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03/12/2006: "Intense weekend"

music: Nothing, just silence
mood: Thoughtful

Hi everyone,

I can safely say that it has been an intense weekend. Next to everything that normally needs to be done we have had a really interesting and thought provoking weekend.

It started with us discovering a new 6-episode American TV-series. The series is called: "Black White" and is a crossover between "Big brother" and a documentary. What happens is that they have got two American families living in a house for six weeks. Inside the house the family that is white is white and the black family is black. However, they only venture out of the house as a part of the opposite race. So the members from the white family are turned black and the black family turned white. So they can 'live in each other's skin' and discover, at least to a certain extend, the other family's day-to-day life.

The idea is really good, however, I don't think they have taken it as seriously as they could. Because it's first and foremost a reality tv-show. A lot of the news bulletins and stories which sprung up all over the web are thus mostly negative, which really is a shame. We downloaded the first episode which was broadcast in the US at the 8th of March and, after watching it, had quite a long conversation.
What makes you what you are? Where do those pre-programmed ideas from which, inevitably, everyone has got and how does it influence your life? It's a shame we have to download this program as I am quite sure we will probably never see it broadcast on Dutch or English tv.
The impact it had on members on both families was varied. The two dads both had their own preconceptions about discrimination and felt like they were too stuck in their ways to adjust their opinions. The two mothers seemed to have such different views that they clash constantly with the white mother feeling she is constantly stamped with the 'racist' word even though she honestly thinks she is open minded and not racist. I'd say she's at least unfeeling and unwilling to learn, then again to eager to learn... The black son can't care less and so also seems to not learn too much. What, even after watching one episode, becomes clear is that the 18 year old white daughter goes into it with an open mind and goed into it to the core. when her mother and the black mom have got a conflict you can see that she honestly understands where both are coming from and that not being able to reconcile those two ideas is simply heartbreaking. You can find more info on this TV-show here.

Next to that we also watched a couple of Oprah's about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is unbelievable that Americans are still living in conditions close to how it was just after the Hurricane struck. It's just criminal as far as I am concerned! I don't care who's call it is...the federal or state government, but they should start moving fast. It's unbelievable that this happens in America, the richest country in the world. It shows how incompetent America really is.

Saturday evening we watched the BBC show about your memory. They had questions so you could check how good (or bad) your memory is. Well, aparently my memory is bad. So I will definitely have to train it! That was so bad, finding out that it really is that terrible. Anyway, that is why I do want to start to do some training. Today we cycled to the club via a slightly different route so I could test that part of my memory... we went slightly wrong when cycling back but I did better than I normally would. At least we got home in a reasonable period of time.

Anyway, enough for today. This has become a whole essay.

Jacqueline