Romanian television

While I have been away I had satellite TV in my apartment in Croatia.
The only Romanian television station was TVRi... Awful...
All the shows were a salad. For example a show about problems in Romanian tourism had as guests two business men and one singer (Traistariu the castretto). The first guests were talking about how to make tourism more efficient in Romania while Traistariu sang an old tune and spoke about Japan :P.
The host of the show was evidently not able to handle it.

Another morning show "Intalnire la malul marii" was hosted by two aging/consumed whore like girls. The show was also an uninspired mix of young un-tallented starlets wanabes (Romanian name for them is "pitzipoance"), gypsies and manele singers, old actors and such... Awful again.

The afternoon I have once seen a cultural show about Vasile Parizescu's Romanian painting collection - one of the largest and most valuable in Romania. The producer/host Irina Irsai illustrated the show with the most uninspired rags. In the meanwhile she offered  a deep look under her skirt and she was constantly interrupting the guest when he spoke about significant episodes of his life. The montage of the looked as it have been made by a 3 years old kid.

Another afternoon  show was an educational one - again with no wit. It was plain and dumb and repetitive. The host had as much pedagogical apprehension as an old boot while the kids in the show were evidently bored and mechanically repeating the lines in the script. The funniest one was a slow teenager with an earing taht was saying platitudes from behind a tree.

The scrolling banners were both in Romanian  and in Romglish - a word by word translation of the Romanian version with some spelling and grammar  mistakes.

However the only good show were the  news and in one day the Traian Basescu's interview.
I almost regretted that I have even turned on TV... but I needed some background during breakfast/dinner.

Vacation... never too long

This year I spent my hollydays in Baska, Krk island in Croatia.
It was a relaxing vacation in a wonderful place.
I have enjoyed bot the stay there, the marvelous  landscape, excellent cuisine and the crystal clear water. The place is loaded with history dating back to Roman period. The trip through Serbia and especially Croatia - with its mountains and dense forests was also extremely enjoyable.

A good place for business

Comparing those three countries we see that Serbia is by far the most interesting both for corporations and common people.

Country	Personal tax	Corporate tax	VAT
Romania	16%	16%	24% (since 26 june 2010)
Russia	24%	13%	18%
Serbia	10%	14%	18% (8% basic necessities as bread, milk etc.)

Dog training

When you have a dog you train it by giving it goodies when it does something good and by giving him a small punishment when he does something bad IMMEDIATELY after it did it.
With a team I think the incentives should also be given immediately after a project is finished or a month later... tops. And the incentives should be real - something people could use or value.
Today I have received an email at 14:00 that we are invited at 16:30 for a small 'party' in a total value of 60 EUR for all 23 of us as sign that management appreciates our work... This is happening at 4 months after the end of the project. what can I, a poor dog, learn from this... Nothing except this is just a master's caprice.
I really do not understand this kind of policies. It would have been better for the management to do nothing instead. "That's lame" I would say.
Moreover I have discovered that management in my group rarely uses the magical Outlook facilities as Calendar or Tasks - everything is on email - preferably at the end or in between a long thread of them.
Meetings are quite ad-hoc and quite de scoped and incredibly long - over one hour to decide simple things and WITHOUT any action points or concrete measurable outcomes afterwards.

Aerosmith concert @ Bucharest

I am not their fan but this is a tune I like:

Chinese spam

I decided a couple of months ago to moderate comment due to the fact that the chinese/taiwanese spammers were publising crap on the comments on my blog.
They did not stop but it seems to me that they even increased their posting rate...
Iam looking for some automated spam protection.

Precious