Showing posts with label romi. Show all posts

#atatsaputut: As busy as one gets, occasionally there is the old "something wrong on the internets" feeling, and that was triggered by this Deutsche Welle free documentary about Romanian Roma kids begging on the streets of Paris as well as in the Parisian Metro (subway / tube) and how the French and Romanian authorities are dealing with it. Ca de obicei, versiunea in romana a acestui articol pe FataCarte.

It's not a lot, but “atat s-a putut”.

Our favorite former SF author, CTP, is back with another seemingly antiziganist or racist controversy, again on former PM and current PSD candidate for president, Dancila. He made fun of her family name etymology (likely Romani or Gypsy) and an anti-discrimination group / person entered the fray.

The most important debating tournament in Romania took place at the “Mihai Viteazu” high-school and the reporter summarized a debate with a BIRT on whether the Romanian government should provide reparations to the Roma community for the Holocaust. This is worth a discussion.

While I am naturally a bit upset by the multiple levels of irony in this story, I have to admit I'm also quite irritated and disappointed. It appears that the German police has actively engaged in ethnic profiling at the Saxony Highfield festival, reported in the German press as "racial profiling", most likely because of the Gypsy/Roma/Romanian Confusion. Let us consider this news together with a few more concerning the diaspora.

@Simona_Halep’s win is an amazing victory and an event we’ll be remembering and talking about at least until her next Grand Slam.  Sadly, it was only hours before all those hungry to for publicity started to throw shade, claim ownership and speculate it for their own nefarious ends.

A relatively recent tragic murder and Munchausen by proxy case is a pretext to look at how Romani / Gypsy / Roma people are perceived, the guilt of their children and mob mentality.

A friend of mine published an article in medium on communism and entrepreneurship (ana-medium) and Aferim!, a movie a cousin of mine was involved in producing has hit the theatres, and I feel a debt of honour to write about each one. So hard to stay focused and write meaningfully is. 

Blegoo, previously profiled and published here, took some time off from shovelling to write an article for this blog, as a guest. I’m publishing it here as encouragement (longer version), with the spelling mistakes left uncorrected but listed at the end, and also detailing there the formatting work I (still) had to do.

Not brown as a result of my trip to Cuba, but rather as a state of mind.

More than two years have passed since my last Poc-Rrrom (III) and today, inspired by a story I've just read, I've decided I'll go through with this one.

The wall is a symbol. In Romania, it separates Romanian Roma who are dark-skinned from Romanian Roma who are (slightly) whiter. Read this while listening to Pink Floyd’s full album (live) or just another brick.

I’ve two heavy things on my mind right now, and unlike WhatsApp frustrations, I don't think I'll be able to balance them with some happier, care-free thoughts. The second part of the title was inspired by a comment left by Blegoo about a year ago.

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 have a ton of things to do so that I can leave. However, part of the preparation is to look through local stuff and one such thing is this. The theft of a tablet in a small town, used subsequently to publish photos of the new owner, is a good opportunity to explore questions about policing, bias, antiziganism / racism and herd mentality.

Now that the European results are known and Euroscepticism discussed, after a short detour through Canadian visas for Romanians, we will finally take a look at the Romanian politics.

Today I met another European woman. Originally from Spain, she told me she worked in the Czech Republic for a while as a translator. Upon learning I'm Romanian, she also felt the need to share with me that there were "a lot of Romanians" in the Czech Republic who wanted to come to Canada but couldn't, because there is no visa treaty. When I told her that there were some problems here with Czech Roma getting visa through fraud and the visa had been suspended, her reaction was to remove her Czech work experience from her resume, out of fear that “Czechs now had a bad name.”

I continue to struggle to express my frustrations with the status quo while also presenting the election results. Here I'll start with the facts, hoping that the rest will transpire effortlessly.

It is almost painful to discuss the election results, chiefly because nothing is unexpected, most voters see a completely different reality than I do (or, if you will, they see the same thing but interpret it differently) and there is no way I can ever bridge this gap. Not only that, but it's virtually impossible to do so, even if I tried. I gave up trying long ago.

A rather popular essay these days is Don't date a girl who travels (link in Sources). Some would use the word "viral" but I'm a mysophobe (aka germaphob) when it comes to travel.

By the time this article is published, I might not be in a situation to reply to comments right away. Still, not long ago I had a(nother) conversation with Blegoo and, visiting his blog, I’ve found some interesting news I had missed. This led me, for a brief moment, to question my love for Netherlands.

There's been a lot of hoopla about horses and Romania lately. Let's summarize it.