Thursday, September 27, 2007

back to RO day 26 (Bucuresti)

gps: Compartimentul verificare si validare cheltuieli, OI POS DRU, MEdCT (a.k.a. camera 6)
working on: the Framework Document for Implementing the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013, draft of August 2007
flavour: cereal & milk

last couple of weeks:
Mon, 17.09: back to Bucharest
Tue, 18.09: back to work at the MoERY
Wed, 19.09: on the way to the Neptun seaside training
Thu, 20.09 - Mon, 24.09: Monitoring Units training & discussions (incl. the weekend)
Mon, 24.09: on the way back to Bucharest
Tue, 25.09: running up & down the Ministry's hallways to get my return to work approved
Wed, 26.09: request approved & Bogdan's visit to Bucharest (my sister's friend)

currently: work updates on relevant documents, corrections & questions
on my mind: Amsterdam, friends, emails, resume updating, apps, the flat here, the weekend, administrative (read: bureaucratic) procedures
I'm sleepy!!!

Monday, September 10, 2007


So this is the book I've just finished reading this evening. A great travel companion and my birthday present this year, from Jan. It's surprising that I only finished it now, since reading it has been very fulfilling, but the reason for having taken a bit longer has been my tiredness and unpreparedness for lecture and not the quality of the writing.

Here's what the book presents us with: "Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and of his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends." - taken from here (while the picture is taken from here).

But the book is so much more than this, I think. It's obviously about treasuring one's roots but also about doing it in a semi-detached funny semi-adult manner - and this rocks!
Now complement this with Mum's search of last night for Uni photos for her 30th reunion this Friday and the incidental running into my own pictures (which seem to be a lifetime old) and there's a complete image of certain years' melancholy. Yet by the end of the day, the question stays: What have we learned here? This time, I can't answer.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

back to RO Day 4 (Iasi)

the passage of time feels somewhat different here.
sleeping is good.
I just wish it wouldn't rain like in NL (Must confess I have a strong conviction that the weather's been following me here)
9 more days of holidays (or about this long)