Hello again

I decided to take a bit of a break from blogging, mostly to cut down on the spam that I was getting. Well, that’s partially true. I was also busy and did not really feel like bs-ing about politics or any of that.

Today I wanted to complain about the EU - to go against the tide. There have been a lot of people speaking up against Romania, saying how today it would not meet the criteria for EU membership. I personally do not think that it really met them in Jan. 2007, but I was not opposed to the move because it definitely needed outside help to grow and become a fully developed nation. The help has been misrepresented and misused, however. And I’m not sure that Romania is fully at fault. I mean, when you go to a child and ask him to go buy bread, but he buys candy instead, is it really his fault? Perhaps you should have gone with him or explained why bread was more important than candy.

Romania really was a little kid when it adhered to the EU, a little kid joining the big kids’ club. Then a large amount of funds was dangled in front of its eyes (i.e., people; i.e., educated/powerful people). The funds were meant to help the country help itself and its citizens. Except how does this money get distributed? Seemingly very randomly as much of it comes back at the end of the projects’ terms. And let’s go over how youth programs work. If you have a group of teens/young adults gathered together and want to do something with them you have to fill out about 200+ pieces of paper after reading almost as many, just to get about 10,000 euro (or less) for a 6 month period. Oh yea, that will totally help the homeless… Are you kidding!? This money should be going to help organizations institute long-term projects. Many organizations that help poor people do not have a lot of money, yet they have good ideas and often work for next to nothing to implement them.

A couple of months ago I saw two of the girls showed on Children Underground (USA, 2001) still on the street. One of them, Macarena (Violeta Rosu), was still near the Piata Victoriei stop (where the movie was mainly filmed). The other girl, Cristina Ionescu, I saw a couple of times by Piata Gemeni, accompanied by what seemed to be her child. Both of these places are in the middle of the Romanian capital. Why are these girls still on the street? I mean, can it be possible? I could hardly believe it. Did no one in the Romanian government watch this movie? The subway stop Piata Victoriei is right next to the government building. Piata Gemeni is on a street lined with embassies, three blocks away from an official state building (where many politicians live).

If Romanians can’t help themselves, they should call in outside experts. We can’t even defend a good country brand (our tourism is crap). We have a gorgeous country that we like to deny to ourselves and to everyone else by not taking care of it.

And I guess I’ve come full circle and inevitably attacked Romania as well. I like it here and I’d like it even more if people tried to get along rather than continued to go up against one another. Here’s hoping the young ones will follow this advice.

Romanian Politics

If you were ever curious about how politics happen in a post-communist country, and can understand Romanian, take a look at this outrageous debate here.

The format is very common, with a moderator and two or more opposing sides that start talking over one another. The debaters are Bucharest’s former mayor (thank God), Videanu (PD-L), Victor Ponta (PSD member and basketball player), and another former Bucharest mayor from PNTCD, Victor Ciorbea, who, unlike the other two, is not a bad guy. Ciorbea left politics four years ago because he could no longer stand to fight against former Securitate members, nomenklaturists, and other privileged profiteers. This debate speaks out against them, a rare feat allowed/seen in the media here. Usually it’s unintelligible noise made by some member of the opposition, but this is actually very good.

I meant to post it last week, but have been randomly busy and unable to sit and write. In the meantime, Ponta has gotten married to (after having a child with) Daciana Sarbu. And good for him, that someone would take him…

Oooh, fun!

Early X-mas/birthday idea for the women who have EVERYTHING: vibrating mascara! You’re welcome.

The European dream

This morning I stumbled upon this story on Drudge. It is a story I predicted about 4 months ago when I decided to stay in Romania. Enjoy.

Something else Romania could import…

A way in which to handle high corruption… send the bad guys to jail! Article

Happy Thursday! Got a bus to catch to Calarasi.

Also, Chavez brings back the secret police

I randomly just saw this on Drudge. Maybe it’s a few hours/days old because it’s only in Italics, not in red, so it didn’t immediately catch my attention, but check it out here. Apparently Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is going for a huge no-no in a modern society: encouraging citizens to spy on one another so as to avoid prison. This cost all former Soviet satellites a lot as far as the people’s mentality. Romania is still suffering from neighbors spying on neighbors for 40 years. This is very bad news. If you’re completely removed from what this means, read The File by Timothy Garton Ash.

In a way I appreciate how Chavez dislikes the US, he has every right to, being the leader of a sovereign nation, but this is turning against your own citizens; it’s no longer a threat to outsiders, but a threat to his own people.

Elections week-end and a semi-big, somewhat-fattening Romanian wedding

Local elections took place in Romania this past week-end. If you think that because we are now in the EU there is no more election fraud, then you are incorrect. A few examples of what went wrong follow:

1. Campaigning continued even through Sunday (when it’s supposed to have ended) with movie goers getting another glance at the wannabe Bucharest mayor from PNL (the National Liberal Party), Ludovic Orban. Of course that was no surprise given the quality of Mr. Orban’s character. Back a few months ago, in January, I believe, he was involved in a traffic accident where he tried to pay off the victim and then publicly denied that he was even involved in any altercation. Tsk tsk…

2. Ever since Bucharest has started losing its real estate appeal for the big investors, they’ve rushed out of the Capital and on towards provincial and even rural towns for the next big boom. In one such place we were able to see how on Sunday voters were paid to cast their “secret” vote to particular candidates, with huge interests in the land on which these voters live. The scene at Stefanesti looked like an outright revolt. Many people expected the area to be tense, but I doubt anyone believed fights would break out. Unbelievable…

3. Even Romania’s Prime Minister, Mr. Tariceanu, could not get past Sunday without doing something dumb, i.e., opening up his “secret ballot” to the ladies operating the poll station. And Mr. Basescu supposedly spent 4 minutes! (”to save the world”, lol) in his booth, doing I don’t really want to know what. Then the I-have-no-words-for-him PRM (Big Romania Party - ultra-nationalist party) head Mr. Vadim Tudor also decided to open up his “secret ballot” after stepping out of the polling booth to examine it. I guess he felt a tad claustrophobic inside the booth, given his size, but still… (This is in no way a comment against people who are overweight, just overly pompous).

In other news, Marius and I attended a second wedding this season. I couldn’t vote on Sunday (because these were local elections and my permanent residence is in the US), so I wasn’t concerned with waking up early to go vote or anything like that. The wedding took place in Ploiesti, which is an interesting town, not too far from Bucharest. It hosts the Museum of Clocks (and watches perhaps - “ceas” is used for both in Romanian). The wedding kept true to some traditional Romanian values, although the bride had some difficulty getting stolen. But we got our fill of folk music and sarmale (stuffed cabbage). Since the newlyweds were not close friends or anything, we took off at a record early hour of 4 AM.

Oh, and Indiana Jones was horribly tacky. Three more days until I’ll be able to get myself to Sex and the City in Bucharest. (It premiered last week, I believe, but it only had one showing. It actually enters theaters on Thursday, but I’ll be seeing it on Friday). Happy Tuesday!

June 1st: Election day

I was going to do a whole analysis of the various candidates’ sites, but I can’t vote in Bucharest anyway and no one really has anything to offer. The top 2 contenders will probably hurt the Capital even more, but what can you do. I just wanted to leave a quick post before Sunday’s election as tomorrow I will be attending a wedding out of town and, since I won’t be in my hometown, where I’m not even sure that I could vote anyway, I will probably forget that the local elections are taking place Sunday.

Yeah, I guess there is not much I wanted to say about these elections because the campaigning has been really bad, aggressive in a non-productive, detrimental-to-your-health (and environment) kinda way.

On a happier note, today the Architecture school’s (from the Univ. of Bucharest) ‘Case care plang’ project organized a first workshop at the school where I first started a volunteering club. About 30 kids partook in the event, which unfortunately was scheduled for the late end of the semester and it was very hard to convince teachers to allow their students to participate. But it was a good, educational experience, at least from my perspective. I hope to encourage other associations that focus on different things (like architecture, theater, film, photography, etc.) to start clubs in the high school and put on a club fair, as is common in US high schools, at the start of school next Fall. I will be pitching the idea to other organizations and I look forward to seeing more and more students involved in extra-curricular activities, since obviously school is no longer very appealing to them. If we can’t have strong leaders, maybe we’ll have a strong society anyway in the future.

Happy thoughts and happy week-end!

Local elections underway

The local elections in Romania are less than a month away and our apartment building is already littered with propaganda. Ironically, the propaganda for PSD (for which I found two flyers littered on our stair case) claims that their candidate is ready to clean up the sector (1). Shouldn’t they first start by not littering? Also, they should consider what neighborhoods lack (like laws for cleaning up after your dog) and make campaign signs encouraging such acts (and not throwing blame on others or making useless generalizations - that they’re already not respecting).

But in a place where political affiliation doesn’t change very often (except when parties morph into other parties or form coalitions - which I guess is sorta pretty often), I assume there is not incentive to actually do anything. You’ll still get your percentage of votes, the party (which really only cares about how they’ll do in the general elections) will be satisfied as it is only testing the waters with the local elections. The real decisions (for who wins the local elections) are made by local barons who can mobilize the most significant amount of voters because they also have the most stakes in the outcomes. And for a public that is too tired to care about whom they’ll vote for, this strategy works (the barons get their way). Then we end up with mayors who use their position to advance their business ventures and that’s how we, in turn, give up our cities/country because with such people in power there is no one left to actually do anything good for the population (or to pave roads, build infrastructure, create social assistance programs, etc.). I guess that’s too much associated with what the communists did and we’re so afraid of the communists and we are sure to bring dictators back through our reluctance of getting involved in what is our civic duty (and I don’t mean going into the army, but voting would be a start).

Anyway, I have loads of work as I prepare my paperwork for the foundation that I’m starting (for donations/sponsorships there will be some information here in the near future - if you have inquiries, please feel free to leave comments/write to adinatheblogger@gmail.com).

Back to work

What was supposed to be a 10-day trip to Florida turned into a 3-week vacation all over the place. But I finally have a Romanian ID (making me a more legal Romanian citizen).

I have random tales to recount, but I’m still getting myself together, so I’ll just post a picture from our trip back from Tulcea (on the Danube Delta), where we attended a wedding about a week ago. The picture is of holes in the road. The way back looked like this or worse for portions of over 20 km. Where the holes were covered, you had to drive on gravel and even that was not very even. I love Romania, but the national highways/roads leave much to be desired.

Enjoy till tomorrow…