Romanian Sounds Funny
I recently read this little piece in a Romanian online newspaper about a BBC TV Show in the UK making fun of a couple of words in Romanian that were coming out of a Sat Nav. This is an extract from the TV show in question:
To me it's perhaps not as funny as it is for some of you English speaking folk, but the laughter is quite contagious nevertheless.
In response to that all I can say is:
Dictionary.com word of the day - June 23rd, 2009
pule: to whimper; to whine.
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| Christian Nasulea - 24.06.2009 | |
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Plaiul Foii
On Friday, based on Claudia's invitation to join an already established group and enjoy a good time in the mountains, I changed plans (and mountains) and talked my crew into going to Plaiul Foii and Piatra Craiului instead of Comarnic and Baiu.
We arrived there, dead tired, fairly early on Saturday morning and started hiking soon after. We were heading towards the La Om peak (2238m), hoping we would be able to reach the summit in good time, in order to be able to make it back well before nightfall and in time for the barbecue.
Despite the perfect day and perfect weather we eventually had to abort because the trail was unfit for the aggregate skill level of our group. Following the teachings of that sane, old principle which says "we start together, we come back together" we made our way back to home base very, very early. We aborted just above the place called "La Zaplaz" around 1700m, our home base at 7 Crai being just above 860 m high.
Another time, perhaps...
Overall our weekend was exceptional. Saturday night we had a good game of charades, good barbecue, good wine and great company.
The TTS for this weekend was without a doubt Gogol Bordello - Imigrant Punk
Sunday morning came too early, as usual. Before heading off I had enough time to play a bit of guitar while the others were playing cards, and chill in the sun in the process.
Although I did not take my bikes with me this time, I still managed to come back with 3 bikes on my roof rack as I offered to bring Laura, Alex and Silviu's "steeds" back to Bucharest in order to cut down on their travel time.
Some photos of the hike can be seen on Facebook.
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| Christian Nasulea - 21.06.2009 | |
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How I Did It!
My recent past is dotted with strange, complex conditions which have lead to my needing to go to the doctoral school macroeconomics exam more than once. Whether it was due to acts of God, strong emotional trauma, chains of workforce incompetence or decisions to crash production on critical projects that could not be postponed, every time it meant I did not stand a chance to pass.
I had previously tried to pass the exam through a few of the classic methods like "ignoring it in hopes it would go away" or "relying on nothing but luck". This time around I decided to do things differently.
I got help from an exam passing specialist.
I studied.
Then, on the day before the exam, fed up with everything I had to put up with (study), I decided to give up on the rest of my exam preparation habits as well.
In the evening I went to the Gogol Bordello concert in Herastrau Park. There I listened to this song and had my revelation.
I now knew exactly what I had to do.
By the end of the day I had ingested about 2l of Cola and 0.5l of Red Bull. Around midnight I had a bite to eat at McD's (after a long chain of KFC, Burger King and other similar stuff all week). I then went on to stay up for the rest of the night and look at a couple more macro models.
Around 6 am I took a shower and put on a purple shirt, jeans and heelys instead of the usual suit and tie.
It all worked out perfectly!
Some of you might have missed the subtleties of my exam passing methods and will be asking yourselves "what exactly worked". In this case there's probably no point reading the post again as I believe the lesson to be drawn from this comes less from my words and more from within.
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| Christian Nasulea - 19.06.2009 | |
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Gogol Bordello
When it comes to doing things right it's tremendously important who you rely on in order to get results. I believe this is true in every field. I also believe there are people who are so good at doing what they do that they deliver every time, anytime, no matter the circumstances.
Let's take my concert-going buddies for example. They said: "let's go see Gogol Bordello". I am now firmly convinced that, while being much more sapient with regards to music than I am, they were still very far from knowing exactly what we were getting into. They probably just had the "hunch" that told them this was a must see. And see we did...
The video is from a performance by Gogol Bordello on the David Letterman show in 2007. It's very far from doing them justice. I don't even think this is a story that can be told in words. You just had to be there to witness the Clejani Taraf performing together with Gogol Bordello in the second encore to understand.
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| Christian Nasulea - 17.06.2009 | |
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Your Car and Your Wife
It seems to be a particularly slow season for blog posts. To show I'm not dead, just busy, I will let one slip from the private archives.
As a kid I remember hearing grown ups say stuff like "you never lend your car and your wife to anyone". Please allow me to call "bull-crap" to that! I mean the first part about the car, not the second part about the wife.
You mean to say that I should not give my car to a friend who needs to use it, even if I don't need to use it myself at that particular time? To make things more clear, we are talking perhaps about one of those friends I recurrently entrust my life to as we are hiking up some perilous ravine on a God forsaken mountain side. So what, they're good enough to hold the line that separates my life from death but not good enough to drive my car?
Yes, you might say, but what if they don't care for it as much as you do and do something stupid when driving and crash it? Most unfortunate indeed, I will say, hoping that no matter the state of the car, my friend will be ok. For a car is just metal and plastic and glass, and can be fixed or replaced, but a friend is meat and blood and feelings for you, difficult to fix and unlikely to be found again.
I guess, this is a good example of the kind of ideological divide that separates some people from some other people. On one hand we have older generations, for which a car was a valuable possession and status symbol which took years of work to achieve, and on the other hand we have my generation, for which a car is a consumable you change every couple of years.
Generation gap aside, there's also that breed of man who puts his wife and his car on the same level of value, whom I think this proverb should originally be credited to. I've just remembered a couple of people I've heard using the quote, and I shan't mention any of them as I realize not all have their age as an excuse.
Just another ranting, of debatable utility, from the periphery of my brain, on a late night drive through the car-filled streets of Bucharest.
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| Christian Nasulea - 16.06.2009 | |
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Forced Labour, Penitentiaries and GCs
We went Geocaching on the outskirts of Bucharest today. After a bit of off-road driving in a field near the Mihailesti lake we found the first cache within 5 minutes of arriving on the scene.
Minutes later, somebody in our group (I'm not saying who) slipped into a sewage canal... in a very spectacular manner. The event just brightened everyone's day. Jokes and stories WILL be told for years to come.
We weren't as lucky with our second geocache attempt. We took the instructions to the letter and searched the railway near the Jilava penitentiary for over an hour. It didn't seem worth looking elsewhere as the area was full of trash.
Looking for this cache I think I understood a bit about what forced labour must have been like for those imprisoned politically in communist times. Standing bottom up in the afternoon sun, plus the disappointment of not finding the cache, made up a pretty clear cut image of a life lesson. I don't know if that was actually the point of the exercise.
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| Christian Nasulea - 13.06.2009 | |
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Babele - Cuibu Dorului Mountain Biking
I had been meaning to go mountain biking on the Bucegi plateau for a long time but I never imagined it could be this much fun. Because I am really short on time I will just give you a log of Saturday's events.
7:53 am - bikes and equipment loaded on car ready to go
8:27 am - arrival at base cable car station in Busteni
9:00 am - ready for departure on top of the plateau at 2170 m altitude
10:17 am - fell off my bike, head-first, into a ditch. Thank you, 661!
10:30 am - found my 14th geocache 7.7 km south of Babele at 1665 m altitude
11:55 am - begining descent from the Bolboci cross-road.
12:21 pm - Ionut popped both tyres on the last run before Cuibu Dorului
12:32 pm - continuing on my own on the road towards Sinaia
1:02 pm - short break in the park in Sinaia
1:23 pm - found a place to leave my bike while I go to Busteni to recover my car
1:56 pm - back in the car, heading back to recover my bike and Ionut
2:31 pm - found Ionut in Sinaia almost done fixing the tyres
2:56 pm - bikes and equipment loaded on car
3:19 pm - back home
The round trip was about 42 km in total. Of these I did about 30 on my bike, 4 by cable car and the rest by car from Sinaia to Busteni to recover my car. I did not count the morning trip to Busteni or the trip back from Busteni to Sinaia after recovering the car. You can see exactly what's included by looking at the map of the trip.
The altitude difference was 1391 m, between 2170 m and 779 m. The whole trip was mostly downhill as you can see on the altitude profile of the trip.
Some photos can be seen in the Babele Mountain Bike Portfolio photo album although they aren't necessarily very relevant to the trip itself.
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| Christian Nasulea - 07.06.2009 | |
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Geocaching Sunday
We had planned to hike up to the Bucegi plateau on Sunday but, after 2 days of heavy rains in our area and 30 fresh centimeters of snow on the mountain top, yesterday morning found us looking at plan B, C, D... and so on. We finally decided on an activity that would keep us below 1400 m altitude. If you look at this news report you will see we were probably wise where others were not.
So, we set off to do some Geocaching in the area, looking for those moderately accessible caches that we would have probably ignored on any other day.
With a good mix of hikers, meaning myself, Dea, Hapa and Quicksilver (I have to get myself a callsign, all the cool kids have them), we found the first one within the 1st hour or so. Having turned the new guys into believers, who now knew geocaches DO exist, we turned our attention to the next one. It was all very good fun, despite the tons of mud left over after two days of rain.
We already felt pretty successfull as we'd found two geocaches fairly quickly so we decided there was still time for another one. To make things more interesting we decided to hike for 3-4 km up to the 3rd one instead of taking advantage of the fact that it was car accessible via forest dirt road. All was good and well as we entered the clearing where the cache was hidden. The GPS read 412 m to target as its battery died. We had nothing but an aproximate heading and a very big distance so despite our efforts to make use of maps, compasses and traditional means of orientation, the search for our 3rd geocache proved fruitless.
Despite our failure to find the last cache we were feeling quite happy with all the cardio workout we got and with everything we'd seen. We spent a few more minutes in the clearing, taking another hundred pictures and we made our way back to the car we had left in town near the Sinaia monastery.
A great day all in all, one that I look forward to repeat.
Photos from the day via Facebook can be seen in my Geocaching Sunday album.
The picture associated with this post is an HDR generated photo of the Caraiman cross taken from Poiana Stanii.
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| Christian Nasulea - 01.06.2009 | |
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Sweet Day
Let's examine my menu for yesterday, just for fun's sake.
7:30 am - Breakfast - Frosted Shreddies... with milk
1:00 pm - Lunch - Double sized Snickers
5:30 pm - Tea - Half a Snickers
7:00 pm - Dinner - Rice pudding
9:00 pm - Dinner 2 - Papanasi
2:00 am - Milk and cake (Cozonac)
So, in addition to my healthy sleeping habits (NOT) and my addiction to taurine I've now had an entire day of the most balanced diet you can imagine... sweets only.
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| Christian Nasulea - 28.05.2009 | |
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The Prince of Japan in Comarnic
There was a rumour in town last Saturday that some Japanese officials visited a sheep farm in Comarnic, that we routinely pass by on our biking trips. It turns out the rumour was true. The Japanese official turns out to be the prince of Japan and his wife.
Video of the news report about the visit:
Thank you, Roxana, for sending me the link to the video.
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| Christian Nasulea - 27.05.2009 | |
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