Monday, October 30, 2006

New toy :)

I have recently bought a new Nokia 6233 phone. My good old Siemens S65 just died.
The toy is nice - I have chosen this model instead of N series because of the better performance/price ratio. I am now able to test my mpeg4ip streams and to remotely control some home appliances via sms' and web.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

"Cinderella" ballet in Bucharest

I went yesterday at Bucharest in order to see a very good friend of mine.
We went to a good ballet show - "Cinderella" by Sergey Prokofiev. The music was extremely pleasant and the live performance of the orchestra was good. The dancers at their turn were okay, although not spectacular. I remarked Corina Dumitrescu in the role of Cinderella and the very nice suporting roles of Tiberiu Almosnino, Catalin Caracas, Gabriel Opincaru and Vicentiu Popescu.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Trip to France

I went to France this week for some business purposes and I must say that I had a bad week there.
Let's begin:

1. On Monday, October the 22nd, I had to go to the airport as my plane was taking off at 08:40 am.
I have made a reservation for a cab on Friday, October the 19th, to Omnitour at 07:00 in order to get to the airport. The cab never showed up and I had to call for another one in the morning so that I arrived late, only 6 minutes before the check-in.

2. After a flight with many turbulences I arrved at CDG airport in Paris. From there I have taken the RER to the Montparnasse Bienvenue station. I have put my luggage in a locker box in the station and visited Paris for six hours. I managed to reach Notre Dame, Eiffel tower, Les Jardins de Tuilleries, Le Dome des Invalides. Of course everything in a hurry. I have had also some time to go on the tower of Montparnasse.

3. I have reached Rennes at 21:48. The Hertz barnch in the train station was already closed so I had to take a cab to the hotel.

4. I have finally got my car from Hertz - a small but strudy Chevrolet Spark therefore I went to Saint Malo.

5. On Thursday, October the 26th I came back in Paris and stayed overnight at Hotel Cronstadt. I would not reccomend it to anybody...

6. On Friday, October the 27th, I came back to Timisoara. Carpatair had some problem refuelling on CDG and we took off with a delay of 2 hours.

Friday, October 20, 2006

A hedgehog in Timisoara

I have found this hedgehog in Timisoara, yesterday. It is strange that it lives in the city...

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Otelul Rosu

I went yesterday to a friend's wedding in Otelul Rosu. I have to congratulate Rudy for this!

Unusually for me I have driven all the way back and forth from Timisoara to Otelu Rosu that is about 120 Kilometres away on the way from Caransebes to Hateg.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

A Doctor was badly beatten inside a hospital

Called from home for an emergency a doctor was beatten badly inside the hospital.
I think that okay our medical system has lots of problems, it is infested by corruption and unprofessionalism but violence should have nothing to do with this.

Education in Romania

As I have said before in the posts on this blog the education in Romania sucks.
I know that we gare going from bad to worse because I often speak with friends that are TAs in Universities in Romania and also with some of my ex-teachers.

Yesterday I have seen a talk show on TV in that the guests (Andrei Marga, Eugen Chelemen and Alina Mungiu Pippidi) were sharing the same oppinions as I do. They also pointed out that integration of Romania in European Community will also produce a major crisis in the universitary life when the Romanian universities will get into direct competition with European counterparts.

Th education in Romania is quite expensive (somewhere around 600 EUR/year) and of very poor quality. With about the same ammount of money somebody could learn in a better University (good Italian ones are about 1000 EUR/year tuition fees). More than this everything in Romanian education seems to be crafted without any plan, without taking into account any curricula, prerequisites and consequences of the learning activity.

...

I really do hope that somet6hing will changhe also in this field.