Le Blog ... Christian Nasulea

Nicht Nein Verboten

Being in Austria and passing through Germany, where there is discipline and all things are tidy and organized, I got this thought about a very discrete cultural difference that might actually have a very big impact on life, people and all that goes along with them.

Here, but also in other countries, Romania included, smoking is forbidden as in "rauchen verboten", "fumatul interzis", "vietato fumare". In England it's simply "NO smoking". Whereas in most places you can't smoke because someone simply decided you were not allowed to do so, in England there is simply "NO smoking!". There's nobody to stop you, it just doesn't happen.

I'll leave you with the subtleties of this little thought.

- 03.03.2010

1 comments

Toe Drag

Sometime around 1pm today I arrived at the top of the Schmittenhohe in Zell am See for a bit of snowboarding fun. I had my freshly repaired brand new board (long story) and decided to take it out for a good test run down "black 6".

I had set my bindings a long time ago but obviously never got around to test the settings. I didn't realize my toe drag was around 5 cm, so on my first hard brake right my board lost contact with the slope, I fell flat on my face and started to slide uncontrollably towards the bottom of the valley and the edge of the slope (not necessarily in this order).

Many seconds and many meters passed before a miracle from God in the form of a large mound enabled me to finally sink the edge of my board into some snow and stop my descent.

For all those who didn't understand anything and for those who understood and desperately want to know how to avoid their lives flashing before their eyes in a similarly silly incident there's a tutorial.

Key things to remember are:
- never let the tips of your boots hang out too much over the edge of the board (same thing goes for your heels)
- adjust your binding base plate so that it increases the distance between your boot and the snow as much as possible without losing maneuvrability.

Christian Nasulea - 01.03.2010

0 comments

Seventy Three

Grandma, "Mamaie" to most people, turned 73 yesterday. Happy Birthday, Grandma! Caught in the frey of events I perhaps missed most of the festive feel of the day.

My thoughts went out mostly to Roxana and Cristi, though I did not dare call and still don't dare call either of them. I acknowledge again that I have a lot to be thankful for. Things could always go much better but they could also... I have a lot to be thankful for!

Grandma received a lot of congratulatory phonecalls today. As I was around for part of the day I got to play secretary so I can confirm they were indeed MANY. Had I posted this earlier there would probably have been even more. I might have purposely postponed posting this in order to avoid the flooding.

Once again Happy Birthday, Grandma! or the more meaningful Romanian "La Multi Ani!"

Christian Nasulea - 19.02.2010

2 comments

Your Farm, Your Fish, Your Mafia and Your Park

All those of you who have been fortunate enough to escape the charms of that notworking tool that is Facebook (until now) might find it a bit hard to understand what I am talking about. However, even if you don't have a Facebook account (yet) I will try to write this in such a way that you may be able to understand.

A couple of days ago a few people in my Facebook friend list became fans of this "club" called "I dont care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!!". I clicked on the appropriate button and became a fan too. Unlike many of the other 4.5 million fans of this club (that's roughly how many there were when I became a fan, there are over 4.8 million now) I know that being in this club doesn't help much, at all actually. If you really don't want to hear anything more about Mafia Wars, Happy Aquarium, FarmVille and the rest of the extremely popular social network games played on Facebook all you have to do is hit the Hide button at the top right of a game-related post and "pouf" you'll never hear from that game again! That's not why I'm writing this post though.

As an employer and manager of people who work with computers and Internet I've often felt the urge to smack somebody over the head when I "caught" them playing Mafia Wars while they were supposed to be working on something. However, being a strong believer in human creativity and all things that converge to it I will say "let them have their fish, their mafia and their farm". As long as the job gets done and I keep being surprised by the people I work with when they take the initiative to come up with new solutions to old problems I will believe this is the way to go.

Plus, working in new media we can't content ourselves with simply working with the Internet anymore. The Internet is not new anymore. New media now means social networks and social networking games and if money is to be made from new media we will need people who know the media so we can harness their power.

And on this note I will leave you with Sir Ken Robinson discussing education and creativity (via Facebook).

P.S.: @G. - when I said "new solutions to old problems" I didn't mean new excuses for issues with already overdue deadlines. :))

Christian Nasulea - 17.02.2010

1 comments

Vatra Dornei Skiing

We devoted 4 hours on Sunday to the big slope of Vatra Dornei. We had done a bit of prior research to understand what it is actually about but as usual seeing is believing and trying it out gets you the full picture.

The slope is long and smooth. The ski lift has an intermediary station. It doesn't slow down but you can get off after the first 20 minutes if you're really bored or if you badly want to avoid the wind-exposed part towards the top. If you do decide to get off you won't actually miss much as the remaining altitude difference you gain over the last 5 minutes is insignificant.

There are two 30 second black slopes starting at the top station. To get back to the top after the 30 seconds you get to ride on two consecutive baby ski lifts. I'd never been on one before. It's interesting but also quite unpleasant.

Getting back to the main slope, the skiing is nice and it's a good place to learn because it's never very steep. It's a kind of scenic skiing, if you will, as you actually ski between trees and wooden houses. There are fences on the sides of the slope in places and it all gives a feel of "Grandma's village", not my grandma but you get the picture.

There are pictures on Picasa in the Vatra Dornei Skiing album.

These 3 altitude profiles should give you a good idea of the possibilities of the slope. They show a full circle (the same full circle), going up on the ski lift and coming down as fast as we could. The speed is obviously not taken into account in the first graph.

The slope was steep enough to allow a top speed of about 55 km/h. On the lower part there were many jump opportunities. 2-3 meter long jumps were easily done, even by beginners not looking where they were skiing :)

Christian Nasulea - 16.02.2010

0 comments

Skiing in Bucovina

After what might be the longest chain of changes of plan in history we ended up making our way to the northern lands of Bucovina for the Vatra Dornei Snow Festival. All that's left of "we" at the moment are me and Cipri but we're counting on our numbers increasing slightly over the next 2 days.

We tried out the new Gura Humorului slope today. It's about 1.5 km long but sadly it's one of the worst planned slopes I've ever seen. With a looong flat part right in the middle and two extremely steep parts towards the end it's only fit for advanced skiers and ends up being annoying even to them because of all the arm-work needed.

The ski lift takes 12-14 minutes to get to the top and is horribly boring. For some inexplicable reason they went for a Leitner ropeway with the chairs permanently attached to the cable which means the chairs move at constant speed both for loading and unloading and for the actual travel.

You can check out some photos from the slope on Picasa in the Gura Humorului album. The photos are geotagged so you can see exactly where the slope is in relation to Gura Humorului.

Also, this altitude profile generated out of one of our descents should give you a pretty accurate idea of what the slope is like.

We plan to spend Saturday and Sunday skiing in Vatra Dornei.

Christian Nasulea - 12.02.2010

0 comments

Head Peak

Saturday night Cipri and I each bought a pair of brand new Head Peak SG skis. Hervis has a big sale now retailing this particular model complete with bindings at 500 lei (roughly 120 EUR).

I took the new skis out for a bit of snow testing on Monday and Tuesday. My expectations weren't too high, probably very influenced by the price, but I can now declare myself quite impressed.

Their performance both when carving on ice and floating through deep powder snow was exceptional. Turning at high speeds is very easy thanks mostly to the shapes of the tails and their wide surface helps a lot when you need to stay afloat in deep snow. They didn't do too well on the few jumps I tried. Although they're very light I guess they're a little too flexible.

Tuesday also gave me the chance to do a first GPS speed measurement, setting a personal best. I skied down the 775m of the main Valea Dorului ski slope in 1 minute and 14 seconds.

Average speed: 37.7 km/h
Top speed: 64 km/h
Distance: 775 m
Altitude difference: 253.6 m (from 2051 m to 1798 m)
Maximum slope: 26.4 °

In fact, this descent was fast enough for the ski lift at the base of the slope to deny me access due to attempted "double use".

Tuesday was also a spectacular skiing day weather-wise. Pictures to tell the story in the Head Peak 13 Picasa album.

Elevation

Speed

Slope

Christian Nasulea - 04.02.2010

0 comments

The Look Good Principle

2 am - just got home after a fairly long and insightful debate with a lot of people about ethics, morality, statistics and the application thereof.

I arrange my jacket and the rest of the things I need tomorrow (in case the need should arise for a quick escape). I turn on my laptop and put my phones to charge.

I realize everything is different (tidier) and I look at the changes around the room. After a brief moment of panic I realize my guitars are still here just in a different corner. It's good to have Cristina back with us.

I pour myself a (soft) drink in the kitchen and go to my room to slip into something more comfortable.

I've got two pairs of training trousers on my bed, one black, one khaki and comfier. Black t-shirt, black socks, black everything else all make the choice really simple. The LG principle simply states "one must look good even when dead".

Seems like a sound principle and a sound idea. So, does writing this post.
Maybe it's not. Perhaps it's just the time of day!

Christian Nasulea - 04.02.2010

0 comments

Little Paris Overlooked

Bucharest got featured on the Where I've Been Blog. Scroll down the page and read the mistyped/misspelled description at number 5:

Five Overlooked European Cities

I'd like to note that once more some non-Romanians have a good idea about how Romania could be promoted better abroad. It only seems natural that the Twilight craze would be well exploited in homeland Transylvania.

I still haven't seen any of the movies!

Christian Nasulea - 02.02.2010

1 comments

The Rroma Beauty Pageant

Last year, as our concert going habits were proliferating, one of us (not me but I'm not saying who) came up with the idea that we should also go to a concert where we could explore that all-too-present music genre called manele.

The principle states that no matter what you do you should try to do a good job doing it so we found out there are two big manele concerts throughout the year. We had to attend one of them. The months passed, we missed the one in autumn (Toamna Manelelor), so when the posters started showing up for the world-famous "Miss Piranda" we had to make good on our plan.

The amazing thing is that besides myself, Bogdan and Cipri we managed to talk 5 other people into joining us for the show. I'd like to congratulate everyone for their courage, endurance, stamina and resolve.

Getting back to the show, Miss Piranda, as you might guess, is a beauty pageant which doubles as a two-day concert bringing together the biggest names of the musical genre. We enjoyed the music of artists such as Babi Minune, Florinel Pustiul, Jean de la Craiova and Florin Salam. The experience was quite traumatic so I will be brief and I will limit myself to only a few notes about the show.

The venue, Sala Polivalenta, was not heated. It usually is so I can only assume that heating is an option the organizers of an event can choose to pay for or not.

The sound system was very poor quality and it seemed the only objective of the "sound engineer" was to make everything loud (and distorted).

There were no lighting technicians. There were no projectors following the people on stage. Practically the dominant light that shined on the artists' faces came from two floor level projectors mounted on the front of the stage. These made everybody's noses cast shadows on the ceiling and made the general atmosphere resemble that of a "bodega de la gara" (EN: slum bar by the train station).

We witnessed the worst playback performance in history when Romeo Fantasticul (manelistu' porno) started talking to somebody off-stage while his vocal track was still playing. Even when he was trying to follow the song his actual voice didn't match the one on the CD.

I think some of the artists like Jean de la Craiova and Florin Salam are actually talented singers but I cannot say for sure as the sound system was too bad.

To put the appraisal of the concert part to rest, I've been to kindergarten Christmas parties that were better organised.

Most of the contestants in the beauty pageant were not of rroma origin.

A few of the girls were absolutely stunning.

Contestant number 9 weighed as much as any 3 other contestants put together. The announcers explained that she was there because she had been the girlfriend of one of the big stars. I guess we could give the event a few extra points based on the fact that they're not promoting extreme stereotypes of anorexic girls as role models. On the other hand the waves rippling through her body during the belly dancing trial were probably one of the things that traumatized us most.

The only criterium that seemed to be used to determine which of the girls got eliminated after a specific trial was the opinion of a guy in a striped sweater with a big belly, I'm guessing the organiser.