a few shops with the boys before we went to see The Last Witch Hunter.

Okay, if you are looking for a good movie in the traditional sense, don't even bother but I don't mind a bit of low brow stuff from time to time, especially on a Friday night when I don't really want to think, so The Last Witch Hunter wasn't all that bad. If I want to be positive, I'd say that the best part of the movie were the special effects. It certainly helped when I enjoyed supernatural stuff, so it was fun to watch all the magic in the movie. If I want to be negative, I'd say that the script was terrible and Vin Diesel was as wooden as ever; he pretty much played himself, which was no different from how he acted in Pitch Black and a whole bunch of other preternatural themed movies. I'd give it a 6 out of 10 for mindless entertainment.

Saturday

All hell broke lose on Saturday morning when I started hearing about the terrorist attacks in Paris. I was sickened by what I heard. I did send a message to our Airbnb host in Paris to tell him that the people of Paris were in our thoughts and the whole world was behind them. I can't really say I don't understand why the terrorists did what they did - after all, we are all infidels from their perspective and we simply don't hold any value to them, irrespective of whether we are civilians or otherwise. But still, I would have thought there must be at least some humanity in people, whether they are terrorists or not but I am obviously too naive, not to mention that if people are desperate enough, for instance, if someone is bombing the crap out of you, you tend to retaliate without abandon.

Anyway, I went down to Wilde Kitchen to catch up with Dale for lunch. We had a good chat about many things. We tend to do that whenever we get together. After all these years of walking with each other on a weekly basis, we still manage to find heaps to talk about.



After lunch, Sam and I went to Kathmandu in the Valley to look for some warm clothes for him. I gave him the downs filled mid-layer I recently bought for myself because he was a bit short on money and he bought three sets of pure merino wool thermals. Together with this really warm outer layer jacket that he has, I think he should be fine in Europe. I also bought another mid-layer for myself because I gave mine to Sam. When I got home though, I changed my mind and didn't really like it, so I planned to return it the next day. We didn't do much for the rest of the day and I spent much of it trying to find more news on Paris, which was becoming more depressing and horrifying by the minute.

In the evening, the two of us went down to a local Thai restaurant for dinner. Originally, we were just going to get some takeaway but we decided to eat there, which was more convenient and it turned out to be a nice little impromptu date night.

The rest of the night was uneventful but I started this clothes shopping streak online, which caused some damage to the credit card. :P

Sunday

We woke up to more news about Paris, which had been weighing heavily on my mind. As bizarre as this may seem, I think I was suffering from mild trauma over the events.



Sam and I went down to Wilde Kitchen together for lunch, followed by returning the gilet I bought at Kathmandu the day before and going to his mum's place to install Microsoft Office on her iMac. I don't know what the hell is wrong with her computer, albeit it is an old model iMac that dates back some 7-8 years ago but it seems to hang at times, which is very annoying. I did manage to install Office on the machine and when I did, we gave her a crash course on how to use it (she is highly computer illiterate) and show her how to access all these old files that were sitting on the system. There were heaps of stuff saved down by Sam's dad before their divorce, so we reckoned she would have a field day going through everything with a fine tooth comb after we left.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were uneventful. I ironed, cooked dinner for us, and that was pretty much it.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help thinking about how the world could ever solve this fundamental Islam problem. While the Islamic State is now the embodiment of the phenomenon, fundamental Islam is spread throughout the world, including western countries. Therefore, no amount of fire power or bombs could really eradicate it and if you try (like what France has been doing), you are merely perpetuating a cycle of revenge.

It would seem to me that the only solution is to neutralise the need for fundamental Islam, which will require a dramatic shift in mindset. This is where it gets tricky because of how the religion is so inextricably connected with politics and government due to the Sharia law. But perhaps the most difficult part of all these is the concept of jihad in the Koran - as long as this concept exists to legitimise violence to achieve a spiritual end, it will always be open to fundamental interpretation.

The world has a massive problem to solve and I am afraid there will not be any drastic change to the current position for quite some time yet.