That time when I prelonged my stay in Bratislava

A small reminder of a few beautiful days in Bratislava this summer.

Just a few days ago one of my best friends visited Bratislava for a few days(he lives on the other end of Slovakia), so there was a need of meeting him. In Slovakia you usually try to find a good fake reason to meet up (or go for a drink) with people. In this case he wanted to give me my birthday present. :)

After failing to solve some thinks out in Bratislava I met with the guys at around 5pm. With him there was also Pivet a German girl and her Romanian boyfriend (with whom naturally we had a fight about Trianon and the Hungarians living in Romania. I'm pretty sure that I've picked the fight. Now that I think of it, he may have had no real overview about the matter, but had enough national pride to defend his nation by saying the same argument over and over again... Will need to focus more on reading peoples behaviour, was never good at it, but maybe now it will work better :) ). Afterwards also Petkan joined us. :)

Anyway we went to Slovak pub, ate from all kind of Slovak specialities. Then I had a meeting with old friends from AIESEC (something like a CU alumnie meeting), but had just 45 mins. before my bus left from to my hometown... At least I thought I would like to catch it.

The fact was, that I had nothing to do at home. This gave a very good position for Luki for convincing me to stay, what he used out... At the end we grabbed a few more beers and stayed at Petkans flat that night. After 3 of us drunk around 4 liters of mulled wine (The wine was pretty much undrinkable before boiling and adding some special Tesco mulled wine spices :) So for you to know, if you come to Slovakia and want to buy bad wine it is pretty easy to find them in shops, because it is cheap and is in plastic bottles or cartons...)

Continuing our tail the next day was pretty calm as Luki had stomach ache, and I wanted to go home to eat properly... Yes, wanted to, but as easily as yesterday I was persuaded to stay. We had a quite day, having a good talk in the city with Janie. Never had an opportunity to hear her out till now, what I do regret now. Quite an interesting person with a good taste of humor.(I write this here cause it is unsure when I'll meet her again.)
Then went back to Petkans apartment and killed time.
I went afterward to Doms beer pong party. Was as good as it used to be one year ago, but there are now again a lot of people I don't know, and won't have a chance to get to know for a while. Which made me realize, that I'm now in the same situation Sherisse was telling me about half a year ago, and heard also from a lot more people: there comes a time, when you get tired of getting to know new people and not being able to rely on the fact that they will be around even after you made a strong bound to them. It is definitely a hard thing and I'm not sure how I'll handle this situation.

I left early from Doms party. I haven't seen Luki for ages as he was in Australia, and he planes to leave again for an internship in Europe. I got back at around 11pm, and we were singing till 1am :) Luki was playing mostly Pink Floyd songs on his guitar + I will need to learn Hey Joe again in Hungarian... Awesome experience, as I'm a fan of such events.

We took the next day easy... Watching a movie, just chilling and as usually I wanted to get home with a bus at 7pm. We went to the "beach", had a drink and went to the Slovak pub to meet an ex-intern who was in Slovakia in 2001/02. It must have been a lot of fun having her around, we had a lot of good talks, there were a lot of people I haven't met for ages (alumni meeting number 2 :)) We finished at around 1pm. We were going again to Petkans apartmant (yep, was convinced to stay again... but wait for the twist...), when I suddenly realized that I forgot my bag and the flowers for my mother in the pub! While running back I realized that at around 2pm there should be a bus going home. Now I know 2:15, bus stop 11... Thou these facts were unknown at that moment, so I waited at the usual spot (at the other end of the station), and nothing came, so I called a cab and went to sleep with the others again :P

The next day I missed my bus again, and waited for 2 hours for the next bus to come, luckily Vaida was waiting with his brother at the bus station also, so I made them company. They met another Lithuanian girl, with whom they were talking afterwards. In a nice sleepy state I was able to listen to the Lithuanian language, remembered YouCan in 2004 and listening to Spanish and Portugese people :) I liked it. (On the photo, there am I with the same clothes for 3 days... Which were spend with friends and in a very good atmosphere, I definitely smile in my heart ;)

There are two more things I want to mention.
The perfect cooking skills of Pivet, though there were meals, which are easy to prepare, the taste was marvelous! Thank you!
And the few hours spent talking with Nadja, who I discovered lives in the same flat where we were staying. It was nice to her speak about annoying neightbors, dogs, german comedians and studies. Looking forward for the next opportunity!
As a lot of years in my life I was spending before the German television (we had satelite). I've got a quite good German vocabulary from those days + a piece of German culture just stick on me. Talking to her makes me get nostalgic feelings, spicing up the talks to an interesting person even more :)

Thank you all! Looking forward to meeting you again!

Tesco curiosities - Red Fruit Flavour?

I was wondering maybe I missed the marketing campaign of the next generation soft drinks... hmm this was quite a surprise:

An amazing weekend

This weekend I was celebrating my birthday, which was a few weeks back. The feelings afterward are a bit awkward. Like in all "best" parties I don't remember much of it :P

With my mothers help I have organized a small cottage inside the bath's in my hometown. The weather was perfect, the people in a good mood, their first experiences made them have a good mood, which lasted during those two days.

I missed most of the fun, while I organized the people, food, accommodation, payment... you can imagine. And in the evening, when the party started I pretty soon lost all the memories. I still remember giving everyone a sip of my birthday present - Danish alcohol (will find it's name) in the small happy birthday cup, which can contain around 1cl of fluids. Perfect way to share with everybody! So I did that, and though Anders told me it was a quite expensive bottle, I prefer using it that way. I'm sometimes the guy who waits for those "special moments", but the longer I live the more often it happened that the special moments just didn't seem to arrive. So I decided that to show the friends I care for my gratitude by giving a piece of the alcohol to them... Most probably it looked like a drunk guy wanting to make everyone else to drink and get wasted, but for me the thought was what counted.

With a lot of old and new friends around me, who one by one thank me for a great weekend I'm a bit sad that I don't remember much, but still think of joy, happiness and a lot of fun, when I remember that day.

PS: will need to get the receipt for the cherry soup :) I have a few photos, they will be added later on

PS2: The few photos were added, they capture very little of the whole atmosphere. Will need to learn to make pictures with a camera! http://picasaweb.google.com/hajdupeti/Bday2008

Bazant na Mlynoch 2008

And here it is again! Bazant na Mlynoch (see last years entry here!)

This years Bazant definitely better from the perspective of concerts. The finishing with Polemic and Horkyze Slyze made a terrific atmosphere (although miss wet T-shirt was a complete disappointment. It's called miss wet T-shirt because it is white, there is nothing below or above it and it is a t-shirt... and not a black fishing net like this year :( No real nudity, but at least some nice dancing... see yourself)

Anyway first bad to look at was Flavour United - Czech band played some kind of latino/reggae - they weren't excellent, the singer girl had a pretty good voice, while the black "rapper" was not understandable at all...

After a few meeting with friends, beers and uninteresting concerts later Polemic came on the scene. This was the time I understood I made a huge mistake coming there... in sandals. My confidence was empowered by the guys who brought bottles of beer and 40% alcohol in the crowd, which I was pretty sure would land below me. So after 5-6 songs I always moved in the back rows, where there was still dancing, but no more pogo. During Polemic it was fine, Horkyze Slyze even better. After the first 5 songs of the second band I was so afraid, that my legs are bleeding, that I went out of the crowd to watch in the dim light. I didn't see anything, calculated that drunk people are lucky + and believed it was just dirt and went back into the crowd, though further behind, so people won't jump on me.
What came next was also a bit surprising a huge dose of a "beer shower". Will remember this as an experience and not as a reason to take a long shower after the concert :P
All in all when after a huge concert and the feeling of proud for not being able to speak nor move my head the next day I went to my room, and examed my feet. It was perfectly healthy :) So I concluded, that there are a lot of thinks I'm afraid of, just because I'm not in daily touch with them, and went to sleep peacefully after going out again at 4:30am.

Looking forward for the next Bazant, hopefully with Vidiek! And more free time attractions like in 2004!

In The Waiting Line

I had a few experiences the last day which I was thinking about, while listening to the song In The Waiting Line from Zero 7 - good music for such activities.

I was talking to a person a few days ago, and she mentioned her interest in gypsy culture. I find this topic quite interesting, as I try to eliminate my prejudices if possible.

The gypsies at least in Slovakia (though I know about a few neighboring countries, too) are usually treated badly, and not without a reason. There are huge "ghettos" in Slovakia, in which only gypsies live, and if the social system tries to help them, then in most cases the help is abused. For example if they are given new flats, then in a few months they are usually looking like a waste dump. There are also quite often caught in the act of stealing. Bad behavior, violence, stealing a lot of children and not caring are the things most often come in people mind. Though there are exceptions of course people meet those more rarely. It is hard to get forward from such community, which also means, that there are only a very low percentage of them going into universities, if there are any (in the application form for the university there are most of the nationalities living in Slovakia including some which have lower then 1% of the population, but the gypsies are not listed - I didn't pay enough attention, sorry, false information) - in most studies the problems are related to their lack of education and the discrimination against them.
- All this information is subjective, and NOT based on my experience -

But I value the gypsy culture. It is still (though much less today) a part of the Hungarian culture. Gypsy music was a very important part of all the better restaurants in the country before the world wars and the growing popularity of the radio and recorded music. Until today I believe in the significance and beauty of their dulcimer and violin play, which underlines the regions folklore. Also they were moving traders and building special bricks, and other stuff only they knew how to produce. They were a part of the culture in a good way, too.

This second part always fills me with hope, that todays situation may change. Getting integrated into the culture (which must not mean, that they have adopted to the majorities culture, it can be that both cultures have changed to find a compromis).

Getting to the core of the post... The above situation is definitely not unique in Europe, or the world. At this point another TED presentation came in my mind, presented by the finance minister of Afghanistan, talking about the creating of a healthy economical system in a country where the basic conditions are missing. He asked the people in the audience to leave the clean world they are living in and start to think out solutions in a surronding, which works according to different rules. I think that the same principle should apply in this case to, as in many other. The people should stop looking at the situation in their won perspective and open up and be able to change if needed, not just wanting to change something...

But the will to change needs to be on both sides!

Curiosities - A man's life

I wanted to start a small section with curiosities on websites, which are interested in one way or the other.

This is a site, where you learn about a persons life through photos he had taken every day of his life till he did from 1979 to 1997.
Blog referring to the site:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15131

The site. It takes a pretty while till the photos are downloaded, but interesting anyway...
http://addresszero.com/pod-html/

I'm always was interested in peoples life, mainly those, who cold change or add a new habit in their lives. Gives me a hope, that people can change, when they are motivated enough...

And for those Slovak people with paranoia (in Slovak): ako to bezi s verejnym sutazom...

Apache, Phishing, Google Translator

Some useful facts:

Apache error code - 0xc0150002
Reinstalled Windows today (now with SP3), I've got an error while installing XAMPP.
Microsoft explanation: The package Microsoft.VC80.CRT was missing = "Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package (x86) installs runtime components of Visual C++ Libraries required to run applications developed with Visual C++ on a computer that does not have Visual C++ 2005 installed."
Solution: downloaded and installed the file vcredist_x86.exe
Solution found at: http://www.apachefriends.org/f/viewtopic.php?p=112694


Phishing
In the last days I see a lot of phishing. It is really todays trend as I can see it. One of the biggest banks in Slovakia got just a few weeks ago a huge phishing attack on it's clients. Also I've got a lot of "invitations" to sites through msn, from contacts, which were offline right after I've got the message. On ICQ I even got those messages from ppl who are not my contacts. So I turned off the possibility to get post from strangers. Annoying. Started with blockdelete.com, which promised the possibility to get you a list of users who ignore you, by giving the site your username and password... Must have been quite successful. Became the link from a quite amount of people. - if this happened to you to, change your password immediately! Thank you!

Google Translator
Translate text, sites between 24 languages (including Czech). Though the translation is still quite far from an understandable text, you will most probably have a better chance to understand what's written there.
http://www.google.com/translate_t?hl=en
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-19-n41.html

In the last days I was listening to...

- Support Lesbiens - Czech band, normal music for talking. Needed such music, you can't listen to Led Zeppelin, Waking Vision or Pink Floyd, with anybody. Some people just can't appreciate it...
- Death Cab For Cutie - inspiration was the song "I will follow you into the dark", can't listen to them for a longer time, cause I believe that one album has rarely enough variability - gets boring after a while... but good music anyway
- Starsailor (album Love is here) - the saddest album I know, to bad that I feel pleasure while being sad. Heard their songs first when I was 17 (Alcoholic), have a concert from them on a tape! Recorded through FM4 (Austria). Loved those songs since then.
- My Brightest Diamond - said, hear Something Like An End (you can hear this song at her myspace site), perfect song, perfect lyrics
After being influenced by Dr. House (you should watch the series cause it's good :) but some of the ending songs are also worth listening to... some of the best music also from the 60's, 70's...):
1. The Who - Baba O'Riley (note: Boris the Spider is just a cool song, Who Are You - title song for CSI)
2. The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want - perfect lyrics! Awesome song! Thank you for using this song!
Refren:
"You can't always get what you want" x3
"And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need"
3. Mazzy Star - Into Dust - need to hear the album a few times, but sounds good... Slow with a lot of low sounds. Though seems a bit "monotone". Need to read some lyrics to it. That could rescue some value.

No more time, take care!

Beeing in the organizating committee (SprinCo 2008 OC)

SprinCo 2008. A conference for the members of AIESEC in the Czech Republic. Last term I was in a lot of OCs mainly as site help. It was always a nice experience, but as I was mainly doing stuff in my AIESEC home country there was missing something.
After a half a year I was doing the job again, and I had a marvelous experience:
- working in a team with strangers, with whom I have built up a great team in a few days from nothing. Here I want to note, that AIESECers for me are never really strangers. There is always at least two things that make me work easier with them - they are full with energy and a goal (even if just a short term one) for which they are eager to fight.
- networking from the finest one. Meeting new people with whom I want to stay in contact with.
- interesting talks
- not enough sleep, cause I felt full of energy (haven't had so much energy in my life... still slept 3 hours/day), and didn't want to miss any opportunity...
- being appreciated, for a good work.
- feeling the spirit of AIESEC

And this all with a lot of fun. I'm not sure if I had such a good experience in my life before. I write down another list of events, so I will not forget:
- meeting an African by accident, who I was with 4 years ago on You!Can
- meeting friends I was doing OC work together
- 60th anniversary, were everything had to be perfect... still don't know why was "Death cab for cutie" played... :P
- singing in the night with unknown people playing the guitar
- OC wins topalky
- understanding how to be happy from my work, while the appreciation goes to my successor
- Ostrava! :)
- Jaromir Nohavice - Jezisek - don't you wanna dance, when you hear this song? A small 30 second vid here.
- Can I abuse you? (Mozem ta zneuzit?) - ezen percben engedd meg nekem e tettet, mellyel kezem testedre tekerem
- Waterpipe
- Saturday night fever - up till 7 am, slept one hour + 1 redbull, and was fit till the end of the conference

Afterwards I feel the need to change myself, to have goals, to miss less things in life by knowing what I want = goal setting session on the go.

Thank you OC SPRINCO, Thank you AIESEC OSTRAVA, Thank you AIESEC CZECH REPUBLIC, Thank you AIESEC.

Beeing torn apart by Richard Bona

14.04.2008 - Richard Bona in PKO, Bratislava, Slovakia. What a concert! (Click here for interview after the concert)

First I was afraid if I wouldn't like the concert after an AIESEC conference I still feel the PCS (post conference syndrome see: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/AIESEC note uncyclopedia is not a relevant, nor trustworthy source of information! see rather wikipedia!), longing for the great OC team, but the international atmosphere on the stage made me quite fast comfortable in my position as a listener ;)

I always loved the typical African singing voice which is for me so indescribable, and now I had an opportunity to listen to it. Though I heard less from it then I expected, it was still a marvelous event far beyond my expectations. His repertoire listed mainly traditional African songs and I would say Latino type of music.

The problem on the Jazz concerts in Bratislava is mainly that you have to sit. And this concert was definitely for dancing your soul out. That's why I say I was torn apart. Should I enjoy the well positioned tones following each other by solving their mystery or let my body flow with it. I lost to my natural desire very quickly an was hard to handle in my chair, though as usual most of the audience bewared a calm had. But the clapping, screaming, whispering in the background broke through and 30 minutes before the end of the concert the whole place was clapping and singing "sen sen sen"... so much that Mr Bona and his band stopped playing for around 2 minutes and made the audience enjoy themselves.

He is a great entertainer. He put a lot of great jokes in his concert and made us laugh a lot of times. Like "only women over 40 should sing now"... silence ... "oooh, when you are over 40 in Bratislava your finished" :)

He also gave a solo to his percussionist from Colombia, to have a solo. Amazing.

At the end of the concert there was a 3 minute long standing ovation, one song where the audience had to stand, and should dance... but that was already to much for this type of people... anyway the mood was good and after another 3 minutes of clapping it was said to us, that there is going to be no more music. Central European people don't complain after this. Used to the fact, that the end, means the end, and so the people where slowly moving on.

All in all I was moving all the time in my chair, one of the best concerts of my life, hope to have a good Latino party on Friday ;)