....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: