The examination period is oveeeeeerrrrrrr

My dear reader,

My last exam is over, the whole examination period is over...for me, for those of you who still have exams: Good Luck! and remember, studying all your courses the night before the exam doesn't always pay off, I do not recommend it, although it kind of worked for me...so far.

Boy, the word "exam" has been said a lot in the last phrase :). Anyway, did you ever feel like you're floating, not the proverbial floating on clouds when you're happy, I mean floating as in "I have no clue what I'm going to do with my life or even where to begin in getting the clue"?

Some people have it all planned out, I don't, so, just to spite me, faith, karma, the most probable universe of all the possible ones or whatever entity exits out there put me in the following situation a few weeks ago: I was accused that I didn't have a plan or even "a fine outline" about my trip to the States - would I have struggled 2 months to get there hadn't I had a "fine outline"? - and for that information I flew over 7000 miles. Now I know that I might not be the most organized or, for that matter, sane person in the world, but I do know that pointing fingers has never helped or even smoothen a situation.

When your friends or relatives or your loved ones (yes, relatives aren't necessarily loved ones, I bet you have an aunt or an uncle that you hate or at least don't like to be around) say that they're lost, you should be kind and if you have nothing constructive to say, don't say anything at all and give them a pat on the back or a hug, if you can, because that helps more than any smug remark could ever do.

Don't forget to be kind.

Because I'm lost and don't know what to start/finish or revise with/in my life I leave this post unfini...

Hell Week and the Beatles

I always seem to underestimate the value of a sweet, fulfilling night's sleep, when you get tucked or self-tuck yourself in bed before 12 o'clock (that's what scientists recommend after studying our specie's usual sleep pattern), you go on and enter dreamland and you wake up in the morning all fresh and ready to start another day :).

Well, this week, I thought, just for laughs, that I would skip night sleep all together...kiddin', not just for laughs, but because, as usual, I left the making of all my school projects for the night before the deadline, ergo, I haven't slept one single night this week.

The great thing about all this is that the week is over, I can finally enjoy the simple, biological pleasure or resting a part of my brain, through the slowing down of body processes.

But enough biology, here's a film that brings the beauty of a lot of the Beatles songs with a twist of XXI century in them.

See for yourselves! Go Across the Universe!





Ah, almost forgot....Have an easy and fun examination period!


Best wishes my dear readers,
Lumi

Poor, poor FBI :))) and a little debate

As it seems, not only average citizens don't have money to pay their phone bills and get cut off from the network, the FBI has the same problem.

Feast your eyes on this FBI blunder.

While we're on a USA related topic, have a gander at this little article, I found the comments of the people who read it especially interesting. Apparently everybody is good at politics and social studies :D; don't get me wrong, as a free person of a democratic country it is sort of a duty to say what you think...and resume to that :).

American Christmas...part 4 (final) - 36 hours on the road

I finally made it our of the Sates. The day I left the sky was clear, the flights weren't canceled and after being super searched at LA International Airport, LAX, I finally boarded on a Boeing 747-400 over the Atlantic.

A funny thing happened to me on the plane. I sat next to a German teenager (9th grade) and her father. After we started talking for a while, she asked me where I was from, so I told her I was from Romania. At that moment she said a most disturbing thing and I quote..."When I think about Romania, Poland and Russia, I think about criminals."...and I replied..."What a coincidence, when I think about Germany, I immediately think about Hitler and the Nazi ", she smiled and said "No, no, no."

After this lovely trip under the influence of the Second World War, I waited for 8 whole hours in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, which I officially hate. I don't have anything particularly against the staff of the airport, or even against the airport itself, I just got so bored of those yellow signs and the announcements in Dutch, made from 5 to 5 minutes, non-stop, for 8 hours.

And after a short delay due to the fact that the plane had ice on its wings, I finally landed on Henri Coanda in Bucharest. Now think about this for a moment: Reno, snow everywhere, airport runway super clear and dry, Amsterdam, foggy and cold, airport runway super clean and dry, Bucharest, snow, airport runway super full of snow and ice...no comment.

To top it all, after they managed to ruin both my big suit cases up to the point where they are unusable and after I've waited about 20 minutes in the cold for my taxi (the taxi drivers at the airport were so nice that they offered to give me a ride to my dorm building for twice the actual current cab fare), I went home in a taxi driven by the only antisemitic person I now know in Romania.

Welcome to your home country Lumi, the place where you land in snow, cab drivers want to rob you and people publicly announce that they want all the USA destroyed and the Jews along with them (same taxi driver)!

Now I'm struggling to overcome the 10 hour time difference and to finish all my school projects before the deadlines. Overall, the trip to the USA was very eventful and pleasant, when I wasn't sick.


Have a great examination period and a fantastic holiday after!


Best of luck to you all,
Lumi

American Christmas...part 3 - Burried in Snow

I'm looking outside and it's snowing like in the fairy tales we use to hear when we were kids. Outside all is covered in snow and if you go out, in about 10 minutes, you become a walking snowman.

As you might have already heard or read, California and Nevada are being hit by a huge snow storm these days. A lot of main streets are closed, you see people with shuffles everywhere, like in a horror film, most of the cars skate even with their chains on, airports are being closed, flights are being canceled, people are freezing and I'm sitting comfortably in my warm and nice room, watching the NFL playoffs (not my choice, it's not only my room :D) and surfing the net.

I should be very worried that I might not be able to arrive in Romania on time, I have a lot of projects to finish and they're not even started yet...but no, worrying is the farthest thing from my mind at the moment, I guess I'm kind of mesmerized by what's happening around me...I'm stuck in the USA in the middle of a snow storm :).

If you want to have an idea of what's going on here, just look outside your window, because I know that Romania doesn't have an easier fate.

American Christmas...part 2 - A Sick Christmas

Well, don't you kind of think that life's kicking you in the ass for apparently no good reason, when you fly 7000 miles to spend Christmas with your friends and you get sick for like a week and you don't get to enjoy anything?

I must have done some horrible things in my life to deserve such a lousy Christmas. I was literally in bed with the phone in my hand, ready to call 911 at any moment, because the pain was too much for me. That's how all of the 2007 Christmas pretty much sums up.

I was supposed to do a lot of things, meet with a lot of people, travel, enjoy the scenery, instead I was in bed, crying from the pain, alone in the house, because the healthy people I'm staying with were doing whatever normal, healthy people do for Christmas in this part of the world.

Anyway, I am now up and kicking, no more back or pancreas or kidney pain, no more coughing, no more huge amounts of tea or fist-fulls of pills. I am alive.

You never get to appreciate your well-being until after you have felt the worst. I am so glad that the pain is gone and I can enjoy the simple things I took for granted, like walking through the snow and taking photos and sitting at Pizza Hut, having some nice pieces of apple pie and checking up on my e-mails.

I wish all of you a Healthy and Extremely Pleasant New Year!


Best wishes,
Lumi

American Christmas...part 1 - The Departure

Well, little I knew that the visa part was going to be the easiest and less expensive of them all, I would have worried less prior to the interview, by doing that I would have saved myself loads of precious neurons and my skin would have had less wrinkles, but noooo, I had to worry.

Here's a free piece of advice, which I promised myself I would take every time I have something hard to do, but I somehow almost always forget about it...DO NOT WORRY! WORRYING DOES NOT DO ONE GOOD THING FOR YOU. On the contrary, it makes your body anxious, it decreases the power of concentration, it clouds your judgment and it makes you annoying as hell to those around you, trust me, I've been there.

Back to the main topic, namely, my departure, I got my plane ticket (I kind of made a huge hole in the family budget because of that, but I love my parents and some day, I will pay them back, with interest), I got myself a medical and luggage insurance. NEVER LEAVE THE COUNTRY WITHOUT ONE!.

It doesn't cost a lot and it covers a lot of expenses in case of baggage loss, broken arms - I am going to ski after all :D -, flight delays and much more. You can get the travel insurance at any travel agency or insurance firm or in other places that I don't know about yet.

I'm going to leave this Saturday and apparently I'm going to be stuck in two airports about 9 hours in total...that should be fun, all alone in Amsterdam and LA, with no time and no money to visit anything in the cities, 'cause the airports are too far from the airports :)...but I don't want to complain, after all, after about 24 hours straight on the road, I will have to drive about an hour and a half to the place I'll be staying at. I can't wait for the actual travel time to be over and have some fun in a ten-hour-time-difference-from-Romania-zone.

Imagine, although my trip is about 24 hours long, I'll be leaving Romania on the 15th and arrive in the States on the 15th, same day, different continents.

And on a trip related subject, but another kind of trip, namely the carrier trip in our life, for those of you who live and breathe for PR and for those who have the courage to start their own business, in case you haven't heard about it yet, there's a book called "Guerrilla PR", written by Michael Levine. Read it and you won't regret one page; it's easy and fun to read and it has great advice on how to make your own PR campaigns without a lot of money.

I recommend that you read it in English though, because as I have noticed, translations seem to loose some of the charm of the writing and it would be ashame not to benefit from all that this book has to offer.

My next post is probably going to be from the States or from one of the airports on the way, since I'll have so much waiting time on my hands.


Take care of your budgets and don't fall in the holiday-retail-trap!


Best wishes,
Lumi