iron maiden concert

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.

personal wrap-up

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.

on my mind these days

• 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 :)

ego moment

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.

debatable topic

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 ?

kimi does it

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 !

the usual college files

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

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.

personal wrap-up

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.

emotional

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

supporter's dilemma

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

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

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.

resolution

"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 :).

the weekend

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'm getting boring

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.

fooling around

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

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.

the first two weeks

the first two weeks in a new place are simply horrible for me. i wake up full of life, and i whistle happily on my way to work, cause i have that feeling of fresh challenge. but as soon as i get there, i get a sort of an "adapting fobia" - i'm almost terrified of opening my mouth in public, i feel numb and stupid, i make silly mistakes that make me hate myself, and, on the overall, i look at everything with awe, while i feel good for nothing. all i want is for the dreaful first two weeks to pass. If i had a little bit more talent, i'd probably draw what's going on, just like Gwen brilliantly does. But when i get home and think about the day, what turns up on my sketch notebook is more like in a Czech animation that i totally love - Maria Prochazkova's „Oreion“, where a little girl is trapped in bed, cause she's sick, and she looks at the world in a cute manner and develops a collage-diary. And the only constant thought that i get while playing with images and sticking them in notebooks is that i should simply blog more.

Image taken from this great site, found via Gavin.

ego moment

Apparently my profile is featured in this week's Metropotam series of profiles. And i want to use this post to thank Gina for having had so much patience with my annoying lack of pictures and of willingness to appear in any. In the end, however, i did find a couple of pics, so now i'm all there into the open. The article is in Romanian.