Lost in America

Father figure

2008-08-03T20:29:00.002-04:00

When I was a teenager I used to wait for months to go to a big star's concert. Saving my pennies, fighting for a ticket and then eagerly awaiting the big night.

This time, a friend told me at the last minute there are still some tickets left for the George Michael concert in DC. So without too much hassle, we got tickets high up in the verizon center and one night after work I went to one of the best concerts I've seen in the last five years. Despite the distance to the stage, the show was awesome, the interpretation flawless, the lighting amazing!

Socata / Elder(berry) lemonade made in USA

2008-08-03T20:14:00.003-04:00

The disadvantage of being in a small ex-pat community is that there are very few services catering to the needs and cravings of national food/drinks. I have been craving for a glass of refreshing socata (which being made with elder flowers i would call elder lemonade) for some time now, mostly because it has been very hot and my mom always used to make this drink in summer. So given I live far away from mom and home I had to make my own socata. See above. It has been tested on at least another romanian and a bunch of foreigners and everyone survived.

If you are curious how to make it, here's the average socata-craving person's guide to socata:

You will need:
3 lemons
450-500 g sugar (2 1/2 cups approximately)
1 gallon (or 4 liters) water
2.5 hands of elder flowers - which means you basically dig your hand in the elder flower bag and fill it two times and a half. To get elder flowers click here

In a big jar (or pot if you don't have a big jar) add the water, squeeze the lemons and put the rest of the lemons in, add the sugar and the elder flowers. Mix it and then cover the jar with a plate or something (it should not be perfectly tight). Leave it outside in a warm place. The whole trick is to have the lemonade ferment. Mix it every night. The socata will be ready when the drink looks naturally fizzy.

Enjoy!

I wonder who said this:

2008-07-26T00:11:00.002-04:00

The course of love is rocky, by custom, tradition, and myth. Romantic love thrives on adversity, on challenge, on resistance, on hindrances, on barriers to be overcome, on prohibitions, on taboos to be broken, on tension, on crises, on anguish, on despair, on secret meetings, on stolen kisses, on forbidden touches, on disapproving parents, on broken-glass topped walls that keep lovers apart.

If matters proceed too easily, too smoothly, then the excitement gradually leaks out of the relationship, the tension dissipates, and matters slowly coast downhill toward the dreaded pronouncement of "let's just be friends".

Dear blog

2008-07-22T23:31:00.002-04:00

My three-month absence has an explanation. I was busy, I was traveling, I was confused.

Now I am just busy, I am tired and confused.

But I did get to visit the beautiful country of Georgia, saw the Stalin museum and Babe - a pig that ran free on the highway. Seeing old friends is always the best way to soothe an aching heart.

Scorching under the DC summer sun I dream away of holidays and sun and peace of mind.

My next trip will be Houston and then Miami. With the dollar being so weak I am hoping family will come visit. Friends already are.

A twist of fate

2008-04-21T20:27:00.002-04:00

It must have been five years ago at the beginning of the war that I wrote a story about some Iraqis seeking asylum in Romania and the painful process that was. The story was published right before Easter and it was then that I met one of my Iraqi interviewees who has learned to say Hristos a Inviat (the traditional Romanian Easter greeting), just for me. This is one of the dearest stories to me and I always wondered happened to the Iraqis I wrote about, including Ali. I hope they're all well. A couple of weeks ago I met another Iraqi friend who lives here and one of his friends who is a TV producer put this video together.

"We arrived in Romaniain a trailer," 28-year old Iraqi asylum seeker Ali recalled through an interpreter.

Ali sat around a table with two other Iraqisand fellow residents of the Gociu camp for asylum seekers on the outskirts of the city. He recalled how all three were smuggled into Romania from Turkey in a trailer.

They said they first had to walk through mountainous terrain for seven nights, to pass through Iran and then to Turkey. Ali said he paid $3,000 to get from Iraq to Romania because he kept getting caught along the way and had to pay extra money.

Hassan, a middle-aged Iraqi asylum seeker who declined to give his real name, said he paid $1,350, out of which $900 was the trailer ride.
The asylum seekers in this story were not identified for their safety and their families' safety in Iraq. They were not photographed for the same reason.
All three are asking the Romanian government for permission to remain here and start a new life.

Ali arrived in Romania in December. He left nine sisters and his mother behind in Baghdad. He said he fled Iraq because he was against the regime, being a Shiite Muslim and a member of a political party opposed to the then-Saddam Hussein regime. In March 1999, a failed attempt to overthrow the regime cost him six months in prison, he said. His brother, who also took part in the attempt, was arrested and later died at the hands of the regime.

Ali worked as a tailor and opened his own shop in Baghdad, but the authorities confiscated all his goods, he said.
He chose to come to Romania because, "Romanians had the same problems like us in the past, and we thought you would understand us. What I heard about Romania were only good things, but what I see here is a very big difference."

Trying to get legal

Iraqisapplied for asylum in Romaniamore frequently than any other nationality in 2001-2002, said Nicolae Carcu, president of the Romanian National Council for Refugees. CNRR is a non-governmental organization assisting asylum seekers and refugees with legal, social and medical problems.

But their chances of success are slim.

"From my information, it is true that in Romaniathe acceptance rate of Iraqi asylum seekers as refugees was smaller than in other countries from the European Union," Carcu said. "We had a 10 percent rate of acceptance, so in this case I don't think it is smaller or significantly different from other years."

Enshrined in Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the right "to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Once in the country, Ali embarked on the long and difficult legal process required to receive refugee status – a process made all the more difficult by officials skeptical of asylum seekers' motives.

Romaniais considered by many to be a transit country for illegal immigrants, and asylum seekers are often suspected of using the country as a springboard to the west by authorities.

"In many cases (application for asylum) is just a pretext or an abuse of the asylum right just for the purpose of extending their stay and preparing to move on," said Carcu. "In my opinion about 95 percent of the asylum seekers come illegally."

After submitting the request, an officer from the National Office for Refugees (ONR) – which is part of the Internal Affairs Ministry – puts together a file, interviews the asylum seeker and decides whether the request has valid grounds or not, said ONR spokeswoman Monica Bizau.

Evan, 24, is an Iraqi asylum seeker who came legally to Romania with his family in December. They first fled to Jordan in 1998 after Evan's father left the family to hide from the Al Baath regime members who wanted to arrest him.

"There is a law in Iraq saying if they want you and they don't catch you, they may take your mother, brother, father, anybody, to force you to come back," he said.
He wanted to go to college but was not accepted because he didn't join the Al Baath party. The family lived illegally in Jordan where Evan worked as a carpet weaver until he came to Romania with his sick mother, two brothers, a sister and a cousin. He said his younger brother is still in shock and stays inside. He doesn't talk to anybody.

When they arrived in Romania, Evan requested medical care for his sick mother and brother.
"So he (the officer) asked my mother if she agrees to have my brother seen by a doctor. She said yes. Sign this paper. She signed the paper. Ok, we will send him to a doctor, and 'till now the doctor never appeared," he said.
Evan said his family spent $12,000 to get to Romania, out of which $2,000 were delivered to an Arab at Otopeni airport in order to let authorities know they are asking for asylum.

The interview

"They interviewed me for six and a half hours," Ali said. "And the translation was very bad."

Raluca Popescu, Ali's lawyer, said, "The interpreter may not understand the exact words. Haven't you ever played the telephone game?"

Evan's family was interviewed at a camp near the airport.
He said he told officials his story, but he doesn't believe it was translated correctly. As a result, he said he feared officials could deny his refugee status based on false information.

"There was a lawyer from CNRR. I asked for her, and there was an officer who made the interview and a translator. I refused to make the interview because of the translator, 'cause I don't want an Iraqi translator," Evan said.
Evan belongs to the Mandean religion, whose members he said are persecuted in Iraq. The Mandeans are a Baptist sect with only tens of thousands of members located mainly in Southern Iraq.

He said he asked for an English interpreter, or for the lawyer to translate from English, because he said he wasn't comfortable speaking to an Iraqi translator. But he was refused, and the interview was carried out in Arabic while the officer wrote in Romanian, he said.

"After the interview he asked me if I wanted to have the interview read," Evan said. "My answer was you translate and he writes, you work with him, I don't know what you translate, and if you read it again, you read what you want, not what you translated."

Bizau disagreed that there are inaccuracies in translations.
"Under no circumstances (is inaccuracy in interpreting possible), not just anybody comes here as an interpreter."

Carcu said, "During the interview, the asylum seeker is made aware of his rights and obligations and, according to the procedure, is asked if he agrees with the interpreter, if they can understand each other, and at the end he is read the interview. And if he agrees with it, he signs it.

"So, if the procedure is respected, it is hard for me to believe that after listening to his interview he can say, no, I don't agree with what has been written and said," he added.

ONR denied both Ali and Evan refugee status in late December. Authorities said they found inconsistencies in their statements.
Popescu, Ali's lawyer, said that Ali could have explained the inconsistency had he been asked. "But it is the inconsistency that is speculated to refuse (the asylum request)," she said.

Both took the next legal step and contested the ONR decision in the local court.

The refugee center

Until the court pronounces the final decision, the asylum seekers are accommodated for free at Gociu camp.
At the beginning of April there were 33 Iraqi asylum seekers in Gociu camp, among them six children and five women, according to the Romanian Youth Association for the United Nations, an organization assisting refugees in the centers.

Iraqi asylum seekers interviewed for this story said only one Iraqi family living in the center has the refugees status.
While in the camp, asylum seekers are given 16,900 lei per day (approximately 50 cents) to buy food they can cook themselves, said Bizau. If they choose not to live in the camp they are also given 11,200 lei per day (approximately 35 cents) for accommodation. They are not allowed to leave Bucharest.

"This is all the Ministry for Internal Affairs can afford to pay," she said.
But people in the camp usually receive help from NGOs and the community.
"If we want to go to the city and shop, we don't have the money," said Hassan. He said he tried to work in a nearby shop but was refused. Since asylum seekers have an indefinite status, it is difficult for them to find a steady job and make money.

Asylum seekers are free to leave the camp during the day until 10 p.m. But many of them remain inside.
"We sleep most of the time because when you sleep you don't think about anything," said Hassan.
Evan said they usually spend their nights talking to one another, playing games and sharing memories. Durig the day, they do their chores, sleep or walk around the camp. " We try not to get too far because you have to pay (spend money)," Evan said.

Little hope left after final refusal

If the local court denies the refugee status, asylum seekers can contest the decision at the Bucharest court. Both Ali and Evan did.
Ali's appeal was not accepted by the Bucharest court because the postal service failed to deliver his court records, he said.

When the court gives a final decision to refuse refugee status, foreigners have 15 days to leave the country. Another possibility is to request the approval to begin a new legal procedure to receive refugee status, if new elements regarding their situation have appeared.

The conflict in Iraq could be one such element for Ali's case.
Even though his temporary visa expired, and he can no longer live in the camp, Ali is still in Bucharest living illegally, waiting for ONR's decision on a new procedure.

If he gets accepted, he will settle down in Romania for good, he said.
"I will start from the beginning, build my life, work, because I lost everything in Iraq," Ali said.

Evan also spoke of his loss. "I lost the past, I lost the present and I don't know about the future," he said. "Nothing is good.
"I've not tried to cross the border illegally, even though I was refused here. I'm tired. But I still have a little hope left to get the status and stay here. I'm tired from running away from country to country."
Some of the Iraqi asylum seekers have to face the possibility of returning to their home country.

"We must see the situation of Iraq now. I don't think Iraq will be quiet for a long time because we have many parties fighting to take the government," Ali said.

"I don't wish to go back to Iraq for many reasons, first of all, every street, every point in Iraq will remind me of my father, who can bring me my father back?" said Evan."Second thing, we don't have anything, we lost everything. Third, my religious problem does not end with Saddam, it's only starting," he added.

"I speak for all the Iraqis here, we want Romania but Romania doesn't want us."

Ultima noapte

2008-04-21T20:25:00.001-04:00

Going back to nature

2008-03-16T22:04:00.002-04:00

The coolest thing about visiting the Colonial Farm at the Piscataway Park is that I got to play with a big, fat tabby cat that reminded me of my defunct tabby Tomi. I love cats and somewhere in my picture-perfect life there is a funny, fat, happy tabby.
Another cool thing was the hike and the chance to roam around in the sun on the banks of the polluted Potomac river and collect shells from between the milk jugs, plastic plates, cans of soda, tennis balls, flip flops and other junk on the beach. Yuck! I know. The legend has it that about 20 years there were enough oysters in the Chesapeake Bay to clean the Potomac and make potable water every 3 days. Now it takes 2 years to get to the same water quality.

The Colonial farm volunteers are very nice people who actually grow hens and pigs and cows and sheep and use utensils from the Colonial time and make food on open fire. I saw amazed tourists. I couldn't help thinking that what they consider eco-friendly, colonial life style, is what I grew up seeing at my grandparents' house in the country side. As I counted my blessings for having born the in the city, the smell of smoke, fresh parsley and the sound of the hens made me homesick and brought back many memories of summer vacation mornings.

If I had a car I would drive up every weekend and volunteer. Seriously... Someone has to tell kids today that peaches don't come from a can but from a real tree.

What if we could?

2008-03-16T22:02:00.001-04:00

I am up again

2008-03-03T22:37:00.003-05:00

I guess I just had too much coffee too late. I drink turkish coffee. And I buy European coffee grounds from this really cool/weird store called Rodman's, located on Wisconsin Ave and Garrison St, NW, about 2 blocks down from Friendship Heights metro. It is also the place where I can get sun flower oil (made in Ukraine with Moldovan instructions on it), ripe tomatoes for $1.29 a pound, egg plants for $0.99, Dr. Oetker products, Fa soap, smoked mackerel, Indian and Latin American food and a lot of other odds and ends. If you are Romanian or from close by, this is a great place to find a lot of the food to make romanian dishes. I also discovered the Whole Foods in Clarendon has 5 types of Romanian wine, priced between $6.99 and $7.99. Oh yes and the Pakistani store on Wilson Blvd, about 2 blocks from Virginia Square metro stop, has awesome bulgarian feta for less than $10 a kilo. I guess this is called globalism :-)

Tonight I took the metro and found a man lying on the floor. He looked like he passed out. The conductor came and called back-ups. Turns out the man was only very drunk and kicked off his shoes, and let the comfortable heat put him to sleep. Everything was cleared fast and the conductor apologized for the "situation." Ah, metro!

This weekend marked the 15th farewell party in the last 20 months. Yes I said goodbye to another pair of friends who are leaving the dysfunctional city of Washington, where nobody ever seems to be a local and where every body comes only to start or end a career.

Another good bye, to my favorite aunt. She died of an incurable and painful illness. She was my favorite aunt because she was always kind, had super cool stories to tell and made awesome desserts. She also had 3 cats at some point, one which was white and black fur around its eyes, hence was named Zorro. My aunt also had one of my favorite cousins. He was 6 years older and could make me laugh for hours. My aunt had a very nice soft voice, which became quite powerful when she was on stage. Needless to say that when she let me borrow a costume for the halloween party when I was in high school, I became one of the coolest kids in class. R.I.P.

Sicko, getting sick and wondering in the dark

2008-02-11T22:12:00.001-05:00

Ever since I moved to US I got sick four times badly enough to have to see a doctor. In three cases the doctor could not explain why I got sick but gave me medicines that made be better in a couple of days. In the forth case the doctor couldn't explain what was going but attributed to my being burned out and suggested all will go away if I just learn to relax and make sure my sugar level is ok. Well despite learning to relax, things did not get solved until I went back home, saw a bunch of doctors, had a CT and figured things out.

To say the US health care system lacks to be desired is like stating the obvious. When I was in grad school, some of my colleagues dubbed the student health center the student death center because they never knew what you really got but assumed you were either pregnant, had a cold or it was all in your head.

When one of my friends got sick over the weekend when regular doctors don't have office hours, I felt both helpless and concerned. On one hand, being abroad and alone makes everything look much challenging than it really is. On the other hand the thought of dealing with the health insurance bureaucracy is a very scary thought - it took me one year to settle a medical bill for a regular physical. At what point do you go to the emergency room? And who do you call in the middle of the night? What if something happens, who will notify the next of kin and who will make sure the repatriation of remains covered by any foreigner's health insurance kicks in?

I saw Sicko, Moore's documentary on the state of the US health care system, while I was flying back to the States. I thought it was another crazy docudrama to be taken with a grain of salt. I read Atul Gawande's book Complications and I am now reading Gawande's newer book - Better. These are notes of a surgeon who is genuinely concerned about the patient, the system, the ethics of medicine. He also has a bunch of degrees, worked for Clinton's administration and writes really damn well. He's probably one great competition for Dr. Sanjay Gupta - CNN's favorite doctor and medical reporter. Gupta looks better than Gawande. Gawande is more personal though.

Some times it is just mind-blowing how great medicine can coexist with lame/lazy medicine and how hard it is to realize that doctors are human too, they some times make mistakes and their mistake can even kill you.

My doctor friend said when in doubt just go to the ER - even if you have to wait, someone will see you and with more doctors and thus, more filters, it is more likely mistakes get caught. At least you'll get to live to be harassed by the health insurance company trying to say you should pay for your $1000+ ER medical bill.

Corny

2008-02-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

I don't know at what point exactly in my life I realized how lucky I am to have been born in the big city, but this feeling has been reinvigorated every time I had to spend more than 10 days outside an urban, pedestrian-friendly environment. Some times I needed less time than that and one such time was a three-day trip to South Carolina. US of A is more than New York, DC, San Fran, Beverly Hills, posh beaches, Chicago blues, New Orleans and other stereotypical movie-like places. Sometimes US of A is the little spread out town redneckville with lots of fields, trailers, a dusty gas station, barns, cowboy hats and rugged jeans. And those people speak with a drawl, get married right after high school and love the sound of country music.

it's game day

2008-02-03T18:39:00.000-05:00

The only reason I care about the super bowl is that it's the time to see some of the most nifty commercials ever. Other than that the town is really quiet, the sports bars are full and I couldn't give a rat's ass about game day,

Pepsi ad - diversity

Snickers controversial ad - two guys kissing

1984 Apple Mac ad

Fedex Ad

Unseen Bud light Ad

javascript:void(0)
Publish Post

Banned Godaddy.com ad

Banned Bud ad

Se Habla Español

2008-01-30T21:24:00.000-05:00

The funniest thing about learning Spanish at USDA is that I learn a foreign language in/through another foreign language. I am the only non-native English speaker in the class, which explains why the teacher's 30-minute explanation about not capitalizing days of the week and months of the year, and the gender agreement between nouns and adjectives seemed basic knowledge only to me.

I thought it was high time I got some real instructions and moved beyond Maná's sticky lyrics. Si, yo puedo.

All you people, all you zombies

2008-01-30T21:13:00.000-05:00

One of the first things I wanted to do as I started learning English was to write a letter to my favorite singer - Sandra. I was just 8 years old and I loved her music especially a song called Little Girl. I did write a letter which i never ended up mailing. As I grew up my taste in music evolved, but I will never forget Sandra and how happy I was she came to the first Romanian music festival taking place in Bucharest after the revolution. Sandra's also famous for being the wife of Michael Cretu, the man behind Enigma. Cretu happens to have been born in Bucharest. Well they used to embody the ideal love story. Today I randomly found they divorced, moved on and Sandra released a new album in 2007 called The Art Love.

Poveste de la scara C

2008-01-21T21:24:00.000-05:00

also known as Block C story. Cristi Nemescu's first short movie is a brilliant common story of a shy guy who falls in love with the popular girl. Or is this the little engine that could!?

2008-01-21T20:56:00.001-05:00

It was 6 am on a fall day a couple years ago and I was the only white person on that car on the green line train bound to Branch Avenue, in SE DC. Dreary eyes were half open under the flickering neon. The car was quite new, with its blue and red faux leather seats and pinstriped maroon carpet. As the train left the Chinatown station platform, I tried to sit down. There were enough passengers to make each double seat be half occupied, so I obviously had to sit next to someone. Sharing is the essence of mass transit, after all. There must have been something in the air that morning. Person after person would territorially expand himself so that I could not take the seat next to him. I thought I would have to spend the rest of my trip standing when half of the seats were empty. The stares made no sense. As I crossed to the other side of the car in my last timid attempt, I try to sit next to a somewhat well dressed lady. She makes room for me and smiles.

"Say, have you got any kids?" she says.
"No. Why?" I say
"I have a 4-year old and I want to give away the clothes who don't fit him no more. Thought maybe you had kids and maybe you wanna take them." she says.
" Oh, no, I don't have any kids. Sorry. But thanks anyway." I say and turn away smiling.

To the best of my memory this was my first encounter with racism in America, or, to put it in a better way, this was the first time I understood racism is a two-way street and I landed in the middle of a somewhat-silent conflict that does not belong to me. After all, they're all foreigners to me.

quality sells

2008-01-18T16:31:00.000-05:00

the inside flap of my netflix envelope had a big ad for Cristi Mungiu's movie 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days. Loved to see all those winner of this and that text and the quote from Chicago Tribune - you cannot afford to miss it.

a little overdue

2008-01-18T13:26:00.000-05:00

When I went home after 19 months, I had a lot of things to rediscover, including myself, my friends, my childhood neighborhood and my people who had just joined EU.

While I am totally unable to have the discipline to keep a journal, I did share some of my observations with my close friends scattered across the world.

Sometimes in late July
…. today I was on the (330) bus coming home after lunch with my friend who works in the corporate world in Bucharest. So it must have been 2 pm or so and there was this little old lady who must have been well into her 70s and she got on from one of the stops near a big hospital (Colentina). She was obviously in a mood to talk and so she started telling how she got some eye surgery and spent on it the money she had saved for her funeral. Than she said, well it's ok, she'll save it back. She works (does housework) for this "lady and gentleman" and the "sir" likes to change his shirt daily (duh!) and so the "lady" cannot keep up with the ironing. so she hired her - if she can iron 30 shirts in a day than she gets 300,000 lei (the equivalent of roughly 14 bucks!!!!) i felt so sorry for her, you know, it was obvious exploitation.

But, anyway, the little old lady was quite happy. She kept saying she likes working and likes to help and the money is helpful. The “lady” is nice to her and lets her take days off when she needs it. She works from 5 am to 5 pm.

Then she started saying how with this summer heat she only eats very little because it just feels like enough. She was carrying a round loaf of bread, freshly baked and so she said - oh this is such good bread - and started offering to other passengers on the bus, who tore little bits out of it.

This little lady was beaming with happiness. (I think I was so surprised to see that) Working so hard for so little, still sharing her bread. As the bus kept going and stopping, fighting traffic, people talked and listened to her even though nobody knew her. There was a lady next to me and she started talking to me as well about what the old lady was saying, about how sometimes there are these old ladies that are always happy, always working and always sharing everything. It sort of reminded me of my granny. But it also made me feel happy because despite being away for so long strangers still talk to me here. Just as some do so in US of A.

top ten reasons to go back to motherland

2008-01-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

The wind is burning my face and I can barely feel my ears. My fingers freeze curled on the grocery bags. So glad to finish the 3-block walk from the station. It's cold and I feel like crawling under the comforter, looking at the lit capitol and drinking mulled wine. I might be slightly homesick... why don't I read some Romanian blogs, something I never read before, see what other Romanian bloggers (besides my friends) think about. I jump from blog to blog and all seem the same - angry. Women angry at men for having been dumped, for being kept waiting... Men angry at women for being too talkative, too materialistic, too lazy, too nagging, too fat... Employees angry at the boss, citizens angry at the government.... Regardless of gender, social or marital status, age, job, Romanians are angry. Has EVERYBODY had a bad day? Why are easterners so grumpy and sad and angry and gloomy. It sounds like the sun never shines on that side of the world. Sometimes I am just too tired of it. Life is tough and life's not perfect, sometimes you lose a loved one, some time your job sucks, sometime your coworker is digging you, sometime you get dumped, sometime you dump somebody, sometime you can't find a parking spot, you see the train closing the doors in front of you and leaving, the internet is slow, they just ran out of your favorite drink and dish, sometimes you can't sleep at night because you have diarrhea. Get a grip! Not all men are jerks, not all women are sluts, not everybody's stupid.

when I think about going back, the eternal whining turns me off! Sigh!

4,3,2...

2008-01-13T16:13:00.000-05:00

I finally got to see Mungiu's movie 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days and the least i can say is WOW!

The synopsis is quite straightforward: a student got pregnant and wants to have an abortion, which is illegal in communist Romania. She turns to one of the gynecologists who does it illegally and asks a friend to help her through this. The twist(ed thing) is the gynecologist does not want money in return for the service but sex, and somebody has to pay up.

This is quite a raw film, with simple cuts, very realistic, which makes it even more dramatic. Its simplicity is what makes it great, after all there is no way to sugar-coat the tragedy of all those women who died having illegal abortions performed by scums. The inhumanity of the decision to ban abortions and contraception is a whole different story all together.

My memories of communism in Romania are those of a 7-year-old. I read more about what happened than I actually remember vividly. I do remember the lining up for various items (anything from milk, potatoes, toilet paper to cotton wool or flour). I do remember once I stood in a queue for about 4 hours to buy red grapefruits. But I had never seen red grapefruits in my life, I just knew the regular ones. By the time I got to the shop keeper, the fruits were gone. She offered me half of the grapefruit she kept for herself (I used to be well known around my neighborhood because I was one of the few children who had the patience to line up day after day) but I thought that was a rotten grapefruit so I politely refused.

But i was too young when communism fell to know much about the illegal abortions. Mungiu's movie makes me wonder how Romania could bare with communism for so long. It makes no apparent sense. At what point do you give up?!? How can you live without privacy and dignity?!?

When I hear the pro-choice and pro-life debate in US, I cringe. I hope they all see this movie.

Good music never dies

2008-01-13T01:00:00.000-05:00

One wish for 2008: to see another Scorps concert.

Ah, the wine

2008-01-11T00:32:00.000-05:00

I finally made schnitzels for the first time ever. They reminded me of my college years and our schnitzel-in-a-bun sandwich at Express Olimp, also known as La Jeg (the dirty place).

The reason to go throw the ordeal of taking the bones off chicken thighs, hammer the meat, roll it through egg and flour and fry it, was that some dear friends came over for dinner: she - a super successful journalist, brilliant and beautiful (from the West Coast), he - a brilliant, super kind Belgian man who works in IT. It's one of those moments when I simply feel at home and happy, no matter how far I am. Their openness and friendship has taught me so much that they deserve the pain of making the schnitzels, the cauliflower soufflé or some 6-course meal :-) And they're certainly worth sharing my aunt's home-made tuica and many, many bottles of good wine. I also got to educate them about a proper romanian-orthdox wedding, the classist system of Romania and much, much more.

If I could drink to anything, it would be friendship.

Count your blessings

2008-01-09T11:34:00.000-05:00

From Housekeeping Monthly, May 13 1955

Dear Metro,

2008-01-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

I felt that! Please stop pinching... my wallet. My one-way trip to work now costs $3.70, up from $3.05 last week. Getting a short-trip pass (up $4.50 per week), changing trains by getting out at Farragut West, walking 1 block and going in at Farragut North, make my one-way trip only 5 cents extra.

My options:

buy a car and drive to work on the beltway at rush hour! (Are you f*ing kidding me!?!)
move - that'll be $2800 for breaking the lease plus endless headaches to find a new place, rent a truck, move, pay higher rent. ( Are you f*ing kidding me!?!)
get another job, downtown or in VA (so not in the mood to go through that again?!?)

So really, stop pinching!

So damn right

2008-01-08T20:54:00.000-05:00

From Stingo's

"How come all the straight people here are in a relationship? I haven't met any straight Romanian who's single."

Indeed, singleness is an abnormality among Romanians... one friend also said the "cold feet" syndrome is a pure American invention and it does not, i repeat, it does not exist in Romania. Hmmm, last time I checked I was Romanian ;)

Look Ma! I can cook

2008-01-08T15:23:00.000-05:00

So he helped... ok, ok, It was team work, but it's me who made it, put it in the pans. He than called it concrete (aka cozonac beton).

Sometimes

2008-01-07T23:46:00.001-05:00

I really don't mind that I don't belong... I am a misfit here and am a misfit there. I never hide where I come from, I defend my country and make fun of it just as much. I often give in to my IHOP weakness, I sneak in the self-help/ego-boosting section at Barnes and Nobles, sit on the floor and laugh at the all-recipe 12-steps to being smarter, more beautiful, sexier, richer, bolder, fatter, skinnier, more whatever books.

I ask for iced water in Romanian restaurants and do not give up until I get it. I drink Silva Bruna and brag about supporting the local economy.
I don't know where my soul is

Alexandria

2008-01-07T23:22:00.000-05:00

My work on a special project takes me often to the library in Old Town Alexandria (Photo © Alexandria Convention & Visitors Association) and I always spoil myself by roaming around on King Street to see the sun set or just look at stores. Sometimes, like tonight, one friend joins me for dinner and coffee. The times passes at ease as we chat away into the night and the world feels like it's all just ours.
I discovered Alexandria on a semi-frigid, lazy Sunday after Halloween two years ago. A bunch of friends, who now moved back to Eastern Europe, took me for a stroll to the torpedo factory, which dubs as a collection of art studios. The marina has a reminiscence of San Francisco with a faint touch of Mark-Twainian Mississippi boats. It's a sweet spot of the "South" that feels cozy, historic, exuberant, peaceful and very much alive. Lots of restaurants stretch on the many blocks between the metro stop and the waterfront - anything from Lebanese, Greek, Italian, Thai, food to Texan chili, Sea food and jambalaya. And lots and lots of good beer.

Sometimes, life is good.

Helvetica - the movie, the font and the search for perfection

2008-01-06T14:57:00.000-05:00

For all the designers at heart, for anybody interested in visuals, this is a great movie to see. It may sound boring to do a whole documentary about one type face - Helvetica - but it is totally worth it. The documentary brings in the lovers and haters of Helvetica, the people who tried to understand why a font is so perfect it has not been improved in 50 years. If some say Helvetica is a soulless type, associated with uniformity of corporate world, the machine and the sterile cleanness of a well organized life, the story behind it is full of passion and interesting people.

Remember when it rained

2008-01-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

Porque nunca sabes lo que tienes hasta que lo pierdes... you lost.

I am back

2008-01-05T23:57:00.000-05:00

Yes I am back! And yes I still don't like the new blogger. But it is my New Year's resolution to start keeping track of my thoughts and to let my friends know how I am doing, or at least that I am alive. I am going the modern way - broadcast my life instead of packaging it nicely in personal letters or random phone calls.

Good news! I am still alive, still living in DC, still taking the metro, still carrying my groceries, still pondering about life. It's been a good year and it's a very tough year. I have seen many friends off and said many goodbyes. I traveled quite a bit, even visited home twice. Lots has changed in my little neighborhood, yet still remains to be changed... or is it just my desire to see the change?

I have moved, yet again. I had mice, yet again :-)

I saw the sunset in the desert.

I celebrated one year at my current job. I launched a new site, bigger than anything I've done before.

I got my own office.

I killed a plant.. make that two plants. Ooops!

I bought new furniture. I made a fresh start.

I almost fell in love.

I made sarmale, all in made in America.

I found freedom.

I am back.

Ruxi non c'è

2007-03-20T21:14:00.000-04:00

Ruxi is not here and is not likely to get back. she has decided the new blogger sucks and does not feel like building a new blog... yet.

otherwise, Ruxi is listening to music, reading Erich Fromm, pondering how to save the world in the little time left by the transition to a new job, redesigning a whole new site, building new web tools, traveling across the nation and looking for a new address to call home.

Lost ... and maybe found in America!

2006-12-18T20:44:00.000-05:00

Dear blog,
I have never kept a diary in my whole life. i struggled with the concept a couple of times as rebel teenager but I always found I had more things to do than keeping track of my life in black and white.

yes, dear blog I have neglected you... it happens to the best of us. No regrets, whatsoever. But for all those wondering what I have been up to and why I do not promptly reply to emails or... worse.. facebook messages, the answer is I have been busy. I have been busy trying to make sense of post-graduation life, quarterlife crisis and other names given by people who have time to being twenty something and living life on the edge.

I have also been busy trying to figure out the way to continue with not writing on the blog about being lost in America for the next 1 to 3 years. I have also been busy planning my first christmas on the east coast with friends only, no family. I have also been busy justifying why I am stepping away from hardcore journalism and I am not getting worried sick about the future of newspapers. Phew...

I am still metamorphosing, hibernation helps. Stay tuned for the next version of my getting lost and found in America.

Until we meet again, dear blog, here it is the essence of hope and the holidays:

the 1897 famous editorial "yes Virginia"

"From the Editorial Page of The New York Sun,
written by Francis P. Church, September 21, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

"Dear Editor--I am 8 years old."Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus."Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.'"Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O'Hanlon
115 West Ninety-fifth Street

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

and the modern version published in the NY Times

Here are some of the things you may not know about what is almost certainly the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever written.
It was summer, not December, when 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote The New York Sun asking if Santa Claus existed. She probably wrote the letter shortly after her birthday in July, it kicked around the newspaper for a while, and the editorial was printed on Sept. 21, 1897.

The eloquent response beginning, ''Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,'' was written by Francis Pharcellus Church, a self-effacing man of 58 who had no children of his own. According to his editor, Edward P. Mitchell, Mr. Church ' 'bristled and pooh-poohed at the subject,'' then knocked out an essay that was buried in the third of three columns of editorials.

It did not become an instant success, as legend has it. Instead, it was first reprinted five years later, with no great enthusiasm, after repeated requests from readers. It was not until the 1920s that The Sun (not to be confused with the current incarnation) gave in and prominently reprinted it every Christmas.

Virginia, later Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas, went on to become a thoroughly modern woman who earned a Ph.D., taught school and served as a principal.

She embraced Mr. Church's sentiments to the end, most conspicuously when she read her question and the newscaster Chet Huntley read Mr. Church's reply on Dec. 16, 1960, on ''Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall.''

She moved to North Chatham, near Albany, from New York City in 1959, and died on May 13, 1971, at age 81.

A grandson, Jim Temple, has a videotape of her, dignified in pearls and white gloves, reading the editorial as she did every year at the Christmas party at the local Methodist church.

SO in the interest of setting the record straight, in honor of Mr. Church's editorial, Mrs. Douglas and the spirit of the season, the North Chatham Historical Society paid tribute to her last Sunday. Mr. Temple spoke, as did George Vollmuth, president of the historical society, and W. Joseph Campbell, a journalism professor at American University who researched the history of the editorial for his book, ''The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms.''

It's not likely the 40 or so folks who came out on Sunday were all that interested in journalistic paradigms. But it's hard not to look at Virginia's question and Mr. Church's answer through one of two other lenses.

The first is wonderment at the impossible distance of it all.

''Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so,' '' she wrote. Ha!

Those were the days. Newspapers still do their best to tug at heartstrings, but it's hard to imagine one writing: ''Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.''

Today's version with an appropriately hip urban 8-year old might be:

Vnyc06: sup santa. r u for real?

elfnumber18: yes, V. he just doesn't use IM.

But the editorial has resonated for 109 years not because of what it said

to children. Its appeal is what it says to adults -- about the fleeting nature

of childhood; the importance and difficulty of faith, hope and belief; the thin

line we walk between being responsible adults and a world with, as Mr. Church

wrote, ''no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this

existence.''

So more compelling than what is dated is what is not. ''Virginia, your

little friends are wrong,'' Mr. Church began. ''They have been affected by the

skepticism of a skeptical age.''

Skeptical age? It's 1897! Letters to The Sun cited by Mr. Campbell sound as

if they could have been written today. One letter writer in 1926 said the editorial offered ''a fine relief from the commercialism and unsentimental greed '' of the Christmas season. One in 1940 said it was ''a ray of hope on the path of human understanding in our troubled times.''

And Mrs. Douglas popped up throughout her life to make Mr. Church's case. (''Yes, Virginia Tells Questioners Today, Santa Can Exist Even in an Atomic Age,'' read a headline on Christmas Eve, 1957, in The New York Times.)

But, a smart cookie, she managed to do him one better. In a newspaper interview 71 years ago, she cited the plight of poor city children, saying that they needed both belief and help, the spirit of Santa Claus and the reality.

The story ends, ''Nineteen thirty-five, she indicated, would be an especially good year to get started.''

Everything changes and nothing does.

Jobsearchingonandonandonandon....

2006-11-20T22:35:00.000-05:00

From an ever-true column:

"Over the course of the past six months, I've perfected the ritual of the final interview. During February of my senior year at college I began sending out resumes to newspapers and magazines that posted their ads on widely used websites. By a few months later, I'd applied to every daily, weekly, monthly and annual publication I could find. First I allowed myself room to move from materials that I would prefer to those that I have never read. Next came the unavoidable abandonment of all political and social beliefs so steadfastly adhered to by government students. Inevitably, I found myself convincing my parents that I would benefit a great deal from working for a socialist orthopedic journal... if only they'd return my calls."

Hard Times

2006-11-17T21:30:00.000-05:00

Hard times call for Hard Times Cafe in Clarendon, an unusual, yet fun, Texan diner slash coffee shop, where the burgers are cheap, the bear flows under near flickering candles and the chili is coming as fast as the eye can see.

Ok, so it's been a while, dear readers concerned of my well being and whereabouts.
I am proud to say I am coming back home now every day to a blue state, well half-blue, but it's a start. Elections were interesting, even if they were not mine. It is funny how the media called the races as the utter most authority on the matter.

As fall settles in and the leaves from my oak trees cover the parking lot, questions arise about the purpose of one's life. yes it is one of those months when I question almost anything, from the ingredients of my bread, to the outcome of Romania's joining EU.

I saw Borat, whose fame is unbased. Yes I enjoyed the first half hour, especially the shots from Romania when people clearly had no idea what was going on. But the jokes got diluted and the repetitive humor got really old, really fast.

Death of a president or 'stereotypes' is the new thing

2006-11-06T21:48:00.000-05:00

It was a real struggle to not get up and go.

Death of a president, the movie, is a fake documentary about the assassination of Bush in 2007 after a speech in Chicago. That's all it is. The only reason to stay and watch is the great shooting and editing of an almost-real (bad) fiction movie. Indeed the cuts are great. But all the rest is blowing stereotypes out of proportion in an almost-expected way. Yes the muslim guy is innocent, though made to look guilty, and the black gulf war vet did it. It is a different play of stereotypes than Crash, yet it leaves this bad taste in the mouth, like turning on the tv to watch cable news all day and realizing you're overpaying for the quality delivered.

I was disappointed the movie did not show how Fox covered the story... or 2007 has no FOX news?

unless you really want to see it, wait until it comes out on DVD. Or better, on YouTube.

My mutant apple

2006-11-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

Fast food nation will finally premiers on Nov. 17. The trailer is quite mild compared to the book, which came out in 2001.

The book is a great example of fine writing and detailed investigation of how corporate America's drive for money has gone to the basic human need - food, took it over and is slowly killing us without remorse. The essence of the book is pure and simple "there is shit in your meat." Yes, unless you can afford to pay a high price to get the very little of what's left from the old-fashioned way of growing cattle, hogs and poultry, you should become vegetarian. Or become obese and die.

I remember the visits to my grandparents in the countryside and I remember the chicks needed at least the whole summer to become somewhat big enough for a steak. Apparently the big poultry producers in US get their chickens the size of a hen in 7 weeks. No wonder boiling an American chicken is a gross experience with meat swallowing in a very unnatural way until it's done and back to a somewhat familiar aspect.

I resent going for groceries. It is scary to read the labels and see there are at least three ingredients that should not be there. I tried several super markets and it's all the same. Especially when on a tight budget. One day last October I bought apples, two apples to be precise. I ate one when I got home and forgot about the other in my fruit basket. I found it again on Thanksgiving when the basket was empty. The apple was as shinny and yellow as the day I bought it. I left it and forgot about it again until the basked emptied again on Christmas before I went home. And yes the apple was as shinny as the day I bought it. When I returned three weeks later, the apple was still unchanged. I kept it just to see what happens. I ended up throwing it away a little before I moved out in May... It was still shinny, but finally had a light brown spot. I could not imagine eating an apple that staid unchanged for so many months.

It takes a mind and a hard stomach to digest this

2006-10-23T10:23:00.000-04:00

Jesus Camp is one of the must-see movies of this year. I was surprised with the E Street cinema being packed on Friday evening when I got to see this documentary.
People who think America=New York are dead wrong. Hollywood does not portray (nor should it!?!) hard-core reality, or the emerging social movements, such as the rise to power of Evangelical Christians... those who may sway victory from Democrats to Republicans and back.

This is a great snapshot of a little-talked-about aspect of American politics on the international level. And a terrifying revelation as well...

My moment of Zen

2006-10-11T21:37:00.000-04:00

town-tagged

2006-10-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

Raluca tagged me on likes/dislikes about my town. Well I actually live in Arlington, VA, but will refer to the Washington, DC metropolitan area:

3 places I love

Jefferson memorial by night and the walk by the Tidal Basin
L'Enfant Plaza promenade
the park in front of the U.S. Capitol

3 places I hate

Chinatown
The stretch behind Union Station, towards the Greyhound bus station
Columbia Heights and beyond in NE

3 places where I like to go out with my friends:

Guapo's in Tenleytown
Capitol Brewery
Madam's Organ

3 things an outsider would not understand

There are no skyscrapers in DC because it is illegal to build higher than the Capitol
There are no outdoors ads or digital displays because that form of advertising is illegal in the city
You must never stand, but continue walking, on the left side of the escalator at the metro. Eating and drinking are illegal on the metro

The fanciest neighborhood:

Upper NW DC, Connecticut Avenue/Woodley Zoo and beyond

The ugliest neighborhood:

NE/SE/SW DC - though there are pockets of nice places, everything pass Navy Yard and Anacostia are not the places you'd want to be, same as NE DC towards Rhode Island Ave. and such.

being a prisoner will make you fat... no kidding

2006-10-04T11:11:00.000-04:00

from AP: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - A high-calorie diet combined with life in the cell block — almost around the clock in some cases — is making detainees at Guantanamo Bay fat.

Meals totaling a whopping 4,200 calories per day are brought to their cells, well above the 2,000 to 3,000 calories recommended for weight maintenance by U.S. government dietary guidelines. Rest of the story

The Dance Factory

2006-10-03T14:52:00.000-04:00

Last night I took my first lesson of ballroom dancing - foxtrot and waltz. It was one of my dreams to start learning these dances for the sake of it, but I never found the time. The small dance factory studios are pretty nice and cozy. As my friend I signed up as singles we got in a class where everyone has to switch partners every 2.5 minutes or so. There are also two ringers who step in and gently correct you. I love the feeling... no pressure to perform well from day 1. It is a little challenging tough because I seem to have the salsa steps deep engraved in my mind.

There was nothing better last night than dancing away on Sinatra's songs... and slow-slow-quick-slow-slow-quick...

ONA is back in town

2006-10-02T12:31:00.000-04:00

The Online News Association conference is in DC this year and kick in on Thursday with pre-conference panels.

There is a job fair on Friday at the Capital Hilton, but apparently you got to sign up for the whole thing to get to the job fair...

More details, including schedule, speakers and stuff here.

All panels will be covered on the site so keep an eye on it this coming weekend to see what's new in the online news industry.

my ideal job

2006-09-30T20:31:00.000-04:00

BestJobs.ro says my ideal job is a funerary march composer.. no kidding. All based on my name, huh! Take the test[ro].

I found home

2006-09-29T21:43:00.000-04:00

and it's not index.html :)
It's this cool wiki map. If your favorite spot on Earth is not there, all you need to do is add it.

what's in YOUR wallet?

2006-09-26T23:24:00.000-04:00

tagged by Romerican I took on his dare and resurrected my camera to show the whole wide world what lives in my wallet/purse... well the purse is not always there, it sometimes a backpack or something related.
So here it is... the complicated life in America: credit&debit card, driver's license from here and home, a couple business cards I keep just in case something happens, my health insurance card (I wonder if I get in an ambulance, will they know to check in my wallet for my policy number?... now they do), my first press pass from many years ago, my library of congress card, my student id card, my employment card and the inumerous favorite customer cards. Enjoy!

Shenandoah is more than your CVS milk

2006-09-26T17:52:00.000-04:00

playing tourist finally after so much time. This time I was a nice little online news consumer and followed the ad for the Shenandoah Caverns festival and wine tasting tour. The cave was absolutely great and the tour was spiced up by the young guide who said with a Southern droll that some of the formations look like strips of bacon.
The wine tour was even better and I was glad to find a winery who has thought of everything - a different type of wine from breakfast to the hot tub and bed.

Photos to come...

2006-09-23T21:02:00.000-04:00

The other day i finally received my degree - nice, gothic-type letters on heavy paper and a laminated business card-size version. My university was chartered by the act of Congress in 1893, which makes it the oldest institution I attended, after my 140-year-old high school in downtown Bucharest. Finally the end of school, 18 years of education, not counting kindergarten.
18 years ago I had no idea I would be where I am (on a couch with my laptop on, in the DC suburbs), nor did I think it was possible.

--------

my friends and I made a resolution to eat natural food from now on. This is an incredible task because of all the genetically modified food in the grocery stores. I still wonder why raw meat has to have high fructose syrup and corn syrup.
We decided to go to the fresh fish and sea food market in SW DC and discovered the wonderful fish hut where for 45 cents a punt they clean the fish and make it fillet so you don't have to deal with it. We were the only white people there, however, which was actually a lot of fun. We practically had "foreigners" written on our forehead and people were very nice.

----------

I still did not develop a rule about when to give and not give money to the beggars/homeless in Washington. For all those out of there who think everybody in America is stinky rich and lives like in Beverly Hills 90210, well poverty is there in your face, a lot more in the cities. According to the 2004 estimates, 12% of America lives bellow poverty line. Some more than others...
I was walking back from the greyhound station one day in not the brightest neighborhoods of all and a homeless man approached me. He politely told me that he does not want to insult me, but he is hungry and he would like some money to eat. I was a little uneasy to dig after my wallet and than look for cash, given the surroundings, so I offered him some bananas and an apple. He vehemently refused and said, you know what, don't worry about it, I don't need it. Perhaps he was not an apple or banana person.

------------
i discovered i have cockroaches in my apartment. Sad but true... despite the neat freak room mate and the tidiness, the 8-legged creatures decided to become tenants too.

alive and kicking

2006-08-24T22:05:00.000-04:00

sorry my dear 25 (and dropping every day) faithful readers.
I just wanted to let every concerned/curios folk know I am still pretty much alive and somewhat kicking in my northern virginia retreat.
Without emulating my neighbor from the WHite house, I can declare mission accomplished. Yes, I have finally completed my master's degree two weeks ago and hopefully the diploma will reach me soon.
I have been generally busy finishing up with everything and working six days a week to make ends meet.
I have a new part time job at PEJ which I enjoy a lot. It is a temporary gig but it is definitely interesting.

I recently launched yet another site - the History Division site of AEJMC.

I have started this blog to prove nobody cares about blogging. I do not have a scientific finding for that, but I am really not into blogging. I have too many things going and too many things to figure out in these troubling times to be a consistent blogger. Besides, the only people who read my blog are people who care what I am upto. I checked IPs :)

My new job has to do with coding. I code blogs among other things, which is a big pain. I don't like blogs! I HATE political blogs. I only read my friend's blogs to check on them.

One more thing I hate - Facebook! I find it useless. I have just read about MySpace but never signed up for it. I know about the hype, but I feel pity for all the socially-challenged youngsters who think they have "friends" in this new type of hood. Think of it - if you're really sick or in big trouble, how many of your MySpace friends will help you? Btw, more and more studies show Americans are socially isolated. Ah! I do not advocate for the village-type community, but Facebook for me is like smoking. Go ahead and do it, I don't care, but don't expect me to find it cool.

On the home front, I am still away from planning a trip to depressed, yet sunny Eastern Europe, where the beer is cheap and the people are rude. My grandmother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer so I do not how I will be able to deal with her degenerating health. It is hard enough to explain why I am here and where 'here' is.

I have been come a loyal radio listener which helps my sanity stay intact and not get mad at my OCD room mate. I will be looking to relocate once my job will be stable enough.

Big future plans include: continuing my Flash training, learning how to bike, go trekking around here somewhere, going sailing.

A new addiction: 80's videos on YouTube. OH! The world of white dudes with big hair and tight pants, and ladies with huge ear rings and big shoulders

New Website

2006-07-18T20:08:00.000-04:00

I just launched another project: a site about the year 1897 and journalism.
Go to www.1897book.com and let me know what you think.

Moartea Domnului Lazarescu

2006-07-15T09:55:00.000-04:00

I just saw the Death of Mr. Lazarescu last night with a bunch of friends. We were from three different continents and all said if you changed the writing on the paramedic's clothes and the language of the doctors, this could happen in any country.

It is really a great movie. I loved the editing and the idea of "amateur camera" with shakes once in a while. I think the funniest thing for me is that Mr. Lazarescu was living about 10 minutes away from where I live in Bucharest. The neighbors, the saturday night loud party, their attitude towards cats, all seems so familiar.

It also reminded me of when I went home this winter and I had kidney stones... but no health insurance. I got to the hospital only because my mother knew the doctor, or else, I don't know how long it would have taken to navigate the system.

The death of Mr. Lazarescu plays in DC at the E street Cinema, on E and 12th St, NW.

Trailers here. Synopsis here.

Favorite line from the movie - Miki, Lazarescu's next door neighbor: How can we love them (the cats) if they have fleas?

rainy days are here again

2006-07-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

i don't know if it's the rain outside, the gloomy summer clouds over NoVa or the ATB song going "Don't let the sun go down on me..." or it's the natural mood of approaching another change in life.
I'm a month away from the official graduation day. My friends are freaking out ... leases end... internships end... and we're finally on that we've dreamed of when we kept cursing over a beer and saying that we can hardly wait to be out of grad school. The pain, the struggle, the ever lower bank account balance. But what's next?

As some of my international friends have already booked their ticket to go home, I am slowly losing my enthusiasm. I came to America to get a master's degree and to learn to be on my own. Now I have both of them... so should this be a mission accomplished moment, like Bush's moment midway through the War in Iraq? I do not know.

I am bitchin' about here, I am bitchin' about home, though I realize both places have their ups and downs. It's all a matter of what you want to trade one another for. Maybe 15 years back I would have been excited about Wal-Mart, the Mall, the highway, the skyscrapers... but I am too old for it. I love New York but I think living there would be impossible on a tight budget of an entry-level job. I miss my friends and family, and I am about the wedding of one of my dears friends. Both the bride and groom are high school sweethearts... we all went to school together and grew up together. They're the next thing to family but going to their wedding would mean so many legal head-aches, I'd rather pass.

I have been aiming/dreaming of becoming a hot-shot reporter to expose corruption and save the world.... I grew up and got over it... I love the media but my skepticism and the drive for the bottom-line put my enthusiasm down. Then I meat this old salesman on a train and amid analyzing the hardships of a young persons' life, he bluntly asked me: "why do you want to be a poor writer forever?" The same questioned echoed a week later in one of my co-worker's advise - why give up the technical skills that are marketable for the sake of writing... Why? Indeed... Why?!?

I was analyzing an impromptu survey of how teens spend time online. Surprise, surprise, they use Internet for chatting, myspace and rarely for news. They don't read the paper either, except for the comics.

Why this disconnection between the media and the young generation? Why don't I read the paper? Well because I don't have time, it costs money ( I can easily get news online), it takes space in my living room once i am done with it. Why don't I read the paper in Ro? Because it drives me nuts... there is so much bad writing and crap that I get really upset with it.

Another reason I don't read the paper in USA is because I feel left out. There is so much looking down on the young person who cannot afford stuff kind of attitude. The good papers rarely hire young people. The average age of the newsroom is the same as their readership. Also you do not serve the person who cannot be a potential client for your adverstisers.

I was reading an interesting article about the Skip this Ad button and I really liked the idea of making advertising something pleasant instead of annoying.

Ah, I am rumbling again.

update on the NY blowup

2006-07-12T19:41:00.000-04:00

Today the media changed the story to the money issue... incredibly The New York post quoted a real estate expert saying the gas explosion of Dr Bartha's building on Monday is a "developer's dream" because now the developer does not have to go through the painful process of evicting tenants and tearing down the building. Read more: When Life Hands You Lemons, Blow Them The Hell Up.

Another online journalist's dreams/ nightmares - comments for articles. Hotnews.ro has really shown the mentality of some of its readers, as the comments show on the NY blow up story.

A man gets upset after a divorce

2006-07-11T21:45:00.000-04:00

and so he decides to blow up a building he owns. The media follow him closely... It happens the suicide doctor was of Romanian-Hungarian origin.
What shocked me about the coverage, though shocking may be too much to say, was how some outlets wrote "oh, great this is not terrorism" and others wrote more of let's solve this puzzle together.

Anyway, in a moment of narcissism, I reported for Antena3. To see this, go to antena3.ro click on the stiri ora 12 than select 11.

It was 5 am by the way :)

Baseball

2006-07-11T21:44:00.000-04:00

I got tickets to my first baseball game ever: Nats vs. Cubs! Can hardly wait!

Just cruisin'

2006-07-07T22:18:00.000-04:00

I am still considering the option of changing my blog from lost in america to bitchin' about Amerik.

Finally I gave in to the temptation and took a trip to a "popular" vacation destination on one of the busiest times of the years - Myrtle Beach, SC on 4th of July.

Things I learned from this trip:

Never, I repeat, never travel on major US holidays unless you have no other option.

If American friends say a place is bad, or the type of frat boys/spring break destination, I should listen and stay put.

NEVER, EVER book a smoking room. The smell is unbearable, regardless if you're a smoker or not.

Holiday Inn has locations that suck big time. The Holiday Inn on Waterway in Myrtle Beach is a great example. For $140 a night we got a smelly room.

First, the room was dirty. Then we got another one, which was somewhat clean but the sheets on the bed were inside out. I think it was just sloppiness and not a reuse of sheets. The towel rack in the bathroom fell on me and the toilet faucet leaked every time in flushed. Ugh! Despite repeated polite requests nothing was fixed. The staff was kinda careless. In fact most of the service and customer care in Myrtle Beach was just about average. The majority of restaurants are the bar and grill type and most of the food is deep fried or there about. Good ol' south!

But all was saved by a great evening in Wilmington, NC, a beautiful seaside resort-college town that goes back to early 1900's.

Watch the wrold cup for free

2006-06-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

For those stuck at the office or without cable, ESPN has the games live free online.
You must have the Flash plugin to get it to work.

the Ukraine-Swiss game was awesome!

The myth of the DC intern

2006-06-24T11:06:00.000-04:00

I was reading a story in Time magazine about a janitor working in a unionized city, making more than $12 an hour, and the impact of new labor movements on the economy. It's no Jimmy Hoffa case.

The truth is that, though the story is quite interesting, it points out to another disadvantaged social category - the students- the interns-the free labor. If a janitor gets $12/hour, why should interning be free for ever?

If the idea of internship started as a way to gain "real life" experience during academic training, it has become a way to get free, often qualified, labor. Washington, DC strives on free interns. If the idea of pay is brought to the table, the argument is the same - there are so many who would do it for free. Should the DC interns have a union? It would be like trying to carry water with a bare hand. Some agencies "employ" up to 100 interns per summer. It's not like they would not have where to choose from.

In the life of a Washington intern, there are a couple of things one can count on: long days of work for little or no pay and late nights swilling pints of Yuengling with members of the opposite political party. In between, when it's time to recharge and put on a new button-down shirt, things get less predictable.

For the 15,000 to 20,000 interns who compete for housing in one of the tightest rental markets in decades, finding a decent place to live could be the biggest gamble of the summer.

Some interns come with fingers crossed and a hotel reservation or the promise of a cousin's couch as they brave the temporary housing market. Others line up a room in advance, hoping for the best and possibly paying the most for cramped apartments that go for three times the market rates.

Rest of the story in the post.com

PS: for those unfamiliar with housing prices, a $1250/month 7x10 ft room in Eastern Market is a MAJOR rip-off. You can get a studio for around $900 and less in the suburbs.

Most interns from outside DC should read the Tenant's guide and know their rights. Too bad no one tells them that and the rip-offs continue.

Only the lonely...

2006-06-24T10:51:00.000-04:00

When if first came to America back in 2003, I thought the hardest thing to deal with loneliness. After living in the same place for 21+ years and having friends "for decades" that I could call any time of the day and night to talk about anything, it was a shock to share o my apartment with 2 girls, who despite not being from the nation's capital, chose to glues themselves to the couch and watch tv all weekend long instead of going out and exploring.

Neither of us had money and we knew we had to keep an eye on the budget and cut down on nights out. We played Monopolly a couple of times to pass time. Slowly I started spending money on phone cards to call my friends home. And I started making friends outside the intern/work circle. It was hard, but the few friends I made, mostly foreign, or who have traveled abroad extensively, are still my friends three years later. They are the people I can call when I have a problem, who can help me move etc. I also listen to them, cook for them when time permits and do what friends do anywhere in the world.

I often found the Romanian "interventionist" way of relationships being a little suffocating... I was wrong, I was just a rebelling teen ager watching too much TV.

I thought America is a great place to be alone, if that should be your case. It's one of those places where people prefer to be alone... It turns out, it's not for the better:

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

The rest of the story in Washington Post.

Who will win the world cup?

2006-06-21T08:38:00.000-04:00

I got this in an e-mail. Thought it was interesting. I am not stealing work, but do not know who to give credit to..

"Know something interesting about FIFA world cup Brazil won the world cup in 1994. Before that, it had won this title for the last time in 1970. If you add up: 1970 + 1994 = 3964

Argentina won the world cup for the last time in 1986. Before that only in 1978. And 1978 + 1986 = 3964 Germany, though, won the world cup in 1990. Before that, Germany won in 1974. Look: 1990 + 1974 = 3964
This could lead us to guess the winner of the World Cup in 2002, since it should be the winner of the 1962 World Cup (In fact 3964 - 2002 = 1962).And Brazil won the world cup in 1962! (And, in fact, Brazil won the 2002 WC)
This numerology seems to work...And now, who would be the winner of the 2006 world cup?Let's see, 3964 - 2006 = 1958 And who won in 1958?....Oh, Brazil did!!!"

Bucharest voted rudest city in Europe

2006-06-21T08:36:00.000-04:00

Hold on, it's just the Readers Digest survey... more here.

yet another act of messing up nature

2006-06-19T16:49:00.000-04:00

Venezuela invented the flatulence-free beans. Reuters reports.

Ah, cherries

2006-06-17T16:34:00.000-04:00

May I remind you that Washington, D.C., is famous for the cherry blossom festival. But as most things in DC, the flowers are beautiful but fruitless.

As a sucker for cherries (which I would use to pick from the tree when i was young, and buy from the market in May/June) I wanted to give in to a childhood memory and splurge with the apparently foreign fruit. But alas, SuperFresh has cut my enthusiasm when they priced cherries at... Ready!?? $6.99 per pound plus tax!!!

I have never thought cherries would be a delicacy. Along those lines, I saw apricots for $4.99 a pound and doughnut peaches for the same price. No, it is no at doughnut filled with peaches, it is a (genetically-modified?!) squished-like peach.

So much for shopping for produce and trying to eat healthy! Btw, Fast Food Nation has turned into a movie.

do it yourself...

2006-06-15T17:42:00.000-04:00

CNN and others reported on this funny story about cannabis found in a do-it-yourself cabinet from Home De(pot).
It's been a generally slow day for news, as today live stories included Britney Spears' new interview on her emotional wrecking :)

If you're curious what people click on the most, some guys mapped out Google news. Really cool thing.

Though I own an old Nokia phone, which is almost falling apart, and am part of the unhappy cell phone customer of America, I thought it is cool that Cell Journalist will buy and sell your phone works (such as movies and photos) to respectable media corporations out there. I have no camera on my phone. I also cannot afford buying an iPod, but I hope technology will be cheaper.

For all you open-source stuff fans out there, check out Elephants Dream the first open source movie ever, done mostly with Blender, an open source 3d graphics software.

Reloaded

2006-06-13T20:57:00.000-04:00

One of my friends gave me a really cool book which made me reconsider my idea of closing the blog. These days I do not get to write to much. I design and talk on the phone. If I used to write lots of letters, I don't do that anymore. If I had to write papers for school, I don't have to do that more.
Therefore I will reopen the blog to jot down my thoughts. I will not be like the newspaper industry and will not look at how many new readers I have everyday.

Anyway, another reason is a story on my friend Amir. It's FIFA world cup and I envy the continuous news desk people for getting to watch the games. I just tune to eurosport.com and see (read about) the games.

Sunday I went kayaking on the Potomac with my boyfriend. After that we had a late lunch at a Lebanese restaurant and watched Portugal-Angola. I know why his team sucks... but why does mine suck too? I know sports is about fair play and all. But I miss the excitement, the emotion, the adrenaline from the 1998 world cup.

There was a story in the Express on June 9. It basically said, all over the world, except in the USA life for the next month will follow the beat of the world cup games....

This blog has closed. Ruxi got lost in America.

2006-06-01T18:33:00.000-04:00

on the road again

2006-05-26T12:13:00.000-04:00

actually not. But it's that time again and I will move to Northern Virginia Suburbs this time. It's just across the river from DC, but still DC area so I decided not to change my blogger's location. One of my friends said people who move out from the District never make it back :( I don't think so. Still waiting for the housing bubble to burst. It's all temporary. Maybe when we'll all graduate in August, we'll get jobs and move together.

I found a lizard on my bedroom floor last night. I am not so unhappy about moving now :)

Could living in a basement with small windows be a cause for depression?

So the Senate passed the immigration bill. An interesting aspect of the immigration bill is that it may lift the immigration cap for nurses. This actually reminds me of a quote from a story on Indian students' protest against the reservation seats. Though I do not belong to any caste and I generally support affirmative action as a social policy tool, this Indian story has become an issue I hear a lot about from my significant other. It is hard to take stands as I could not find any balance report on the matter. But if medical students in Delhi went on hunger strike over this issue, it really rings a bell. Maybe they should indeed all move to USA.

children's world

2006-05-22T23:36:00.000-04:00

I am not Mary Poppins, but I was a last minute baby sitter for three little girls. I had so much fun rediscovering how simple life can be when you're a kid and how the most obvious answers are not suitable for a 4-year-old's question.
But on top of it all I realized how different life is for kids now. Computer time when you're 4? Huh, I never had to deal with that... Stories to teach you the first x words? How about the old fairy tales... I was actually wondering when the bed time story came about if it was ok to tell the Romanian fairy tale sarea-n bucate (something like salt in the food). I mean would explaining a kid that loving someone like salt in the food is a way of saying you love someone very much, or debate the dietary decision of how much sodium should be in food to begin with?

Do we have to worry that the Romanian story of Harap Alb promotes racial stereotypes?

Anyway, the kids were very excited when I started folding paper and making frogs. I am no origami master... In fact I need help. Stie cineva cum se face o solnita ghicitoare?

Please post any suggestions for easy folds. Kids love them and they'd spare me of being a pony carrying them every where, at least for a little while. Thanks.

Graphics

2006-05-19T16:24:00.000-04:00

In my drive to become a web producer, i just got an internship for summer at this site. i will have to hear a lot of bad things about PCs :) but i am really excited. this will give me my last 2 credits to complete my MA.
gotta go celebrate.

In college for 12 years, man wants 1 more

2006-05-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

Today I came up with an odd excuse... I did not rent a cap and gown because I did not want to feel compelled to wake up early on a Sunday morning to go to commencement. One of my friends did give me a ticket and made me promise to show up. I got there at 9.15 a.m. It was sooo boring. But at least it is one of those experiences one should have here. Fortunately I took plenty of cap and gown photos at the graduation party on friday night. So I suppose I graduated. Huh, I wish! Two more credits to go. But this story tells how you can take your sweet time to graduate.

it looks like i will be moving to northern viriginia beginning june. Maybe the change of scenery will be good, though I will still commute to campus for my summer job. Life is moving fast. I overheard today conversations about how bad the job market is now.

Well, I have been lately thinking that as much as I love journalism, it is time to see other jobs. It started after I began obsessing about the Romanian orphans abuse story, which broke again. I was very torn. I first wanted to dig up the 1991 Pulitzer photos of the orphans and wanted to see the 20/20 show that I have never seen and have been asked about all too often. Then as i could not find it, I started searching for anything about Romanian orphans I could find. And than I realized I just really never knew. This is not an excuse, but when I grew up all I remember was there was a small orphanage about 4 blocks from where I lived. It was the same size as my kindergarten, only we could see shaved heads behind the bared windows. Bared windows were in my kindergarten too, to prevent us from falling out of the window/breaking the windows when we played with the ball. But there was something about that place. We knew it was bad. That's what our parents said. All people there are bad. I remember later on, a couple of my friends would see when the place was locked up so we could go play in the swings. Then I never passed again for many years until I went I saw it was a bank instead of it. I also remember that when I first went on a school camp I was 6 years old, right before first grade. I went with a kindergarten that I had never attended, but was close to my dad's factory. The kindergarten also had an orphanage. We went camping with the kids from there. They looked different, they had no hair almost and we were afraid they had lice and other diseases. We were kids but we were afraid. While I was camping for 12 days, I remember we had 5 meals a day. We had so much food including ham that we had not at at home for the past 2 years at least. Depending on who was on duty, we would go in the morning to the forest and come back and in the afternoon we went by the railway tracks and waved at the trains. I did not know my parents called to check on me every day. I was never told so and I was never allowed on the phone. There was someone who would select what clothes to wear every day.I once got sick and I got shots and became well, though it kind of hurt.
The next year when I was supposed to go camping again I got chicken pox and I was really happy I did not have to go. It took 4 years to go camping again.

well, anyway, not knowing is not an excuse. But the pictures I saw in the ABC report are tormenting, mainly because I do not understand why human beings would treat other human beings like this. I believe that Romania does not have enough educated social workers and care takers for this type of facilities. Think of it, the school system has starting producing social workers only recently. In U.S. they closed the warehouse-type psychiatric facilities and a lot of people are on the street. It is one of the explanations for the number of homeless people in the cities. Especially some in D.C.

Sometimes I remember when I worked on some stories on the international adoptions. It was a very emotional experience. Even going through the better orphanages, temporary houses, street children shelters etc. It was so different. But I remember a girl from a street children, ngo-owned shelter, who was going to school and started dancing and playing the piano because she was an artist. I asked her to play for me and she did. She liked me so much that when we staid for dinner to take photos she offered to split her pack of biscuits with me.

oh well, i guess another side of my silent anger and frustration comes from the fact that a foreign ngo or foreign media outlet must go look and find it. What is the romanian civil society doing? What is the romanian press doing?? except for writing about what celebrity got breast implants and who slept with who.

AP reported Romanian authorities acknowledged there were problems in the system. At least that is a lot better than playing dumb.

Lobbying in DC

2006-05-10T12:02:00.000-04:00

My story made front page on Capital (ro). Though I DID NOT write the introduction on the front page which involves sweating and all... you can read the whole story here. It's the result of months of work and hope it will make governance more transparent.

with or without you...

2006-05-07T20:31:00.000-04:00

I just suddenly has fallen all over in love with U2. I feel I need a theme song and a big bottle of wine when I am looking for housing. One of my friends says that in D.C., life is always about getting nearly there... you have an ok job but not what you'd like, you have a nearly ok house but never quite what you'd like, you never have nearly enough money for what you want.
Let me explain... since I arrived for grad school in USA I lived:
1 night in a strange apartment at a volunteer house - 1 night of touring around the livingroom couch because of jetlag
10 nights on a green vinyl couch in the international student association office at lsu.
2 nights in the shared housing at icc at lsu
9 months in a 3-bdr, 2 bath apartment in baton rouge... Occasionally sharing with lizards, cockroaches, palmetto bugs, 3 mice
4 days in crystal city
2 days in silver spring by discovery channel
3 months in a very old house at a retired french professor, with a very old tv that had 1 channel. no guests allowed, no a/c at first, absolutely no boys allowed, except for all the other room mates who were male
almost 9 months in a basement apartment (awesome place)
i occasionally spent some time in notre dame, indiana, traverse city, michigan, cary, north carolina, los angeles, california, chicago, illinois, las vegas, nevada and new york city.

for some reason, of all places, i am nostalgic of my "soviet apartment" in bucharest. and the hilton in manhattan but i know that's not mine. best night: absolutely the beaumont inn by traverse city, swimming in the pool at night and watching the wind bending the trees.

finding a place to live in dc is almost like going to a job interview - you have to provide references on request, answer questions and sell yourself as room mate. One day, it will be better than this.

the memory book

2006-05-04T19:45:00.000-04:00

I have recently picked up my copy of the AU memory book - a CD with photos of graduating international students... most of them I have at most seen at the orientation and some I have never seen in my life. But now, I will have their photos forever.
This year has been so intense I had little time to go and make friends outside of my program. But the people in my class are now some of my very good friends... we spent so much time together at school that it is hard to imagine we have to relocate. My canadian friend is moving to Iowa, of all places. On the good side his rent will be so cheap :)
I have been giving relocation a thought lately as I keep looking for housing over summer. It is absurd to have to struggle so much to get a decent roof over your head. I went and saw a group house with 7 people living it. It was not cheap at all, and it was also dirty, old and falling apart a bit.
Ah, housing. On the other side of my bf's bedroom wall lives a couple... i usually don't care about neighbors. But they have very loud sex at various awkward times and then she screams at him and calls him names... unbearable names. I never hear his answers.

today i got brave again and went for a haircut. I have been to many hair places in usa, in various states and neighborhoods and paid between $8 and $40. I went to places where they serve you wine while you wait to places where you wonder if your car is safe while you get the haircut. A friend of mine (who is American but lived in Europe for a while) and I believe that because girls in US don't usually have short hair, a lot of the hair dressers are challenged when cutting short hair.Today it was somewhat ok. It was close, but not close enough.

i had so much work to do lately i just dream of a good night sleep.

So we scooped them!

2006-04-19T23:13:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post will be publishing tomorrow their guide on the DC primaries. For many, these are the same as the real elections because once the democrat candidate won the primaries he is set to be the next mayor. I'm not gender biased... it's just that mostly there's a guy winning.

The Observer published the voting guide tonight. It was quite a struggle as stuff crashed before deadline. Oh well, I am especially happy one story passed the editing process leaving the pot smoking passage in. Yes some candidates are like that.

Been very busy with finals. Still looking for housing and jobs. There's a graduation party coming up and I am looking forward to it.

Life - procrastination is thy name

2006-04-13T16:44:00.000-04:00

it's been a while since i felt as bad as I've been feeling these days. I don't know if it's spring fever, or something else. maybe it is the dread, the concerns, the procrastination and the struggle to be excited.

I have recently heard one of my friends who graduated last year left the country not in the highest spirits. I could feel the chills going down my spine. It was a reminder that even though I am way better than I thought I'd be last year at this time, I am still dwelling on worries. But then life can take odd twists and turns and who knows what will be like next year by this time?

My stress and worries got me to the doctor. Ok so maybe I know why I pay for the health insurance. I just wanted her to tell me how to make the pain stop instead of telling me let's experiments on medication and see how high we need to get. I said I am not afraid of stress, uncertainty, been there, done that. But as life goes by there are less times when I can say what the hell, I will dump everything and move on. No, this time there would be things I'd regret losing or leaving behind.

One of my friends today was saying there is no right timing for love. I could not agree more. But some timings are worse than others. One such bad time is now.

This week I went to write a feature on the Synetic Theater in Roslyn. Interesting artistic experience. They were rehearsing Faust - imagine a sound going from punk and heavy metal to waltz; imagine dance and mime, and little dialogue. Imagine Faust wearing a long metallic-silver rain coat. Imagine, Mephisto is played by a young Romanian actor. Go Dan!

On another note - Observer is back. Yesterday was a troubling day because we had a lecture and we started production late. My story came out ok.

Next week, stay tune for a special on DC mayor race. See DC is far from being a real capital. Maybe that is why the candidates are also a reflection of that - one is an 82-year-old former stripper who smoked a joint while being interviewed. Another one is his own biggest opponent, so much he would not even vote for himself.

That's why DC is on one side overpriced and on the other rather unsafe, I mean they'll shoot you kind of unsafe.

in time like these I get homesick and desperately sad.

Iubire Ros-Albastra

2006-04-06T20:06:00.000-04:00

For non-Romanian speakers the headline of this post stands for a Red-And-Blue love and it has not even the remotest connection with the American Flag. Go Steaua! No I understand why my dad made the rule that who doesn't support Steaua in the family cannot sit at the same table with him. I am a proud supporter and I hope I get to see them play in the final.

I am praying somehow I could watch the game online. Would anyone be kind enough to point the webcam to the tv and broadcast it online for me?

Hai Steaua!

Please fill this in if you have the time

2006-04-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

no spam please.
From ny friend Cristi:
Romanian version

Hi All.
I am Cristian Curus and I am working as IT&C Editor for Romania Libera's supplement.
At the moment I am working on a thesis about blogs. I would be greatful if you would fill in the form at the address below:
http://www.boardingmedia.net/survey/index_1.htm

All data are confidential. Your name and e-mail will not be published in my thesis.
Thank you for you help.

PS- you can forward this to all your friends that have a blog.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salutare.
Numele meu este Cristian Curus si sunt IT&C Editor pentru suplimentul ziarului Romania Libera.
Realizez acum la o lucrarea pe tema blogurilor si m-ar ajuta foarte mult daca a-ti completa chestionarul pe care-l gasiti la adresa de mai jos:
http://www.boardingmedia.net/survey/index_1.htm

Toate datele sunt confidentiale. Numele dumneavoastra si adresa de e-mail nu vor aparea in lucrarea respectiva. Multumesc pentru ajutor.

PS-puteti da un forward la acest mesaj si altor posesori de bloguri.

what's the deal?

2006-04-03T23:16:00.000-04:00

NY Times relaunched 48 hours ago(?) and CNN.com looks different too. Why does everybody aim to look the same? Ok I know designing 800X600 is yesterday, but variety did not kill anybody. Is it just me, or the Amazon.com-type folders-look-alike sites are the thing to be?
News design is about usability, the cleaner, the better. No fancy shmancy, just get the info across in the most clear, easy-to-digest way. It may just be me but I am beginning to be a little tit bit uncomfortable about seeing all big news web sites look alike. It's like I'm lost, like I mistyped the url, like the collar of my shirt is too tight. What's the deal? Editor&Publisher and Designers's critique corner have different views.

2006-03-31T21:52:00.000-05:00

Regulations make life so complicated but sometimes they also make it safer. I sort of realized that today when I learned I have to move out. It's not because I am a bad renter... I don't have a lease on my apartment and I enjoyed the flexibility until now when my landlady informed me I have to get out in the next 2 months or so because her financial-trouble sister has to move in. Obviously nobody would turn thy back on thy sibling.
But with the uncertainty of graduation and no job secured yet, it is utterly disturbing to be shelterless in the peak of low income life. The truth is that you only became a respected customer when you are rich. And housing has always been a problem when living in a big city without a good income. The Post picked up on this yet again in this story.
When I think about th perspective about going home, the cheaper housing the possibility to get loans and all is making it sound reasonable.
And it's not necessary that I hate moving, it's just that I want to be my choice. Some things cannot last and there is always that one chance of things to completely wrong. Maybe Raluca's blues got to me too, as it will be the sixth or seventh time I am moving since I came to the US of A.
It's the first summer day in D.C., the cherries are in fool bloom, the air is stuffy and it smells again. I look forward to my Sunday walk to the Tidal Basin.

Steaua-Rapid 1-1 and the frustrations of technology

2006-03-30T20:50:00.000-05:00

I got used to watch tv once in a blue moon after last summer when I had only one channel on the old TV in my old house belonging to an old man. Then I had no TV, until I borrowed one and decided to buy a small antenna. But as news of the Steaua-Rapid UEFA quarter finals traveled the world I was excited to watch the game on TVR international, which is available online.
But instead of the game I found this:

Stimaţi telespectatori,
Regretăm că nu vom avea posibilitatea de a oferi tuturor romÃ¢nilor meciurile disputate de echipele romÃ¢neşti Ã®n sferturile Cupei UEFA (Rapid-Steaua şi Steaua-Rapid). Vrem să explicăm telespectatorilor noştri că TVR a participat la negocierile pentru achiziţionarea drepturilor de televizare a acestor partide. Strategia TVR Ã®n domeniul achiziţiilor de programe are Ã®n vedere importanţa competiţiei şi interesul publicului pentru acel program. Valoarea unui program trebuie Ã®nsă atent cÃ¢ntărită, atÃ¢t din perspectivă imediată - calitate, audienţă, Ã®ncasări şi, deci, recuperarea unei părţi cÃ¢t mai mari din suma investită - dar şi pe termen mediu şi lung. Ãntotdeauna avem Ã®n vedere ca evenimentul sau programul respectiv să fie de importanţă deosebită pentru cÃ¢t mai mulţi romÃ¢ni, să fie de calitate şi să răspundă cerinţelor speciale pe care le are servicul public de televiziune. Totuşi, aceasta nu Ã®nseamnă că suntem dispuşi să oferim oricÃ¢t pentru orice, mai ales că o astfel de abordare ne va crea probleme Ã®n viitor. Orice creştere artificială a preţurilor va face ca negocierile viitoare pentru programe asemănătoare să plece de la sumele deja oferite. Ãn plus, TVR a plătit o sumă infinit mai mică pentru drepturile de transmisie ale finalei Cupei UEFA!
Problema apare atunci cÃ¢nd, Ã®n funcţie de interesele unor Âjucători" de pe piaţă, suntem acuzaţi fie că Âaruncăm banii pe fereastră", fie că nu am oferit romÃ¢nilor şansa de a urmări un program indiferent de costuri şi consecinţe. Considerăm că avem o strategie corectă şi echilibrată, pe care nu o vom modifica Ã®n funcţie de interesele pieţei şi nu considerăm un eşec faptul că nu difuzăm aceste două partide, date fiind condiţiile pe care le-am expus mai sus.
Avem speranţa că veţi Ã®nţelege corect demersul Televiziunii RomÃ¢ne Ã®n această situaţie şi că veţi avea Ã®n continuare siguranţa că marile evenimente sportive vă sunt oferite de TVR.
Departamentul Comunicare şi Relaţii Internaţionale

For all you non-Romanian speakers, the press release says that basically the romanian national television could not afford buying the rights to broadcast the two games. They may call it unwise to to spend so much money on the game, but the bottom line is if they could afford it they would have got it.
Oh well... that added to the frustration of my friend asking how Romanians in the DC area get ready for the game. As if we rallied at this great sports bar with huge plasma screen wearing the red-and-blue or dark-red-and-white jerseys.
ESPN broadcasted the superbowl game, why can't I get the game??
Oh soccer, the king of sports! But hey there is no king in this democracy.

Time for updates, time to be grateful

2006-03-28T21:28:00.000-05:00

School is keeping me busy as always. I have three projects due tomorrow and I am blogging... for a reason.
I got addicted to Statcounter and I monitor the traffic on the blog and on The Observer like crazy. I love the little tool and I am waiting for my school to start letting the money poor to upgrade. Thank you all who blogged about the stories on the Observer. You can also check out my last story on St. Sophia's greek orthodox church, an interesting orthodox community like none I have seen home.

I have updated on Monday, WJC's new Web site on Yellow Journalism that i designed over the past weeks.

My job search continues. I just had an interview for a night news producer job with the wp. There is nothing certain now and there are some issues but just being considered is great for this girl from the edge of Bucharest. I think it's a great place to work because they have the facilities, talent, will and money to experiment and get the best out of Web. My friends are right - why spend time worrying about the death of newspapers and not brace yourself and take on the challenges of online journalism? Why look back when you can look ahead? Is the job market bad? hell ya... But when isn't it? Are there opportunities to experiment, explore a new medium, dive in? Hell ya... How often does that happen? well, let's see, last time it was the television in the 1950s or so.

I am struggling not to start bashing my dear old J-school for killing a good program that got me here. But then again, I did learn something in those 4 years and one day I hope they will consider me an alumna worth mentioning and worth guiding other students.

As the cherry blossom festival takes on DC and spring finally sets in, I feel grateful for all the great springs I had at home, for all the great teachers I had the chance to have and for all the inspiration I got from those decent people who knew how to treat this girls who always questioned everything.

Mothership

2006-03-23T21:29:00.000-05:00

I had an odd feeling today on the field trip to USA Today as I entered the airport/mothership-like headquarters. I was expecting people to beam each other from one place to another, i was looking for a walkway and signs to the check in. Ah, the corporate world... Nothing that I need to complain about, just that I felt unattracted. It's not the typical image of the old school newsroom with smoke rising up in the air, the phone ringing franticly, the conversations getting loud. The beautiful Gannet building in Virginia (and it really is beautiful, just not human) just seems misfit for a newspaper. I just can't imagine what that aim for perfection and comfort has to do with journalism and the common man. Especially when it is so far out. Do journalists really need a running track in the yard and all that? Do they have time to use it?
In fact it was not a field trip. It was business to meeting to discuss stuff about our Web site with the webdesigner and photo editor. It was a lot of help and to-the-point comments. It was worth getting lost and driving in the middle of nowhere. It was not my first trip to the picture perfect building, but I was still taken aback.

On another note, I am still busy, looking for jobs. Went to a disappointing career fair today. There was quite some interest for the CIA booth. Not many media related companies came, I was unhappy.

One of my very good friends, my very first friend I made in USA is relocating. We had coffee together and said farewell. I will miss her.

I don't like this time of year when people start moving around. Sometimes I miss running into people by chance. I imagine what it would be like to suddenly see a friend from secondary school shopping at CVS. I wonder what it would feel like to have the friend I used to ride the Bucharest subway with on the way home, get on the metro.

I ate tacos at Taco Bell for the first time ever. I know, I've been here for almost three years added together and I just had Taco Bell. It's like a Mac of Mexican food without the smell of cancer. I like Chipotle tacos better, but hey, TB is dirt cheap.

I keep being asked in job interviews what I want from life, what my goal is. I find myself targeting my goal to the job I am interviewing for. I am actually confused about goals and all that. As S. says, you need to be more flexible if you want to succeed.

once-in-a-lifetime chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip with Pulitzer Prize winner Nick Kristof, Op-Ed and TimesSelect columnist

2006-03-21T21:46:00.000-05:00

Are you a student over the age of 18 at an American college? Are you open to a potentially life-transforming experience? Here's your once-in-a-lifetime chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip with Pulitzer Prize winner Nick Kristof, Op-Ed and TimesSelect columnist. You won't just be Nick's traveling companion - you'll also bring a fresh perspective to his reporting on the developing world.Read a letter from Nick Kristof to learn more about what he's looking for:"I'm looking for a masochist. If your dream trip doesn't involve a five-star hotel in Rome or Bora-Bora, but a bedbug-infested mattress in a malarial jungle as hungry jackals yelp outside - then read on."Over the next month, I'll be holding a contest to find a university student to accompany me on a reporting trip to the developing world. I'm not sure where yet, and that will depend partly on what's in the news at the time. But to give you a sense of the kind of travel I'm thinking of, the possibilities include a jaunt through rural Burundi and Rwanda in central Africa, or an odyssey from the coast of Cameroon inland to the heart of the Central African Republic …"http://nytimes.com/marketing/winatrip/-----------------

It's been a long ride

2006-03-18T10:04:00.000-05:00

It's not that I am complaining..... but how could I not??? My train ride back to DC from Raleigh took almost 11 hours when it was supposed to last 5 hours and 47 minutes. What happened was that some track road which was supposed to take 10 minutes took 3.5 hours and that got all traffic messed up. I am over my wondering why people don't take the train anymore. Ah, one more blow for mass transit.

I started reading Never Eat Alone, even though I am not particularly a fan of recipe books, the how-to-be-a-millionaire-in-ten-days kinda thing. I was just curious after I found the book on my bf's shelves. It's quite an interesting approach to life, to networking vs. schmoozing and such activities that define D.C. life and not only. It is also that most frequent career advice I get is network, network, network. It makes me believe that job openings listed on career and company sites are a big joke. And of course who wants to have a resume that triggers the delete key!?

The Knight Ridder Digital food chain

2006-03-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

Poynter's Bill Mitchell commented on Knight Ridder's takeover by McClatchy and the way this deal will affect the chain's online component, Knight Ridder Digital.
I found these paragraphs to be the most illustrative of the change.

"In practical terms, Hendricks [McClatchy VP] indicated that, instead of reporting to a corporate online headquarters as they do now, local online directors of the acquired Knight Ridder properties will likely report to the publishers of the newspapers whose content they publish on the Web.

And rather than pouring that content into standard templates shaping the look and feel of their sites, local sites will be expected to come up with their own paths to strong financial and journalistic results.

Note that strong financial results come before the journalistic results. It's not necessary that this merge aims at improving the news for its local audience, it's about getting the local advertisers closer to the site.

I like a lot some of the work done by Knight Ridder Digital and I was especially amazed on how the page views of SunHerald.com based in Biloxi increased more than 1,000 percent the day after hurricane Katrina hit. The Sun Herald is owned by Knight Ridder, and while the population and staff had to find shelter away from mother nature, it was the Knight Ridder Digital staff placed in dryer areas that took over the site operation and kept it going as a virtual community. What if there was no more central headquarters away from the endangered town, who would keep the light on, the local publisher?

I know journalism is a business, and I would like to recive a salry as a journalist, not just moral rewards... but how about the public service!?

The color of patriotism

2006-03-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

I often feel the word 'patriotism' is getting a negative feel, like being a patriot is wrong, is a step in becoming violent, as if loving your own country (may it be a little crappy, confused, corrupt, rigid, poor, lagging etc.) is a way to reject multiculturalism. But Rang De Basanti which literally translates as the colors of patriotism (or colors of spring according to some critics) has managed to look at patriotism of the 2006 indian youth versus the meaning of patriotism in the fight for independence from the British Empire.

There was something that kept me interested all through the almost 3-hour long movie. And it was not necessary the experience of seeing a hindi movie in a theater for the first time... it was rather the unexpected twist of drama and the feeling of relating to the issue. It sounds strange, a Bollywood hit and the stand on corruption. And on top of all, the question of getting involved, the need to change or the choice to leave abroad and better your own life. And on a side, journalistic note, the problem of surrendering the airwaves of the national public radio to the people who killed a corrupt official to make a point.

2006-03-13T11:34:00.000-05:00

Which File Extension are You?

Thanks to Raluca

Oh Carolina! my random thoughts

2006-03-13T10:16:00.000-05:00

I was very envious on the passenger across the aisle who kept chatting on her 13-inch laptop, as the Carolinian wound South into the twilight. She had a verizon wireless card. I only had a roundtrip ticket to Raleigh, NC. I thought Amtrak was giving away Internet for free but i was wrong, obviously. There is something romantic about riding the train, something that triggers back the movies of the 1950s and 60s. But as I was wondering why the train has fallen in such disgrace in America, my answer came right in my face as my 6-hour journey turned into a 7.5-hour slow motion trip.
There is definitely more leg room and more comfort in the train as the wide chair reclines and a padded extension pops from under the seat, unlike the economy class on the usual cheap, about-to-run-bankrupt airlines. People are more relaxed (they obviously have the time to spend on the long journeys), kids run around playing with the automatic door between cars and sometimes the train stops for cigarette breaks.

it's hard to feel the spring break when piles of work await the day I get back. It's even harder when the next couple of months bring the uncertainty of graduation and landing first job. But there is something about this little rich town that makes everybody seem cheerful. The weather is perfect, three college towns with happening bars and cheap beer are really close by and the average income of a household is $88,000 per annum.

One of my North Carolinian friends told me Cary stands for Confined area for relocated yankees. Ouch! Another North Carolinian friend told me the only northern thing about North Carolina is the name... the rest is all Southern. The accent sure is. I can't say much about the rest.

Cary is picture perfect... its Lockmere community seems out of a catalog for dream houses. Everything sparkles, the hydrants are painted red with shiny metal caps, the trees are all perfectly cut, even the birds sing in perfect harmony. The lakes are clean, the breeze is just right, people play soccer (oh yes!) in the mild spring sun, and the shopping complex stretches on both sides of the road featuring all shops you can think of.

I got to get back to Finkel's strange book which I have to review for class and answer the perpetual ethical questions - when you get caught lying in journalism, does the size of your lie make a difference?

2006-03-02T16:30:00.000-05:00

when i asked one of my journalist friends if she'd go back to pursue her business career she gave up to be a reporter, she said no way, if you cut my veins i bleed ink.

i wonder what do i bleed? bytes?

i had my first job interview today for a job unrelated to journalism. i did not apply for it, but the company recruited me from a career portal. after a trip to virginia through the rain, i found myself shivering on the metro in my new 99%-nylon-1%-other-fiber pinstripe suit. I was wondering why I enjoyed the talks with the cabbies more than I did my job interview. I was wondering why I started digging up the news about the company I was going to interview for, as if looking to see if it were involved in a wrong-doing. I was also wondering why I broke the no-negative answers rule and I said public relations, or whatever you want to call it, is not what I want to do with my life. You may call it multimedia public outreach, working for the government just doesn't make me feel right. My trip to the burbs, where the sidewalks disappear and the cars rule again, was challenging... do I want to do whatever related to media and new technologies or do I still want to be a journalist at all costs, including at the cost of most of my comfort zone.

the ever lasting teenager

2006-02-28T19:57:00.000-05:00

When I first listened to ATB, my best friend at the time was turning 18 years old. Don't stop was the song of the 1999 summer and I hated it. But, sever years later, ATB is the name of the game and I love his music so much that I checked out the merchandising section of his site.
And then there was the thrill... of the first beat in my headphones, the familiar sound, the new feeling of being on top of the world. I also got the first new ATB CD ever - No Silence - though I have been downloading his music for past few years. It's a gift I made to myself for martisor.
It's also a glimpse of the past, of the excitement I felt running home to listen in the dark to my favorite singer's "original" tape when I was in high school and I had to save money for weeks to afford buying it.
There was this study released about a year ago or so, which said people who are religious tend to be happier than the average crowd. The explanation that religion gives them something to hold on in time of uncertainty and going to church gives them something to look forward to. In a way, music is like that, especially when you have a favorite. There is always something to look forward to, a new album, a new beat, a new video, a new photo and the feeling of being on top of the world.
It was in fact my addiction to music that lead to my addiction to Internet and e-mail, which gave me a different perspective on life, faraway friends and so much more.

on another note
S. got lost on his way to DC but finally made it and we had fun. we went to see a new indian movie but we lost our way on the way to this theater in an ethnic neighborhood in Virginia. We finally found the place half hour after the movie started. The place was strange and we left.

will spend spring break near raleigh, in the middle of nowhere. I am looking forward to my first Amtrak trip.

happy Mardi Gras and eat some kingcake for me!!

So where the bloody hell are you?

2006-02-23T20:26:00.000-05:00

and i didn't mean this is in a rhetorical way. I know I had no time to blog. Anyway this time it's the "if we curse them, they will come" moment for Australia's tourism ministry campaign for attracting foreign tourists. I can think of very many creative way we can ask the same question in Romanian.

latest news:
we put out yet another Observer
I had no more time for belly dance lessons
workload is increasing every day at an unstable rate
I worked with WRLC's variant of DSpace to replicate a site for archiving and it turned out to be a pain and a time-consuming task
Working with PbWiki for content management and communication improved our production flow.
I found a lost friend on Facebook. Rather he found me.
I read today's Libertatea and did not know whether to laugh or cry. I did like the thing with "tanti de la televizor" = Andreea Marin and the idea of comparing the couple with Brangelina story. Yes, pop culture is included in current affair quizzes.
I'm on a quest for singers playing outside the DC Metro.

I am seriously considering closing this blog because I have no time for it.

The last MASH

2006-02-16T22:00:00.000-05:00

And I am not talking about the last episode of the famous 70's show MASH with Cpt. Pierce and Hot Lips Houlihan.

AP reported the U.S. Army donated the last MASH unit - worth $4.6 million - to Pakistan because it is going to take a new approach to military medicine.

For all of you MASH fans out there: we're quite old, aren't we?

A new Observer is out

2006-02-15T22:34:00.000-05:00

After a long day of work the Observer survived and is out online. Check it out and submit stories, comments, whatever....

Focus on Romania

2006-02-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

I wish I could post the "photo that won 2nd prize in the World Press Photo competition under the category "Daily life - stories." Winners were announced last week and the entire photo stories are yet to be published within the next couple of month.

I was also fascinated with the Chernobyl kids photo and following one of my friend's advice, I browsed Paul Fusco's gallery. It's shaking!

Tagged

2006-02-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

Ok so considering I fit the description: "Tagged is a social website designed specifically for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19." Here is my list of five:

What were you doing 10 years ago?
finishing 8th grade and planning the graduation party, doing my homework in maths and generally wondering about the world and future.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
I was eagerly waiting to hear about my transfer.

Five beverages I enjoy:
1) My family homemade wine
2) Coffee in very large quantities
3) Amber beer
4) My bf's indian tea
5) Lime (tei) tea with lemon and honey

Five movies I really like:
Filantropica
Liceenii
The English Patient
Amy Michael Cane movie
The Budha of Suburbia

Five TV shows I enjoy:
ER
MASH
CNN World Report
The Daily Show
Seinfeld

Four places I lived:
Bucharest, Romania
Tenleytown, Washington, DC
Woodley, Washington, DC
CrystalCity, Arlington Va (only for a week)
Baton Rouge, LA

Five cool places I visited/vacationed and would love to go back:
1) New York
2) San Francisco
3) Traverse City, MI
4) Chicago
5) Brasov, Ro

Five moments I'd like to get stuck in:
1) Metallica's concert in Bucharest 6/9/99
2) Scorpion's concert in Brasov 9/6/2002
3) The first time I saw New York skyline from the Liberty Park, 10/5/2003
4) First walk with by on Malibu beach at sunset 11/25/2005
5) Seeing my mom and dad after 16 months, at the airport, 12/22/2005

Five songs that always make me happy:
1) Life is life, Opus
2) Any Scorpions song
3) Unforgiven 2, Metallica
4) Don't stop, ATB
5) Sanatorium

Four places I would rather be right now:
in my room, sleeping
walking in Times Square
BekerBrau, Bucharest
home home

Five sites I visit daily:
Washingtonpost.com
Cnn.com
Reuters.com
Hotnews
Google

On journalism (4)

2006-02-09T21:29:00.000-05:00

I was digging through the Time magazine archives looking for the cover
story of the week I was born. Then I realized I wanted to see how the Romanian
revolution was portrayed. Well the online archive of the december 1989 Time has
no story about the revolution. It just talks about the the Eastern revolutions,
primarily DDR.

I once read the AP and Reuters reports on the revolution. As I do not remember knowing very many things about what was going and since my mom was just fresh out of the hospital after many, many months, I find it illuminating to read the media account of history. A doze of skepticism is advised.

I decided to quote part of the story from the December 1989 Washington
Post. I hope I am not breaching any law. The story - Regicide in
Bucharest;Reflections on the revolution in Romania - was written by Charles
Krauthammer and made page A19.

On the first Tuesday of liberation, viewers of Free Romania Television were treated to a tour of Ceausescu corruption. In Sibiu, soldiers opened the drawers in the office of Nicu Ceausescu, the dictator's son and head of the local Communist Party. "In excited voices," reports The New York Times, they revealed the dauphin's treasures: "bottles of whiskey, cartons of Kent cigarettes ... a bottle of foreign-made men's cologne, canned food, several pairs of tube socks and one beige moccasin."
The man with one beige moccasin is now under arrest.It is testimony to how horoughly the Ceausescus impoverished Romania that these trinkets, which a Marcos maid would have disdained, should so titillate and enrage Romanians.
It is hard for us to get very excited about the pathetic rapacity and kitschy megalomania of the Ceausescus (now, like the Romanovs, a noun that is its own past tense). Even the dictator's brutality was, by historic
Soviet-bloc standards, not unusual.
Khrushchev and company, now much rehabilitated in Western eyes, killed 25,000 to keep their grip on Hungary in October of 1956. What is it then that made Ceausescu the monster that indeed he was? To my mind, it is not so much the brutality as the calculation and deliberateness that went into it.
The butchery carried out by his private security apparatus turns out to have been no accident. It is in part explained by the most chilling report to come out of Bucharest all week: Ceausescu, it seems, recruited Securitate thugs from orphanages, raising them from childhood to kill for him. For that alone, for this grotesque improvement on communism's traditional deformation of family bonds, Ceausescu's execution seems to me highly inadequate punishment.
The execution of monsters always leaves us unsatisfied. The feeling was perhaps most acute when Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
One wishes that civilized societies would improve on the death penalty and find a way to make monsters suffer more. But the pseudo-judicial murder of the Ceausescus leaves us uneasy for other reasons too.

on journalism (3)

2006-02-07T21:12:00.000-05:00

speaking about journalism and transparency...
washingtonpost.com is going to require registration before posting comments. It will also allow comments on stories!!! can you believe this is coming so late :(

And yes, the post online will have two home pages which would show up according to the local or non-local zip code put in. For international users, well just make up a zip code that is not in the Washington area.

And sooner or later we'll start paying for content. Oh well, Nation said it already.

I've been Wikitized

2006-02-07T21:05:00.000-05:00

as we prepare for our dry run, we got on the PBWiki to create an easy work flow, which is accessible from everywhere. This way if someone calls in sick, we can say, well work from home...

I am still wondering if I should make our wiki private - I know it's journalism and it should be transparent, but there has to be a certain limit to this non-commercial see thru process.

Anyway, it really is a good idea I believe. So far at least.

On journalism (2)

2006-02-03T09:56:00.000-05:00

Bob Woodward spoke last night at our spiritual center. Pretty odd to see Woodward talk in church about his book on the war in Iraq. The place was packed.

A couple of things memorable from his performance:

journalists' power relies on facts

you cannot understand a man in the afternoon - about the change of news cycle, less time to report and write stories

Washington Post gave him 1 year to find why Bush went to war in Iraq

He sent Bush a 21-page memo about his findings on the pre-war intelligence and Bush read it and gave an interview the next day, which happens to be the longest interview given by a president at once

When asked how he thinks history will judge him for the war in Iraq, Bush said he doesn't know - "we'll all be dead"

the greatest threat to democracy and our/their society is secret government

Today's class at the Post will be about Brady closing down comments on post.com

on journalism

2006-02-01T23:23:00.000-05:00

George's comment on my previous post about the 10 things I know about journalism asked for some clarifications:

First, I am not the author of those 10 things. Jay Perkins is. I just happen to adhere to most of them and read them when I feel the urge to give up on journalism.

Secondly, what I think about journalism - I think it is a necessary evil. I respect good journalists and despise bad journalists who think they're good. And by bad journalists, I mean those journalists who lie and disrespect people, who dig their colleagues, who think they're God's gift to journalism. My opinion. I also think journalism is addictive, hard, exhausting at times, stressful, but rewarding most times. And in almost every newsroom, there will be one passionate journalist who is also a nice human being and you will find at least one story in life which will make the whole ordeal worth it.

I also think some journalists, especially in the U.S., are unrealistic about certain aspects of life, that they like to preach things they do not follow and do not like to admit that journalism is also business. And like all businesses there will always be uncomfortable business decisions.

A great thing journalism in Romania lack is journalists to look up to. Real people who through honesty and diligence changed things for the better. Or such people are not visible enough. Ok the free press is young and the dinosaurs are corrupt. But what journalist would make j-students excited to see talk and interact with? I mean a Romanian journalist coming to the Bucharest j-school and talk to people and make people say I want to be like him/her. I can learn something from this person.

I have written about 600 words earlier on journalism and meritocracy and hypocrisy in U.S.A. I thought it might actually be a single voice in the woods and deleted it.