bits&thoughts

wish jar

2008-10-07T12:06:00.003+03:00

i don't think there's any doubt on the reasons why i fell completely in love with keri smith's "wish jar". it's cute, it's inspirational, and it's the kind of thing that simply makes you drop whatever it is that you are doing and run out into the world, explore it in minor detail, and exploit that every detail in as playful ways as possible.

lego

2008-10-04T12:08:00.006+03:00

I fell in love with Lego when I was in primary school. I had (and still have, actually) a neighbor (who was also my desk-mate and play-buddy) who had loads of Lego pieces. They were all mixed together and deposited in shoe boxes and we’d get them out of the wardrobe and we’d spend hours and hours building whatever our vivid imagination considered appropriate. (photo below from here, the creation of brick artist Nathan Sawaya)

As childhood gaming faded away and the responsibility of endless secondary school homework took over most of our spare time, we’d often find ourselves in unfortunate circumstances of Math exercises and Geography lessons eroding our relationship with the Lego pieces.

This way, by the time we reached 14, the amazing pieces that challenged our imagination were long forgotten. And they stayed that way until last week, when I spent quite some hours evaluating items in the children’s department of a big retail store.

The long hours of close examination made me draw two main conclusions.

One (and I know I’ve thought about this before, but it just seemed so much more striking): it really is no wonder that kids are getting smarter and smarter, and that’s not exclusively due to computers. It also has a lot to do with the intriguing games one can find nowadays in children’s stores. Games that invite you to discover the world in its various forms and aspects, games that stimulate your ability to form complex constructions and structures, games that challenge your imagination and invite you to make the most out of your creativity. Games that have been developed by physics institutes and art labs and all sorts of other pretentious structures.

Two: my passion for using Lego bricks is slowly finding its way back into my life. Therefore, I couldn’t help buying myself a great Ferrari Lego from the Racers collection, which was followed by several Bionicle acquisitions. And I keep on finding reasons to go check out the Lego shelves almost daily. Anyway.

The thing is that reexamining my own Lego memories obviously made me curious in some different ways: am I the only Lego nostalgic around? was Lego a significant part in more nineties childhoods? are there other 20+ Romanians who have found the joy of Lego once again? or some who’ve never lost it ? is there a local community of Lego-builders? and I could go on and on, but I guess the point is made.

Happily, browsing local blogs and forums started answering my questions. As well as revealing some rather neat realities. It seems that many 20+ (and even 30+) guys have great childhood recollections concerning Lego sets, which they’d mix and recombine and use and reuse according to the free will of their imagination. Moreover, discussions around Lego apparently not only wake up memories, but also stimulate the parental instincts of these people, who are pretty much keen to pass on the Lego flame, rituals and secrets to their kids.

One very pleasant surprise was to come across a young guy in Cluj-Napoca, who is a Lego guru and who is making great efforts to build a strong local community of Lego embracers (he set up a Lego forum here, and you also google numerous other topics opened by him on other ro forums). His name is Adrian Florea, and his own creations are interesting and ingenious enough to have brought him several prizes, interviews, as well as an admirable position of Lego ambassador. the photo below is taken from boingboing.

Until I get to reach great Lego achievements, I must also link to an ArtLab research project that used the bricks as a means of expression and exploration.

my new status

2008-10-03T13:02:00.002+03:00

The more days go by, the more convinced I get that I am increasingly fascinated and intrigued by everything connected to people. So it isn’t surprising that I became pretty much addicted to attending all sorts of interesting seminars held within Fundatia Calea Victoriei. It's been an amazingly eyes-opening experience: i gained a completely new perspective on our country and its inhabitans. a perspective i'd never gain, no matter how many advertising researches i'd carry out.

one of the workshops, however, had a particular impact on me. it was an ethnography workshop, introducing some general aspects of traditional life and culture. my mind made a lot of connections, some of my old passionate interests reactivated, and i decided i wanted to dig further on.

So, starting this October, i also am a student in Ethnology (University of Bucharest), as well as hopefully involved in other related stuff. I have no idea where this new thing will take me, but it surely seems like an interesting and challenging path. Especially since the professors that I’ve met so far seem really passionate about sharing their expertise, as well as to listening to our ideas.

am i reading too many comics ?

2008-08-12T21:59:00.002+03:00

i am extremely disappointed by the whole scandal (ro link) around the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. I have spent the last few years trying to make a difference, being part of projects that are aimed at changing the world bit by bit, and i have been blindly hopeful during all this time that a difference can actually be made. By enthusiastic, borderline crazy bunches such as Oricum, Fundatia Calea Victoriei, the Czech Center. Actually, by any enthusiastic, borderline crazy bunch that deeply believes in doing good things and in doing things better. During all this time, i have met a lot of such doers, who have inspired me a great deal and with whom i have worked, regardless of seemingly neverending obstacles. Never once have i doubted the worthiness of these projects, the value of these people and our power to make a statement together and do something about it.

Last night, however, following the whole scandal and reactions, was the first time that i felt completely powerless and mostly worthless. it was for the first time that i stopped and asked myself what i'm doing all this for. would i not be better off simply somewhere else, where normal reason, common sense and average education would make people think twice before jumping to conclusions, before speaking about something they don't know anything about, before judging things and people without having the smallest background that would allow them to actually express an opinion ?

cu neagoe

2008-08-11T21:16:00.001+03:00

tonight, 10pm, Antena 3, a chance to clear the pathetic situation. Go, Cristi ! context and credits for pic here.

iron maiden concert

2008-08-05T00:25:00.004+03:00

Iron Maiden. A band name i can connect so many memories to, it's not even funny...

Bruce Dickinson was right tonight: many of their great songs, songs that i adore, are actually older than i am. And, unfortunately, i cannot say that i have been listening to them ever since i was in my mother's belly. Nope. But sometime, when i was nearly 14 and in the 9th grade (and a folk afficionado, for that matter), i completely accidentally received an mp3 cd that had a lot of "old-school rock and metal", as the title claimed. It contained Slayer, and Judas Priest, and Ac/Dc, and Black Sabbath, and Lep Zep, and Deep Purple, and Samson, and many others. And Iron Maiden. Not many songs: it had Aces High, and Two minutes to midnight, and Bring your daughter to the slaughter, and Run to the hills, and Killers. I really liked the entire cd, and as i listened to it, over and over again, i realised a completely new era of musical taste was taking over my humble self. I loved almost all songs and bands on that cd (i still have a problem with Slayer, though :) ), but Iron Maiden got to me beyond that. I soon found myself puzzled enough to look for anything related to maiden i could find: finding old recordings of some of their songs was a real bliss, and so was catching one of their videos on VH1 rocks or something. I had a personal interpretation of each and every song of theirs i came into contact with, and soon enough not a day went by without me listening to maiden, even though i could not find maiden enthusiasts among my friends or acquaintances in the beginning. the more i collected, the happier i become, in a period when i hardly had internet, there was no youtube, and some bulgarian pirate cds were among the best deals i could find. as soon as i would get my hands on a video live concert, i'd watch it obsessively, and discuss every frame, every fan gesture, every band member move with my friends. i started learning about heavy metal with maiden, i grew up with maiden, i had loads of fun with maiden on the background, i found the person that completely changed my life by talking about maiden.

i know my brief fandom history of 8 years cannot compare to the histories of people who have been listening to maiden and waiting for this concert for nearly 20 years. but well, i only came to life in 1985. back in highschool, seeing maiden live was one of my greatest dreams, but it also seemed completely out of reach, as i had no money to go see them abroad, and the idea of them coming back with bruce as a vocal was also kinda wild. which is why i was waiting for the concert last night as for the concert of my life.

and the concert of my life it was. I have no objective idea about the concert whatsoever. i have no clue whether it was as bloody awesome as i perceived it for people who only seldom (if at all) listened to Maiden before. it was a demonstration of passion and energy, and that would simply give me wings. being able to sing live, together with the band, some of the songs i could absolutely die for, was so liberating and fulfilling i still bear the playlist in the back of my head.

the songs seemed to be coming and going really fast, with Bruce Dickinson playing and jumping around, as well as interacting with the public as the passionate showman he obviously is, with Janick Gers continuously doing tricks, with Steve Harris, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray electrically performing and with Nicko McBrain beating the hell out of those drums. The complex old stage would go through loads of different moods and images, taking us through a great journey around maiden artwork and imagery. The playlist was flawless, with Aces High, Two minutes to midnight, Revelations, Trooper, Wasted Years, The number of the beast, Can i play with madness, Rime of the ancient mariner, Powerslave, Heaven can wait, Run to the hills, Fear of the dark, (obviously) Iron Maiden, and the bonus Moonchild, The Clairvoyant and Hallowed be thy name. It's been great, it's been emotional and it's now yet another great maiden-related memory.

iron maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far

2008-07-31T00:14:00.002+03:00

On August 4th i'm gonna see Iron Maiden live for the first time in my life. The reason i am so excited about the concert is that i realised i will never be as passionate about any other band as i used to be about iron maiden. i had been their passionate fan during all highschool, and quite some time afterwards. albums, bootlegs, live concerts, videos, b sides, artwork, tshirts, you name it, i had it. i knew all lyrics from all their songs (and still know an impressive amount of it). i convinced all my friends to give them a chance. i listened to fear of the dark and dance of death each morning, around 7 a.m. when i crossed cismigiu park on my way to highschool. i have a tremendous amount of memories connected to iron maiden one way or another. and my greatest dream back then obviously was to see them perform live.

until they come, here's a video with two of my favourite guys ever, maiden's vocal bruce dickinson and top gear's jeremy clarkson.

random links of interest

2008-07-29T20:58:00.005+03:00

i have spoken before about how much i enjoy presenting, and one of my goals is to become and actual good presenter (whatever that means). one of the consequences is that i can't have enough of related readings and talks, because i am trying to use more and more platforms and instruments that are completely unrelated to powerpoint. which is why the visual thinkers community gathered by VizThink, and the numerous links i plunged it from the main site have been my brain candy during the last two days. the only thing i now have in mind is how to gather a sort of local community of visual thinkers, because i think it would be nice to meet and share thoughts every now and then.

until i do that, however, i must admit i was pleasantly surprised by powerpointheaven, which basically shows that powerpoint as a medium is not actually as wicked as the people who simply choose to overcrowd it with neverending bullets, charts and templates. just as i was enticed by the simple philosophy (and not only) behind visual thinking company XPLANE: "when you communicate clearly, people understand. when they understand, they make decisions which lead to actions and create results". and i also found interesting the Daniel Rose's idea to create The Global Collaboration Cue Card Project, that gathers visual interpretations of the concept "collaboration" coming from various people around the world.

seriously, now

2008-07-29T20:16:00.003+03:00

some time ago, i read A. Plesu's "Tescani Diary". the reading was enjoyable and thought-provoking, and there were several ideas i particularly embraced. one of them said that "the act of thinking should start by taking a platitude seriously. starting from a platitude is equivalent to starting without a personal idea. the people who have ideas too fast, who have ideas even from the beginning, almost always end up not trully thinking. the key to optimal speculative start-up: not having ideas, but rather obtaining them."

i love the idea of taking a platitude seriously. i work in an environment that cannot work with presumably "general ideas": we fear not being particular enough, so we'd rather invent or fabricate something (a benefit, most of the time), than taking "general ideas" seriously and communicating them differently to people, embracing a new perspective and shading a whole new light on them. and that's a pity: in my opinion, most "general ideas" are general because everybody takes them for granted and nobody actually takes the trouble to go deeper into finding out what these ideas actually mean, what they actually translate into. although showing a brand new meaning of a "general idea" is very impactful and intriguing, because it makes people think: "hey, i never looked at it this way".

pic from here.

personal wrap-up

2008-07-29T19:47:00.004+03:00

i have spent the last few months growing up and developing in many different ways. the blogging gap that i had was thus due to two major causes: on one hand, the fact that i attended a lot of workshops, and worked on a lot of interesting "extra-curricular" projects; on the other hand, the fact that i spent a lot of time thinking about what i do, what i want to do, what i see myself doing with my life. The truth is that i love doing so many different things, i love investigating so many different areas and i find so many places and subjects fascinatingly interesting, that i kinda got stuck in a carousel of emerging decisions. No wonder, since I had to deal with a lot of interesting circumstances, varying from amazing opportunities to pragmatic and rather painful surrenders. Happily, i am surrounded by some amazing people, whose support, ideas and feedback were essential for my mental sanity.

now most things have cleared up in my mind, and i have some trully great plans at least for the near-future. one of my conclusions was that i miss blogging. so here i am, resurrecting this old personal space that will keep on gathering my silly musings.

hammock braindead

2008-05-06T11:32:00.005+03:00

I must admit that the very short but lovely holiday i had last week brought at least a new passion for me: the hammock. I have experienced sleeping outdoors before, in various types of beds and grass, but hammocks are different in a way that i wouldn't have expected. They must be the most relaxing way of enjoying sun and warm weather ever. And because they're so relaxing, i realised u simply cannot read any type of book while endlessly bouncing around, with the sun and friendly wind blows and life actually feeling good and everything. i tried to read "serious" or rather technical stuff, and it was in pure vain.

so i resorted to reading a book i completely accidentally bought. it's called "it's just you, everything's not shit" and is written by steve stack. obviously, such a title would never have attracted me, but sometimes a book does simply cry to be taken from the shelf, and that's pretty much how i ended up buying this one some time ago. this proved to be a wise choice, because the book is really nice and heart-warming. skipping cliches or patronizing pieces of advice, the book simply alphabetically lists common nice things that make our life more beautiful and exciting. the simple things that we often take for granted or forget about, even though acknowledging or remembering them definately makes us smile and droole. As some Amazon reviewer said, the book "manages to delight and inspire without ever resorting to sentimentality". and it's also ocassionally funny, as well as ocassionally filled with interviews from very cool people, such as the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, the inventors of eglu or the man behind librarything. it's so great to find a book that you know will always be enjoyable to flick.

pic from here.

printed storytelling

2008-04-14T16:02:00.004+03:00

I love reading story-books, but i must admit i haven't come across a book that is as beautiful as "The invention of Hugo Cabret" in a long time. And i'm not saying this only because the story itself is interesting, but also because the book is a wonderful combination of impressive visuals and text that complete each other, instead of plainly illustrating each other, as the case with common children's books. Besides, the human touch of the hand-made drawings makes reading this book a very special and cosy experience. If you come across it, you'll surely enjoy it :).

joy of presenting

2008-04-08T16:15:00.006+03:00

i love creating and delivering presentations more and more. especially when two main contexts combine.

First, when the presentation is actually supposed to deliver the work and energy of an entire team, not just of the presenter. therefore, the easiest way to create an energetic presentation is to get everybody engaged and excited about it. to give people an interesting shape to play with, and get them playing. An unusual format, an interesting overall concept, anything that allows people to add their own bits and pieces, to add up to the whole. somebody in the client service might have collected blog posts and flickr sets related to the brand, some creative might have some great skills at editing and remixing mood videos, some designer might have gathered strange fonts and bottle designs...i think the greatest thing is to join all this, let it grow, and constantly have the team connected to the way the presentation is shaping. Then the final presentation will not be delivered by indivuals each presenting his/her own piece of thoughts, but by a bunch of people who are so excited about the idea they've been giving life to, that they'll come with various straight to the point perspectives to shed light on the idea. it's amazing what good vibe during the "making of" a presentation does to the final act of actually delivering it, especially since the final presenting team accumulates energy from all the people involved in the process.

Second, when the audience you're presenting to is very challenging, because they're most likely not be familiar with the idea's conceptual universe. i think it's precious when you have to create such a proper context that everybody gets it, even though you're taking them completely by surprise, telling them stuff they're only vaguely (if at all) familiar with. engaging them in your game, making them relate and contribute themselves to the points you're making, exciting them about your challenges and your ideas is very rewarding to me.

and that's why i am seriously thinking about more and more instruments that would help creating better, more interactive and spectacular presentations.

not really getting friendfeed either

2008-03-31T09:47:00.004+03:00

yesterday i came across a very old post from Nancy Baym, who spoke about "the widgetized self", personal portals that gather billions of widgets which bring the web to the people, instead of people going to billions of different websites. Which i often considered was a good way to deal with the huge ammounts of websites we've all spread our accounts on, a model that is highly unsustainable in the long run, as Nancy said as well.

More and more people dealing with this problem might be the reason why everybody seems to have fallen completely in love with FriendFeed, the new buzz word of web 2.0. Frankly, i don't really get the love around it, because the site seems to me nothing more than a fancy aggregator, which is not really easy to follow or truly helpful to me or even cool-looking or something. Is it so much better than Plaxo Pulse, for example ? Cause at this point i couldn't find its great functionality and i tend to agree with everything that Duncan Riley says about it here.

why so ?

2008-03-30T20:58:00.004+03:00

since i've received the book from a very dear friend, i've recently read james frey's "a million little pieces", the diary of a drug addict fighting his addictions. i pretty much enjoyed frey's style, which was equally fast enough to capture quickly, and tourmenting enough to leave a trace in the mind of the reader.

what i couldn't believe, however, was reading about all the controversies surrounding this book. frey published the book as a memoir book, leading everybody to believe that he was one and the same with the main character of his book. however, at some point, it was revealed that he had augmented some of the incidents in the diary, by describing them at a dimension they never actually had in real life. The public incarceration was taken so far, that in 2006, Frey and publisher Random House, Inc. reached a tentative legal settlement, where readers who felt that they had been defrauded by Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" would be offered a refund.

the reason why i am so puzzled is because whenever reading a memoirs book, i assume that not everything there happened exactly as illustrated in the book, because otherwise it would have seemed more like a newspaper article, than the diary of a person going through a lot. and the reason why i am interested in a memoirs book is because it offers me an insightful perspective of how a certain person perceives his/her life experiences, more than it offers me a very accurate recollection of some episodes in his/her life, which i could maybe access by simply reading a biography written by somebody else. are we supposed to be that offended if a writer inserts some fiction when writing his memoirs ?

saturday morning

2008-03-29T12:18:00.003+02:00

i miss the beginnings of this blog, when i felt good about posting whatever trivia i felt like posting. now with all the new things, nothing seems important or interesting enough to post on the blog: i have flickr, in case i feel like sharing a photo or something, i have facebook to keep in touch with friends and colleagues and all that, vod pod for the selection of videos, twitter for silly thoughts, and so on.

on the other hand, i read less and less blogs, because i started feeling most of them are more likely to waste my time than actually add value to my thinking, intrigue me and provoke me to react or reflect. and despite how much i like wandering around random information, i once again found myself in the old-fashioned situation of being more happy reading structured, interesting books or articles rather than jumping from blog to blog, and getting very little out of them at the end of the day (obviously, that doesn't apply to all of them).

which makes me feel like the blog remained pretty much something big: something i should only update in case i actually have something important to say, something others are pretty much unlikely to read somewhere else. of course, that's stupid. because when i started this blog, i wanted to make it more like a companion in my quest for making something out of planning.

so this post is solely about this morning, and it's pretty much a spam post. i watched even more top gear videos, out of which i fell completely in love with this one, in which clarkson drives (or, more likely, carries around) the smallest car ever made, a hint for the future coming from the 60s.

reading Russell's articles in campaign is aways a bliss, and i particularly liked this phrase which might actually help me setting up an order for my thoughts: "The objects we use are starting to tell stories about our behaviour. And the people who can find the patterns in that informational fog (who can mine the reality and find the non-obvious relationships) and those who can sort through it and find the stuff we should be worrying about (modeling the surprises) will be the people we'll be desperate to employ. Them and the folk who can connect all those databases together, without losing CDs in the post." Together with a quote from Bertrand Russell, who said that "The secret to happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and personas that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile".

Since i am slowly recovering my love for movies, i am quite confused about what to watch today, although i know i'm the mood for sort of bio-movies. My shortlist includes Stop Making Sense (a supposedly innovative concert movie for the rock group The Talking Heads), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Sympathy for the devil (Godard's view), True Stories (i know, talking heads again) and No direction home, Scorsese's take on Bob Dylan. I'll probably just watch them all and get it over with.

And very interesting episode of Border Blaster, tackling Wolfman Jack's story, "from Wolfman's days as a renegade radio DJ to his appearance in the cult movie American Graffiti".

all these while thinking about how much i hate lack of fairness.

history, baby

2008-03-24T22:13:00.002+02:00

This post is a tribute to one of the funniest cars in the history of, well, funny cars: the Austin-Healey Sprite, relevantly nicknamed Frogeye (UK) or even Bugeye (US). I sometimes like to think of it as a sort of a Ford Ka ancestor. Enjoy the ads of the period, its 1958 presentation, as well as its feature in TopGear, nearly five decades later.

planner meeting

2008-03-19T11:11:00.003+02:00

Happily, John is back is town, which seems to be a great opportunity for a planning meet-up. This Thursday, 8 PM, Cafe Pedia Universitate. meet you there :)

design is about making things better

2008-03-12T23:03:00.006+02:00

Today i went to see Dick Powell speak during the opening conference of Filter Design Competition, the great design event organized by Oricum. Even though he didn't really say anything completely new to me, his discourse was very inspirational, because it revealed interest and common sense, two of the most important ingredients that help create brilliant work. And the fact that he also showed a great deal of examples, together with their results on the market only adds up to this observation. Here are some random notes i took:

ideas need to be pushed and pulled, that's what makes them eventually work
companies are like jelly: they like the concept of "innovation", because it's a buzz word, they spend endless hours in meeting and workshops discussing how to innovate, and yet, they sometimes completely fail to change, because they prove so reluctant to change after all (this sounded awfully familiar)
innovation is rarely about a "big idea", but about a series of small ideas brought together in a new and original way
crucible event (that's why observing people in their homes makes a lot of sense - design is about making things better, and most times those things it needs to fix or take into consideration are purely intuitive, therefore people will not be able to rationalize them within focus groups) -> knowledge (if we ask a 5 year old to design us the car of the future, his imagination has no limits, and he's very likely to come up with something with lots of wheels and engines and stuff, because he doesn't have the knowledge to know it won't work) -> idea -> belief -> embodiment
a brief is a collection of client prejudices
design is about making things better in a relevant and functional way, which is why designers are interested in everything, and scoping society, science and economy is vital to gain little insights, as well as big pictures
look rather than see
anthropology comes before technology, because people and more important than things
the product is where the brand keeps its promises (a brand manifests itself through much more than just communication and packaging)
it's essential to learn how to deal with how others manipulate your brand (coke versus mentos example, dove camapign for real beauty example)
if we solve all these small problems we've identified, we're gonna have a very successful product, even though it means harder work
"problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created" (einstein)
you see things and you ask "why?"; but a designer dreams of things that never were and asks "why not?"

appetite for exploration

2008-03-12T22:25:00.004+02:00

last night i had one of the most beautiful and energetic journeys lately. because i went to uca marinescu's workshop, hosted by Fundatia Calea Victoriei, and from there to Ireland and Mongolia, just two of the destinations reached by this fantastic lady who's travelled across all continents, not even excluding the two poles. Although she's nearly 70 years old, you really wouldn't tell, while her great modesty and richness of speech, together with her radiant attitude, fill even the most pessimistic person in the room with joy and excitement.

That's why the meeting wasn't just an expedition in itself, filled with pictures, explanations, music, moods, anecdotes and stories. It was a lesson of life, optimism, simplicity, modesty and common sense, coming from a person who's completely capable of persuading everybody around to regain faith in the human kind, as well as in the healing power of exploration and discovery. In fact, she started her talk reminding us that the specific of a country comes from two main factors: its nature, and its people. The way the country looks like where it has not been touched by humans, as well as the way in which humans brought their contribution and left their marks.

And from these two perspectives, she analyzed Ireland, with its helping respectful clans, roots and traditions, and Mongolia, a land of complete freedom and honesty. She talked about the peaceful ways of the Mongolians, of the freedom that each individual there has, from the isolated homes, to riding, as the main means of transport. A freedom that they know how to enjoy, without disrespecting the other people, or the general norms of common sense that seem to govern around there. The two hours of stories and recollections reminded me that from time to time one should simply stop and go somewhere far away, where it's still possible to enjoy the pure essence of both humans and environment. Although uca marinescu fears that it has become more and more difficult for us, modern people of this country, to just stop for a while from our crazy city races. But, as long as there still are areas where the modern rhythm hasn't found an equally fertile ground, there's still a lot to learn about respect, beauty and proper living. And that's really worth exploring.

pic from here.

the beauty of music

2008-03-11T09:57:00.001+02:00

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

common sense reminder about creativity

2008-03-10T22:07:00.004+02:00

this video made me think about some of the young people i've come across in the mccann creative mentorship project. people who complain that the only reason why they can't get their ideas through is because they don't know how to graphically express them (even though they weren't even asked to do so in the first place).

anything could happen

2008-03-09T21:46:00.003+02:00

Only a few days left until a F1 season that seems to be more than exciting. Featuring F1's first ever night race (Singapore), banned traction control, Alonso back at Renault, ambitious Hamilton fighting against perhaps too confident Raikkonen, as well as an enticing line-up of number twos who are potentially unpredictably brilliant , 2008 season is surely worth watching. Top Gear gives a taste of things right before start.

as seen by dorina lazar

2008-03-07T11:06:00.003+02:00

this post is about interacting with yet another interesting person. i know i might be pushing it with these posts, but the truth is the more i talk to people whose job is completely different from advertising, the more i enlarge my view on how to be a better planner.

a couple of weeks ago, i attended this very cosy chat with Dorina Lazar, about her experience as an actress (the gathering was organized by the same foundation i'm just gonna keep on talking about). Apart from being one of the greatest Romanian actresses, she also is the managing director of one of the most interesting and appreciated theatres in Bucharest, the Odeon Theater. She struck me as a modest person, and her discourse was nowhere near "big talk", being filled instead with simple words and deep emotions. A true communicator, because what she tries to do with each new role is to communicate a story from the perspective of a certain character.

The thing that i liked the most about her was the way in which she rejected verdicts: even when provoked to talk about the young generation's generally claimed superficiality, she dismissed all such preconceptions, and tried to give us her own view instead. And this view seemed to make a lot of sense to me: she brought into discussion how acting was taught when she was young, by professors who were first rate actors on top of everything else. People who inspired respect and admiration through everything they did: their performance, their pieces of advice, their tone of voice, their education, wit and discipline. People who were true mentors, as well as role models for their students. Whereas today, the actress says, most professors are second-hand actors, mostly frustrated by never making it on stage, and thus lacking a great deal of expertise, as well. And this translates in many cases of younger generations being deprived of inspiring role models.

Another thing that impressed me were the recollections from the beginning of her career, when she used to go together with her theater group on tour a lot, in order to play on the stages of village cultural chambers. So they were supposed to act in famous plays in front of peasants who were eating seeds and commenting all the time. Which she thought to be a very good experience. Because keeping such an audience engaged meant developing very powerful performances, and improving her communication skills a lot. She did not take it as an ordeal (although it sometimes was), but as a challenge, because those people were not stupid, but simply uneducated.

Oh, and she has this theory that each audience receives the show it deserves, because the artists on stage unconsciously react to the vibes they receive from the audience. Which means that people in the audience are always an important part of the show, even if the show is not necessarily interactive. This only comes as a further argument to support my earlier point about live performances and their audience, and what brands should learn from it.

Tickets to most good plays sell out very quickly lately, and she thinks this happens because people have started to rediscover the power of theater, of real performance, the sort that is able to inspire reflection, as well as deep emotions. She remembers the beginning of the nineties, when people desperately embraced TV, and stopped attending cultural events; however, she feels many of these people eventually got bored of seeing such little substance in TV shows, of hearing the same TV stars and commentators talking without actually solving anything and so on. And that's a good sign for the cultural level in our country. I sure hope she's right :).

participating in the new york of the 70s

2008-03-06T22:07:00.003+02:00

for some unfortunate reason, i hadn't been to the czech center in a very long time. this monday, however, i couldn't resist not going, because the documentary they were going to play sounded way too good to simply ignore. i was very happy to find the room absolutely crowded with young people who had come to see genuine footage about how it was like to be an artist in New York, in the 70s.

Truth is, the documentary was indeed a bliss. Woody and Steina Vasulka had left the Czech Republic in order to go to New York nearly 40 years ago, and this change of scenery turned them into real chroniclers of the underground scene of Soho, who used their Sony Portapak in order to record images from rock concerts, undergroung events and whatever else which made a point about the context and atmosphere of that period of time.

Participation is a sample of footage that pictures the genuine atmosphere of those times: it doesn't have a script, or other cuts except from the ones between different scenes, but it surely has examples of attitudes from so many different manifestations from artists of that period, that you end up with quite a clear picture about how things were back then. Life for Soho artists surely looked difficult, but their passion in expressing themselves seemed so powerful and boldly stated, that you could simply feel wild energy and creativity floating around. The documentary features transvestite actors, ian gillan, jimi hendrix, jj johnson and many others, showing an uncensored, vaguely filtered highly pitoresque universe.

pic from here.

attending music workshops

2008-03-06T15:31:00.003+02:00

Part of the reason why i've been so quiet lately is that i took my resolutions quite seriously, and enrolled in a great amount of stuff outside the office - from workshops and conferences to all sorts of shows, loads of opera and theater included. My choices so far have proven to be inspirational and truly enriching, especially since many of them were doubled by getting in touch with amazing new people.

I have become a regular of Fundatia Calea Victoriei's workshops and gatherings, because their alternative education sort of concept has so far proven to be insightful in a far more substantial manner than advertising language abuse .

The workshop in the picture is entitled "how to listen to music" and is held by Tiberiu Soare, a brilliant conductor at the National Opera Orchestra. The workshop hasn't finished yet, but i am so in love with it, that i simply felt the need to write about it anyway.

I had no idea what to expect when i first went there. It seemed like quite a pretentious induction in classical music directed by an honourable director. It's quite the opposite: it's a very passionate journey into learning how to make the most of any musical experience one might have. Tiberiu is brilliant, passionate, modest and funny, and despite the fact that his musical knowledge seems almost neverending, he doesn't even for one second pretend to be smarter or more entitled to discuss about music than any of his listeners. Maybe this is what makes the meetings great: the fact that what Tiberiu actually does is to inspire us never to take any idea for granted. To judge everything by ourselved, and never be overwhelmed or frustrated by remarks coming from critics, specialists or any other types of people who feel their opinion should be superior. Just as he warned us that a great danger in enjoying music is to fall in love with a particular interpretation of a certain musical piece, and to further dismiss by default other interpretations that might be at least equally good.

He makes music seem within our reach, because he never uses a technical term without explaining it in very simple and common-sensical analogies. It's funny in a way - it's so obvious that he knows so many things from so many different areas, and yet, his language is still easier to understand and his discourse still easier to follow than that of many advertising or marketing people.

We talked about different manners of approaching music, as well as about various potential definitions of music, always connecting music with maths, physics, philosophy and history. This comes as no wonder: as Tiberiu explained, it's essential for a very good conductor to know as many things as possible about the various stages in the history of music - the more he understands the social, economic, historical context, as well as the idea exchanges at a certain time, the easier it is for him to come up with a deeper interpretation of a musical piece.

When many people brag about always knowing exactly "what the author wanted to communicate", Tiberiu helped us realise that sheer music doesn't have a message, it's just an expression of our states of mind: you cannot say "the glass is on the table", no matter how many symphonies you write in your attempt. So music is actually accessible and open to anybody who is willing to use his/her reason, and not take any preconception for granted. And what you actually need to do in order to become better and better at evaluating musical pieces is to practice your comparative and your discriminative capacities. As well as to always have the patience to listen to the end. Nothing more.

I wouldn't stop writing for days if i were to discuss all the things i get out of these workshops, so i will just add various observations derived from it from time to time. In the mean time, i can say that music has never been dearer to me, as is the case with the need for opera :).

yamato again

2008-03-06T11:00:00.003+02:00

i've been to their show before, but last night i went to see the drummers of Japan once again and i was completely impressed once again. I couldn't really realise whether the show was about discipline, about energy or about passion. Because it surely wasn't solely about music. It was an art show which at times sent vibes of scientific precision, a sample of entertainment that did not defy tradition. It was simple, playful, surprising and engaging.

And i left the show bitterly thinking about some clients that keep on talking and talking and talking about what they should do with their brands, in order to please all the consumers and potential consumers and consumer family and so on. In order not to upset anybody. And by obsessively thinking about this, they forget that "the consumers" are just people. Not this dark force, that's out there to get you, and analyzes every pixel just to prove you wrong. People in the audience last night were genuinely open and got deeply involved in the show, because it made them smile and laugh and be part of the performance. While the japanese fellows didn't seem to be thinking: "oh my God, but what if everybody leaves if i ask them to clap their hands in a difficult manner, and my, oh, my, what if they throw rocks at me if i mock them when they fail to applause as i want them to, and oh, dear, what should i do to make it clear to them that this is a joke" and so on. A matter of doing and of believing in your own voice, i guess, something we're still far away from. And i know this is a very general observation, but i had to express this week's frustration somewhere :).

pic from here.

on my mind these days

2008-02-13T14:30:00.003+02:00

fuzzy logics
Plato's Theaetetus
possible worlds
how to make the most of the "how to listen to music" brilliant workshop i'm attending
getting back in great mental shape
turning this blog into an explorations blog
errors

and other stuff, of course :)

today's mood

2008-02-12T14:09:00.001+02:00

ego moment

2008-01-24T16:42:00.000+02:00

I am the proud owner of this brand new thing to certify i am crazy. Not the medical certificate yet, but apparently a strong proof i'm on the right path towards one.

the sad truth about the new impreza

2008-01-21T21:21:00.000+02:00

Last night, i was talking to an old friend (who is also a great Impreza fan) about how disappointed we both were by the looks of the new Subaru Impreza. We both felt it was a betrayal of the amazingly distinctive and sportsy looks that made us love Impreza far beyond its (equally amazing) performances. And, to my utmost (though sad) pleasure, Clarkson's most recent Top Gear feature perfectly points out what i think to be the feelings and thoughts of millions of Subaru fans. Enjoy !

learn by doing

2008-01-17T20:51:00.000+02:00

Five years ago, when i first become keen on cars, i took a Ford course named "how vehicles work - an introduction to automotive technology". it was very interesting and i learned a lot about the way cars are built, about their components and how they fit together, about engines and safety systems and design and so on. A very comprehensive course, developed in easy steps: how chemical energy of fuel is turned into rotation of the engine crankshaft, how big isn't necessarily best in terms of power, how an engine is supplied with the necessities of life, how the computer inside works, how the power gets from the crankshaft to the wheels, how automatic gearboxes and other developments work, how vehicles deal with bumps, how suspensions work, how vehicles change direction, how vehicles stop safely and quickly, how vehicles make, store and use electricity, how today's vehicles are built for safety, style and economy and so on. I had watched plenty of accompanying videos as well, so it wasn't plain theory. It was dreamlike for somebody like me, because it turned me from somebody who claimed to be a car lover because i knew designs and brands into somebody who loved brands and designs, but also had pretty much of a clue about how to evaluate what's under the beautiful design as well. I was very enthusiastic about all these things, i loved to talk about them and get as much information as possible. I ended up actually knowing how my car worked, as well as the differences between how my car worked and how the other cars worked.

Some time after, i met this fascinating guy, and at some point the car subject popped up in one of our conversations. It turned out he had been curious about the deep inside of a car as well, for which reason he had bought a second-hand car (a Scorpio, if i remember correctly :) ), and deconstructed it bit by bit, piece by piece. Whenever there was something he did not know or understand, he'd read about it and ask his father or mechanics. And that's how he started building his knowledge.

The difference between us turned to be quite simple: although we were both good at explaining and understanding mechanisms, he was able to identify a problem or replace some piece on the spot, while i needed time and i was completely unsure (as well as pretty much incapable) of replacing anything.

I know that's just a very basic example of learning by doing, but examples tend to have far more power when they come from personal experience. And while i was thinking about this example the other days, i realised yet another basic thing. Reading about interesting things is not enough, no matter how much knowledge i feel to be building. Cause real knowledge and know-how come from a lot of exercises and practice - and that's what building experience is all about. Just like simply knowing Math theorems does not necessarily turn you into a very good problem solver.

And i felt that to be true once again last week. I bought myself the hieroglyphic transcript and translation into English of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. As an Egyptology fan, i had read quite a lot on Egyptian history, hieroglyphs, art, mythology and so on. One of the books i've read was actually entitled "Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture". But having the Book of the Dead transcript in front of my eyes, i must admit i didn't do very well in understanding it. some parts vaguely seemed familiar, but i felt quite far from being able to translate it. Because i've never actually taken the trouble to "learn the language", i've just read about how it was used. So now i've started to actually learn the language from a great course that provides full explanations, as well as exercises. And things are already starting to get clearer and better systematized in my head.

Since it's late and i'm really sleepy, i have no idea whether this post made any sense. But what i was actually trying to say is that my most important resolution this year is to learn many great new things by doing. It's a great challenge for me, as well as a priceless source of insight. Cause, as some friend once told me: "you'll never know how it's like to be drunk, if you've never been drunk" :).

articulate things through animation

2008-01-16T21:56:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago, i eventually watched The Nightmare before Christmas. I know that it's weird to have postponed the moment so much, and it was actually the only Burton related movie i hadn't watched, but well. I guess it's better later than never :). And what i also did a few weeks ago was to read Neil Gaiman's Coraline, the wonderful and terrifying adventure of a little girl who enters a parallel version of her own life. The connection between the two, apart from them both being very enticing stories ? Director Henry Selick, who had successfully directed Tim Burton's piece, and is currently working on the first 3D stop-motion animation movie based on Gaiman's tale. Reading more about Selick, i got more and more intrigued and, among other things, i found Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions - the animated short that attracted Burton's attention in the first place and basically obtained Selick the Nightmare before Christmas proposal. I particularly liked the use of cut-out animation.

yesterday's bads

2008-01-16T11:44:00.000+02:00

sometimes you just don't do as much good as you'd want to with all your heart, but you do harm pretty much against your will.

Other bads:

people who talk about what "the consumer" thinks and wants, although the only thing they ever do in order to find that out is to read the ppt developed by the research agency.
people who think that "the consumers" are a sort of weird creatures kept in bottles, and not human beings who are blatantly similar to them.
non-bloggers who are afraid of bloggers, because they never had the curiosity to at lest try to understand how the latter work
people who still ask if publishing something a post on a public blog means making that something public and available for everybody (?!?)
people who don't want to listen to any complaint about the brand they manage
people who don't understand what teamwork means and how that functions (by the way, it's very easy to spot people who've never done any competitive sport in their life from)
continuous lack of sleep

rockin'n'rollin

2008-01-10T21:53:00.000+02:00

Ever since i've read its title i've been determined to get my hands on a copy of Jacques Carelman's "Catalogue d'objets introuvables". But until i actually grab the book, i've obviously researched Carelman's work on the net, and found fascinating objects i really think of actually buildinf for decoration purposes. After all, if you're surrounded by things that create a pretty much upside-down world of themselves, you're very tempted to reinvent your own thinking, right ?

And this must be the ideal chair for balanced thinking:

saint nick as told by

2008-01-10T13:13:00.000+02:00

i spent my holiday in seciu, a small village situated on a hill near Ploiesti. and it was a very relaxing holiday, mostly because it was filled with reading, watching movies, interacting with people who have a completely different lifestyle (also trying to adapt to their lifestyle) and exercising.

The main reason why i wanted to stay away from cities was the commercial holidays syndrome that drove me completely crazy. While i was really nostalgic about the nice recollections of cosy times of holidays beautifully spent together with my family and close friends, decorating, singing carols, being excited about the Xmas tree and Santa and all that. So i tried to recreate that holiday cheerful atmosphere.

And part of the attempt was reading this book called "The Autobiography of Santa Claus" and written by Jeff Guinn. I must admit i was completely fascinated by the contruction of the tale. The book combines lots of historical information with lots of fiction, and the result is a nice voyage through time, that explains each magical aspect related to Santa (that is, nearly all aspects that make his existance improbable) in a rational way. Well, kinda rational. In the sense in which you're willing to admit that Nicholas has used all opportunities history provided in order to team up with people such as Attila, Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci (in case you ever wondered who designed the flying sleigh) or Benjamin Franklin, with whom he now shares the North Pole headquarters. And that's just a glimpse of the story, which is obviously not delivered in a "theory of conspiration" manner, but rather in a "whatif" joyous manner. And since winter holidays have the gift of allowing imagination to drift as much as possible, this was a really relaxing read, especially accompanied by fresh orange tea and ginger biscuits :).

baldly go

2008-01-10T10:18:00.000+02:00

Speaking of interesting, inspiring people, i met Cris when i was working at Imager. She was a copywriter there, as well as a sort of "enthusiasm maintainer", as Kreti would put it. And i must say that rarely have i met somebody with so much energy, courage and ambition. Ever since, she has been for quite some time in Ghana, doing branding and getting as much as possible from the African culture, she has been a great freelance illustrator (related blogging here and here) and now she's heading for another adventure, namely at least one year in Dubai, where she's going to deal with marketing for a very cool firm (while also doing something about her passion for design).

a series of unfortunate events prevented me from attending the farewell party last night, which makes me a horrid friend once again, but i just wanted to wish you "good luck and have fun" in this new challenge, although i'm sure you'll make the most of it anyway :).

new year's resolutions

2008-01-08T23:42:00.000+02:00

i've been very angry at myself lately, but i wasn't sure why until last night, when B made a lot of very good points (see ? sometimes i really listen to you :P). and she made me realise that the bad ways in which i felt i've changed lately are more visible than i had assumed.

Sometimes it just happens: you get into something, and you slowly drift away from yourself and what you're really passionate about, by complying with crappy places, crappy people, crappy situations. But it's crazy and stupid and against everything i believe in and stand for. Cause i cannot really change the world if i complain more and more and don't even change what's crappy around myself.

The truth is that if you don't do stuff, if you don't practice, whatever knowledge or skill you might have simply gets erroded and slowly fades away. You just get out of shape. Just like you forget a lot of things if you don't share them somehow. And "i don't have anybody to talk to about the lots of stuff i know about one topic or another" is no excuse - if i do something about it, i will surely get more favorable contexts.

This was just a very large introduction to answer to Bogdana's new year resolutions tag. Actually, what i want to do this year is to become the doer i was once again.

1. get my dear old passions back on track (which means reading, exploring, travelling, writing and all that) - games, philosophy, profiling, movies&directors, egiptology, cars&formula 1, anthropology, animations&movies, rock and many others

2. do a lot of sport - skating, swimming, ping-pong, badminton, running (i also need to get the nike+ipod kit for this), doesn't matter what as long as it keeps me in shape, both physically and mentally

3. graduate and make up my mind about the next steps

4. spend more time with the people who matter to me and inspire me

5. travel a lot - experience people and places and lifestyles and all that

a nice voice

2007-12-11T15:14:00.000+02:00

i have watched Across the Universe several times lately, because i fell completely in love with the music and the choregraphy (in pretty much the same way i enjoy watching The Wall over and over again). And if i wasn't a Beatles fan before, i must admit this movie made me reconsider my attitude towards the band.

And this was not the only consequence of watching the movie. One of the other things i found trully amazing is Dana Fuchs, whose voice i find absolutely spectacular. And who also wrote a very interesting description of the experience she had filming Across the Universe and interacting with the other actors involved in the project, such as Bono or Eddie Izzard, for example.

Rozalb de Mura, one place to keep on coming back to

2007-12-09T11:48:00.000+02:00

in my ideal world, stores (or at least fashion stores) are pretty much like this one.

They have a very strong personality, one that's actually different from the others on the market. They have an amazing atmosphere, one that invites you to stick around, look at each item and experience how each of them would suit you. They have a story; preferably, one that has different twists with each new season. They always surprise you with something new - they seem familiar, without ever looking the same.

And, yes, they have owners that give the impression they've known you forever and kindly talk to you and explain the context of each interior design piece they've build up, of each detail in the history of the store. Owners that are very open to every new idea or suggestion. And that have various artsy backgrounds. It doesn't take much to develop such stores: most of the time, a touch of passion will do, cause imagination and originality often beat huge budgets.

net startup

2007-12-05T23:03:00.000+02:00

as many of you know, yesterday was NetCamp's big day. And also Net Start Up's big day. I only found out that i'd present something at Net Start Up a few days ago, when Cosmin told me he had registered a tiny bit of our way bigger Trendspotting project. I knew we didn't really stand a chance to win, cause we could only present an idea, without too many plans, numbers or technical info to support it, and i cannot stand losing, but, still, this time i prefered to go for the experience. And i'm really glad i did, because it really was interesting. Even though I hadn't been that nervous before a presentation for ages, and i had a constant feeling that i didn't belong there and that i'd just embarrass myself (which i probably did).

Cosmin and I talked about our need to understand local young people's online behavior, as well as its dynamics at a larger scale, so we can permanently be in tune with what's hot for them, what their internet pathway looks like and what the emerging trends are from this point of view. In brief, we need to constantly understand the relationship between young people and online, so that we can be relevant to them on one hand, and predict the future on the other hand. So we presented a sort of an online research application that monitores the online activity of a certain user (by user i mean one of members of our trendspotting network, who obviously gives us his/her permission to do so), focusing on the user's pathway on blogs, youtube, flickr, twitter, last.fm, and so on (further generating statictics about the network's behavior). Pretty much like an Analytics for users, instead of websites. Of course, that's just a tiny part of something quite complex that we're still developing, but we were really curious how this thought sounded like to people who actually know what Internet is all about.

All in all, it was nice to be part of something that gathered many different enticing ideas, especially since there seemed to be a lot of enthusiam around local valuable net startups. And i also took it as an incentive, because the whole experience made me realise how many things i need to learn about the online environment. The big winner was Vladimir Oane, who presented CaptainGo, an online hotel booking system, while the other finalists were Catalin Tenita, Alex Brie, George Lemnaru and Emi Gal (congrats, guys!).

Thanks to Cristi and to Dragos for the great event. And to Bogdana, for cheering me up.

avoid the knowledge danger

2007-12-03T14:18:00.001+02:00

analog city pixelmania

2007-11-21T10:55:00.000+02:00

i haven't been a doer lately. which is very bad and kinda hurts. and it's not because i don't have all sorts of ideas and plans and means, but because i pretty much feel like i've lost motivation and inspiration. That's a weird feeling for a very passionate person. Happily, i am now writing a presentation which is more like a story about small things that make a (big) difference. Maybe that drives some change in my attitude.

silly thought

2007-11-16T09:38:00.000+02:00

yesterday was pretty much a shitty day. but at some point, i realised that there was a remedy for it, namely talking nicely to people, smiling at them and making them smile back at you. this way, they become helpful, you laugh in traffic together, you solve problems together, and generally get the feeling that it's really nice when you make things work.

status anxiety

2007-11-13T15:02:00.000+02:00

I only recently came across Status Anxiety from Alain de Botton (came across actually means that sergiu pointed it out). And i must admit i really enjoyed it, because it's a very interesting theory (part of which i myself was explaining when talking about the new suburbias of Bucharest), even though the alternatives he suggests to the status-driven never-ending anxiety are quite soft and not necessarily widely-embraceable.

"This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety.

We care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we have (it is no coincidence that the first question we tend to be asked by new acquaintances is ‘ What do you do?’). With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, the book examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends), before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness. It aims not only to be entertaining, but wise and helpful as well."

“After having … been constantly bombarded by road-safety propaganda, it was almost a relief to find myself in a real accident.”

2007-10-27T23:10:00.000+03:00

i have just finished J. G. Ballard's novel Crash, which i've been curious to read for quite some time. it's an interesting and fascinating novel, which gives you the chills not necessarily because of the things it describes, but more likely because of the things it makes you think about: more than exploring a car-crash sexual fetishism, it explores the way in which technology can modify human psychology. this relationship between human sexuality and "perverse technology", illustrated in quite a harsh manner obviously made the book quite controverial, but i really think it's worth reading for its ability to play with your senses and make you experience all sorts of sensations you're not really sure what to make of.

The book was also turned into an award-winning (and equally controversial) movie, by David Cronenberg, but i haven't watched it yet.

debatable topic

2007-10-23T15:42:00.000+03:00

our small and cosy department has a sort of interesting half friday, when we're supposed to perform on an interesting topic for about 20 minutes. i'm very confused about the theme i should pick for our interesting presentation on friday, so i'm going to follow Bogdana's initiative and ask whoever might read this blog to give me an opinion on what to focus.

i'm concerned because i find a huge amount of stuff to be interesting, but i'm not sure which of them might also be actually worth talking about with my planning folks. because although i know that it's theoretically up to me to make the certain topic worth talking about with them, i've noticed yesterday that there are subjects that are only relevant for me, not for my colleagues as well.

so i cannot decide between a kinda history of frogs (real and imaginary), film noir, organ, Ana Aslan and Gödel's incompleteness theorems. And even the history of October 26th :)). Any suggestions/ opinions ?

a vision of students today

2007-10-23T10:26:00.000+03:00

i was complaining about my college conditions, and now Gavin points out this extremely interesting vision of a student's life, envisaged by Michael Wesch. And it's interesting to follow the entire discussion about the video. Of course, there are differences in numbers, but i think the idea applies quite well to our city as well.

kimi does it

2007-10-22T17:25:00.000+03:00

ok, so i tried to restrain myself, but it's impossible. yesterday was the last race in this Formula 1 season, and, my God, was it brilliant! despite the supporter problems i was speaking about some time ago, i ended up following my heart - which meant that i continued to support Ferrari and its pilots, partially leaving behind my adversity towards Kimi Raikkonen.

so yesterday i was really hoping Ferrari would win the driver's championship as well, even though Kimi started the race with the third chance. When the race started, my heart started beating really fast, and i cannot describe how happy and proud i was to see the incredible starting teamwork from Ferrari. The red drivers did a wonderful job blocking their McLaren rivals, taking lead of a crazy fight for the title. And this was followed by all sorts of weird key moments, each of them being able to twist the title's fate. Hamilton unfortunately had gearbox problems, which made his quest trully impossible, but he impressively handled his problems, gaining enough points to come second in the driver standings. Kubica confronted Alonso and was able to grab his third position for some time. Several laps before finish, it was still unclear where the title would go. But the beautiful switch between Massa and Raikkonen, following the final pitstop, made things a bit clearer and released a bit the tension in Kimi's supporters, although if Hamilton had gained a single position higher, the final results would have been different. A far complex analysis of the race can be found here, and, indeed, as David Tremayne says, "in the end, Ferrari came away with everything, and McLaren virtually with nothing." And Ferrari deserved it - i really think that teamwork made a lot of difference in this race, and that's what turned both Kimi and Massa into real heroes of the race. Beautiful !

oxford murders

2007-10-22T15:48:00.000+03:00

very interesting weekend for me, although i basically spent it in my bed, reading and solving math problems (while also not being able to hear anymore with my left ear).

the reason why it turned out to be interesting, despite its monotony, is because i read a book called "The Oxford Murders", written by Guillermo Martínez, an Argentinian writer who also has a PhD in mathematical logic. The book deals with a series of murders which appear to follow a mathematical pattern - which is why the people who seem most likely to solve them are a logics professor together with a math scholar. When i started reading the book, i did not know what to expect, especially since i feared it might be just one more of those many silly recent books which attempt to seem serious and interesting by inserting completely ridiculous mathematical codes references. Instead, it's a pleasurable reading referencing ones of the most important and challenging theories in maths, logics and even physics (Gödel's incompleteness theorem, Fermat's last theorem, Wittgenstein's Finite Rule Paradox and even Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle). And what seemed even more enticing to me is that the book manages to somewhat explain these concepts in a very simple way: it becomes clear how "any finite sequence of numbers can be a continued in a variety of different ways - some natural, others unexpected and surprising, but equally valid". Actually, the thing i appreciated the most is that the book seemed to me a very good highschool textbook, more than a detective novel. With the crime story as a pretext to exemplify the concepts. Which is probably why i got completely hooked and i spent a lot of time remembering all sorts of maths/logics talks i had during highschool, as well as actually solving some problems.

film noir a la venity fair

2007-10-19T12:32:00.000+03:00

there was a period when i nearly breathed film noir. I watched the movies like crazy, i watched documentaries, i read books about it. and i'm obviously still fascinated by this topic, although i now watch and read other things also :)).

that's why i was very happy when Sanziana indicated these two bits in Vanity Fair - a very interesting "concept-noir"...

...as well as a nice explanatory article entitled Day into Noir.

tales of mere existence

2007-10-17T23:34:00.000+03:00

I have just come across (and immediately fallen in love with) Tales of Mere Existence. They're simple, they're witty, and they make a lot of sense (and they also made me laugh because they reminded me of an earlier post from brilliant Tom Fishburne).

the usual college files

2007-10-17T21:50:00.000+03:00

i don't usually get this pissed, and i don't usually blog when i am this pissed. but i have to somewhat express my utter disappoitment after attending one of my college courses this evening.

i attend the political science college which is part of the University of Bucharest. and that should mean that my colleagues and I have spend quite some time during the last four years reading and developing our critical thinking and argumentative skills. as readers of my blog and friends know, i didn't exactly have the time or the patience to attend many of the courses. partly because i had already read and studied most of what was being taught. partly because i got more and more into my planning thing. and partly because they are simply mocking us. but after the nice experience at the beginning of the autumn, i promissed myself i'd focus more on school during this final year.

so this evening i went to one of the courses and i was really curious and enthusiastic. since it's a course, i expected to go there and receive some information or at least some framework from the professor. but no. the guy actually gives us some articles to read, and what we basically have during the course is a discussion analysing each text. i have no problem with that, and i'd normally consider it's a really challenging approach. BUT. Neither what was being presented by the professor, nor the opinions coming from colleagues had any coherence whatsoever. Like Andreea said, we felt more like in a therapy group than in an interesting information exchange environment.

Cause the opinions coming from colleagues were something like: "i think this is a very bad article, cause it's predictable" or "i think it's bad because corruption can be viewed from other perspectives as well, such as...aaaa.....aaaa...you know...aaa...resources...like in Africa, but yeah, you're right, that's connected to governments as well". Not a single person said that he or she thought the article was bad because the hypothesis was wrong, or the argumentation was inaccurate or something else that's actually relevant.

and now my problem is this. if you've spent the last four years of your life studying political science, and developing your critical thinking, how can you think that predictability is an evaluation criteria for a scientifical article? Yes, sometimes (scientific) papers have a striking thesis, which is further developed/ probed/ explained and so on using some very simple facts. The fact that an argument development is sometimes "in your face" does not mean that we are all capable of connecting those simple facts in such a way in which to accomplish a new, interesting theory. Once you've understood his main concepts, Kant's books become predictable, yes, but does that make them any less brilliant ?

Maybe, just maybe, i can cope with some colleague who said "i think it's a bad paper cause it's boring", although she did admit that the points made in the article were clear and interesting. But, all in all, i left the classroom feeling really really sad.

more movie mumble from me

2007-10-17T09:52:00.000+03:00

after more than one year of completely ignoring it, i eventually decided to start posting on my silly movie blog once again. I've written a tiny bit on Todd Solondz, and now i'm already preparing the next post about Henry: portrait of a serial killer. And i'm suspecting it's going to get a bit more serious soon, because my graduation paper will surely deal with movies, and i'm going to need a lot of feedback and opinions on that.

in the mean time, i'm open to any movie-related suggestions.

so, you think you can market ?

2007-10-16T10:56:00.000+03:00

Gavin Heaton, the mastermind behind Servant of Chaos and The Age of Conversation, sets out a new bald challenge for everybody out there who's sure to have breakthrough marcom ideas.

The competition is called "so, you think you can market?" and it invites all "people of ideas" to try out their skills in bringing a male audience on leading fashion blog The Bargain Queen in time for Christmas, only using a limited budget of around $500. And that's not it - the really fun part is the round-robin style of judging the entries: only the entry with the most votes will pass through to the next round, until there are only two entries left, and then a final voting decides the winner. So, it's a sort of battle of big thinking. Check out all details here, and have fun!

"my idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper"

2007-10-15T12:56:00.000+03:00

this weekend i read Neil Gaiman's Stardust, because i want to go see the movie, and i couldn't do that without reading the book in advance. And reading it felt nice, because it's been quite some time since i've read a fairy tale. It set my imagination on fire, and it was at this point that i realized i hadn't set my imagination free in quite a long time. I've been thinking stupidly rational in the last weeks - like everything needs to be highly conceptual.

And i went to "3:10 to Yuma" and i kinda hated it cause it was long and predictable and generally bad, but a friend i deeply trust told me it was actually very good for a western. And that annoyed me even more because it seemed like i should have judged it in a particular category, and compare the experience of watching it with the experience of watching other westerns, not movies in general.

And there was this really nice project for a social campaign - a real brief, a real problem, for a real target. And i briefed, and things seemed to be ok, but then i received a mail from one of the creatives working on the project who told me that he had scanned the winning social campaigns in various festivals and that the methods generally used for those campaigns were metafore and absurd litteracy, starting from a message such as "call", "donate" or "sign". And he wanted me to give him a new brief that took these observations into consideration (although sadly enough for him, the project really wasn't about calling, donating or signing anything). Of course i smiled, then i laughed. I laughed because instead of trying to come up with something different, engaging and really cool, he was just concerned about fitting the already established advertising patterns.

These things crossed my mind this weekend and made me think a lot about ideas. Original, special ideas. Not the ones you get out of applying a certain pattern or recipe. Not the ones that strike you as being advertising. And i remembered this really nice Neil Gaiman essay entitled "Where do you get your ideas?", a piece in which the author gives some answers to this annoying question he gets so often. It's a beautiful piece about unleashing imagination. About trying to give something special to your audience. It's the type of "thinking outside the box" i'd like to see more in advertising as well. Here are some quotes, but do read the whole thing. It's really worth it.

"The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new."

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?

(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)

Another important question is, If only...

(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...

Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose ('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.

An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.

Sometimes an idea is a person ('There's a boy who wants to know about magic'). Sometimes it's a place ('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...'). Sometimes it's an image ('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')

Often ideas come from two things coming together that haven't come together before. ('If a person bitten by a werewolf turns into a wolf what would happen if a goldfish was bitten by a werewolf? What would happen if a chair was bitten by a werewolf?')"

pretesting

2007-10-12T13:31:00.000+03:00

The story of Gusty and Ford

2007-10-12T11:36:00.001+03:00

Do the Green Thing is a very nice initiative, because it encourages us to focus on the small things that can collectively make a difference. There's been so much buzz lately about the huge problems humanity is facing nowadays, that it's easy to feel overwhelmed and to think that there's not much you can actually do. But i think that's totally wrong, cause every small contribution is very important once the pieces are put together.

Green Thing comes as a community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month, a new Green Thing challenge is issued. And basically what you have to do is actually do it (or, even better, have fun while doing it). October's Green Thing is Walk Once - and the way in which they invite us to walk more is a short animated story that illustrated how much obervational potential there is in walking. Enjoy!

I'm very enthusiastic about this type of "challenging" communities, because they are so engaging. You just want to enter the game and contribute to its rules, and generally do stuff, share and make a difference. Not like the regular "let's develop a social networking site, cause they're fashionable among teens nowadays, but without asking them to do anything in particular, cause they're so lazy" that most times ends up as a deserted site, which doesn't have anything particular to attract the teens, and provides even less to encourage them to visit again.

delightful time at masterplan

2007-10-10T16:46:00.000+03:00

A person who's "interested in what's interesting" is an interesting person, who always makes interesting observations and inspires the ones around. This is my conclusion after spending some time with and listening to Jeffre Jackson. He came back to Romania in order to be part of Masterplan, the big planning event.

I used to evaluate conferences and workshops according to how many notes i felt i should mark down from the speaker's speech; now (with blogs, and the global conversation and all that) i evaluate them differently - namely, according to how many ideas i mark down starting from something the speaker had said. And from this point of view, Jeffre's workshop was more than productive for me. He talked about stuff worth thinking about, and indicated areas which can give us hints for developing more interesting things - video gamers, data base engineers, entertainment critics, Hollywood screenwriters, academics and graphic designers, for example. We discussed about measures of interestingness, and interesting vs. entertaining - common-sense stuff which make perfect sense, and yet we miss or lack them so much sometimes. If you want a glimpse of what he said, go to his blog or watch his short movie :). And if you want to know more about the conference, Andreea has a very nice review here.

week animated treat

2007-10-05T11:37:00.000+03:00

I've just finished an eye-opening meeting with the director for our new campaign, and the guy managed to completely change our optics and add a lot of value both to the ideas, and the executions. Which feels good and relieving, especially since this is happening after last week's horrid experience with some executions gone completely bad.

Sometimes it's really amazing how different your perspectives get when you sit around and discuss the details of a final execution, especially with an outsider. He gives you hints, and then each member of the team starts to make connections and visualize the details of the spot in a particular manner, that depends highly on the cinema references the person has experienced. And obviously, the more you've seen, the more perspectives you have. Which is why Anim'est is a complete thrill - the festival brings a very interesting blend of different animation styles, some of which focus on expressing a certain concept in an intriguing manner, just like some others focus on offering visually striking imagery, while others focus on "paying forward" a feeling, no matter how minimalist the way. After last year's edition, i felt completely resetted and refreshed, and i'm expecting no less from this year's edition. As a slight preview, here's the trailer for René Laloux's famous Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage, 1973). And if you like it, you'd better come to the festival, cause they've got an entire Laloux retrospective among other loads of goodies that will probably confirm, as Laloux said, that "That which suggests is superior to that which shows. Movies today show more and more. It's paranoid dictator cinema. What we need is schizophrenic cinema."

advertising young minds

2007-10-04T11:43:00.000+03:00

There are so many interesting blogs out there, it sometimes feels like a pity to simply stick to one list of feeds, even though the list contains posts i feel like i definately must read. Which is why every now and then i enjoy brand new random lists of blogs - sometimes i take them from somebody's blogroll, some other times from one top or another.

Now Daniel Mejia - whom blog i totally feel in love with - gathered Advertising Young Minds - the top 27 blogs of people under 27 , by combining all sorts of ranks and authority stats and so on. Enjoy !

no, really, it's up to you

2007-10-02T11:05:00.001+03:00

Everybody is speaking about music industry problems, and it's need to reinvent itself. Prince attracted a lot of reactions by giving away his new album together with a Sunday tabloid, to the outrage of music retailers. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails further rioted against record companies, accusing them of ripping off customers, and encouraged his listeners to steal the music. Now it's time for Radiohead to launch an interesting experiment together with the release of their new album on October 10th. The band made the album available exclusively from a website, while inviting people interested in the download to pay whatever sum they feel like giving away. In other words, fans are asked to name the price they're willing to pay for the album, and establish their own "fair-priced alternative to illegal downloads". Will everybody want the album for free ? Or will most downloaders pay some amount because of shame ? That remains to be seen, because although the band initially said that this move only means that people who'd have got the illegal download anyway are now free to pursue their wish legally, many of the people i spoke to about this regard the whole idea as a social experiment.

go, oaks

2007-09-30T12:27:00.000+03:00

Thanks to Cosmin, yesterday i watched quite a historical confrontation for our rugby team: the Romanian Oaks vs. New Zealand's All Blacks. Without knowing basically anything about rugby, i found myself enjoying the match quite a lot. Because i felt it was a game played by people who are so passionate about this sport, that it would have been impossible for them not to express the beauty of it. All Blacks is a legendary rugby team, and everybody knew they'd win anyway. However, they said they'd engage all the effort they usually do when they play rugby. Romanians declared they felt proud to meet All Blacks, and wanted to show that they're rugby players as well, while also hoping to lose at a difference smaller than 70 points. All Blacks are said to be warriors, not just rugby players, and Romanians wanted to show that they're fighters as well. And despite the obvious difference in value, the game was a very passionate show. The French crowd present on the stadium equally seemed to love the sport itself - they appreciated every interesting move from All Blacks, but they became extremely supportive and encouraging whenever Romanians proved their fighting capabilities (and Romanians scoring was a complete delight). The final score was 85-8, which was not such a big surprise, since the force and coordination of All Blacks can hardly be counteracted. But i really loved watching it.

one of the simple pleasures of life

2007-09-29T00:30:00.000+03:00

i'm eventually slowly moving back home. back to my books, and my movies and the many small things i've been collecting during the years. simple things i'm completely in love with. like some old books that were letterpress printed, therefore beautifully crafted. i think letterpress is one of the most beautiful parts in the history of printing, and as it's slowly fading away, i'm sure i'm really going to miss its fine touch.

apg romania news

2007-09-27T10:55:00.000+03:00

Many cool news about APG Romania.

Together with Evensys, we're having a first important event: Masterplan is a marcom planning and strategy 2-days event, which will not only gather the masterminds of local research, strategy and brand management departments, but will also bring Jeffre Jackson, who already impressed at the Napoleons conference, as well as Alain Thys, from the Future Laboratory.

If you're a student, then you have a very good chance to attend the event for free - all you have to do is win this contest, which invites you to have fun while trying to figure out solutions for a small firm that produces pencils.

Besides, there's an open season to APG subscriptions now. So, if you care to receive all kinds of enticing benefits, just contact apg@planning.ro for details (that is, if you haven't already received a mail from us with all the details).

suburbia

2007-09-26T10:24:00.000+03:00

the brief talk at the Czech Center on Monday proved to be a far more exciting and interesting experience than i first anticipated.

First of all, the project itself. It all started when Monika and I were talking about advertising, as we sometimes do, until we reached advertising for the new residential projects. I complained about how annoyed i was to see those huge advertising outdoors brilliantly showing a sort of "promissed paradise", when in fact the reality of many of those residential neighbourhoods was far worse. And she brought into discussion "The end of the suburbia", a documentary she wanted to screen anyway during one of the Documentary Mondays. So she invited me to somewhat "open" the screening by making some points about the differences between advertising and reality in today's new suburbias. I talked to Raluca about it and she proved willing to join me on field with her camera, to look around and take some pictures of the new suburbias.

The more we got into the subject, i realised that the initial thought was kind of redundant. There was no point in simply showing that reality is not like in the commercials, cause that's a sort of a truism. Just like there was no point in simply attacking one residential project or another, because it was far better to simply show people how many of the new suburbias actually look like, as well as what potential problems they have. We talked about how buying a new house in one of the new suburbias didn't mean just buying a piece of land, it actually meant far more than that, and each person should evaluate the context of that piece of land before making the aquisition. Together with our guests, we discussed about the need for urbanistic regulations, as well as potential problems such as the developer, the surrounding environment, traffic conditions, people around, utilities, facilities or deceitful advertising. And we tried to get a bit into the core of this "Monopoly" (the game) standard of living, discussing how we could make people aware of what they should be looking at before becoming the inhabitant of one of the new suburbias. People in the audience also brought into discussion examples from the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. And this is how everything actually became the starting point of an extensive study we'll carry out during the next year, one that looks at the new human typology and lifestyle present in the new suburbias, as well as at the development and evolution of these suburbias.

The video below is the trailer for The End of Suburbia, a very interesting case study brought to the Czech Center by John Ketchum.

blind wedding

2007-09-19T16:41:00.000+03:00

this will probably not make too much sense for non-Romanian speakers, but we developed these spots in order to promote Radio 21's latest thing - Blind Wedding, the first radio reality show in Romania. I'm curious to know what you think.

suburbia chat

2007-09-17T12:13:00.000+03:00

Desolation Jones is by far one of my favourite comics. And this particular strip is something we (Raluca, Didi, myself and who knows who else) will be talking about next week, at the Czech Centre, before "The End of Suburbia".

pic from here.

personal wrap-up

2007-09-11T15:45:00.000+03:00

I have been completely silent during the last two weeks. Not only online, but also pretty much in real life as well. I am sorry, guys, and i'll do my best to compensate! I took the weeks off, because of the exams that i was supposed to pass, in order to eventually enter the last year of college. I started the whole thing thinking that i just wanted to pass, and get it over with, while also having fun and doing some more stuff for work. It's just that i was not sure what exactly i was supposed to do for each exam, not sure what exactly i was supposed to read and so on. I only had the courses for a couple of exams, and the exam requirements for another couple. I must admit i was kinda afraid to get more details.

So i initially did what i always do when in doubt. I thought that i should get at least something interesting from the experience, therefore i started reading books that were generally somewhat connected to political science. I knew that if i knew at least something, then i could keep on connecting ideas and pass at least part of the exams. But the more i read, the more interested i became, and after a couple of days i was so absorbed that i decided i really wanted to prepare for these exams. Cause i realised a thing - there was no point in me just going there and attempt to pass after a quick look on the courses the night before the exam, or based on completely unrelated general things i knew. That would have meant cheating on myself. My ambition goes far beyond that - i strongly believe in reading and thinking and analysing and presenting own work. I worked like crazy, but i got a lot from the experience - i simply know so much more now, and i am so much more confident about some political issues, and i feel so much better. I completely switched off Internet, in order not to be distracted by mails or messenger or blogs or any such things, and i surrounded myself with books, articles, and courses. I woke up extremely early every morning. I've written dozens of pages for essays and papers. And i enjoyed every minute of it. This way, I also realised how much time i generally waste daily. And the cool thing is that it really paid off.

imagination dead imagine

2007-08-24T15:55:00.000+03:00

yesterday, while having one of the endless discussions about the "young generation", we started talking about the sad possibility that kids nowadays completely lack imagination, due to TV, video games and internet consumption. I will not get into that again, but i must admit that the conversation reminded me about Samuel Beckett's "Imagination dead imagine", nicely illustrated below:

first free and legal music on demand website

2007-08-22T15:30:00.000+03:00

i have been using blogmusik daily for a very long time now, which is why it felt really weird today, when i was redirected to deezer.com. Apparently, the name Blogmusik is gone, being replaced by Deezer - the first free and legal music on demand website. According to this and this, this rebranding takes place after blogmusik negotiated some copyrights and stuff. Daniel Marhely and Jonathan Benassaya, creators of blogmusik, explain that "While most people surfing the internet consume music freelly and illegally, a way profs and artists are continuosly fighting against, Deezer.com announces the long expected revolution. Thanks to agreements negociated with SACEM, Deezer.com now becomes the only actor offering a free solution for web-surfers, while also paying music actors with the profits obtained through advertising."

the many weird meanings of various terms part 1

2007-08-21T11:45:00.000+03:00

whippy choppy (definition(s))

1. an unkown canned food that looks like mashed up chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, jojos, onion rings, and rolls

2. a sex position in which the partners are floating in the air while fucking eachother! - "We're gonna have to have sex in space in order to perform the whippy choppy."

3. a term for idiotic entertainment... if said in an old mans voice while holding a thin stick that sounds somewhat a whip when swung... it's sure to get a laugh and probably cause somebody to piss their pants.

4. a curse word to use when you are taking care of a fake baby with a computer in it's back when it cries.

5. another word for a fucked up hairdo.

6. a kick ass dance move mostly seen at private raves.

7. a sport in which players get in zipped up sleeping bags and beat the shit out of eachother while completely blind!

8. a kick ass sword/whip used in war

9. the type of movie in which you laugh so hard you shit your pants

10. the kind of website that your friends send you a link to and you have no clue what it is... and it ends up being porno

11. an island that looks like a penis

12. a term coughed during work when you are talking about your boss and he's standing right behind your best friend!

13. a term used for a celebrity that is such a poser and is so fucking stupid

14. a type of drug in which you inhale to make you feel like you're having an endless orgasm or can make you feel like you're in a kill bill movie ready to chop everybody's limbs off!"

15. an article of clothing that is worn up the ass crack and over the shoulders..... ???

16. a shitty old beat up car

From the restless ever-inspiring Urban Dictionary.

exciting event

2007-08-20T13:18:00.000+03:00

there are very simple things that make me really happy. One of these things is a piece of experimental theater that happens in Sibiu on the 28th of September.

dreamthinkspeak is a theater group that aims to explore the use of space, light, image, film, sound and text as equal ingredients in creating live performance and to explore how the use of different environments can radically alter the relationship of the audience to the work. Which also means that they adapt their performances according to the various locations where they're supposed to act, using and integrating the story of the places where they perform in their show.

They'll come to Sibiu in order to perform Don't look back, "a journey through the rooms, corridors, hallways and stairwells of specially chosen sites inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice". The experience will be really intimate, for the audience only consists of 3 people, and the show was customized to fit the city hall, where the whole thing is going to take place. I can hardly wait to get there.

The Fantastic Voyage of Billy The Bullet

2007-07-24T16:11:00.000+03:00

juicy week

2007-07-17T09:43:00.000+03:00

Last week, i have been part of things that i appreciated a lot, and in whose potential i believe a lot.

IAA is launching IAA Young Professionals, a division that takes care of the interests and needs of young people (less than 25 y.o.). I was invited to the preliminary discussions last week, and i am priviledged to say that i am among the founding members of this chapter, together with a bunch of great colleagues. The reason i am so enthusiastic about this is that i know damn well what it means to be completely new in this industry, not knowing whom to turn to, where to learn from and all that. So i can only be glad we can make a difference for the passionate young people out there who need some support.

Speaking of passionate young people, the McCann Creative Mentorship that Mihnea and I are taking care of, has announced its first mentorees. It's been an amazingly refreshing experience for me, because some of the people who submitted their answers proved to be extremely funny and creative, and came up with crazily fresh ideas. And, what was even nicer, they also came up with interesting concepts, resisting the temptation to be creative just for the sake of creativity, to use one of the most loved cliches. However, i was quite disappointed by the very many who only submitted brief answers in Word format. I would have loved to see them at least trying to sell their ideas in surprising formats, which would have given them an extra credit for their work. Anyway, since this is an ongoing project, i am sure that more and more intriguing presentations will add up, making the selection more and more difficult.

And last, but surely not least, we had quite a productive planner meeting last Thursday, with many people coming and sharing their opinions on how to turn our APG into something useful for everybody. During the first months, APGR will try to become a sort of a knowledge-center, so that any person interested in planning can find useful information and support. This will be obviously doubled by trainings and conferences aimed at presenting the various forms and aspects of planning and research. And we hope we can attract as many members interested in planning as possible. In case any of you has suggestions or comments, please feel free to use our email apg@planning.ro.

Looks like there's plenty of work to do !

emotional

2007-07-11T12:14:00.000+03:00

My sister turns 18 today, which makes me feel bonkers old. Happy birthday, sis !

APG meeting - things starting to roll

2007-07-11T10:31:00.000+03:00

As you might know, our APG Romania had a voting session last week, and the result is a short-term board. Let's talk about this board's starting objectives, as well as the first steps that our APG should follow on Thursday, at 8 pm, in Codecs.

Everybody is welcome to share ideas, suggestions, expectations from the APG and so on - the more ideas we discuss, the better chances we have to turn this into something useful for everybody. So, what do you think ?

Precise location - Codecs, 37-39 Agricultori street, room 104 (very close to PRO TV)

mind-feeding

2007-07-10T11:49:00.000+03:00

Filtr.tv is one of those nice small ideas that bring something interesting for the watcher's eye, as well as mind. What it basically does is to provide weekly playlists of short movies, animations and music videos developed by a selection of unique, undiscovered, and intriguing individuals and organizations (we call them contributors) who are either using online video to communicate or can be represented within an online video.

What i like the most about it is that it feels like going to a cosy contemporary art gallery: you travel through different perpectives, intriguing views, inspiring twists, refreshing combinations of ideas that kick-start your own closures and interpretations - i really like websites that act as a platform for that.

only 2 km away from extra special life

2007-07-09T17:00:00.000+03:00

supporter's dilemma

2007-07-09T11:32:00.000+03:00

I am facing a very serious problem and i thought that sharing it here might help me get suggestions. My problem is this: i have been a Formula 1 great fan for very many years. I've been mad about Ferrari and Schumacher - always supporting them, crying enraged when they were having problems and/or losing, being more than happy when they were winning. Sheer love.

When Schumacher retired, i pretty much stopped watching the races. However, some weeks ago i accidentally started watching a race, and all my passion for Formula 1 in general came back, so now i'm back to watching all confrontations. The sad part is that something very important is missing - i have no idea whom to support. Therefore, i watch F1 for the show, but at the end of the race i am quite neutral - no tears of sorrow, no tears of joy. I still love Ferrari in a way, but i felt really betrayed when they brought Raikkonen - back in the good, old days i hated Raikkonen, and i used to receive tones of aggressive sms from my friends who supported McLaren whenever Kimi surpassed Schumi. I know this is not really a rational argument against Kimi, but whenever i remember some of the Raikkonen/Schumacher races i get totally pissed off. Massa, on the other hand, doesn't really inspire me in any way, even though everybody says he's one of the rising talents (which he might as well be). I sometimes appreciate his style, but most of the time i get the impression that he's barely even racing. Maybe i should just pay a little more attention to him.

I cannot stand McLaren Mercedes. No rational reasons, again, but i always loved Ferrari too much for McLaren not to get on my nerves, and i hope it's understandable. The fact that Alonso is now part of McLaren only made things worse, since i've been in great pain when Alonso took away two titles from Schumacher, also winning in Schumi's last season (you cannot imagine what i've been through during the race when Schumi could have definately won the title, but car problems forced him to abandon - i just couldn't believe it and couldn't recover). However, i do somewhat appreciate and empathise with Hamilton who seems to be really promissing, and who's also my age :).

Even though i am a BMW fan when it comes to cars, i cannot say that they impressed me with anything in Formula 1 (by the way, i really appreciated the Williams-BMW duo). I would have really expected them to, but they failed to do so, which means that i cannot relate to them as a supporter. Nor to their drivers, Heidfeld and Kubica.

Strangely enough, at some points, i've been really impressed by Fisichella, and in a way i was happy for him when he switched to Renault, cause i thought this gave him more chances to prove himself as a good driver. At some other points, he disappointed me so badly that i thought he had nothing to do with driving, after all. As for Barrichello, i appreciated him when he was part of Ferrari, but now he's just average, although i thought that the combination between him and Honda would be nice.

This is obviously the very abridged version of the story. And i know it's mostly emotional, but how rational can i get, after being so damn passionate about Schumacher and Ferrari for so many years ? I guess my heart is still with the constructor, but supporting Raikkonen just feels unfair...

sleeping randomness

2007-07-02T15:54:00.000+03:00

Last week, i was so sleepy i couldn't believe it. I even fell asleep on the door, and i am not kidding. I simply couldn't keep my eyes open. This whole situation was both embarassing and discouraging for me, since i've spent a lot of years sleeping 2-3 hours per night at most. But i must be getting old.

This state of mind randomly reminded me of all kinds of sleeping-related things i've watched or read at some point. Here's five of them, in an obvious random order, as well as topic.

The house of sleep - a novel written by Jonathan Coe i've read many years ago and considered interesting at the time. Actually, i was fascinated by one particular character, named Terry, a chronic insomniac who was obsessed with movies.

The science of sleep is a Michel Gondry movie i liked quite a lot. Mainly for two reasons. One - it reminded me of the period when i used to let my imagination fly far more than i do nowadays; which meant that instead of cross-referencing a lot, i pictured all sorts of oddities around me. Two, cause i love the sound and concept of "Parallel Synchronized Randomness".

Nocturne, one poem by Ruben Dario that was sent to me by a friend years ago.

Andy Warhol's first film (or, better said, anti-film) Sleep, about which he said: "I could never finally figure out if more things happened in the sixties because there was more awake time for them to happen in (since so many people were on amphetamine), or if people started taking amphetamine because there were so many things to do that they needed to have more awake time to do them in... Seeing everybody so up all the time made me think that sleep was becoming pretty obsolete, so I decided I'd better quickly do a movie of a person sleeping. Sleep was the first movie I made when I got my 16mm Bolex."

Suzanne Vega's song "Tired of sleeping".

pic from here.

non-blogging consequences

2007-06-28T12:16:00.000+03:00

This blog has been deserted for too long now. And during this time, i tried to come up with all sorts of reasons to convince myself that there was a very good cause behind me not writing here anymore. Most times, i felt like i was too busy to post (which is not so far from the truth), some other times i felt like i 'd rather use the time for doing something else, sometimes i felt like i didn't really have anything interesting to say, some other times my enthusiams was simply cut down by all sorts of talks about blogging vs planning or blogger vs. practician. At times, i even got annoyed by all the fuss that was created on blogs following events such as Olimpiadele Comunicarii - when the unhappy people used the blogs as the perfect environment to let go of all their frustrations and insult other people who were only trying to help. More recently, i blamed not posting on the fact that i have temporarily moved away from my home, and no longer have internet, which must be one of the silliest excuses ever.

And then, slowly and surely, i started to realise all the drawbacks that not blogging has on me. Like for example:

1. my daily dose of interesting bits dramatically decreased - i simply love the blog brain, not necessarily for the times when it reminds me of random "cultural" or scientifical facts that i could have read lots of books about or even looked for myself on wikipedia, but more likely for its "amazing ability to come up with all sorts of hypotheses that sound correct and have the added benefit of being totally impossible to verify", as Scott Adams puts it. Blogs are full of ideas and, most important, thoughts - some brilliant, some crazy, some silly, but who cares as long as you can always make connections and get something out of them ? I mean of course i spot all sorts of things in the street, i read all sorts of things in newspapers and watch some on television, but their tone sounds more argumented, more like "these are the facts", and less like the "you know, this thingy crossed my mind this morning, and i can't realise whether it's retarded or genius" blog-tone.

2. the more i postponed posting, the more i postponed reading - and i mean even postponing reading blogs that i adore, written by people who always get me curious with their posts.

3. the less i blogged about them, the less events i attended - i used to be so much more connected to Bucharest arena - no matter how tired, i still found time to simply know about very many of the things happening, and i also found time to attend at least half of them. I went to events, museums, i compared, i combined, trying to extract something interesting enough to share. And actually, this isn't only limited to attending stuff.

4. blogging less meant getting in touch with less wonderful people - and also losing touch with some of the wonderful people i "met" via blog. Quite an obvious one, isn't it ?

5. lack of blogging reduced my enthusiasm in implementing all sorts of small projects - sometimes blogging feels like writing my very small manifesto and keeping track of how consistent i am with it. Otherwise, many of my small manifestos remain notes in my notebook i often forget about.

This being said, it's time to gather the Word docs i saved as drafts on the laptop, even though they seem really silly, like the one trying to prove what a great planner Hitchcock would have been.

pic from here.

interesting2007

2007-06-20T11:15:00.001+03:00

Interesting2007 has been one of the most exciting experiences i've ever had. The atmosphere, the presentations, the rhythm, the mood, the audience, there simply was something special in the air that made me feel very special to be part of the gathering.

The whole thing was mostly interesting because of its randomness - and it kept on bombing us with different ideas, different angles, different perspectives, developing far less like the regular planned big teaching seminars and conferences and far more like the exact way in which we find ideas and inspiration - combining a bit from here, a bit from there.

At times, the randomness and events-on-stage made the event feel weirder and slightly spookier than a Star Wars convention. Which is kinda brilliant. There were moments when i simply laughed and wondered what would happen next, and i didn't get disappointed for a moment. The combination of topics included tips on how to split a log, video games and art, the challenges encountered when you you try to use simple everyday actions to change the world, television, tips for making a better erotic film, comics, niceness, knots, food reconstructions, printing, Ibsen and muppets, tubes, skateboards, finity, Oprah, science of spying, amazing pics, fobias and many others.

Once again i was reminded the fact that no matter whether they're used to talking in public or not, whether they're used to writing presentations or not, people are just brilliant when they talk about something they are really passionate about. And passion can get really contagious at times.

I was very glad that Alina and Ileana were also there. And it was also really nice to talk to John, who's up for a brand new experiment and who will also be in Romania soon, Ben, who was kind enough to sign me an autograph and draw me a map of London, and Faris, who had just been to Romania. And i even got a chance to say hi to Paul Colman himself.

Amazing day, amazing feel. Pics soon.

instead of counting sheep

2007-06-07T11:33:00.000+03:00

We're dead curious to know how many planners Romania has (and making bets about it), as one of the first APG Romania actions. So please tell us about you here.

resolution

2007-06-05T22:03:00.000+03:00

"It's just this crazy day - so damn many things to do. Tomorrow it will all be different". "The weekend...aaah - the weekend will be free". "This is the last weekend when i work instead of doing other things". "It's just this crazy week. Next week i'll have spare time". "It's just this month. I'll have to reconsider my lifestyle next month"...

This is how i've been lying to myself lately. And it has to stop, so that i can post on my blog once again, and attend all interesting events again, and watch loads of movies, and practice sports, and stay out like crazy and so on. That's it :).

warning signs

2007-05-21T21:37:00.000+03:00

This is a warning sign for tourists - the hand-written small print claims the warning does not apply to Hungarians.
Smoking area - but smoking kills.

the weekend

2007-05-21T20:28:00.000+03:00

Although i wasn't very pleased with the idea of going to Poiana Brasov again, my weekend turned out to be very nice and relaxing. I took the good, old Red Road up to Postavarul, took loads of bad pictures of trees and thought a lot about recycling, mostly following a very interesting and engaging "Focus on ecology" conference in the Czech Center. One thing is certain - one way or another i need to get involved in environmental issues, and try to make at least a small difference.
Walking in the woods is always fascinating for me - and i usually focus on one particular detail, which i observe all the way. This time the detail was snails.

And, speaking of snails, i can say that i had plenty of slow food (now that the movement arrived in Romania as well). And it felt so good to talk to the chefs, be explained all sorts of stuff about Romanian traditional food and recipes, as well as particular serving methods. I also admired an exhibition of pickles - those people develop pickling as a form of art :).

i support

2007-05-21T16:32:00.000+03:00

A very nice recent campaign caught my attention - this year The Civil Society Gala gives all of us the possibility to help shape the Romanian civil society, by "adopting" an NGO - linking to it, promoting its projects, talking about them and so on. I think that's a really great idea, especially if all of us "adoptive parents" remember to keep an eye on the chosen NGOs.

I would adopt many of the featured NGOs, but i just thought that i should focus on one for the time being (and then maybe record podcasts with people from the other names on the list as well). And that one is The Ecology-Sport-Tourism Association (AEST). I like AEST because i somewhat perceive it as a sort of a gathering of planeteers (Captain Planet sense). They help form eco-volunteers, and i know how difficult, yet vital, this has become among the vast majority of young people. They have already formed over 600 eco-volunteers, who either developed their own associations, or they further collaborated in various eco-projects. And i strongly hope they keep on doing their great job (at this point, i am very tempted by the idea of becoming an eco-volunteer myself). Their projects for 2007 include:

5 volunteer camps in Apuseni, Bucegi, Cozia, Piatra Craiului and Piatra Mare

eco-volunteer training courses, addressed to students

"Ecoturistica" educational magazine

implication, together with other organizations, in a vast campaign against the destruction of forests

Stay tuned for updates :).

last night's meeting

2007-05-18T10:34:00.000+03:00

Really enjoyable planner meeting last night. Even though we thought nobody would show up, we ended up with very nice company including Leo colleagues Andrei, Daniela, Monica and Stefan, IqAds mogul Costin and nenorocitu, whom i've been dying to meet in a loooong time.

I guess that research was the main topic on the list, with us chatting about focus groups, Leo Youth and Q methodology and IPA. Not much about APG Romania, though we did speak a little about the differences that might exist between planning in Bucharest and planning in other Romanian cities.

Oh...and we considered a bit starting a blog to mark down Costin's adventures. I think he'd make a great cartoon strip character as well.

planner meeting

2007-05-17T11:02:00.000+03:00

Apparently, out small APG Romania is starting to have a legal shape as well. I guess this means we'll gather every once in a while to discuss "serious" stuff like how to turn this into something meaningful and helpful and worthwhile. However, this seems to be fairly impossible every two weeks.

So, in the mean time, the Amsterdam series of planner meetings goes on with a brand new edition tonight, at 8 pm :). In case there are people still interested :).

if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left", said Einstein

2007-05-14T17:02:00.000+03:00

The feeling of getting back in mental shape is a very pleasant feeling - just like waking up from a very long, disturbing and torturing bad dream and realising that not everything is lost.

Anyway, i spent some time today reading various research studies, some of which revealed some really interesting or thought-provoking points (such as that search engines dominate modern epistemology, and that we suck at judging the quantity of food we're eating, because we're regularly tricked by size illusions).

One of the most interesting i've read, however, is related to mobile phones and a weird effect that the latter might actually have. I mean everybody keeps on having endless discussions with no clear result about mobile phones affecting people's health one way or another. But while most such human effect-related research remains inconclusive, another very interesting (movie-like) possibility is beginning to be taken into account: mobile phones might have something to do with the mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees. The Independent article talks about the results of a small study carried out in Landau University, which shows that "bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby". These conclusions have also been supported by other researchers who think that "radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops".

i'm getting boring

2007-05-13T21:47:00.000+03:00

what my weekend contained:

more cases in the "The Mummy at the Dining Room Table" collection
Last Tango in Paris (or how Italian cinema can sometimes ruin my appetite for French movies)
Hitchcock - the book, The Wrong Man, The 39 Steps
more on the 39 steps, by reading John Buchan' book, The Thirty-Nine Steps, available at Project Gutenberg (spy stories soooooo rule).
physics, as brilliantly simplified and explained by Richard Feynman, in The Feynman Lectures on Physics (i fear physics is finally starting to make some sense in my small brain)
Ikea food
lots of Bernard Herrmann (i've always been crazy about The Wrong Man score), and lots of Noir Desir (i think i'm finnaly starting to listen to music the way i used to)
lots of thinking about old times.
and i nearly forgot - Howard Hawks' screwball comedy His Girl Friday, which i've watched on Friday. And speaking of Cary Grant, it was also nice catching parts of The Philadelphia Story on TCM on Saturday (although i've watched that movie quite some times before), and it was even nicer to watch the Katharine Hepburn documentary which followed (she looked so vivid, i even had to double-check that she had died in the mean time :) )

All this cause i've been really sick, and thus couldn't join my friends in Sibiu Jazz fest. But next week i'm off to Bran again. Unless i break something until then.

we introduce....

2007-05-10T16:08:00.000+03:00

McCann Creative Mentorship is a program i'm very excited about. It's an open-source education experiment which invites all aspiring creatives to solve briefs given by our creative directors, get feedback, improve their skills, and make the most of their chance to prove that they belong in a creative department. The website is due May 20th, and until then we launched a blog which will have all sorts of tips and tricks, inside details, valuable resources, and hopefully some surprises. And yes, it is for real.

Goodbye, master !

2007-05-08T09:29:00.000+03:00

fooling around

2007-05-06T18:41:00.000+03:00

I have been going number and number in the last couple of weeks. Until i figure out a solution to escape this horrid, mental-blocking mood, i felt like filling my time with continuous reading, movie-watching and attending dance shows. And not only. I've also bought a bagpipe (a Romanian beginner's bagpipe, obviously) and have been trying to learn playing it ever since. Of course, actually learning how to play will take me forever, but that's irrelevant :). What i've discovered browsing the net about bagpipes, however, is Expert Village - World's Largest How To Video Site. And while i'm sure everybody knows about the site already, it was really funny and fascinating for me to browse dozens of funny video tutorials from passionate people. This actually gives you a nice, cosy feeling, that there's nothing on this world you couldn't learn how to do yourself.

Click here for more on "Learn How to Play the Bagpipes : Beginner Lessons"

bran, predelut, dambovicioara

2007-05-02T00:03:00.000+03:00

I eventually had the break that i've been craving for for quite some time now. And instead of going to Paltinis, as i initially intended to, i accidentally ended up in Bran. The funny thing is that i thought i hated Bran, cause i felt like i knew it by heart, like it was a very visitor-crowded place and so on, but discovered something totally different from what i was expecting.

I stayed in a beautiful house far away from the madding center of Bran, in a small village called Predelut. The room had this splendid view of snowy mountains, combined with impecably green fields. I loved the air and the fresh smell of the place, the amazing silence, as well as relaxing nature sounds. I loved the farm animals playing freely all day long. And i loved to enjoy small details of nature, stare at these details for hours and focus on their simplicity and beauty. I only ate fresh traditional food and i walked for hours and hours (i also went to Piatra Craiului). It's amazing how alive i feel in such instances, how much i believe in living and in doing meaningful things, things that actually make a difference. Coming back to Bucharest was even more depressing than it usually is.

planning department's door sign

2007-04-20T23:36:00.000+03:00

pic from here.

another quote

2007-04-20T10:24:00.000+03:00

I'm in the slightly alarming position of hosting weekly so-called "creative meetings" for my colleagues at Oricum (as part of the brand new organization that we've more or less started to implement). Since this position is more than challenging, i've been spending some time lately thinking about how to develop the meetings. And then i came across this, and realised that it might actually be far easier than i anticipated :).

pic from here.

quote

2007-04-20T10:16:00.000+03:00

pic from here.

snapshot

2007-04-19T12:39:00.000+03:00