Getting around Stanford

I had mixed feelings about going to Stanford and about how the university will appeal to me. The "Farm", e.g. the big green campus of Stanford, that looks indeed like a farm, would surely mean something very different from the MIT (tall, rather ugly/communist buildings) or Harvard (nice and classy, rather small) campus and I wasn't sure what to expect. Bikeless in Stanford is indeed terrifying, the distances are fairly long and no matter how much of a walker I am (and I truly am), I still ended up paniching after a couple of days to get my hands on a second hand pair of wheels to move me around. Other than that I really loved it there. The Farm gives you a sense of freedom and biking back and forth to my home in Menlo Park was a blessing in disguise that I have enjoyed. A lot of fields (soccer, football, baseball) and gyms all over the place, Californian style buildings with lighter colors and odd shapes (to my standards) give a special charm to the place, but the green and trees just took the cake. I just loved it!! Moreover, my hosting institution, SIEPR, just got the newest and coolest building on campus, and that just addedd thrills to my everyday commuting to work routine.

Burn-a-Mac tale

Only today I got to finally burned a DVD on my MacBook after about a year and a half of usage. Deh, a 1 TB external HDD comes in handy and I do not watch many movies on the computer these days. I just wanted to hear some music on my loudspeakers instead, so I went for it. Two things: 1. burning a DVD/CD on a MAC is way easier than Win (dummies, welcome!) 2. again, there are some software/hardware issues in this Nexus, since the last time I tried burning some stuff on my external writer (a NEC 3550) I was not able to. Later I checked the specs and indeed, it seemed that it was unable to write DVD-R 16X, so I was dissappointed that I haven't checked that before buying a whole stack of 50 DVD R-'s. Today, I was able to write the same DVDRs at 16X without much hassle...my dvd player chocked a bit (but it is an old one anyways) but took it in the end. Thus, it seems that there is something in the soft (Mac Burner versus Nero or whatever I was using under Win) that gives Macs another reason to glitter..Getting back to the issue, easy is an understatement: 1. make a new folder on your desktop (right click and choose Burn Folder) 2. drag and drop whatever you need to burn 3. hit the burn button (upper right) 4. done. Great.

Emancipator- New Album

Great NEW stuff from EMANCIPATOR.
You will like this..I guarantee it.

Emancipator - Safe in the Steep Cliffs (2010)

TRACK LIST

01. greenland
02. black lake
03. jet stream
04. kamakura
05 all through the night
06. old devil
07. nevergreen
08. ares
09. rattlesnakes
10. bury them bones
11. vines
12. hill sighed
13. siren
14. safe in the steep cliffs

My first NBA Game

After some heroic battles with my reluctant self, I managed to pull through and finally attend a NBA game. There were a couple of failed attempts back when I was in Troy to go to some NETS games (back then Vince Carter was still on their roaster and they almost had championship a pedigree) but for some reason or another, I still ended up on the couch. So now, in Boston, I had to go and check it out. And what better way to start an NBA experience that watching the Celtics? Garnett, Pierce, Allen and Rondo are (use to be?) one of the better teams in the East (League?) and hope to get a second championship in Beantown after the '08 success. However, this night was definetely one of the worse ones for the Celts, getting blown up by Memphis Grizzlies (111-91) in all compartments. Still, a very nice experience..

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

You all remember Gorillaz, that virtual project of Damon Albarn (Blur) that involved over time famous third parties such as Del tha Funkee Homosapien or Mos Def. The had a couple of great runs back in the early 2000s ("Gorillaz" and "Damon Days"). Now they (he) are (is) back with a new release called "Plastic Beach". Guest performances by Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music, all are indicative of the quality and diversity of the material, marked by the usual "Gorillaz"-style.

Endless Winter

After all the bad weather I encountered in DC, Atlanta and finally in Europe, two things are obvious: the love/joy of cold weather diminishes significantly with age, and secondly, I need to make more north-south trips rather than going back and forth on the east-west axis. Moreover, it is pretty clear also that climate change is quite real, weather shifts have become something common (I remember those early December days when there was a sudden 30 F drop in the temperature, similarly the snow flakes in October, and some of the weird temps we had last June)

Movie Nights

The Holiday season is usually a good opportunity to check out the new releases. Besides seeing the the "squeakquel" of "Alvin and the Chipmunks" with the kids, Avatar was something that I wanted to experience, especially after all the commercials and noise about a cinematic revolution. So, here it is: nice movie, a mixture of a sci-fi, action with a love story lining. Reminded me of Apocalypto and the Last of the Mohicans (although not as bloody) with a Sci-Fi coating. Even though it wasn't really a revolution (except maybe the exquisite quality of the visual effects), it is a nice epic story (about 2 and a half hours) with all the drama and a (very necessary) happy ending.

White Christmass

A penny for your vote

Since now I am in Boston, it is a lot easier to exercise my right and duty to vote in the Romanian Presidential elections 2009. And more over this year things seem to be pretty tight. Although most Romanians do not believe in either of the two candidates left (Basescu and Geoana), still vote in the spirit of choosing the lesser of the two evils. I subscribe to this view; however, I am not even sure why evil is greater, since most of alliances in Romanian politics are purely driven by immediate interests, so something like a "right"-"left" coalition against the "center" shouldn't surprise anyone. At least, very close results (such as 50.33 and 49.66) makes you feel like it was all worthwhile. Hopefully, in a couple of hours they will also have the final results, including the Diaspora votes.

Revisiting Romania

The Fall/Winter season is obviously not the best one to visit Romania. Cold weather and muddy roads contribute tremendously towards a grim & gray vision of it. This time I only got as far as the capital city (Bucharest) and the trip was mainly dictated by a dental emergency, and I barely got to see some family in these short 5 days spent there.

Still, anything is better than nothing. When I think of all the people unable to travel and see their families, 9 hours seem like a little price to pay. Moreover, I am grateful for all these chances and you tend to appreciate them even more. It is always nice to get back to your roots, spend some time with your loved ones and set everything aside at least for a while. Plus, it is a good moment to pause and reflect on where you are now and where you want to get next.

However, not everything went so smoothly: when I left, I wanted to be brave and decided to take the public transport to the airport (Otopeni- OTP) and it was still a hasty decision despite the fact that I left home really early. I ended up getting into a microbus for commuters that left me close to the airport at the main road. Funny enough, that morning one could enjoy the biggest and densest fog that I have seen. Basically, you could not see beyond 2 meters. So after walking for about 10 minutes I still haven' reached anything and I started to panic. However, when I heard the announcements, I realized that I am at 5m from the door of the terminal. Amazing. It was just like in a movie sauna (cause in reality is not that steamy) but the visibility was awful.