Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Look up Ring Tales on Halloween

I found a very interesting section of animations on our beloved YouTube. You might want to check them out. This particular one, although painful, is sadly so true :D.


Tastes just like chicken and goes to your a*s:




And here's another (Relativity and Customer Care):




And another (Casual tie day and Erecting a Brand):

Peace of mind on Halloween

It's funny how much we value the simplest of things: a ray of sunlight, a walk on leaves in the park, the noise of falling water, hearing small birds sing...all for the precious peace of mind...

So here comes my question:
If our conscience were clear, would we really need peace of mind?

Let's say the problem is that we are so chore-absorbed every day, that we sometimes need to be reminded it still doesn't take much for us to find a corner of tranquility. I dread to think what we will do without the little nature that human kind has got left. But it's more than that, it's like every day we are confronted with situations that make, at some level, question our integrity.
For instance, I recently tried to get a signature from my dorm building landlord, in order to prove that on October 1st, I was in the country, fighting with the bureaucracy of my beloved Romania and my esteemed college representatives. He had to sign a written declaration (written by myself, because he didn't know what to write in order to prove that I truly, personally picked up my dorm room from him on the previous mentioned day, despite the several official papers I had signed then).

The declaration was inspired from a declaration of income I had found on the net, so it had the following final print: "I hereby recognize that this is a public document and I take full responsibility in the court of law, according to the penal law, for the inexactness or falseness of what has been declared."
The landlord dreaded this final phrase so much, that he refused to sign a document with no falseness and no inexactness in it. An the thing that surprised me the most is that, he agreed with everything else written there, that means agreeing to the the part where "I state on my own responsibility that...", which was the first part of the declaration. So the first part and the final print seemed so different to him, that he refused to sign the declaration.

The funny thing is, even without the final print, if he signed the rest, he would have still been responsible in the court of law, because that declaration was a public document.

Therefore, returning to the main idea of this post, people have a lot on their conscience, a lot that gets triggered by expressions like: take responsibility for one's acts, court of law, law etc..

The feared equation for a guilty conscience is:

TODAY+RESPONSIBILITY FOR DONE ACTS=DREADED TOMORROW

I guess we all have our conscience spooks haunting us every, not just on Halloween :). This actually reminds me of a very interesting commercial.
Try guessing what it's for!(don't cheat by first looking up information about it :D!)





Happy Halloween for those who care!

Friday, October 26, 2007

What we are, were and will be...

The expression of indignation on our faces is one that characterizes us our whole life. The same expression of indignation sits on our faces when we are kids, when we grow up and when we are old.

Come to think of it, we have a lot of expressions, reactions, conceptions that stay with us our entire existence, imprinted in our behavior. For instance, have you ever noticed the way you put soap on your hands right before you wash them, your sleeping position, the way you hold your fork at the table, the way you tie your shoe laces etc. ?

We are distinct and easily identifiable because we truly have some aspects of our personality that are ours and only ours. Even if there are similarities between the behavioristic-cognitive processes of one person and another, nobody is going to be exactly like you and do exactly the things you do...that's the beauty of it. Our inexactness and the lack of capacity of any human being of making the exact replicas of another's behavior, is what makes us unique, it's what separates us from robots.

Although I am inclined to say that humanity is losing more of its humanity with every day that passes, because of the daily routine and the boredom and tiredness that it inflicts (metrou, boulot, dodo as the French say - that means subway, work, sleep), I still think that there is hope for us yet. As long as we make mistakes and correct them, as long as we care, as long as we remember to take some time for ourselves, as long as we remember to see something else than school, job, worries, then I truly think we will be OK as a race and we'll keep developing as a species.

I happened to come across a small helping hand to our routine caused problems when I saw this particular short film, that got turned into a regular film:

Cashback





In another order of ideas, my pet Jeremiah (the turtle) is growing every day as others grow in seven years...kiddin', but he is developing at a normal rate for a turtle and fancies only dried fish in his diet :).

Thursday, October 25, 2007

ANVIDA

All our staff is always set,
No customer shall be ignored;
Victory will be here we bet,
In business we've all majored.
Dependent on us you can be,
ANVIDA does the job, just see!


Copyright © 2007 Luminita Stoica



I recently have been made an ANVIDA international staff member. It is an honor. The people there are really trying and succeeding to do something great.


Thank you Manny! Thank you Jeff!

Happy Birthday ANVIDA!...your 25th anniversary is approaching.



Best wishes,
Lumi



Monday, October 22, 2007

One of my many obsessions




As corny as it may seem, the first season was extremely interesting :D. The second, well...we shall see.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Let's talk about war baby, let's talk about you and me

WAR
Atrocity all over,
Belligerent in parts,
Catastrophe in houses,
Denial in all the minds.
Effectiveness of weapons,
Ferocity in souls,
Geographical locations
Itineraries hold.
Justifiable crimes and
Knives cutting hearts away.
Lonely are the ones that leave;
Mothers often weep and pray.
Nobody cares at all,
Only power they must seek.
Poor are the ones
Quite eager to stay safely meek.
Random killings all the time,
Some for money
Too many for none.
Under the sword of Aries the fight
Varies the price it carries.
We all suffer, war’s no gift
Xenophobia can excuse,
You can’t think the whole abuse
Zen-like-wisdom does inflict.


Copyright © 2007 Luminita Stoica


It seems to me that humanity is starting wars on a daily basis (apart from the gun-usage-nuclear-explosion-Jew-killing-children-tank-crushing ones we have in past and present history).
It's sad really when parents fight in front of their children in the war of marriage, when friends link to the most absurd reasons just to prove their friends wrong, when you find out (to me it was a shocker), that nobody else cares, not really, and by "else" I mean other than your family (and that's if you're lucky), and if you're really really lucky you find somebody that cares because they're crazy or deluded or, most often used, in love...but then you enter a tough battle. If it's a distance thing, you have to fight with everybody that tells you that "the ocean has plenty of other fish". If it's a local relationship, you get hit by the wall of "you don't care about us anymore, you've changed"...so love is a war too, a war against those who don't get that, for once, you want something that's yours an only yours and you would very much appreciate it if people would just leave you be, leave both of you be. To ask for support from your late loyal friends is a bit too much...sad no?!...to find out that sometimes you did a lot for them (overall) and they repay you with blame (in the end) :(.

Returning to war, I guess that it has to take a lot of human evolution levels passed this one in order to get rid of this nasty gene.


To be in accordance with the above stated, here's the well known Zombie.




Saturday, October 20, 2007

Nature, Body, Mind and Universe

...in the Head


Universe inside,
Mind into mind into mind,
Petals of the
eye.


Copyright © 2007 Luminita Stoica

Friday, October 19, 2007

VMware and other happy tales

Lately I found a thing that I love (let it be noted that I wrote thing not person), my MacBook. I bought it from the States with the money I earned this summer...mainly because I'd been wanting one so badly since May this year when I saw it in a computer store.

Every day has been a day of discovery with it, Mac OS X has a really friendly user interface, although it is a lot different from the Windows one we are all familiar with. I wanted more though...
I kind of gotten used to the Mac OS X, but I also wanted Windows on my MacBook in order to benefit from applications from both operating systems.

There are several ways to install Windows applications on a Mac: you can download windows applications made especially for Mac (like Office 2004 for Mac) - but that kind of costs you-, you can install Windows and Mac OS on your computer (it's easier if it's Intel based) and switch between them by rebooting (but that's not highly recommended) or you can do what I did...install a Virtual Machine and have both Mac OS X and Windows XP (because Vista is too much of a resource eater) at the same time. To apply this marvelous facility on my laptop I used a little VMware called Parallels Desktop.


But enough about the one that occupies most of my time these days. On Wednesday evening I went to the cinema with a bunch of friends and I saw the new Silence of the Lambs-related -film, Hannibal Rising. Why did I went to this film?...Hmmm...I'm actually wondering myself...at least the actors pretty convincingly got in the skin of their characters ...in more ways than one.

Pretty landscapes, a lot of gruesome scenes, if you are not into the whole "nobody is worthy of redemption and I'm kind of a cannibal" way of living and you haven't seen the Anthony Hopkins films about Hannibal Lecter, then I suggest staying away from this last one...Just in case you do think it's worth seeing, here's the trailer...maybe you'll change your mind :D:



In other order of ideas...the new Heroes season started in the USA and the 4th episode is already out, so GO AND GET IT!...from Torrents of course...luckily we have the REGIA around ;).


Have fun watching...or not watching what's on today!


Best wishes,
Lumi

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Happy Together

Some bury themselves in pages, some sink their eyes in endless roles of film, others start writing poetry, decorate their dorm rooms or think about the future...it's funny how we all try or feel the need to occupy our time with intellectual activities...Do we feel our mind slowly slipping away if we don't?

Science has proven that big periods of intellect vegetation can lead to the slowing down of mental processes due to the lack of exercise. You see, the intellect is just like a muscle, we need to constantly train it in order to keep it in shape, otherwise, the fat layer of stupidity threatens to take over and we do no want to have an obese mind, do we?

A good friend of mine gave me as a welcome-back-to-the-campus present, a Wong Kar-Wai DVD (he knows he's my favorite director :)), so I started exercising my neuromuscular tissue with a little stream of cinematographic metaphors.

For those of you familiar with Wong Kar-Wai and Pedro Almodovar, I have to point out a slight soundtrack resemblance between the waterfall slow-motion scene in the Asian film and the guitarist scene in the Spanish one.

Have fun bathing your brain in tolerance with the help of the beautiful Happy Together!

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The things we try, to make a change

Chained Seagulls
Morning breeze on planet’s face
So blue once,
So warm now,
So sad for us.
With ink from depths ,
Covered all over,
The sea’s inhabitants
Cold rocks populated with their corpses.
Guilt?…mostly none.
Anyone? Something? Now!

Through clouds of dust
In chains of smog
Fly the once that were free…once.


Copyright © 2007 Luminita Stoica



Here's a little web page that provides the necessary lyrics for the opportune occasion...including some of my own work www.poetrysoup.com

Enjoy the poetry!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

...time

Fix here ye overdated spheres
That wing the restless foot of time.
(John Milton-Fix here)


All I hear lately is people (including myself) complaining about the lack of time or that time moves too fast etc.. Everybody has to check their schedule in order to have a cup of coffee with an old friend. We depend upon the the mighty watch, the all-powerful clock, our agenda, to-do-list etc.
It seems to me that we try more and more to became computers more than we seek their help.
Nobody has enough time so...they blame the planet :).

The Earth has four types of movements: its own axis moves once every 26000 years, around its own axis in 23 hours and 56 minutes, around the sun in 365 days and aprox 6 hours and around the Milky Way along with the whole Solar System.
Our planet has been moving exactly like this for thousands of years, the Earth doesn't suddenly move faster, so the whole time passes faster than 10 years ago excuse is groundless.
Time seems to pass faster as we grow older because our brains accumulate more and more information as we advance in life, resulting to the slowing down of several processes which took less time to accomplish when we were younger.

Our brains are actually like computers, the more programs you put in them, the less usable space you have; some programs may slow the computer down, programs like: smoking, drinking large amounts of alcohol, living in a polluted environment (air pollution, noise pollution), sleepless nights etc..

Therefore we have less and less time because we have more and more to do with the same capacity...the sad thing is that we cannot easily upgrade our memory.


But enough about the genetic incompetence of human beings, here's a little film that will make you think about something else than the cruel time-free-less life that we all have to face...

Ladies and gentlemen, the cassic, number two on the Americans' list of all time favorite movies:

To kill a Mockingbird



Monday, October 8, 2007

Is there such a thing as BAD LUCK?

In Romanian we don't have an expression quite similar to the one in the title. Let's think about it for a little bit. Bad Luck can be translated through "ghinion", Good Luck through "noroc", but just, plain old Luck can be translated as "noroc" too, but the meaning heads more to the idea of faith, destiny.
So, to recap the, Luck is sort of a given thing, you can even consider it the sum of energies that surround a person all his/her life and if we pick a certain moment in the time of that person's life, than the Luck classifies itself in either Good or Bad, it all comes down to "Do you feel lucky, punk?...Do you?" :D. As it seems, Lucky is the adjective from Luck, but in all he situations it is used (currently), it has a direct link to the expression Good Luck, because being Lucky means that you have Good Luck :), it never means that you might, sometimes, have Bad Luck.

Why this rattling about Luck? Because, as it seems, lately I'm running very low on it, Good Luck that is.

Last night, when yet another bunch of actions went totally wrong, I had a revelation (not a religious one, just a plain awakening), the strange thing is, I don't know exactly what triggered this or what it was about, but suddenly the problems I am still facing kind of faded away (NO...I didn't smoke pot!).

If I were lucky every single moment of my life, how could I enjoy every single moment of it?

Here's a film I saw when I was a kid about the very theme in this post.
If you can find it, enjoy it!...if you can't...I'm sure you can live perfectly well even without it ;).



...just my luck, I can't find it. Sorry! The Romanian translation for it was "Norocosi cu ghinion", it's a French film. If I'm lucky enough to track it down this week, then you're in luck.


Best of luck to you! :D


PS: The film was made before 1990, so Le Boulet that came out on DVD isn't the right one.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Back to Romania

After three flights with a little, a bit and a lot of turbulence, I finally made it home. From the first moments of my time back in Romania I've sadly noticed the striking difference between the American client service and the Romanian one.

I left a "Hello! How are you this morning? How may I help you?" for a "Miscati-va si voi mai repede cu bagajele ale!"("Move faster with that luggage!"), said by a very polite Otopeni employee at the same airport.

What can I say?!... when it comes to the behavior of tellers and any other kind of public functionaries , the American system kicks the Romanian system's ass (*it's a private blog and I can use any kind of language I see fit to use :D).

The things I haven't missed in Romania:...everything except my family, my friends and my pets, so I figured out that I can live anywhere in the world that's habitable, as long as I have the people I like and love with me and I can even live without them...but not for very long.

I went to the USA with 7 friends, I came back from the USA with loads more.
On our big trip on the West Coast we traveled over 2300 miles (2300*1.609344Km=3701.4912Km) and we visited: San Francisco (If I ever had a sh** load of money, I would surely move to SF...it's the most beautiful city I have ever set foot in.), Alcatraz (the famous prison of Al Capone), San Jose, Monterey(there is a beautiful aquarium there), Santa Barbara (where they have a Zoo that recreates the natural habitat of the animals so they feel like home; the facility is made only with the help of donations), Los Angeles (where we visited Hollywood with the Walk of Fame, Disneyland - "Where all your dreams come true..." and Long Beach), Las Vegas (the city that never sleeps, the city of kitsch opulence, the city of fake Venice and casinos), Hoover Dam, Yosemite Park and the breathtaking West Coast shore, where the Pacific Ocean mesmerizes you.

The West Coast has been a fantastic place to spend our summer and I can honestly say that this has been the best vacation ever.

Have a great beginning of the new school year!Hopefully you will not face the cruel bureaucracy I had to fight with in order to get my dorm room.

For those I left in the USA: I'll miss you guys a lot. Hope you'll come and visit sooner than I expect that to happen.
Joe: Take care, stay safe, don't smoke, dream sweet..the dream-catcher is guarding you for me :)!
Chris: stay away from that bong, keep your head smooth as a baby's bottom :)!
Paypay: keep writing on those walls Logic one, Paypay the dawn, but don't get caught :).


Here's a glimpse of what we visited: