Friday, February 4, 2011

Comeback

Or attempt to return.

Writing makes one grow, and writing makes one remember and discern.

Today, I am painting my nails purple, to go with the stockings I wore yesterday.
Today, I am wearing my "tipa, tipa, wazo fe nich li" T-shirt. Because I believe that little by little, the bird builds its nest.
Today, I danced Zumba, and I fulfilled a dream from three years ago.
Today, I am reading about my silenced worlds, about struggles and love, about ancestors and the future they envisioned, and I am re-discovering the meaning that seemed forgotten.

And tomorrow - tomorrow I will read a book that's not fantasy, because I miss being touched by the feelings and dreams of others who knew how to craft a vision.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Buses

When people are sad, they remember the past.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Punct, dar nu de la capat (2)

Vrei o bucata din mine?

Poftim, ia doua, si-asa sunt mici.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Punct, dar nu de la capat.

“You have it all now,” he said.

She knew that people were not toys. And that even toys make their way into your nightmares if you break them in pieces.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

La Miazanoapte

Today, I thought that I like riding the metro by myself at night. And that all choices in life are random, which turns the latter into a Brownian motion. It's far more interesting this way.

Maine e o noua zi. Look forward to it, ca asa-i sta bine omului, entuziasmat.

Don't get me wrong. I've always been a positive thinker. I think that pavements are made for dancing in a boundless space and that people don't understand it. Instead, they walk.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Din categoriile: “La pensii, carevasăzică, la pensii…” sau “Pesemne că acum s-a dus s-o scoată din puţ.”


Măh nene.


Dragilor, iubiţilor, se-nţelege.


Scriu din perspectiva omului care nu s-a dus cu Pluguşorul anul ăsta.


Vreau şi eu, pe lumea asta, adică acum, aici, în prezent (carevasăzică), să găsesc ceva, sau pe cineva, care să mă inspire. Sau o situaţie. Sau o conversaţie oarecare, poate cu un străin, sau poate cu o străină, sau poate cu un bătrân – om trecut prin viaţă, cu un rid adânc, sau poate chiar cu două sau cu trei, toate pe frunte. Sau pur şi simplu un om simplu, care trece prin viaţa uşor - de bunăvoie şi nesilit de nimeni. Un om care poate de aia are mai multă voie bună în viaţa lui, că aşa nesilit cum e, nu-i sileşte nici pe alţii să urmeze căile cele bune. Căi înscrise pe tăbliţe cu reguli şi evidenţiate în statistici. Reguli care altminteri aduc, indubitabil, fericirea.


Mami, mami, îmi aduci şi mie cadou, de Anul Nou, o revelaţie?



Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Midnight Crisis

Context: Nessa and G. doing internship applications, one day before the deadline. They decide that Facebook might be a good start and provide good inspiration for the “describe your personal strengths” part. They are eating oranges and they type.

G: An orange is like a person.

The juice represents the tears of suffering. Squeezed by malicious hands, scheming evil. In the late hours of the night.

The seeds represent the waste, the anonymity, the meaninglessness of it all. Taken from the flesh, with cold steely knives, only to be left in the rotting trash piles of Naples.

The shell, outer layer, is the thick carapace of hypocrisy. Of social conventions that bid you to say hi, and bye, and thank you, and thank you very much, while our livers distill the dark, black bile of bitterness... wishing we could instead cut their livers open with our thousand daggers of bubbling sarcasm.

And the flesh... the flesh is all that's left after we've all been harvested and processed for juice.

All that remains is the price tag and bar code.


N: Stop writing about Renaissance theories on my wall. Thank you.

A person is like an orange. Instead of having a deep structure, as for example, onions do, a person is thick-skinned. Like an orange.

Like an orange, a person seems simple. It has an exterior that does not resemble in any way what's inside, and that hides the unexpected. You never know whether an orange is sweet or sour, if you look at its skin.


G: [grabbing the computer] For example, today I was just there sitting on the dinner table, chilaxing, and then we were supposed to ya know, eat them oranges. And we got yer ol oranges, and looked at em, and said, aye, yeah, they're all orange. But you know. Who would have thought. We thought we were looking at an orange. But then, we get em oranges, we open em up, and voila, we get RED ORANGES.

That ain’t no right man. What the heck is A RED ORANGE? What is that? Is that like bright red, or something, is that a color?

NO, no, its gotta be a fruit, i mean, no, its not a color. What the heck is a color, its not even a thing, ya know.

I was there, holding a thing, it was a fruit you know, a Red Orange. First one I had ever seen.

Who would have thought? I wouldn't.

Okay, yeah, back to your point.


N: [annoyed, gets back the computer] That’s touching. Thank you. I am, as I said, touched. Inside. Not like an orange would be touched by a person.

Ok. A person is like an orange.

One day, I grabbed a bag of oranges. It said “Sweet Oranges” on the label.

See? A person is like an orange. LABELED. By the society. Who the hell cared that those oranges were not all the same, some sour, some sweet, some more orange, some thick-skinned, some fat, some skinny, some suculent, some dry, they were all the same in the eyes of the society. And the society has no idea.

Ignorants.

I wonder if oranges label other oranges just like people label other people. They might. Imagine two oranges talking to each other, of course, about a third. “Hah. Have you seen that one? Just because she’s bigger and got to be right under the sun at the top of the tree, she thinks she’s on top of the world.”


G: Okay okay okay sorry I just gotta add somethin' real quick.

You know, I’ve seen many oranges down there, in our tropical homeland, and many a proud orange boasted under the sun:

“Aye lads, look at me!
Look at my shiny armor of protein!
What a great…”

And then it was interrupted, its insides half chewed by a bird.Yeah, that’s about it.


N: Yeah. SEE? The good ones die first. All the time.


G: You see what happens?? The proud orange gets eaten by a bird. Do you see? That’s the moral. Pride.


N: A new La Fontaine is born. But then, I wonder, why aren’t there any orange people in the world?

[30 seconds later]

N: What the hell is that sound?

G: Has the roof of your mouth ever been itchy? It happens to me all the time. Then I have to rub it with my tongue and it makes this noise...I thought it happened to everyone. [sad face]

Sunday, November 30, 2008

When My Friends Talk, I'm Taking Notes


Context:
Sidney Webb House, London, friends together.
Fragments of deeply engaging conversation that occurred late at night in my room.


G.: I have to discipline myself. If I read 10 more pages I can have two more cubes of chocolate.
Anh: You’re still at page 106. Wait. How come you’re at page 106? When did you read this much?
[long break in conversation]
G.: Oh, I actually started at chapter 6. Page 96.
------

Anh: How many pages are left in this chapter?
G.: Oh not much, not much, I’m halfway through the chapter actually.
[immediately after]
Andrew: Did I scare you?
Anh: No.
G. [to me, as I was typing]: What are you gonna do with that [these notes]? Write a book?
Anh: “The Life of Dinu”
G.: Yeah, write a short story. It’s better. More concise.
------

Anh: Giu’s a teddybear.
------

G.: SO if she [Anh] were 40 pounds more obese than she already is…
Andrew: Wait, where would you put those pounds?
Anh: Seriously, skinny people are so scary.
G.: Yeah, some people are too bony…
Anh: Like, when you throw them around, they don’t have that sponginess.
G.: When more than 50% of your body mass is bone, that’s not ok.
------

Anh: My butt is freezing.
G.: Don’t be obtuse. That’s a very obtuse thing to say.
------

G.: [describing an econ graph] This could be a rollercoaster. It could be anything.
------

G.:You know what this is? It’s chocolate residue dispatched from my hand. [on the new book and my sheets].
Anh: You know how on every 10 pages you get chocolate. You should leave a chocolate mark at every 10 pages.
G.: Oh you know, I could hold the chocolate with my left hand…
Anh: [interrupting G.] I am not listening anymore. I am sorry.
------

G.[randomly]: Ay. Zimbabwe…
N.: What?
Anh: That’s a country.
------

Thursday, November 27, 2008

A Proper Blog Entry

I haven’t written a “proper” blog entry in a long time. Now, however, I do have some random thoughts to share.

1. Instant coffee turns out to be a pretty good replacement for the badly Nessa-made normal one.

2. My friend Dan has been writing quite a lot lately. I have been reading his blog and it's brilliant. Read, enjoy, learn, get informed. Thank you, Dan.

3. London got pretty cold and I don’t have a hat that fits me well yet. I am also systematically afraid that getting a hat might ruin the effects of my newly-acquired professional hair-dryer.

4. Lack of sleep is not good. Unless it happens for a good reason.

5. I decided to spend my New Year’s Eve in Venice and booked the flights already. All I have to do now is inform my parents of my brilliant decision and make them cope with the fact that I will fly low-cost, low-safety, and won’t be home for a week or so. Because I didn’t tell them in advance, I feel adventurous and I am happy about it.

6. I took out about 8 books from the library, for an essay, and read none of them. I like their smell, though.

7. I think it’s worth working for Oliver Wyman primarily because they give you umbrellas and bottle-openers when you go for their company presentations. This clearly shows that they have a vision of what’s important in life, especially when in London. P&G comes second, with their free detergent and free electrical toothbrushes. They have a vision as well, emphasizing the necessary…which should never be placed ahead of the important. Uhm… I also rank them second because I was too shy to get one of those free noisy toothbrushes and I’ve thought about them ever since.

8. I don’t understand why everyone is so excited about the last James Bond movie. I regarded it as plain and unsalty.

9. Body lotion doesn’t have the moisturizing properties of hand cream.

10. I have been discussing the fact that “group dynamics shapes the outcome of foreign policy decision-making, especially in the situation of a crisis” for the last week or so. And I still haven’t finished.

11. It’s my name day on the 6th. Buy me presents.


I love you all, most of the times,


Nessa

Sunday, November 23, 2008

G. and One of The Best Days of The Year

Context:

G. studies in Italy at present and came to briefly visit London…for three weeks. G. loves travelling.

Saturday:

Geeky A. and Nessa (London hosts) decide not to go to Oxford because of schoolwork. They assume they will meet G. back in London on Monday, when he is supposed to return from Oxford where he visits another friend.

They don’t know that:

G. suddenly decides to leave to Bratislava from London.
G. books flight to Bratislava, thinking that a cheap flight is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit such a major city. He bases his judgment on the core assumption that some relatives he hasn’t ever seen in his life (relatives that his grandfather mentioned briefly in the past) would welcome him with arms wide open. G. does not think that annoucing his London friends of his departure would be necessary. After all, why would they care?

Saturday night:

London hosts worry about G. They have no idea where he is, or what were the reasons for his sudden departure. They assume he might be dead or robbed. All attemps of reaching G. or anyone else who might have a vague idea of his present situation fail, during the night and early morning.

As a result, A. and Nessa stay up until 5 am. Not necessarily because they’re worried. They need to design the punishment plan for G.’s return. Violence is certain.

Sunday morning:

A. finds out from Oxford friend that G. left to the airport. The destination of his flight is unclear – A. and Nessa assume it’s Italy. Still no sign of G. Anything is still possible, including death or high degree of physical injury.

Sunday afternoon:

G. calls Nessa. From the relatives’ house in Bratislava. He found their phone number and address - IN THE PHONEBOOK.

Nessa and A. do not worry as much anymore – since G. has a charged phone and enough money on him. Worst case scenario: G. could get hit by a car or a bike – but the two of them still decide that’s highly unlikely. Bratislava should not be worse than Italy.

Sunday evening:

G. calls Nessa again, for an update on the situation. The family turns out to have a sick son. They attempt to put drugs in G.’s wine. G. also suspects they want to take one of his kidneys and transplant it to their sick son.

G. makes the first wise decision of the past days and leaves their house, while still in one piece. G. books a flight back to London from an Internet Café. He is to return to London the next day, after one evening, night and afternoon spent in the Bratislava airport.

G. shall return right on time to attend the Christmas Party on Monday that he had bought tickets for…unless he misses his flight, gets robbed in the airport, takes a wrong flight, loses his possesions, misses the bus, gets hit by a bike, a car or other such vehicle.

Sunday late evening:

A. calls Nessa. G. has never left Oxford. It was all a two-day bad joke. Incredibly brilliant bad joke. Violent punishment is a must.

G.'s Closure

Facebook message:

"wait i just checked, the oxford tube should be coming in about 4 in the afternoon in Victoria Station tomorrow. I can send you a text

Yo dude, sorry, i think i've been dialing too many numbers this past night, i might have called you a couple times. Awwhh dude, Oxford is too crazy, i dont think i can cope with this. Matt took me to meet his Jamaican friend Ayman, and then... we had this big reggae party, and he offered us all this stuff... i think we drank a little bit too much... and they had all these pipes with hashish, i think there was like a giant hookah. It loked like a big octupus, with these 8 pipes.I dont remember much but i think we had some kinda trip to bratislava, and oh god there were kidneys involved... i dunno whose.Poor Matt, after a kebab lunch today he totaly passed out on the bed, with this big headache. But at one point, i think he was making phone calls too, on the phone.I hope we can wake up for class tomorrow morning..."

The problem with G. is that he is one of those people that you consider capable of actually going through or doing crazy things. It's all about his lack of luck. Bad things happen to him all the time. We love you G. You shall still be violently punished though.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Oh, well.

Context: London

I had almost no money left on my Oyster Card** today and I decided that I am grown-up enough to take the bus from school to home, by myself, without boarding the wrong bus, without paying 4 pounds for the underground, without getting lost. So I did. I boarded the right one. In the right direction. And saved money. But then the bus broke down in the middle of the road, close to the Waterloo underground station. Oh well.

I started walking along the Thames’ south bank, saw the Invisible Man’s suit and his umbrella, Hitler portrayed as a ballerina, Monalisa’s head and a heavy golden frame around it. The south bank was full of street entertainers, book sellers and tourists.

I like London’s pedestrian bridges more than the too big and too famous ones.

Closer to home, I saw a kid jumping through piles of dead leaves - I thought of how nice that feeling must be. On my side of the pavement, the street cleaners had already passed. Because of them, I had to grow up for a moment or two, and think that one day, there will be a pile of leaves around me and someone ready to start a battle. That made me happy.

I had cereals with milk for dinner.

Some people were born grow-ups. I wish them all the best.

When people ask me how old I am, I think 18, and wish for 14. I answer respectfully with my real age and I ask for a fancy drink when all I really fancy is an apricot.


**The fact that 7 million people travel daily through London, and that most of them carry a transportation card called “Oyster” in their IKEA card holders bothers me. Why would one want to carry daily, in their pocket, an object that reminds him/her of the famous Chinese sauce or the not as popular mollusk?

Monday, September 15, 2008

Magazines, Scortzishoara, Challenges, Wall-E and Stocks

Lots of things have been going on lately. With myself too, but especially in the stock market.

Today, I came back from the mountains to discover that Lehman filed for bankruptcy and no other bank offered to acquire them. Their stock went down 75% in three days, after a bad earnings release last week. I wouldn't have expected bankruptcy, though... I probably put emotions ahead of reason too much on this one.

Then! Bank of America purchased Merrill, instead of buying Lehman, as people thought initially. The Dow is now under 11,000 and the commodities' price did not increase at all, to hedge the fall in stocks; crude oil fell to $94 per barrel. Basically, it sucks. This whole sub-prime-backed-mispriced-high-risk-derivatives-combined-with-unrealistic-expectations-
to-cause-a-domino-effect-in-a-not-so-efficient-market thingie.

I count on the thought that people will understand: those who take on more risk than they can handle will - sooner or later - get hurt. And that the whole market tends to return to an efficient, more balanced mean in the longer run. So, in a way, I support the government for not pumping any money to save Lehman. On the other hand, I worry about the people who work in these troubled institutions and who will be fired, and I worry even more about the young, enthusiastic ones who just got job offers there. Some of my friends included. Sadly, the internship prospects for next year go hand in hand with this "let's fire people to reduce costs" mechanism.

Apart from the financial happenings that I am more or less addicted to, I haven't been able to follow the news as closely. This kept me away from both the global wonders and suffering. Can't wait to get to school, get a stable address and some magazine and newspaper subscriptions attached to it. Then I'll find out in fashionable time about hurricanes, people and peoples, conflicts and the inability of governments to solve them, infamous presidents, new books and places to explore around the world.

Random thoughts:

#1. One of the things that I miss from Vassar is Scortzishoara (Cinnamon). My guitar, that I played neither well nor often, but dearly.

#2. Each individual has something to offer. It is important to wake up every day with an open, non-judgmental mind. It is also important that I remember this, regardless of my surroundings.

#3. The last few weeks have been, in some ways, challenging. One challenge, that I failed to overcome, was the fear of bungee jumping. Another challenge was to understand actively that when one feels vulnerable, one is more likely to react violently.

#4. At present, none of the parts of my body are misplaced.

#5. I went to a random check last week, and the doctor seemed to measure all the quantities in "spoons of", even if he talked about honey, polenta or cereals. I couldn't stop laughing - but the doctor was young.

#6. To all of the people who thought (b/c of the bad television programs in my home country, combined with the lack of general knowledge of those who watch them) that they might die, as the end of the world was coming: please write your will, and put my name on it.

#7. Don't talk, just let me look at you.

Background voices going on in my head have been saying lately:

"Wall-ee?"
"Eeeee-vaaa!"

I finally watched Wall-E. I absolutely and completely loved it. And I would never sleep through it, if sleep were a function of my will exclusively.

Today, I loved you all.

Good night!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Happy Bubble Burst

I got very excited today as I came back from my grandparents and checked how things are going on on Bloomberg.

As I predicted, oil was in a bubble. It fell all the way to $108 from its $145 peak in July. That's under the $110 limit that I was expecting - even if the Dow is just partially stable. Congrats to all of those who were shorting it! We'll see what's going to happen next.

Small things like this make me so happy sometimes :))

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

It Is Not Cheese, It Is A Sponge...

Turns out that my cheese-shaped mug is not cheese-shaped, but sponge-shaped.

It is also called Sponge-Bob. I was supposed to remember this/know Sponge-Bob. Guess I'm too in love with cheese to make the difference. And I haven't watched Sponge and Patrick as a child.

Deep apologies :)