It's Tuesday. The 28th.

As Unexpected As Last Weekend

Find of the Week

Presenting: Derren Brown's Cold Reading [sorry for not having been able to embed the video, it's just not an option; but do bear with it till the end for maximum effects]
and: Derren Brown's use of Hypnotism [incredibly funny, btw]

Thank you, sister! ;)

I, Nomad & the Social Bubble

Just as last week seemed to be all about socialising, last weekend was 2010's 2nd weekend coinciding with my 2nd weekend at someone else's place. There's a bunch of stuff to be appreciated about this and also a few notes of that-which-needs-improvement.
Firstly, the good stuff. Moving around and hanging out with others is as enjoyable as can be for me at this point in time, and I appreciate it loads! I didn't get such levels of interaction in a while and the variety, levels and depths in which they come call for this note of appreciation: Thank you, All, friends, family, former colleagues and house mates! A sizeable part of my wistfulness's now been quenched.
What's more, being a nomad [or should I have written 'The Nomad' instead?] rocks! At least for the vast majority of the time. It's getting as close as it gets to people's daily lives and their streams of discourse, to their essence and way of being, in an increasingly un-mediated manner [time-wise]: Gotta love it!

But there are drawbacks to this. Other than the obvious home-based comfort etcetera, some very specific one which I've experienced over the last couple of days.
That's the absurdity related to the RDS.Net's policy of not only restricting home users' access via their [paid!] home wired network connections' pass-wording and generally encoding [to what ado?] but also not supporting non-Windows non-Mac OSs via their support call centre - such as yours faithfully's Ubuntu. Excuse me?! Why freely push away potential customers when you might try attracting them? And why have such a restrictive policy to start with? If the home user is already paying for your service, shouldn't the said service be provided independently of the home user's OS?

FYI, this is not just a rant, it's a rant-with-a-context-and-a-ramification: RDS managed to ruin my weekend's plans. Boo! What's more, this did drive me to blankly starring at the telly for hours and I'm yet to be convinced that this is the better option. By consequent, all of the work-to-be-done during the weekend is now to be rescheduled - which will be [unwillingly?] pulling me out of the social bubble for awhile. Consider yourselves warned.

Dear Mr. Neagu Djuvara, Thank You

The first and most easily discernible thank you is for the storytelling: being a storytelling aficionado since I know myself, I need to be grateful and express my appreciation on this level: Mr. Neagu Djuvara is an amazing storyteller, and I thank him for it. I've seen his words but, most importantly, I've heard them: I've heard their intonation, their fluency, their subtle notes - they are storytelling in form and content, a harmony of meanings.

The second layer in this thank you note is for who he is and all the implicit along the explicit that comes along his presence.

And the third is a very particular one - which makes it even more special: this is to thank you for voicing out loud on the Romanian National Television that which I only have the chance to tell to my friends, the opinion that the necessary condition for Romania's real change of attitude rests with the establishment of an independent tribunal invested to judge communist and post-communist crimes. The opinion that as long as impunity will continue to be the rule rather than the exception, only sadness and hurt can come about. Of course, Mr. Neagu Djuvara had phrased it differently - but I am his most grateful fan still.