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Writing about the voting experience would be way too uninteresting even for me, especially since it was straightforward and uneventful, so rather than doing just that, I’ll be telling you about how the voting went, some food I bought and my “participation” in Doors Open Toronto 2014.

This is an (Austro?-)German movie shortlisted for the Foreign Oscar and filmed in Bucharest. It’s great and rated 7.6 on IMDB, with a Metascore of 93. It is also remarkably warm and positive toward Romania.

Whenever I talk to Romanians who want to come to Canada and I answer questions, I always end up being a bit upset. I find that people ask me too many simple questions they could answer themselves with Google and too few of the “important” questions. Maybe there’s a guru hiding inside of me, and here’s where I set him free.

I recently read a longer article on Bloomberg about Romania and its lagging infrastructure - more specifically, roads and highways. Much to my surprise, all that I was reading on other blogs (or hearing from my relatives) was described and explained as facts. (blmbrg-cows) 

It’s been a while since we haven’t talked about poverty in Romania and solutions. A recent “debate” caused by an over-the-top article on not giving money to the poor gives us a chance to look at it again and also address our reticence with BDSM practices.

A while back, I was having an argument (well, it’s more like I was trying to have a conversation with my designated troll, banned since) about the downside of population decline (PD). He demanded to know why is it bad (which is what I was trying to say) and I thought I provided some studies, but while searching, I was unsatisfied with the quality of the studies I had found. (The title term refers mostly to economy (i.e., population drops below the level required to carry the economy or more specifically old age pensions) whereas PD refers to demographics.) Since then, I’ve found a bit more so here it is.

The stuff I haven't told you yet about Anaughtia (see previous and still unfinished, at this time, article) is on my mind, fighting its way into a sequel. But it will be a while. There are other stories for other blogs that also searching for a way out of my head. Until then, a somewhat easier subject, on Sweden.

While writing about Jihadi Jay Abdo, I had started writing about foreigners who study in Romania and half-way through I realized that this deserves a separate article. I had previously assumed (nature) that the Romanian prime-minister’s (Ponta) many scandals, some centered around his plagiarizing of his doctoral thesis will taint Romanian education and significantly decrease its appeal. Further investigation revealed that many are still interested, although it is hard to determine to what extent the scandals have caused the Romanian tuition fees to be the lowest in Europe, or that is due to other market forces. As usual, the links are listed at the end.

My resolve to stop speaking about the difference between Roma / Gypsies and Romanians was recently shaken by an Irish couple, one of whom had a Roma sister adopted from Romania.

I hesitated for one day before writing this article and telling you this story. Maybe that's cuz here in Canada we went back to regular time, "losing" one hour.

Hotnews has previously interviewed Romanian diaspora people, which we covered, and we have also been profiling others in the diaspora ourselves. This interview is somewhat new in that the interviewee is "returned" - and we expect to be many more like him in the coming years.

A while back I had an overseas guest misbehaving. I had invited her for a longer stay in Canada but it turned out she had difficulties living without regular fights. I offered to make a reservation at a hostel and cover her costs at a hostel for the rest of her stay but she refused and I was eventually bribed to give in due to my membership affiliation.