Sunday, May 31, 2009

My visit to Bulgaria

In March this year I went to Sofia, Bulgaria, to help with the organization of an AIESEC conference there. I spent 7 days there and flew the first time with an airplane.

It all started as we arrived at the airport. Check-in was pretty easy and fast. We arrived more then an hour early, so I was waiting a lot at the airport. Slowly the time was passing by, and I was finally checked in. Learned that I can take my mp3 player aboard with me, so the trip back was a bit better. The first memorable experience was, when the pilot announced, that they have technical difficulties, so we will start later. At first 10 minutes later, then another 5, then a specialist will look at the case (one of the doors for the luggage couldn't be closed...). The pilot already prepared us for the possibility, that we might have to change the plane, when it was fixed and we flew off. As I believe, that the security and technical standards need to be very high for a plane to be allowed to fly I wasn't nervous about it at all. Then we started to roll. The plane started to raise, and the feeling of sitting in a roller coaster calmed me – yes I know this feeling, everything is alright. Then I looked down, and as the houses grow smaller I started to believe I'm watching Google maps :P It was like I have experienced these feelings already. It was fine.

The blue sky above the clouds calmed me, but I believe, that looking up on a nice summer day the shade of blue is much nicer then up there. The next surprise was, when we started to sink, I saw a vast white surface. As I wasn't sure how high we were I though it was some kind of a plant, or manufacturing facility. I saw whiteness and black squares below me. Then after a minute or two I realized, that everything is covered with snow! And the squares are houses.

The landing in Sofia was perfect, no complications at all. And I was picked up by a very good friend, Didi, at the airport, who I thank this whole experience. I was taken for lunch, put down my luggage, so that the ex-socialistic countries do look alike, so I didn't feel to lost. Although it was a bit dirtier, then what I'm used to.

The first meal I had in Sofia was “Kavarma” with bread. Delicious.

In the afternoon I went with two AIESECers to a small restaurant, which served fish. I was surprised, that I could smell the fish already 2 blocks away from the restaurant, before I could even see the place. I'm not a big fan of fishes, because of a few bad experiences, but I enjoyed the small fishes, which were fried and served like a snack. The beer was fine, too, and we had a good talk. It seemed I left a good expression. :)

The next day I took my first pictures in the center of Sofia. I was surprised when in one of the streets I found the quote below. Sándor Petőfi is the biggest Hungarian revolutionary poet. He was one of the people who started the Hungarian revolution against the Habsburg Monarchy in 1848. He got lost after a battle in 1949.

The quote says: “Love and freedom is what I need. For love I sacrifice life. For freedom I sacrifice love.”

The dinner was perfect afterward. I order a 2 liter beer, cause I didn't know what they will bring me. I was not surprised, when I saw a jug, but a bit disappointed. I would had love to hold some kind of 2 liter glass. :P The think that I ate there was called mish-mash and said it was a specialty in Bulgaria. In Hungary we call it lecsó, and I do believe almost every country has this dish, as it is quite simple to make (scrambled eggs with paprika, tomato, onion and spices).

I was accommodated that night with two facis at Zlaty's place. It was a great place to stay and we had the opportunity to eat some home made jam and a lot of lutenica. Lutenica is a mix of vegetables and spices which is sold in bottles in every supermarket. It tastes very fresh, and I'm very sorry there is none here in Slovakia.

The next day it was the first time the organizing committee of the conference met. The people were great. The fun thing was, that exactly when we finished our meeting there were fireworks above the city.

The first day of the conference started with a global village, where I started to perform a folk dance from Slovakia. It was horrible, when you take it from the view of a dancer, but the people enjoyed it and I had build up a small reputation for myself :P This was my first appearance before people, dancing folk dances.

The place we were was just beautiful! It is a red cross facility pretty close to Sofia.

During the conference there were as usually some problems as also upsides. Some of the reasons of being in the various OC was for me to enjoy the team spirit, which builds up in a very short time, but is extremely strong at the end of the conference. To be able to stay calm in crisis situations and understand, that everything has a solution. To know where to be and when and last but bot least to smile. I do believe that I managed to learn all this. But I lost a bit of my enthusiasm on the way, which came from various adrenalin rushes, mainly, when there was no time for anything. But I loved the fact, that I work nonstop, when work is needed.
Here is the right place also to thank my roommates for offering a helping hand anytime I needed some :)

All in all the conference went fine, the people were satisfied, the parties were awesome. And I had my share of dancing. I even tried to show some people the folk dances I dance.

The last day was very said. With barely the money to pay for the taxi I checked in on the plain and with a tear in my eye I left the great people back, and wrote down the great memories.

Special thanks to: Didi, Vanya, Zlaty, Chris, Dave, Filip, Peter, Niki and Tina. I may not be the best person to hold contact with anybody, but I thank you for a lot of great memories and just give a note if I can help in any way.

Diary of Awesomeness

In February I had two weeks of poor awesomeness, when everyday I just felt great! I don't know why I enjoyed life that much, but I'm definitely sure, that the my song list helped me a lot. So I just want to wright down my main reason why I felt fine those days.

Day 1. In all started on a Thursday, as I had dance classes the whole day long there was something to look forward to. This will be true for every Monday and Thursday... Afterwards we had a few beers with a few fellow dancers.

Day 2-3. Big Pig! I went with some friends to the Czech Republic to an event called Big Pig. There we ate a whole pig on Saturday and Sunday in the morning. I met some old friends from the Czech Republic and made a few new ones. Outside it was a beautiful nature and a lot of snow. The kind you just drift away in its beauty. And of course, as usually, a lot of fine beer. The last party was also great with some drinking, a long evening dance, and then the drunk people singing text they don't even know. Something like a team building activity. On the way there we were drinking black Krušovice. It became my favorite brand of beer.

Day 4. Traveling back was also fine. The most stupid jokes seem hilarious when you are tired as hell. :) And the best part came, when we arrived in Bratislava. With Stoky and Kincho we sat down in a pub and started to call up friends, if they wouldn't want to join us. We started to call at 4pm, and went away at around 11pm. There were maybe more then 10 people coming on such a short notice, and all great people! Some I haven't seen for a while :)

Day 5. Monday – after having a good sleep, was looking forward for the dance classes again :)

Day 6. A once in a while opportunity. Having a queen night with a few fine bottles of wine. We were at Ivo's place watching a Queen concert, talking about music, and random stuff. Perfect night, I will have to organize such events in the future, when I will have a flat. A part of the truth is, that I've got lost on my way there. It took me 2 hours to get to his place instead of just 35 minutes. But exactly when I found the right street the song You Can't Always Get What You Want from the Rolling Stones started. It was a heavenly feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Ji83e4mUA

Day 7. Wednesday is teatime, at least once a month. And that's always a good enough reason to have a good day! :)

Day 8. Thursday dance class!

Day 9. Meeting up with some classmates from my high school. Always a fun thing to do

Day 10. Poker night with my brother

Day 11. Peace and quite – a well deserved break.

Day 12. Monday Dance class!

Day 13. Dance house – which means teaching folk dances to the public – in this case Hungarian ones

Day 14. Sushi night at a friends place

Day 15. Thursday – dance class

Day 16. AIESEC alumni meeting of my local committee. A perfect opportunity to chat with friends I haven't seen for ages

Day 17. Jazz night in Dunajská Streda with Slovakia's best bass player.

AWESOMENESS
"When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story."
Barney Stinson

The playlist (songs from House MD, 1-3 season):
Bird York – In The Deep
Curtis Mayfield – Superfly
Eddie Harris – Listen Here
Gomez – See The World
Joe Cocker – Feelin' Alright
Joe Cocker – N'Oubliez Jamais
Josh Ritter – Good Man
Leon Russel – Stranger In A Strange Land
Louise Armstrong – What A Wonderful World
Lucinda Williams – Are You Alright
Marc Cohn – One Safe Place
Massive Attack – Teardrop
Mazzy Star – Into Dust
Michael Penn – Walter Reed
Rolling Stones – You Can't Always Get What You Want
Scott Joplin and George Gershwin– The Entertainer
Solomon Burke – None Of Us Are Free
The Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc.
Zero 7 – In The Waiting Line

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Favourite song for now - 10000 steps

Omega - 10000 lépés

Tízezer lépés kéne csak,
Tízezer boldogtalannak,
Tízezer elfelejtett csók,
Tízezerszer elszakított.

Tízezer titkos, néma vád,
Tízezer év nincs, hogy tisztázd,
Tízezer szavad közénk áll,
Tízezer vad országhatár.

Tízezer lépés olyan sok,
Tízezer lépésre vagyok,
Tízezer lépésre ott vagy,
Tízezer lépés kéne csak.


Omega - 10000 steps

Just ten thousand steps are needed,
For ten thousand wretched,
Ten thousand forgotten kiss,
Ten thousand times torn apart.

Ten thousand secret, silent accusation,
Ten thousand years are not enough to clear them,
Your ten thousand words stand between us,
Ten thousand wild borders.

Ten thousand steps are so many,
I'm ten thousand steps away,
You are behind ten thousand steps,
Just ten thousand steps are needed.



And one different but beautiful song (in English, not as good as the original, but enjoy) from Omega. They are going to play in Košice with The Scorpions next weekend and I can't be there, so I'm listening to them in the last days to have at least some culture inside me :)

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Another short movie :)

A perfect short movie. 15 mins in total. A nice story a perfect mindset. Enjoy!



I hope I will be able to learn how to say such nice things to people. I'm usually criticizing people :(
But I learned already how to smile much more, than 3-4 years ago. It is something in my hands, and I really try to use it. And if from time to time someone smiles back, isn't that a great feeling?

PS: by the way, the photographer Victoria's dog is called Peti, gave me another huge smile at the end of the movie :)

Sunday, March 15, 2009

What is our privacy? What do we trade it for?

I just read an article at ZDnet.com with the thinks that I'm thinking about. Here is the article:

Is privacy dead, or just very confused?


The article just asks the questions about our privacy on the internet. The thing we missed out in those last 10 years when the internet started to step into our lives and bombed us with newer possibilities and services was the time to sit down and think about it. In the general mindset of the people there is no shared understanding of what is appropriate to post/upload/share/tag in general. And I was very rarely in an open discussion about this topic in my surrounding, and that bothers me to.

Just thinking about the on hand problems with tagging - you have no option to influence someone tagging you on a picture. While you can additionally remove the tag, the time between you noticing yourself tagged on an embracing post and actually taking steps against it can be already to late, not to mention the fact, that if you have a lot of common friends with the person who uploaded the pic, then it doesn't help much either...
This is the side of a tagged person, on the other hand the person who took the pictures has to make a hard time creating permissions for just those people who he wants to share the pictures with.

Of course the possibilities in advertising and marketing are also huge. I like the idea, that Facebook implemented now, which gives me the opportunity to forbid applications to use me as a reference for advertising their services. (Like: Join MySuperApplication and do something to your friend Anonymous...)

I'll need to sit down someday soon and get a clear point on the does and don't on all the social networks I use. You give something and you get something in exchange, but it would be stupid to share ones life with the internet.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Dancing

I had a strange feeling the last 2 weeks. A part of the joy in dancing just disappeared. I made some mistakes, but mainly some kind of a spirit was missing, and I didn't know what the problem was. For a while I though the way I'm changing, with more and more experience my style of dancing changes and with it the excitement fades a bit. It was an unpleasant feeling.
The other day I was talking to a new guy about dancing and what I have heard from others, while one particular sentence stuck in my mind. He sad something like this: "When I dance with a woman, there is nothing else on this world except of her. She is the thing that I desire the most, and I want to have her.". So before my last dance class I decided to dance for her and not for myself.
This small change in mindset made me realize in some moments, that I behaved precise: "step, step, step, find your partner, catch her, now direct her to your right, and start again". I wanted to get the perfect movement coordination. After that I told to myself to take more care about the stuff around me. I don't know if this change of thought changed my style of dancing, I just know that somewhere I payed more attention to my partner, I don't know if it was just a small sentiment that overcame me, I definitely want to find out. The fact is, when I cared, I felt more alive, more connected, like I dance with a person, while I was dancing before with a "thing".
I'm deeply sorry for the time I didn't pay attention!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Is this music? Give me a break!

"Gush, terrible! Give me a beer and two shots!"

I just read the lyrics below on a friends blog, and though I know the song from somewhere...
"If you want it
You already got it
If you thought it
It better be what you want"
So I googled it out and found out it was from Madonna and Justin Timberlake (4 minutes)... At that point I had a bad feeling, but curiosity pushed me into listening into it. I remembered the few times I was clubbing on this song, where it was bearable, and remembered I always was with good friends and after a nice number of shots at that time. God bless I learned to ignore music as is in that state, and just drift away with the people around me!
While listening to that "music" I couldn't find anything at all that would make me say, yes, that was good. A monotone bass in the background, a hornlike continuous sound in the foreground using the same old notes, as every other hit (I mean I don't have that good ears, but that is already a cliche). The "singing" has also no added value, except of the fact, that Madonna and JT are doing it.
Please note the article is about the song itself, I do like some of Madonnas older songs, and I look up to her for what she accomplished, even this song is a good example of how good she can adopt to the needs of the listeners. If the folks want it, give it to them, but I can't feel any joy listening to this. And I would like to have better mainstream music... or internet radios. I like to search for new music, but it gets harder and harder to find something worth to try.

PS: sorry, for everyone who likes the song. It definitely is catchy, but I see no value in this song, that could last longer than a summer rain...

The Rocky is down


I just read in the news, that the first big news paper in the US closed down: The Rocky Mountain News, also called as the "our Rocky". 230 people lost their jobs. This year would have been the 150th birthday of the newspaper. In this occasions the coworkers made a small video (18 minutes + credits) about how it inflected their lives, their dreams. It is a well made movie, very sad with a small insight in how the news work.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3390739&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1


My opinion is based on my own deductions from Alvin Tofflers books: The Third Wave

The part of the video that struck me, as I'm interested in the topic, is where they were talking about the fact, that the crisis in the news industry was new (less than 10 years old), and they couldn't find a successful business model to tackle the problem.
While the rise of the internet as the main media and news provider/advertisement tool is really a problem that appeared just around a decade ago, the problems first hints about the struggle of the paper news providers was foretold already in the 70's.
Toffler wrote, that already in the 70's individualization was an important change in the mindset of the people. This change led to a variety of new products we are enjoying now. Individualism and localization led also to the expansion of small local newspapers/weekly/monthly papers of an area, about a hobby. These small papers made it possible that the huge newspapers lost readers and needed to localize some parts of their papers to the regions they were sold to.
I think this could have been the first warning to the media industry in general, and that they should have been more aware of possible changes. From that time on, individual projects kept appearing to appeal on the specific needs of customers, which were better to advertise for a selected group of people rather than to the major public.
The first networks like the internet were created at that time. Sci-fi like Star Trek was already produced in that era. The change in access to information could have been felt. Here the question is, what strategies where implemented to stay above the water, and what new ideas where they using to stay profitable. And for me it is even more surprising, when journalist talk about this unsuspected change... It is their work description.
Though it is always easier to have a big mounth afterwards, and it is also true, that noone likes to see, how something they based their lives on slowly fades away...

it's late, I hope I wrote down some stuff, that made sense...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Windows 7 download

The beta version of Windows 7 is available! The only thing needed is
1.) a Windows Live account
2.) patience to wait till the 3.15 GB data downloads.
3.) IE 7 - at least I couldn't start the download with my usual browser

Link here. I don't know how long it will be available. Should be free for the first 2.5 million participants.

update:
Windows 7 beta will be available till the 24th of January for everyone who wants to be a beta tester: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/01/10/here-s-where-
we-stand.aspx
Guide to make a Dual-Boot system with Vista or XP: http://lifehacker.com/5126781/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-with-xp-or-vista

After the huge flop of Windows Vista (the moment they abandoned the cool project name Longhorn I knew it won't get good :P) Microsoft needs to continue to support Windows XP operation system, although they announced to end supporting the personal version at 1. January 2007 (not completely abandon the product, just cease updates and patches). Now Win XP SP2 will be supported till 13 July 2010, but is not sold anymore as an OEM with PC or by retail sales.

So MS needs to get back some of the trust of the users, which they lost after the introduction of Vista. A very nice way is also this campaign with free beta testing. It is good for MS, as they get real-time feedback from enthusiasts by that getting a view from the outside, and if the new users will be satisfied, than they will get a better publicity.

Will see how it ends.