Say thank you once in a while

And ask for it from those who you trust.

External memory

This is just a short note for myself... this short poem, which I know exists in many languages, and comes most propably from the English language is one of the few poems that stuck in my head so strong, that I still remember it. So I want to write it here to not forget...

János bácsi a csatában,
János bácsi a csatában,
János bácsi a csatában,
Elesett egy fűszállban!

Arra járt egy indiánus,
Arra járt egy indiánus,
Arra járt egy indiánus,
És szívébe lándzsát szúrt!

János bácsi testét kukacok eszik,
János bácsi testét kukacok eszik,
János bácsi testét kukacok eszik,
És az egyik felkiált!

Jaj de büdös ez a János,
Jaj de büdös ez a János,
Jaj de büdös ez a János,
Ez a lábát nem mossa!

As it was never easy for me to turn down a request, I won't do it this time neighter. After making a quick search around this songs history, I found out the original song comes from the USA and is called: John Brown's Body (click here for wikipedia entry and here for youtube video). Now it is a bit more painful to translate the text as it is definitely not as glorious as the original one was, I would say quite the opposite is true...

Uncle John in the battle
fell over a leaf of grass

An Indian went that way
And stab a spear in his heart

Worms eat the body of Uncle John
When one of them screams out loud

How stinky this John is,
He must have never washed his legs.

I definitely remember this song, because I though it was funny, and still have to smile when remembering it.

and another one:

100 forintnak 50 a fele
Egye meg a fészkes fekete fene
Nem lehet az ember fából
Ki kell rúgni a hámfából!

Azt mondják hogy részeges vagyok,
Pedig csak a jó bort szeretem nagyon!
Megverem a csizmám szárát
Csókolom a babám száját!

A kecskémnek nagy szakálla van
Az én anyósomnak nagy pofája van
Rusnya állat mind a kettő
Verje meg a jeges eső

Peace in the eye of the observer

I was waiting in a line this week for hours when I saw one of natures most beautiful wonders. I looked in front of me and I drifted away...
I was in a valley. Everywhere around me mountains reaching up to the sky. Full of live. My body wanted to climb them... Near my path between the trees and flowers birds were singing. On the way up a small reflection of light blinded me, so I turned and slowly, cautiously approached the light. It came from a small cave. When I enter it, I saw a small underground lake being lit by the morning sun. I sat down for a few minutes to enjoy the sight and moved on. Slowly moving up the hill the forest got thicker, my strength faded slowly, while my wish to get up grew stronger every second. After a while I slowly lifted my head and looked around. I was at the top. Happy. I spotted my soul on the horizon...
I was in a valley. Everywhere around me mountains reaching up to the sky. Such a perfect blue sky. No clouds to disturb the view. I closed my eyes for a second, while my soul slowly elevated up to the sky. When I opened my eyes I saw how I slowly pass the mountains behind me. I wished to have wings. I felt a small warmness on my back and my wish came true. I grew wings. I started to fly in circles. A bliss overwhelmed me. The seconds felt like an eternity.
Then I looked down and saw my self in the waiting line... I should have maybe said something. Something like:
"Please deliver my sincere acknowledgment to your parents, for these are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen."

Peace in the eye of the observer

(by clicking on the picture you get the high-res photo)

The fields around Dunajska Streda in July.

A feather in a forrest

An explosion of colors

ps: dedicated to Elise and her Moments of peace

Szőttes folk dance camp 2008

From the 4th of August till the 10th I was in Várhosszúrét (Search for : Krásnohorská Dlhá Lúka) near Rozsnyó (Rožňava) which lies in east Slovakia. I was attending a folk dance camp there with a good friend of mine, Gábor.

Lets start from the beginning on: in June on a short notice I started to visit a Hungarian folk dance group called Szőttes (twice a week 2-3 hours). And there, as they wanted us to join the group, we were motivated to come to this camp, as we would learn a lot there. When it was clear that I won't get my internship trough IAESTE to Spain I was happy that I have at least something to look forward to.

We were sleeping in tents, had a great weather (it rained just on Monday and Saturday). The little village and the mountains around it were breathtaking. It was like beeing stuck in time. The calm surrounding with the traditional carvings. One of the local pubs was having a traditional design. But of course one of the local shops and the local "house of culture" (the place where the cultural presentations used to be in a village during socialism - concerts, presentations, meetings) where having the typical minimalistic construction. Most probably they were built during the socialism. Nevertheless those were insignificant in the whole picture of the village. The small Hungarian community gave me a very pleasant feeling.

The program - 6 days 3+3 hours of dancing a day + during the night there was a dance house. We learned traditional Hungarian dances from two regions (Mátyusföldi and Kalotaszegi). We started with the Kalotaszegi (from the village Bogártelek) dances. They were according to me much easier then the Matyusföldi dances, though the second one is much more fun :) Of course we learnded just the basics of these dances, but it was very interesting for me to see the little differences in them. Also the character of the Matyusföldi dance catched me. It was very much like a game, with a lot of moves, were you change get away, got close, run away, court your partner...

The Bogartelki dance:


Is definitely more fun when you're there ;)


The only problem with the whole show was, that I had an inflamation of my right ear the whole time, so no alcohol, nor staying up long through the night for me :( Definitely missed a lot of fun.

Of course from time to time the question popped in my mind why so few people are interested in folk dances nowadays, when it is so much fun. Somewhere on the way to the 21th century people were having so many new things around them that they forgot the old ways. Thank god I was never a type of a guy who just walked with the stream, and figured, that there is much more to see and enjoy!

more pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hajdupeti/SzottesTabor2008

A small movie

12 minutes (+titles), a short movie when you don't know what to do... It's called: Our Time Is Up from the director Rob Pearlstein
(a psychologist who gets to know, that he has six weeks to live and so decided to tell the truth...)


This reminded me of a TED talk I saw recently, about positive psychology, where the guest presenter says, that he wanted to make miserable people happy with psychology. But he got only to the point where he got the people in a state of emptiness. This is where he started to search why people are happy. See what they found out till now.


Are you living a happy life?

How politics work

After the last elections in Slovakia, the political party SMER-SD with it's leader Fico got the best results. After the elections I have seen the small video clip below, which pretty nicely describes his tactic between the voters, and works marvelously. Czechs made a lot of good movies during the socialism, some extrelmy funny ones, and some with words of wisdom like this. I tried to translate it from czech... I had my difficulties in the process, but hopefully it understandable :)



Grandpa: What is our strategy for the campaign before the elections?
Candidate: ...
G: That everyone should have everything. Am I right?
C: Yeah, of course.
G: Every dumb ass knows that. But, what strategy to use to get to this? ... Come on, say it. ... So that everyone won't have anything.
C: No way!
G: Yeah. We just won't tell anyone. Just like you can't allow anyone to think, that you don't understand something. Your the head of the city, that means that you understand everything!
C: But I can't do that!
G: I know that to, but you can't let that show! See, the only thing you really must know is, that you need to know something about everybody... But be aware! Most importantly with those people who understand this.
C: Gramps, were did you take this from?..
G: ..and be careful! With the nit witted people be gracious! Show them that, that anything the clever people say is complete idiocy! Cause you can't argue with those who understand it, so you'll hurt your reputation! Because if you don't have the aggrieved, the harmed and the incompetent on your side, then you won't get far. Remember that!

Title of the movie: Tri chlapi v chalupe

Deevastating icy rain

A few weeks ago there was a huge icy rain in here. In a near city it had horrifying effects (roof, cars destroyed). I was home, we had "just" nut sized ice pieces falling down... at my grandparents place the ice stayed for another half an hour in the garden. I didn't make pictures from my grandparents garden before the accident just this one:

We were there to cut the wine, cause there were to many fruits (are they called bunches?) on them. Just 1 day before the rain :(

The garden afterward:

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: