I can has cheeseburger now?

You sometimes get to a point in your life when you start to reevaluate your priorities. Because when you're constantly tired and constantly rushing to get things done, there's obviously a lack of efficiency somewhere. And today I have come to the conclusion that I'm doing it all wrong. What exactly? No clue. But when you love what you're learning and it interests you and you're all fired up about it but no output is coming you have to come to one of two conclusions: 1) maybe you're not as good as you thought you were and what you thought was intelligence well maybe it's just arrogance; or 2) you're incapable of conveying that fire and those smarts to the outside world (which in a sens is worse than being an idiot). Either way, I'm doing something wrong here.

After months of stalling, I finally started reading The seven habits of highly effective people and though I'm not very far into it, there was something that caught my attention. At one point, the author is talking about the tale of the goose that lays golden eggs and how, in order to keep enjoying the eggs, you need to care equally about the goose as well as the eggs. Kind of like farmers in Malawi who keep sowing their land year after year after year because they never have enough to eat and eventually the soil becomes so depleted in nutrients that production starts decreasing every year more and more and they just become more and more poor. They need to eventually get fertilizer in order to enrich their land (aka take care of the goose) in order for their crops to become sufficient. Anyway, leaving aside the metaphors, it is true that I have been neglecting my goose these past few years. You push yourself to the edge in order to get everything done and afterward you are too blasé and too tired to keep going so you need to take some time off. But the time off then causes you to fall behind in everything else so you need to again push yourself and etc. and etc. and etc. Spinning cycle that never ends. And what does that leave me with? A fucked up back, quite unattractive dark circles under my eyes, those extra pounds which will never go away if I never eat properly and no applicable knowledge that would show that I actually didn't waste my time in school. So shall we say loss-loss?

In the end the point is that something needs to change. I think that after a year dedicated to self-discovery and selfishness (I was selfish that's for sure... how much did I discover? Well, not a total waste of time, but I still have a long way to go), the next one should be dedicated to proper habits. After all, Aristotle did say that we are what we repeatedly do.

Problem is that all I want to do right now is watch last night's Fringe episode. I can has cheeseburger now?

Durerea lipsei de cauza

Ok, 10 minute pentru o reflexie vite-vite là. Exista anumiti oameni pentru care orice s-ar intampla, in orice situatie s-ar afla, nu se pot simti niciodata impacati. Cel mai bun exemplu este acel al romanului care emigreaza in strainatate si anume in America. Cand era un cetatean ordinar al dulcei Romanii, invidia traiul dinamic, instarit si plin de posibilitati al americanilor. Odata devenit un detinator de carte verde, se uita cu nostalgie spre patria lui de origine, spre durerile acelor oameni care era compatriotii lui odata si invidiaza viata din ei care se zbate sa supravietuiasca, valorile lor pastrate din stramosi si care pana la o adica sunt si ale lui. Si in adancul lui, vrea sa faca parte din rascoala, vrea sa rada cu ai lui de bancurile facute pe seama politicienilor.

Adevarul este ca intotdeauna e mai usor sa visezi la posibilitati decat sa traiesti cu realitati. Si cand nu tii la ceva concret, vantul te va bate intotdeauna in afara drumului tau.

Erratum

I was looking through a previous post and I realized I made a mistake. In The day the world stopped making sense, I wrote that the faster you go, the more time contracts. Actually, at high speeds, time dilates and it is space which contracts. However, this incident reminded me of the famous twin paradox where one brother stays on Earth and the other embarks on a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light. When the astronaut came back, he realized that his brother on Earth aged much more than he had because time passed much slower on the spaceship than on Earth. The paradox consists in the fact that for the brother who stayed on Earth (let's call him Stan) it was his twin (who we shall name Bob) who was moving and therefore Stan saw the clock on the spaceship as counting time at a slower pace. However, Bob was at rest in the reference frame which was the ship and for him, it was Stan who was moving and therefore, he saw clocks on Earth as being slower (kind of like when two metros are stopped in a station and when one begins to move, you're not quite sure which one is moving and which one is at rest; all you know is that they're moving relative to each other). So that constitutes a paradox because, for Stan, Bob should be younger and, for Bob, Stan should be younger. But the way that physicists have explained it is that when Bob made a U-turn in order to return towards Earth he accelerated (you need to accelerate to change directions) and at that moment he changed reference frames and that requires a clock adjustment (relativity only considers inertial reference frames therefore by accelerating, you leave your initial reference frame). Therefore the paradox does not exist because you are now comparing apples and oranges. What I don't get though, when Bob left the Earth, didn't he have to accelerate as well? Why are we only talking about the U-turn as being an acceleration.... I need to discuss this with someone.

You can leave your hat... eugh... socks on

Thea ma amuza tot timpul cu alegerile ei muzicale hahaha!!

Two sides of an equation

Bai da' chiar ca e greu! Sunt femeie deci pot! Stai.
Totusi o sa-ncerc eu sa-ti soptesc: Te iub..coughcoughcough

Ce-i drep de multe ori noi femeile ne credem high and mighty dar la o adica nu suntem mai bune ca si barbatii!

Late anniversary

You know, I just realized that a week ago this blog had entered the third year since its inception!! Oh the horror! The HORRORRRR!!! I'm starting to forget my own anniversaries!! It is kind of sad, but I guess it comes with the overly busy schedule. Anyway, I'm sorry "Eyes through the glass"! This will not happen again I promise! (and now I'm starting to talk to a virtual creation of my own... I think that's how insanity starts to set in...).

Aaaaanyway, a few words on this (late) memorable occasion... This has been a crazy but incredible year and the next one promises to be even more so (if I have my way with it). I would like to thank my loving family for all their support. I would also like to thank my producer Bob who... no wait, wrong speech!!

I guess that what I'm trying to say is that this place is o cratima care te trage de limba si iti da aripi sa zbori deasupra oceanului involburat; un loc pentru a-mi purifica gandurile si a pune ordine in amalgamul confuz care ma inconjoara zi de zi chiar cu riscul de a transfera dezordinea aici. All the while risking Hegelian alienation, this blog stands as a separate entity traveling time and space with fractions of me embedded within. Nu stiu de ce, dar imi vine in minte un episod cand Cris vorbea de aberatii hahaha! Ma intreb de ce :P

This is madness! This. Is. SPARTA!!!!

Following the latest economic news on Europe sometimes makes you feel like you are entering some sort of a parody of how societies and economic systems are supposed to work. When you follow the news on a regular basis, you constantly have the felling that the end of the world is near. Whether it's revolts and civil wars or terrorist attacks or economic crises or just good old mother nature, there's always something to keep you on the edge of your seat. And if everything is fine and dandy for you or your neighbors, then there are over 100 other countries where things can be shitty and what with globalization and our financial system there's always a way in which that can screw you over.

It sometimes makes me wonder whether we as humans should have the right to lead something as fragile, as complex and as big as a country. They say that everyone can make mistakes and as humans it is natural that we make mistakes. However, when your mistake involves millions of other people in the street, then we should question whether that natural characteristic has the right to exist within political or economic systems. We should question whether any changes in policies or structures should ever be made. In physics, they make over 16,000 runs of the same experiment before they even begin to question the validity of their theories. In that perspective, who the hell ever thought that the Eurozone would be a good idea? Probably the same schmuck who thought sub-prime mortgages would work out alright.

Alright, I might complain a lot, but the truth is that while we might feel like grand men who are setting the foundations for better societies, in the end, we are just children building sand castles on the beach and any minute now the wave is going to come and wipe away a decade's worth of efforts. And how can we even phantom to talk about global economies when more than half of the people on this Earth don't understand the slightest thing about their neighbors and much less about someone living at the other end of the globe. We have many dreams about how this world could be, but we fail to see the full implications of our plans. And how can we? It would be like trying to predict the weather that we would be experiencing 10 years from now.

It is in moments such as these that we wish we had someone who knew what he was doing. An actual adult. But the only thing that ever came close to an adult-figure was God. And God is either dead or he doesn't understand shit about the economy. Then again, neither do we...

Cirque du Soleil