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Reciteam recent povestea vietii lui Ion Rimaru, teroarea anilor '70 si ramaneam uimit cum perceptiile populatiei generale si modul de a gandi cu "fa ceva!" au ramas practic neschimbate, gasindu-si mai nou expresie in teatrul de securitate. Criminalii se schimba, prostia vulgului, nu. Asta pe langa prima victima din serialul de familie, care se numea Elena Udrea.

A couple of years back I found myself in the Boston airport, meeting face to face Ana Birchall, whom I have previously featured on this blog. It was not a meeting organized by our respective secretaries, but it was nonetheless interesting for me.

I recently discovered a new and interesting blog. I'll present an enlightening article.

Cateva stiri despre ce se mai intampla p-aici si nu numai. Sunt multe si-mbarligate, si-s cam toate din presa streina. Se da si bere!

I’m not a nationalist and though I wish my Romanian friends “La Multi Ani” for our national holiday, a small part of me is uneasy, because nationalism means association with people who share your ethnic background, some good, some bad, but in our case (and, of course, excepting those I know personally), mostly bad.

It recently occurred to me that in my article about the school uniform, I forgot to mention perhaps its best known and most hated feature: the number every student was supposed to wear on their uniform. It’s much like what students wear these days of their own accord: Abercrombie, Adidas, Parasuco, Lululemon, Joe Fresh, Smythe, Guess, but it also had a supposedly unique number and it was compulsory.

I just learned about two Romanian-Canadian people, mother and daughter Ana Constantin and Lisa Maria Paun being banned for life by Air Canada and left stranded without proper notice. This is not discrimination, just incredibly poor customer service and it’s an issue almost all of us have to deal with every time we fly.

In a recent (semi-)transatlantic flight, while reading the airline magazine, I stumbled upon a bit on courage and machismo, which contrasted sharply with Andre Gide’s preface to an Antoine de Saint-Exupery (you know, the guy who wrote Le Petit Prince) book I was also (re)-reading. Let me present it for you.

A more recent politico-artistico-philosophical scandal, far more interesting to me but, apparently, less interesting to the Romanian public, is the open conflict between Andrei Plesu, my favourite philosesseist, and the PSD cultural wing.

Unlike most of my Romanian friends, who are angered by the details of the 112/police (EMS) response to Alexandra Macesanu’s increasingly desperate calls, I am far more upset by police colonel, university professor and forensic psychologist Tudorel Badea Butoi-Severin and the inconsequential censure by CNCD following his deeply offensive, misogynistic, victim-blaming comments. I believe that the hostility and inadequacy of the police response is rooted in the attitude that Prof Butoi has expressed and this bigotry is the root cause of police inaction and incompetence.

Extreme division in the public opinion is not new and is not common only to Romania. What is special about our situation is how ludicrous and paranoid their claims are. In this article commenced long ago, we look at how “tunnel vision” and “excessive focus” ruins politics, and implicitly, electorates who fail to censor the politicians who succumb to it.

I suspect there is a 'TestVote' application for each member country of the EU. I decided to follow my own recommendation from Romanian MEP elections in Toronto and go through this, just before voting. Since there is very likely an English one in existence, and the English vote has already concluded, this article has the questions left in original, in Romanian.