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@BAndreescu_ (#BiancaAndreescu, ofc) catapulted herself so fast to stardom that I am having difficulties forming a mental picture of her. And so are most of her new fans, attracted to her rising star like loving insects to the blinding light. I’ll be giving you 3 reasons, not counting the intro, but if you can only remember / have time for one, remember creative visualization.

The title means “Romanians vote anticorruption”, but then I realized that Romanians know what happened, it’s foreigners who might be more interested in what I have to say about it. I wish I could write a celebratory article, but I can't. Most Romanians who lined up seem to think that they are voting against corruption, but have they really?

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.

I am beginning to see the limits of my enforced-positivity in terms of absorbing and interpreting the current political events. Yet the political situation in Romania is remarkably similar to what’s happening in USA.

I have, in the past, dedicated ample space and time to the Romanian elections. Lately, I’m starting to get a feeling of futility. It’s a widespread disease.

It's a sad day for Ioan Pop, his family, and Romanian Christian Orthodoxy in general, but on the bright side, the abused women are finally getting some closure and Ioan Pop won’t have a chance to repeat his weird brand of sexual religiosity. As usual, I am not content with only reporting on the news; I have a few other things to say.

A recent Op-Ed in New York Times seems to have caused a fair amount of consternation in both Romania as well as among my diaspora friends. Ion could equally be Ion Iliescu, recently green-lighted to be re-investigated in the “Mineriada” file, Adrian Nastase, the suicidal former premier and failed presidential candidate who had become the first test case of prosecutorial overreach in the case of an elite aparatchik, or even Patrick Basham, not afraid to confront the warm, fuzzy racism/scepticism/antiziganism-fuelled consensus that Romania is “doing something”.

There are two subjects that seem to dominate the Romanian public sphere (I would say blogo.ro-oaie, but that's defunct): the religion choice in schools and the New York Times Op-Ed on corruption in Romania. I’m very tempted to make a nice hot stew out of both, but I’ll try to keep each to its own article.

One question I keep getting on this blog despite having answered it more than once is why did I start it. Since I keep getting it, there's a good chance that the answers given so far have been unsatisfying (or invisible to the reader). So here's another attempt at an explanation especially now that even the Ontario Legislature has observed Romania’s National Day and BI thought of coming up with this challenge (i.e., why are you proud of being part of the blogo.ro-oaie).

After #yeslavot let’s see who won and why..

As I'm starting this article, there's a ton of things I want to talk about, and I'll be lucky if I have the time to get into 2 of them. First, Simona Halep's amazing win against Serena Williams, then I'd like to talk about Romanian accomplishments, education, verbal aggression, debating skills, and Sfinx / Dan Andrei Aldea. Let's see how far I manage to get.

This could very well be a paid post, but it's not (unless you consider a free concert and a couple of Pepsi bottles as 'payment'). I was just passing by their tent and the music caught my ear; I enjoyed it while watching a cover of Talking Heads (Psycho Killer). All in all, a great opportunity to reminisce on what Pepsi meant in my childhood.

Discussing the tragedy is inescapable. I had started doing this a few days ago, focusing mostly on Andrei Anghel, but didn’t have the time to say all that I wanted to say, which is why I’m continuing here.

I don't how much I will end up writing and whether or not I will password-protect part of it - I just know that I do. If it’s not obvious, the title makes reference to a movie about mother-daughter love with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson (clips: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

I recently indulged in a counselling experience on Facebook and I thought I might share with you part of it.

For the longest time I've been meaning to write an article about how youth is not a virtue in itself, but a time when you're actually pretty dumb, and though in your older age you might look back with regret, that does not (or should not) make youngsters gods.

A while back, I had started a series dedicated to poetry. I called it poezia de marti or Tuesday Poem, but it wasn't long lived. Let's try again.

Only recently have I discovered the "Superscrieri Prizes" and I thought I share it with you – it’s quite interesting.

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.

I'm not sure how and why I ended up watching two movies in one evening, but I did. Maybe it was a need to procrastinate, maybe it was the "monster storm" that shut down New York and was raging outside.