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Duolingo (invite) sent me a new report placing me in top 1% users, which is a great opportunity to once again look at Romanian radio drama or theatre or teatru radiofonic. Traducere in romana in curand pe pagina de fatacarte Zamolxis.

There are many ways, these days, to celebrate April Fools Day. I'm going to share with you a James Joyce poem along with the story of having sent it. (If you’re looking for a more conventional April Fools celebration, check out 2009.)

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.

I haven’t been able to find many movies with by Romanians or about Romanians at TIFF 19 (Toronto International Film Festival) I thought I mention them before the Festival is over.

I recently learned some interesting facts from a follow-up (by a Romanian news outfit) on the “Romanian Government attack” on the corrupt Adamescu family who is “not showing off” and it reminds me of a joke with Ivan, the American Spy.

When friends ask me about immigrating to Canada, my first answer is always DON’T!. However, though I’ve already written about this in the past, I have yet do so in English, so I’ll do so here, especially since yesterday I answered another reader.

About two months ago, Maftei, my math teacher in high school, has passed away (fb-maftei). I felt sorry, and that’s why the expression he used to invite us to the blackboard (“iesi pe straße” or “come out on the straße/street”) found its way in the title of this article, which is about the high-school physics teacher Sever Iosif Georgescu and his (or his kids’?) attempts to erase the negative events of his past. This is the third installment in the Georgescu, Iosif SEVER saga:

I have meant to write at length on this individual and, as expected, not only that reality caught up with me, but it left me far behind. I never expected for things to go this far, which is why I am revisiting it now.

Despite having better things to do and write about, a recent article published by Deutsche Welle annoyed me enough to get me to write about the non-debate happening in USA and discuss abortion.

The fatalities count has gone North of 30, and I try to parse all the data, info and opinions that are squirting on the Internet much like the absent fire extinguishers should have in the infernal basement.

I was planning to go out tonight, and on my way out, my eyes fell on a headline: "Romanian nightclub blast kills 25". By the time I looked it up online, the casualties had gone to 26. And memories of a few nights in Bucharest came back.

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.

Though it may be unfair to extend the failure of the Romanian National Press Agency (Agerpres) and the Romanian External Affairs Ministry to an entire nation, let us not forget that part of their job is to represent the country. The recent faux-pas, confusing the French contours with the German one in a one-print commemorative brochure is, unfortunately, indicative of the dilettantism that has taken over the Romanian government.

Although I have written briefly about progressive rock, I shied away thus far from Romanian progressive rock. That's rather odd, considering that the apogee of that genre in Romania is universally considered to be the eponymous Zalmoxe by Sfinx, released (more like “censored”) in 1978.

The initial motivation in starting this blog was telling a number of "origin" stories. Some I have already told, some I left for later, but for the most part, telling these stories is the main raison d'etre for this collection of characters (i.e., letters, numbers and strange people – the constituent parts of this blog). One of them is the story of my last year or so in Romania, a time when I lived on my own in my Drumul Taberei / Favorit apartment.

"Little birds" is the English mot-a-mot translation of bijboace, clampacioace, fofoloance. Just the other day, a Latvian friend visited me and brought me as a gift some candy from her native country. And as she explained laughing and blushing, the candy name had a dual meaning.

Though inordinate, this childhood memory was quite far from being an extraordinary event, and as such, I wasn't going to write about it. But a recent, excellent article but this quasi-famous disciple of an even more famous philosopher caused me to reconsider and share this story with you.

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.”

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.

Recently, the "superwritings 2013" prizes were announced. I paid a tip of the hat to the 2012 winners, so this time I’m doing it again. The winning texts are a very clear picture of what passes as great journalism in Romania and are quite compelling in their own right.