So I must go to New York!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Si em mor

I'm obssessed with this song today:

Si em mor, if I die
que el cant siga ja realitat, may the song become reality,
Si em mor, if I die
que les esperances siguen fets may the hopes become facts
i que d'altres continuen and that others continue
el que nosaltres continuem. what we continued.

Si em mor if I die
-quin absurd descans-, - what an absurd rest-,
ja per sempre now forever
lluny de tot el que més estime, far from what I've loved most,
lluny de tot el que més vull. far from what I wish most.

Si em mor, if I die,
que el cant siga ja realitat, may the song become reality,

Si em mor, if I die

que el nostre treball may that our efforts
haja guanyat. be rewarded.

Si em mor. if I die
Si em mor. if I die

This song was written by the Catalan artist Raimon, and appeared for the first time in 1964.

As always, thanks to Cancioneros de Trovadores for the lyrics.

Mayrit

Jose published a series of great pictures from Madrid on his blog, entitled The Sky Over Madrid.

Highly recommended! :-)

PR Forum

On Tue., 13th March Evensys organized the first PR Forum in Romania.

I attended two of the 4 sessions, thanks to my boss, Raluca, and here I wrote about the event (in Romanian).

Visiting Romania: Bran - Babele

Last week-end we went to Bran and spent two wonderful days at a b&b called MIS, very close to Bran Castle (marketed as Dracula's Castle, though it has nothing to do with Dracula) and very nice and comfortable. The landlady is a retired teacher from Brasov and the place was build using EU Sapard funding and is one of the most clean and elegant places to stay in the area. A little hard to reach, true, but on the other hand it's a good thing to be farther from the main road if you want a quiet holiday.

On Saturday we took the cable car from Busteni to Babele. It was a 15-minutes trip uphill, in a spectacular landscape (going down is even more spactacular, like a huge roller coaster, though at a lower speed) and we ended up on the Babele highland, a weird place that looked like the moon to me.

Of course I knew Babele ("the Old Ladies") was a plateau at 2200 m, where you could see, apart from the renowned Old Ladies (two large rocks looking like mushrooms to me), another huge nature-made sculpture called the Sphynx (2216 m). But actually seeing them was very very impressive and I can't wait for the summer, when we will go back to take the 1-hour trip to the Caraiman Cross, which we couldn't see this time due to the snow and late hour (we would've missed the last cable car going down, if we went).

I really liked the feeling of being on top of the world; it was a nice sunny day and the sky was bluer than ever, there were quite a few people up there, taking photographs and having a good time, and the only bad thing of the trip was the fact that the toilet at Babele Chalet was broken. But this will hopefully be fixed by the next time we go.

Stuff I collected over time

1. A link to an interesting post:

How to make a successful blog

2. "The Career Manifesto" - I don't agree with more than half of the stuff there, though

1. Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.

2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?) If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.

3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don’t brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.

4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.

5. If you suspect that you’re working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don’t delude yourself by thinking you’ll change what the organization regards as a “turkey farm.” Flee.

6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can’t get along with your co-workers, you’re a litigation breeder. Don’t be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.

7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.

8. Don’t believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you’ll have a better clue as to what’s going on.

9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.

10.If you plan on showing them what you’re capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.

Grey's Anatomy

For those of you who haven't heard about it, Grey's Anatomy is a TV show broadcast by abc in the US and TVR1 in Romania (Tuesdays at 21:45). It follows the life and struggles of a group of surgical interns at a Seattle hospital and I really like it. I even took the test to see which character I ressemble and I came out as Callie. I don't know who she is yet; we've reached season 2, episode 2 here and she hasn't shown up yet. But she sure seems a lot like me :-)

Just thought I would share this with you.

"screw them all" day

I'm a bit behind with this blog - this post was written on my other blog 10 days ago

I usually do not complain about my job on this blog
but if I were to start, today would be a good day :D

RoBlogFest - 18th Place!

And so RoBlogFest 2007 came and went, and there was a biiiiig afterparty with lots and lots of bloggers (when I realized you had to put your name on a list on the roblogfest.ro website in order to attend the party, there were already 400 & sth people and a maximum of 300 places so I gave up (Suzi couldn't come, anyway :p)). And the contest winners were announced at the party, some of them controversial (in an Eurovision-kind-of-controversy), others well-deserving... but this is less important, since all the top winners are well-known Romanian bloggers and I'm sure it was their internet fame that brought them the votes.

But you must be wondering what WE did, that is to say my blog and I ;))

Well, surprisingly, we ended up on the 18th position in the "Best blogs" category and we're very proud to be in the Top 20, from a total of 215 blogs listed for this category.

As regards the other two categories, Disentangling the Web (Romanian version) came out 23rd in the "Best personal blog" category and 21st in the "Best post" section.

And I'm happy, and I thank all those who gave me my 11 votes :-)

Yours,

Chris

the game of hazard

Sometimes I play a fun game:

I open one one or another of my favorite blogspot.com blogs , I read whatever there is to read and then I press the "Next Blog" button and read another random blog, then press next again... and so on until I get bored, or I'm late for wherever I'm going, or the Next button simply disappears (on customized pages).

My findings today are:

• Carlota Duarte - Sem imaginação - the musings of an 18 year-old religious girl from Portugal;
• Raedwald - A London blogger writing a boat's blog :-)
• Pala-pala - A French photo blog.
• Shelley's blog - A personal blog of a Canadian lady (I must read this one in detail, seems interesting).
• The Sociopath Daily - daily postings from the "crazy world" series.

...am I insane, or is it just normal human curiosity to always want to click & see what's NEXT?

Chernobyl

In 1986 I was about 7 years old and I had no idea what "radiation" meant. My only memory related to the Chernobyl explosion is a dialogue I had with my mother one day in the tram station:

- Mom, why aren't we allowed to go out these days?
- Because of the radiations, Christina. You must stay inside because of the radiations.
- And how are the radiations?
- Well, I'm not sure, but they're very bad for you. If you're touched by radiations your skin is burnt and your hair falls out.

That was all I ever knew about the radiations. I don't remember feeling frustrated for having to stay indoors, like I felt when I had the measles. But a few years later I read a book about the atomic explosion at Hiroshima and recognized the effects of nuclear radiations. It was only then, after several years from the Chernobyl explosion had passed, that I started to worry about losing my hair or my skin, and I would run my fingernails over my forearms every day to see if my skin was falling off. It never did, so after some time I stopped doing it :-)


This entry was initially published as a comment on Sonykus' blog entry, Level 7.

My Visual DNA

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The One Million Masterpiece

I read about The One Million Masterpiece project on Madalina Macovei's blog on Yahoo 360. She has submitted a drawing of her own that was featured in an OMM calendar.

The One Million Masterpiece is a project aimed at bringing together the drawings of one million people from all over the world in a huge online patchwork image. All the money resulted from this project are donated to charity, as the website states.

I really liked the image below, which is the work of a 16 year old highschool student from the US, called Quian Zhao. On his OMM profile you can see a Flash film that shows the creation of his drawing, step by step. Pretty impressive!

You can also visit Quian Zhao's profile by clicking on the link below. I'm thinking of contributing with my own drawing to this project - what about you?

Waiting for IKEA

The famous furniture store chain is about to open its first outlet in Romania on March 21st. They've already promoted it in the papers and the city is full of Ikea outdoor commercials; starting from last Friday we even have a dedicated website, a bit boring for the time being, but, hey, it's there!

Last week they also distributed the famous Ikea catalogue to some 15,000 people in Bucharest and the neighbouring towns. They advertise low prices, but judging from the catalogue, they're not really that low. However, the furniture looks very nice and I can't wait for the store to open to see it with my own eyes.

Martisoare :-)

To me the 1st of March has always meant the beginning of spring and, yes, mărţişoare! Those little "symbols of spring" that we used to offer to mothers, grandmothers and teachers alike, small good-luck charms to protect us in the year to come and make us happy every day. Or at least on the day when we received them.

In the old days they used to be quite standard: flowers in a plastic tube, small pendant-like four-leaves clovers for luck, ladybugs and chimney-sweeps that you could lose in the palm of your hand or the much more stylish and sophisticated models created by the Plastic Artists' Association and available only to a select few.

Today anyone can create and sell mărţişoare and you can see the craziest models on sale in the crowded corners of the town: one-eye monsters and robots, Disney characters or seashell masterpieces. Artists take advantage of this custom to sell mărţişoare of their own making: painted ceramic pieces, embroideries, hand-made jewels and many more. The long-standing tradition has been so well assimilated into the consumer society that we even have a fair-like event in Bucharest, where you can buy presents for your loved ones on this special occasion. And they are - it breaks my heart to say it :) - just about the same kitschy presents you can buy at the Christimas, Valentine's Day and Easter fairs.

I don't know if the 1st of March has the same happy meaning to all of today as it used to have when we were kids. I know that for me any warm and pleasant day in the middle of a cold winter season makes me think suddenly of mărţişoare. To me they are a symbol of the light-hearted days of childhood, and I know the sun has to shine on every 1st of March, at least for a minute or two.

***
Wikipedia: History of the Martisor tradition

A sample generic Mărţişor is the symbol of spring and also a celebration on the first of March. Its beginnings are still a mystery, but it is usually said that it originated in Rome, because New Year's Eve was celebrated on the 1st of March, the month of the god Mars. He was the god of agriculture and signified the rebirth of nature. For the Thracians, Marsyas-Silen, whose cult was related to the vegetation and the land, had the same attributes. The flower and nature celebrations were consecrated to him.
It is said that the Mărţişor originated from the Ancient Roman culture, where March (Martius) was the month of the war god Mars with a double role: both protector of agriculture and of war. This duality of symbols is kept in the colours of the Mărţişor: white and red, meaning peace and war (it might also symbolize winter and spring). This custom can be found in all areas where Romanians live. Bulgarians also have an almost identical tradition on the 1 March, called "Martenitsa".

Digital Marketing Forum

I've recently attended an event organized for the first time in Romania and entitled Digital Marketing Forum (website/blog). It was an event that brought together lots of people working in the online business, from bloggers to CEO's of internet companies [not that the two couldn't be one & the same :)]

I only attended SESSION IV: 16.00 - 17.00

Interactive solutions to promote your business.

TOPICS:

• Search Engine Optimization - How does it help me?
• Blogs - Why bet on blogging?
• Text Ads - An effective alternative at a small price?
• Viral - How to start a chain reaction

SPEAKERS:

• Cristian Mezei, Internet Marketing Specialist, Kondiment
• Madalin Matica, Director for European Operations, DotCommerce
• Doru Panaitescu, Director of New Media, Initiative Romania

MODERATOR:

Dragos Novac, Managing Partner, Krogos

impressions:

Well, I read Cristian Mezei's name as "mezel" (Romanian for sausage & salami kind of products), maybe also linking it to his company's name ("Kondiment"). I was also a bit hungry, why not admit it. But when he started speaking, I forgot all about hunger & stuff, fascinated by what he had to say about search engine optimization and online ad-placing. Though very technical, his speech was extremely interesting and useful and I really hoped to find the presentation online on the event website, but this hasn't happened so far. I googled him when I got back to work and found out he was born on March 26th, 1983, which means he's two days younger than my brother. OMG, I feel so old!

And I really think it's high time my brother started his successful manager career, because I'm obviously not cut out for this. With a little luck I might end up being a successful writer or University professor. It's what I like best!

Here's a funny page, from Manafu: get a first life!

Sort of Evil *muahaha*

You Are 36% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?