The Other World ?

...and so it came to pass that the young one stood in the Great Hall, in front of simple and noble men alike... and ne'er blinked at shining lights flashing in his eyes. Learned men greeted him with smiles and humility, dwarved by the greateness that would be.

Or something like that. Yea. That's why I never became a writer.

Speeches were nice, some moving, some more in the lines of "listen to me talking about me for forty minutes"....

I hope the young one realises it is the end of an era. An era when pints and shots were all you had to worry about at night, young one. An era that none realize exactly how missed it would be once it was over. I tried to make my point, without being too intrusive, but finally it is his choice... I will support him as best I can, but it rests with him, that final decision.

And less than 20 hours ago, I was back on this side of the sea... back from the other world.
It amazes me how simple things can be just 3 hours away from this City. You expect something to be in a certain way. And it really is. Of course, listening to Clarkson bitch about the other world, one would think it is most frustrating. Try living here for a year, Clarkson!

59 horns I counted on the way back from the airport to the apartment. 59... In a very empty city, on Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, it started raining. Hard. I think the rain drowned the horns.

There's a lot to be said about waking up in the middle of London and breathing in the cool, clean morning air through a wide open window through which an avalanche of sounds pour in: a bird chirping in the tree under the window; girls laughing in the parking lot; the deep growl of a coach pulling into the same parking lot to pick up the laughing girls... In contrast, I was pleasantly awakened this morning by the chirping of about 150 cars, all honking their horns at some poor bastard whose car had the nerve to die in the middle of the boulevard. I opened the window to breathe in the cool, clean morning air. At 0730 it was stifling already and it burned my lungs with fumes. No laughter from girls in the parking lot. You must be crazy to laugh out loud here...
I can't sleep with the window opened. Too many Valentino Rossi's and Emerson Fitipaldi's in this city. Oxford Street noise at the height of sales week is church-like quiet compared to the typical morning on Unirii.

And the young one wants to return to this dreamland. I understand the valid point he was making: working so that you may sleep at the weekend so you may work another week is indeed something one might not like. Not making new friends because people you meet at work are "work friends" and all you do is work. I understand that that is how it is in the other world.

But then I realized: except for the different chirping noise levels in the morning, I'm living in London!

Summer in the city

It can get a little crazy at times... Life in this God forsaken city, I mean. And I do not mean good crazy. It can get pathological, "here's-the-white-padded-van-you-ordered" crazy. Can you really blame the people, though? Or is it just the blinding heat, the dust, the sweat and the lack of parking spaces? Can you really blame people here for being crazy, after a lifetime of scorching sun beating down on their heads, boiling their brains into mushy soup?

Traffic is legendary already, so I will not dwell on it. Aggression is brought to new heights, whether in language, looks or behaviour. Drowsiness is something that only started to affect me this year. I thought I was stronger than that, but green is not always strong ;).

I think stupidity is also bolstered by the high temperature. Take this morning, for instance: I was stuck in Electrica for 3 hours, doing absolutely nothing but camping in front of offices so, eventually, I would be sent to a different camping site, just to be told by idiots increasing in rank and function that in order to get a quote on what one of my clients owes to the mammoth that employs the idiots, I needed a power of attorney. Lower ranking idiots accepted a regular POA, higher ranking idiots wanted a legalized POA. JUST TO FIND OUT WHAT MY CLIENT OWED THE IDIOT EMPLOYMENT COMPANY!

So I gave up, for fear that had I continued, the even higher ranking morons would probably ask my client to show up in person and have a DNA test done in front of a notary to prove that it was really him who was asking the information and, probably, provide 534 kilos of documents to prove same and also comparative studies done on his pictures as a child and his more recent pictures, for consistency.

Secrecy seems to be the word of the day in Electrica or whatever it's called these days. But I know better. I know that the real word of the day is "going-beyond-the-call-of-duty": not revealing client info to people is one thing. Not revealing client info to the CLIENT is a totally different level of secrecy.

Or maybe they just don't trust lawyers.

First time

Hello, Pis, and welcome to the great wide world of blogs. :)

I've been reading my friend's blog for a few days now and decided that venting one's ideas to the world like this couldn't be such a bad idea. Not for the one doing the venting, anyway... So I thought I'd give it a try. I chose English for my non-Romanian friends. Just in case one of them stumbles upon this "vent".

I've recently been the victim of theft. On Monday, when I shouldn't have been at work (national day off and all that), I was, again, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone broke into my office (with me and a friend in it, of course) and stole my watch from one of the rooms. After the initial outrage had passed, I started feeling some sort of admiration for the one that was actually doing what I had only done in computer games like Thief. Must be cool to be able to break into an office, with people in it, and nick a watch and not be heard or discovered. I bet they also stepped silently through the lobby, sticking to the walls, hiding in the shadows to become invisible.... I bet they used a moss arrow to muffle their steps, too....

All improper admiration aside, it was really sad... In the middle of this ugly, hot, noisy, dusty, crowded, poorly raised "metropolis", I was still expecting, after all this time, a bit of decency. OK, I can understand breaking into people's homes when nobody's there as a rule for thievery, but with me in it??!? And I didn't hear a thing... Will I ever wake up and smell the roses?

At 29, I'm still discovering the world. It speaks volumes about how vast the world is. It also says a thing or two about how green I am.