Two weeks

Two weeks = 14 days
14 days = what's left of university this year
99 = the number of posts on this blog
50% = the chance Mike is reading. Reading what is a totally different question
1 = the years left of our university lives
5 = the number of exams I have
51% = what we need to pass each course
1 = the number of malls I've visited in Kuwait during this week
.4% = how much of our lives we will have spent in Budapest
100 = the number of days Obama has been in office
7 = The number of OS's Microsoft has released [two thumbs up to Windows 7]
100% = the certainty that Tristan will read that and think, "nothing replaces a Mac"
50% = the chance Trevor is either reading or watching South Park
100% = the certainty that I will never permanently live in Kuwait again

Story time

I have learnt two possibly life changing things this past week. 1) Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to f*%#@ 2) Words tell stories.

I would like to share a story, it's not my story:

Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, and he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the prince believed his father.

But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace and came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.

"Are those real islands?" asked the young prince.
"Of course they are real islands," said the man in evening dress.
"And those strange and troubling creatures?"
"They are all genuine and authentic princesses."
"Then God must also exist!" cried the young prince.
"I am God," replied the man in evening dress, with a bow.

The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.

"So, you are back," said his father, the king.
"I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God," said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
"Neither real islands, real princesses nor a real God exist."
"I saw them!"
"Tell me how God was dressed."
"God was in full evening dress."
"Were the sleves of his coat rolled back?"
The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.
"That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived."

At this, the prince returned to the next land and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.

"My father, the king, has told me who you are," said the prince indignantly. "You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician."
The man on the shore smiled.
"It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom, there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them."

The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eye.
"Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?"
The king smiled and rolled back his sleeves.
"Yes, my son, I'm only a magician."
"Then the man on the other shore was God."
"The man on the other shore was another magician."
"I must know the truth, the truth beyond magic."
"There is no truth beyond magic," said the king.
The prince was full of sadness. He said "I will kill myself."
The king by magic caused Death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
"Very well," he said, "I can bear it".
"You see, my son," said the king, "you, too, now begin to be a magician."


If you are still confused, watch this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8EiScBEjA

Sickness, AC Milan, and Kuwait

I've been sick for the past few days .. sicker than I've been in a while. I had some severe throat pains that were bad enough to keep me up one night. Trevor's recovering from sickness and Tristan got sick around the same time I did. I'm better now, but still working at around 60%. Not the condition I wanted to be in when I went to watch my beloved AC Milan play a friendly here in Budapest. Regardless, it was fun watching them score 5 goals, and it was fun seeing Kaká play cause he was injured when we watched them play in Milan.

I travel to Kuwait tomorrow morning - my flight departs at 9:10 a.m. The excuse is to go for some paperwork, but I really just want to see the family. Some of mom's food will help me get over this sickness way faster than some meds! I'm gone for a week, and then I'll be back in Budapest for a week of classes followed by a week of exams.

The pic above is of Kuwait- the tall structure is the communications tower.

Why I think J. J. Abrams is a cool dude

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-05/mf_jjessay

He's got something figured out. And its something pretty fundamental. And I dig it.

....9:30 on a tuesday night

I went downtown in the rain. 9:30 on a tuesday night, just to check out the late night.... Record shop (Late night record shop)

This is all true to brian wilson, except that its not raining, i haven't been to any record shops lately, i don't have background singers, and its not even technically 9:30.

The boys got all snazzied up headed out to an operatta tonight entitled The Gypsy Princess. Its a part of this Cool Tour thing our Erasmus team at Corvinus arranged for interested students. I don't know what an operatta is, it sounds like a short opera, kind of like a novella is a short novel, but this opera was like 3 hours long. short novels are like 100 pages. Anyways, it doesn't matter because we left half way through. The music was lovely, so was the stage decoration, the acting, singing, dancing, and costumes. Even the lighting was really well done. The only problem was that it was in Hungarian. It did have German subtitles, though which was really helpful for me.

All in all, life is good. This week is shaping up to be an enjoyable one. We are going to see AC Milan play tomorrow night, and then another Cool Tour event on Thursday, and I row on Sunday for Corvinus. So ya. All good things.

Picture of the day

Why GM went bankrupt, while Toyota continues to thrive. TQM.

Dear Vegetable Gods

Canada is known for exporting ridiculously good hockey players and maple syrup, Sweden has its meatballs and chic furniture , the Mongols were know for their culture blending and archery skillz, the Toronto Maple Leafs are known for their inability to make the playoffs, Starbucks has its Caramel Macchiato and oat fudge bars...

I am gonna be a radical and say...

"Central" and Eastern European countries are not known for their "colorful" diet and legume friendly recipes.

This drastic realization came to an Everest-like peak when Mike and I stopped by the Slovak Pub, Bratislava for some hearty Slovakian specialties... before this day I knew that I kinda knew about knowing the knowledge of a new found niche with non-existent nutrition - yet I decided to practice my appeasement skills and give way to my id, ego and superego.

Food is a lot like movies, neither of which should be enjoyed in shades of black and white.

Please forgive me, I will do better - now I am sitting with kleenexs stuffed up my nose and a large mug of honey tea as I feel the wrath of the Vegetable Gods.

Its kind of like... writing a book about paper waste

Hey,

My 'Art of Persuasion' class sucks. We haven't learned a damned thing of practicality I think in the entirety of the course. Last week was spent analyzing the changes in Barbie commercials from 1959 to 2008. What a waste of time. Every class there are student presentations and they all pretty well suck, like the one today about Sting and the Police. Sting? Persuasion? Like, where's the connection? There isn't one and yet we sit through it and the professor thinks its all great. Every once in a while something surprising happens. Take George Orwell's "On Politics and the English Language" (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) which he wrote in 1946. He's political, duh, he wrote 1984. But, the fascinating part of the article is the notion that language is like clay, you mold it to your purpose. I mean, this is what I get out of reading the article. First, what is the meaning? Convey that meaning through words. Don't find words to fit to a meaning. The power of the article is in its ability to change the preconceptions of the reader, thus making it very persuasive. There is substance in this class, after all.

The other interesting bit of knowledge comes from TED.com, a very, very cool website that does for formal education what Advil did for pain. The lecture is by a guy named Renny Gleeson, a kind of modern-marketing guru and his point is a very good one... social networking should make us more human, not less human. The amazing thing is that we even must consider this, and yet, I'm afraid of counting the hours I've spent in front of this laptop 'sharing' when real life is going on on the other side of the screen. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/renny_gleeson_on_antisocial_phone_tricks.html

Rowing

Hey,

Started rowing yesterday at a local club on the Danube. I'm not very good, its actually a lot harder than it looks. I got a blister that was bleeding and i bled all over my shirt. And my legs fell asleep so when I stepped out of the boat i lost my balance and almost ended up in the river. But other than that it was a great experience. I have another lesson tomorrow morning. The club also has a weight room, so after rowing I pumped some iron with a guy named Gergel who likes to pretend he's arnold schwarzenegger. interesting guy. He found me a spot on Corvinus' rowing team and ill be rowing with them in a regatta next sunday.

Triple Detour

The incredible, life-changing, three-part story of the past hour and a half.

Part 1

Something terrible has happened. We've always wondered when, not if it would happen. Actually, we were surprised it hadn't happened earlier. No longer can we take the 18 or 41 all the way to the 47 or 49. What was once nice and simple, no longer is, and now the horrid and wretched 40-something is in the way. What am I blabbing about? Well, the tram route that once so efficiently linked us to our university has been out of commission (and will be for another two weeks).

It used to take us two tram rides to get to university, but now an extra bus ride has been added to the mix. It's actually not so bad, but it leads us to Part 2 of the story.

Part 2

Every Tuesday at 4:20 p.m., all four of us have a class called Presentation Skills. It's one of the better classes I'm taking here - the prof seems to put a lot of effort into the course, which is something I've come to appreciate over the past few months, or rather, the past two and a half years. Others don't like the class, but to each his own. Anyhow, the professor and his wife have been expecting a new-born son, and it seems like he's been born because we were the only four students in class. We presumed that this was the case and left early.

On the way back, we decided to split up and try two alternate routes in a bid to figure out the most efficient way back home. Mike and Tristan went off to one route and Trevor and I took another. Our route went along the Danube, all the way to Parliament. Quite a scenic view, plus getting to see parliament everyday for a few weeks wouldn't be so bad. Except the tram never got to Parliament. And there were a lot of cops around. We get out to start walking toward the metro stop, only to find that it was blocked by a huge protest. Old men and women were shouting something at the police. People were chanting Hu-Hu-Hungaria everywhere. One guy was up on a podium blabbing on about something we wished we could understand. If someone can explain what the protest was about, please do!

We hung around for a bit and then headed toward the nearest tram stop that would get us home. The tram was full beyond capacity with people, some of which were emitting some unpleasant odors. We had no choice - it was the easiest way home.

Part 3

We finally got to Moskva Ter, where we could take the final tram home. As soon as we entered the tram, a freak storm began. Heavy, heavy rains started falling and went on for a while, followed by lots of hale. This disrupted the third, and final part of my trip. I put off going to the grocery store, opting to get as close to home as possible. I sprinted the final 20 meters of my journey. The 20 meters that stood between me and safety (the lack of rain, in this case) and finally made it home.

Because I Don't want to be a Vampire

Contrary to the glorification given to those pale blood-suckers by author Stephenie Meyer, I opted out of spending my Easter weekend in Transylvania. Instead, Rock and I have saved some cash by getting out and seeing what the Hungarian country side has to offer. Yesterday, motivated by what I read on the website http://www.thehub.hu/, I convinced Rock to get on a train to Nagymaros/Visegrad to check out the 'Bend in the Danube' which is supposedly a beautiful place. And I'm sure that it is a beautiful place but based on what this website said, and what we found, it left some things to be desired. Needless to say, Rock and I decided to head to Holloko today on the suggestion of this same website. We rented a car (actually, the same fine vehicle that took us to Amsterdam and back) and drove the hour or so to the UNESCO World Heritage site to check out if their Easter Festival really is the best thing east of the Danube. Lured by the prospects of some truly great scenery and giving our cameras a work out (Rock's actually died there), we actually found the alluring thing to be the strange traditions that occur there. Apparently the community that lived in Holloko had a different culture than the rest of Hungary. On Easter it is customary for the boys to knock on girls houses and douse them in a bucket of water because they are virgins. I don't know what the purpose of this all is of course but its atleast fun to run around with a bucket of water and throw it on local kids. After this we ventured up to the castle and took some cool shots of us doing something that looks... salvation-y?

Us rocking out to some crappy song on our way to Holloko.

Love him or hate him, he's back

Rude as ever.

Green tea and Reflections

I am going on a Dracula hunt... but I'm not afraid!!

In t-minus 1 hour I will be on a very stuffy, pre-coldwar autobus on my way to Transylvania, Romania to Dream Big Dreams.

Before I embark on what will most likely be my most awesomest trip to Romania EVER!!! - I
need to make a few things known.

Shout-outs:

Doug - top 5 greatest story teller I have ever witnessed - everything I thought I knew about Rock has quickly come into question... and our visits to the mall together have been put on hold until further investigation - all the best in your travels

Shemy - we leave no boundries untouched or velvet rope un-walkedover - rip it up on those exams and never stop making deals and taking names

Night shots

Just got back from a couple hour of walking along the Danube and taking some photos with Alex, my friend from Queen's who was visiting for a few days (leaves in a few hours).

Doug, my friend and former teacher also came to visit for a few days, but left on Wednesday. Never thought my 8th grade English teacher would be visiting me in Budapest 8 years later - shit, never thought I'd be living in Europe for half a year either, but all those coincidences and little choices we make end up having profound effects on our lives. I need a topic for a presentation I have to give for my presentation skills class and I think I'll be going with Chaos Theory ...or maybe just its basics.

Here are my two favourite photos from tonight:

Shem's visit to Budapest

Just a couple lessons learned in Buda:
1. The Swedes love their meatballs, as well as teabagging
2. a 5k run around an island isn't as easy as it sounds
3. living in a city doesn't mean you know the sights, or your way around, or how to get home from the airport via the metro
4. don't freeride the trams, you will be charged 6 grand
5. it WAS GM and Segway that teamed up to bring the two seat electric vehicle

Shem

McDonald's

A weird thing happened between classes today.

Well. Actually, class itself was weird. I set my alarm for 7:15am with the intention of going for a run (you see its this kind of weird thing called a 'regimen' that you design as a way to improve yourself through 'self-discipline'. It really only works if you follow through with the plan you set for yourself the night before, otherwise you just end up waking up really early for a reason thats even more dreadful than the act of waking up itself.).

Well. Actually I woke up at 5:15 for some reason before that. I decided to go to back to sleep and looked forward to waking up in two hours to begin my fitness regimen. I went to sleep and I had a dream about being an egg that was hidden by the Easter bunny in the forest somewhere (the grass was really high whereever I was) and this gigantic toothy rabbit was hunting voraciously in his memory for the whereabouts of this seemingly important egg (that was actually me). The rabbit grew larger as he searched and darker and mangier and started to cry out as only an enormous, black, mangy, deranged Easter Bunny could when I suddenly awoke to the vibration and shrill scream of my cell phone telling its time to run up Gellert Hill, do pushups and situps and feel personal pride all day long at my self-discipline. I immediately evaluated the status of my mind, looking for any excuse not to return to that menacing easter bunny, found myself with my head on my pillow and woke up two hours later with 5 minutes to get to class. I arrived in class an hour and half late having consumed what I like to call the "breakfast of champions on the run" or in this case "Breakfast for the extremely late" that is: a tub of yogurt with a chopped up banana and muesli. When I finally got to class it was time to break for twenty minutes or "Hungarian Recess" as I like to call it and I spent it discussing why my apple had two stems with Erin from USC, how much Rock probably threw up when he had his first chaw with Thomas, and 'recycling' with Gunter. To my great surprise, class had a guest speaker.

Dr. Wagner from the Hungarian Eco-labeling club came to speak to us about absolutely nothing of merit, importance, or interest known as eco-labels. For about an hour she explained to us that stickers about the environment give people like her around the world something meaningless to do with their time. Thoroughly disappointed I began making faces to people around the classroom who if they weren't already drooling on the desks, were about to start. I never thought class would end (39 slides of... of... drivel I honestly never hope to find interesting) but when it did I ventured to the mall at Nyugati Palyaudvar to buy a frisbee or a football.

On my way I ran into Yoann from France who was in my class and we made small talk about Hungarian ecological regulation until we came across some construction and a weird older man in a grey shirt and toothless grin told us to follow him around the construction. I oddly enough was more than eager to follow this weird man around the construction while Yoann stood his ground. turning my back I saw his reflection in a store window and went back to ask why he didn't want to follow the weird toothless grin-man. "I walk this way everyday, that toothless man can't tell me what to do," he said when I went back. Damn-straight, but why was I so easily persuaded and Yoann not at all. I sometimes think that I could be that Eskimo who buys the snow. At Nyugati, I didn't find a sports store but it took no time at all for me to sit down at McDonald's with a burger, an extra large fries and Coke. Then, defeated in atleast two ways I ventured to the Maltese embassy to get my EU passport. arriving at the address listed on the maltese website produced no results as it was a sports store that sold everything but footballs and frisbees.

Spring's over ... summer's here

So the great weather has held up, and promises to stay.

This has inspired me to go out and take a few pictures of budapest with my new camera. I created a flickr account so you can see all of them.

The last few days have been a mix of acting like tourists, visiting local festivals, beers in parks, and procrastinating on schoolwork.

Hotel Domokos is in full swing. It's nice to have lots of guests visiting now that Budapest isn't a depressing place.

Were we fated to listen to this song?

We all absolutely love this song, but what if I hadn't been home, hadn't been on my computer at the same time my friend Rami in Waterloo was, and what if we had chosen a different topic of conversation and he never shared the video with me? Watch to understand.

AC Milan repay the visit

Less than two months ago we all ventured to Milan for four days and, among other things, watched an AC Milan football (soccer) game. As a long-time fan that was the highlight of my trip (gelato comes close), and so you can imagine how excited I was when I saw a Facebook message from Evi (a friend and member of ESN) telling me that AC Milan are coming to Budapest for a friendly match. I couldn't believe it at first. I thought watching Milan once was awesome, but to get the opportunity to see them again in a span of less than two months is a surprise. I wondered whether it was an April fools joke by some website. Turns out that it isn't, and when the tickets go on sale tomorrow, I will be sure to pick a few up (I'm sure others will be interested).

The stars are aligned, and AC Milan will be repaying my visit.

Evi, thank you!

A day in spring

The weather in budapest is screaming "Go outside" so yesterday that is exactly what Trevor and I did. We donned our cameras and set out as proper tourists snapping photos of everything, even if it isnt particularly breathtaking or profound. The one exception however was this video of the world's fastest man. Enjoy!

Krakow, Poland, "Central", Europe

There were no signs of the soviet winter in Krakow, Poland last weekend, the main square was filled with teenagers showcasing their new spins for the Melbourne Shuffle, children were chasing costco-sized bubbles and the rest were succumb to the hustle and bustle of Europe's largest outdoor square.

This weekend, I decided to infiltrate our rival school's exchange program to see how they operate on the other side of the Danube.

Our first stop was Wieliczka Salt Mine, the world's largest operating salt mine... I think the word "mine" is an understatement, when you have 3 churches followed by a mini shopping center, a full service restaurant, concert hall, cafeteria and flush toilets in the 1% that I saw... "mine" eh... A must see for salt enthusiasts and cave dwellers alike.

The second stop was Europe's playground, Krakow - when you slay a dragon and found a city all in the same week, a legend.... wait for it, - DARY!! oasis is bound to unfold. tasty people, friendly pastries, and a lively nightlife make this a popular weekend destination.

A major highlight of the trip was our afternoon in the square where I got personal lessons on "Jumpstyle" and our many demonstrations of the "Melbourne Shuffle" from the local experts. Basically both of these methods involve copious amounts of jumping around in a hypnotically synchronized way - basically pure awesomeness. Our friends also made a video for us with the basic steps - we said we are going to start the Jumpstyle Club in Budapest... Heroes Square?!

On our final day we had a change of pace - Auschwitz.