How to lose a client in 10 seconds

Sometimes people shoot themselves in the foot when they think they are shooting others. This little story is from two Tango parties, but it will relate to any type of customer-seller relationship, you’ll see .

A few weeks ago I was at a Tango party. I’m not a Tango dancer – I love it though, I like to make stuff up as I go and I did have quite a few great dances with people around Europe who thought I actually can dance it properly. I insist that I can’t, although I can on occasion fake it pretty well… Anyway. I enjoy it. I enjoy creating within it. Every once and again I end up at a party, where I try to absorb moves and tricks as I watch them. So here I was at one such big event.

Towards the end of the night I asked someone (turned out to be a Tango teacher) for a dance. I normally let everyone know I know very little of Tango when I ask them to dance, by the way – he was no exception. I was looking forward to picking up yet a few more things on the go.

He had a more defined lead than others I danced with and, to my understanding (as I’m a very light follower, mind you), he gave me that extra energy that normally signifies some extra stuff going on (for example, flicks). I’m a good, girl (on occasion ), so I did what I thought I was supposed to. Less than a minute into the dance, however, my partner stopped in the middle of the floor, looked at me and asked “Do you want to dance alone?”.

I said something in reply on the lines of, well, I wasn’t familiar with his lead and I basically felt enough of a push to do what I was doing, which was why I was doing it etc. etc. etc. He then (thank you, your majesty), was kind enough to finish the dance. He also told me, in the meantime, that he would be holding a workshop the next day on exactly that – connection and lead interpretation etc, where I could learn it if I wanted.

Well, I wanted. I still do. Just not, my dear friend, with you. You lost me in the few seconds that it took you to say your arrogant-son-of-a-bitchy “Do you want to dance alone?”, to which I had to summon all my manners and will power not to reply “Yes, asshole, that’s exactly why I asked another person for a dance – so I can do it on my own. Duh.” Want to know a trade secret? If you wished to promote your workshop, being such a dick towards me was not the way.

Let me, in the near zero chance of a hope you may one day stumble upon this, tell you how you could have handled this whole thing with much more class and maybe even could have seduced me into your workshop:

1. Ask me a different question. Ask me something like “hey, I’m wondering if you normally prefer to do these things in general, or do you feel like I’m leading you into it?”. I would have told you that was what your lead felt like for me and we could then sort it all out in a much more dignified manner.

2. Compliment me. Even if I were absolutely terrible (I wasn’t), stepped on your feet at every step (not once) and was heavier than a load of bricks to lead (I’m the opposite, which actually causes problems sometimes). I’m your potential client? Make me happy! Say you’re impressed I could pick up so much without proper lessons. Say you can see how I could very quickly learn a lot more if I did take a lesson here and there. Then wait.

3. Wait for me to tell my heart-wrenching digest of a story of how I’m hardly ever in the city for long enough to take a course (so if I paid for one, I’d miss out on several lessons inevitably, which makes a course not worthy of an investment for me).

4. NOW pitch your class. Tell me I may not even need a full course necessarily (another self-esteem boost), but a few specific workshops can help me interpret the lead better and end up jumping ahead in terms of dance abilities. Say “by the way there is one tomorrow if you’d wish to come – we’d be doing exactly that and I’d be happy to see you there”.

Guess what? I never considered going for that weekend’s workshops. But. Had you played the situation out that way – I could have been very easily persuaded out of my money and you would have gotten it. I would have gotten a valuable lesson, too (I’m sure. I may still one day – just never with you…). And instead of writing this entry, I would be writing an entry with your name in it, praising your skills, workshop and everything about it. Wouldn’t you benefit from some positive publicity?

Instead, you ruined my evening. You made me feel absolutely terrible about myself. You’ve basically shat on what to me is actually sacred: an ability to express what the music stirs inside me through movement. You’ve also crossed out every single occasion when other (mind you, very good) Tango dancers told me they thought I danced already for a long time and didn’t believe me when I would tell them I’m no more than a beginner with a decent ability to fake it – on a good day. You made me cry. I hardly ever cry. You made me think I should never dare show up at any milonga ever again because I’m a worthless pretender with no hope for ever being able to enjoy this particular dance, which I happen to love.

To my luck, I’m a stubborn person. It’s probably the only quality that keeps me still afloat in life. So I gathered the tiny pieces of my shattered dance-esteem and forced myself to go to another Tango party the following night. It was mixed with other music, so I was more within my element in general. And here another Tango teacher character enters the story.

Of course, I asked him to dance. And of course, I also told him I’m sort of just starting out there and don’t dance more than once in several months. But he was pretty much the exact opposite story to the first guy.

There is one figure I kept making a misstep on – I do it often, I’d like to correct it but I didn’t pick up on it yet. So by misstep number three I apologized and told him for some reason I always seem to get that one damn thing wrong. Instead of patronizing me though, he said there is no such thing as ‘wrong’ in Tango. It’s about creating the movement together and enjoying it! (I respectfully disagree about “no such thing as ‘wrong’”: when you’re not matched in balance to the partner, it’s ‘wrong’ in Tango – ideally it shouldn’t happen, and my misstep is the kind that disturbs that balancing act that Tango is, but enough of the technicalities…).

We ended up dancing a few more times that night and if he had ever invited me to a workshop – I’d rob a bank to go to it if I had to. Because that, that was a true teacher of his craft. And a great salesman for his goods, so to speak. And I am very happy that I had forced myself out of the house and into that other party that night, where all it took was a warm smile and a friendly, but very true comment to mend my badly damaged dance-esteem back together and return to me that hope that maybe one day I could actually learn to dance this thing properly… If I ever hear about him being back in town and teaching something – he has my money, mark my word.

Here is the tl;dr ‘moral’ of the two stories: don’t be an asshole. If you’re in the business of offering something to people for money and you’re interacting with someone who may be (however slight the chance) your potential customer – treat them nicely. You may gain a customer in their person, or through their reference. Word of mouth goes a very long way – don’t allow that huge potential for publicity go sour just because of one stupid, condescending comment. No matter how much you may wish to say something mean – think of whether it would end up bringing the money into your pocket if you did. It probably won’t. Don’t be the teacher #1 from my story – be teacher #2. You shall reap rewards for remembering that.

Call me, baby!

Just to make me happy, it was relatively cold in Tel Aviv as long as I was there. Except for one day – Sunday. I used the opportunity to go to the beach and catch some sunshine.

I arrived around 10am to the huge beach with few people and groups of people on it, found a spot to the side from everyone else, set up my towel and settled down.

About 15 minutes later some woman came to the beach and laid her towel 30 centimeters away alongside mine… I’m not exactly sure why on an empty beach she believed that spot was exactly what she needed, but there she was…

I thought ‘whatever’, who knows – maybe she planned to go swimming later and thought her stuff may have been safer if she left it near someone else. I was wrong.

Immediately after taking off her top and shorts, she picked up the phone and commenced a very lengthy phone call… So, obviously, she wanted me to listen to her phone conversations!

At first I thought that maybe she just needed to call that one person and would soon wrap it up. Not that she had an unpleasant voice, but it’s a bit difficult to relax when someone you neither know nor understand is merrily chatting to an invisible friend right up in your ear. Basically, as hard as it may be to believe, I preferred to listen to the waves and keep all the other noises at background level.

Ten minutes of her non-stop talking in, I realized it was a bit too crowded for the two of us on that one square meter of sand, picked up my stuff and settled a few meters away, wondering how long the phone call may last. Turned out it was a wise decision: in the two hours that I spent on the beach since the move she had one 10-minute break in her otherwise incessant phone conversations! She was still on the phone when I left the beach…

Maybe I’m slow in understanding some things, but I can’t figure out why the hell she had to lay down literally less than half a meter away from me on an empty beach? Did she think I’d appreciate the radio talk-show for hours at end? In other words: WTF?

Just another manic Wednesday…

Let’s just say a whole week of the Prague Zouk Congress was partially to blame for everything… After all, I had in total 7 people crash over at my place during the week and the last of them left on Wednesday early morning. In other words, no wonder I slightly overslept… Until about 2pm .

As a consequence, I had only two hours left to clean up the entire apartment, wash the dishes and pack. I don’t think I ever did a full-house clean-up (including floor-washing) with such speed before! I managed almost everything from the list, although I forgot to pack a few useful items in a rush, but I think I did well granted I basically had 5 minutes to collect some remotely relevant clothes items from all around the house and throw them into the micro-suitcase. How I managed to take my phone and camera chargers is still a mystery to me!

I was expecting a guest at the house and Sinclair was supposed to drop by… My phone, however, had other plans for me – it was on, but didn’t accept any calls or texts! I learned about it from a Facebook message from Sinclair who let me know he was under my door a few minutes before and now was having a beer nearby… The phone started to behave well again after I switched it off and on… Finally, I managed to let everyone in – in the middle of running around like crazy and trying to find things .

Running only 15 minutes late on estimated time of leaving the house, I rushed out and made it just 10 minutes late to the free Zouk lesson we were supposed to give with Sinclair. That seemed to have gone well, then I rushed to the airport – for no good reason, as it turned out, as the flight was delayed for 2 hours… Had I known that, I would’ve dropped back into the apartment before going to the airport to properly pack, but oh well…

Finally I made it to Tel Aviv. At the passport control the lovely lady was not in the best of moods. She asked me about the print out of the return ticket (which I, of course, didn’t have… Why, too, for an electronic ticket?). I was then asked to go to a ‘room over there’ and wait… In the ‘room over there’ another lady asked me a few questions. I asked her if it was necessary to have a ticket print-out at all times, she was surprised… She then gave back my passport and I went through.

Caught a train to Tel Aviv, then a taxi to the apartment and finally the full-day-crazy-rush was over.

So here I am in Tel Aviv. It’s kind of cold and windy – just the way I ‘like’ it… Although in a couple of days it should be hot again… I hope! I came here hoping to warm up!

 

We can do the “Harlem Shake”! Aka “just another normal weekend”…

When a friend comes to town for a short visit over the weekend, all sorts of things end up happening that normally wouldn’t. For instance, me dragging my butt out to several places over only two nights… IN THE COLD!!! (almost unheard of!) The highlight of the weekend, however, was taking part in one of Prague’s “Harlem Shake” videos (at the end). Here’s how it all went:

1. Friday night, March 8. International women’s day. We made it to KU Bar for the UNYP party simply for the lols. I was surprised that only a couple of years after I graduated I only recognized maybe 2-3 people in total! We then spent 10 minutes waiting in the queue to M1, ditched the idea, went to Nebe on Vaclavske nam. but they had some weird graduation party going on, checked out Beer Factory but it was closed, so we snacked at the KFC and headed home .

2. On Saturday we met up with a bunch of people and went to Nebe on Kremencova.

The perpetrators

Acting normal… for now!

Photobombing

My precioussssss!!!!! This is where it all got a bit out of hand… Julia and her friend ordered the MAXI Mojito not knowing HOW big it was . We all had to help them out with it and in the meantime I ended up in a massive ice fight with one of the party crew… Ah, the joys of good company!

Heeeeere, kity, kitty, kitty!

I vant to suk ur blooooood!!!!!

BEST. PICTURE. EVER!!!

Just kidding… Everything’s cool…

3. When most of the party people headed back home, we decided to see what else is out there and walked all the way to Radost… It was empty by the time we got there (of course), but at least we got a bit of r’n'b down the system and made a pit stop at McD’s on the way .

(Radost pictures (c) SoulTrain Weekender)

We have arrived!

The coolest girls in the club

Sarah and Julia

Gettin’ the groove on! (Whoever was the DJ that night at 4am should probably quit cutting every song after 10 seconds… Seriously… Just when you get into a song, he switched – aggggrrrrhhh!!!)

LOLLL we spent so much I had to tak e a rickshaw job on Vaclavak! (Not really – this was taken the following Tuesday after ballet class, I just like the picture )

4. Forcing ourselves to get up way too early for the organisms’ liking, we did a 15-minute express raid of my closet to find props for the Harlem Shake Prague, Lavka edition! It was a wonderful, sunny, warm day and we were happy to spend it outside during the filming!

Just a regular outfit…

We have arrived… Since we had plenty of time before the filming, we were taking funny pictures along the way

Shower tiiiime!

WTF?!?!

SuperWitch impersonation FAIL

Inspired by the Harlem Shake theme

Riding it!

MMMMMMMWWWWWAAAAHHH!!!!!

At some point a group of Italian guys showed up, asking us what was going on. We took a million pictures with them (on their phones) and ended up recruiting them for the Harlem Shake

OMG a SNAAAKE!!!

The Pope in action . When the filming started, he was the one who began the video

Discussing whether or not the Italians should look at the Pope as he walks in…

The Pope was joined by an Indian and the girl we talked into participating (She originally just came to watch)

Finally, everyone was in the picture

Final pictures before we left to get breakfast/lunch

BYYYYYEEE!!!

There is a lot of fun stuff that didn’t get into the final cut, as usual, but we spent a lovely time in the sunshine having some silly fun – and that’s exactly what matters

Swans and philosophy: the little things in life.

Little things in life sometimes get lost between the bigger events. It is a sad loss, as those little things are often just as significant. They make up the fabric of one’s life story, after all, and all that major stuff are just occasional ornaments.

As we were throwing bread to the swans at Kampa on an unusually sunny Sunday afternoon of February 24, I was thinking about how many types of snow I used to be familiar with when I was a kid at my granny’s place… How we built snowmen and snow fortresses, had snowball fights… Collected icicles and the icy top layers from the snow that were so beautiful and ornate…

Now at this age the main reaction to snow was concern over how it will make the clothes wet instead of all the possible simple joys that playing with it could give… Maybe it’s called ‘growing up’, but something magical is inevitably lost or at least dulled in that process. It is irreversible. Almost… Unless you try, at least sometimes, to look at the world through the eyes of a child again, to react to it without inhibitions and to enjoy its small treats fully… It’s sad I can’t go back into my memories to snap pictures of it all for future reference to all those things that make life special, but that would have been an insanely huge photo album anyway. I hope my memory would hold them all for my use for many years yet to come…

Going through the inventory of the months between Lloret del Mar/ Barcelona city and now, I recalled a few omitted ‘little things’ that I shall pay my dues to, not all of them bright and positive, but all of them memorable in their own ways…

It was shortly before Christmas. I was on my way to the city center – my friend and I were about to watch the Samsara film. A homeless man got onto the tram – not an unusual event in Prague. He smelled pretty badly… A few moments later someone told him he really should get off because he stinks. The homeless man started to slowly get up. Then a young lad sitting a few chairs ahead said something on the lines of “Yeah, make sure to get the hell outta here or I’ll beat you up”… I don’t know why, but I was so shocked by that pointless threat of violence I wanted to cry…

The homeless man, in the meantime, made his way to the door, but because he had bad legs, he didn’t make it out in time. He got off one stop later and so did I. I came up to him and told him not to listen to those stupid bastards who had never been in a situation like his. They had no idea how easy it is to lose everything and end up in the streets and how hard it can be to then regain a decent life… I gave him some change I had on me, crossed the tram lines, turned to a wall and burst out crying in the middle of the busy street…

Why? Why such aggression? Why the unnecessary threats? Poor thing was getting up already after the very first remark by someone… What asshole felt the need to self-validate on behalf of someone so much weaker and in such a terrible situation already? I wished I could punch him and break a few teeth… Those who know my aversion to physical violence would understand how extreme this feeling was…

It was a young lad, tall, just a tad bulkier than the average – maybe all that was needed for his brain to develop went into the muscle tissue instead? His spoiled, healthy ass has no inkling about life in the streets, especially paired with physical inabilities… He has a warm home to come back to and at least three meals a day and a decent life, and the one he lashed out at has none of it and none of his youth to give him strength either…

Anyone can end up homeless in a blink of an eye. Anyone. And making it through even a few days without a roof over your head is an ordeal most of us spoiled Westerners won’t manage with due dignity. Now imagine having to count winter after winter with no home, no friends, no family to support you and no money…

I think back to this and it still makes me mad… Mad, and grateful for everything I have. And mad… Mad on behalf of those homeless people I had had a chance to talk to in my life who were better and more intelligent humans than many of those who have their comforts and privileges intact… Mad at all assholes who continuously prevent subsidized facilities for  the homeless from being built in their neighborhoods because they don’t want the ‘scum’ there… They don’t want the ‘scum’ in the trams… Or anywhere, for that matter… But without such facilities these people have nowhere else to go, nowhere to get washed and to sleep and to be off of the streets where the assholes don’t want to see them in the first place… People are remarkably cruel and stupid …

I am one of the lucky few in this world… I have everything I need and much more. I have friends I could spend the 25th with, even though we don’t even celebrate Christmas on that date. But we had the luxury of deciding to organize a spontaneous dinner just because ‘why not’…

After the New Year’s, we paid a visit to one of the local ice skating rings.

Last time I wore skates was at least 10 years ago, so I was happy I did not fall that evening .

We decided to go to the rink near Stavovske Divadlo: renting skates was the cheapest there and entering the rink was free

Best way to brake!

Ready, set…

Go!

One fuzzy girl…

Another fuzzy girl…

And together we are two fuzzy girls

At Mlejnice restaurant, refilling the lost calories… Save me from the camera!!!

Check it ooooooout!!!

Results of some culinary experiments may be, on occasion, questionable…

Back from the spontaneous trip to Amsterdam I had a chance to barricade myself inside the house from the winter cold. I went out only for occasional visits to the store and special events, like a hockey game on January 30th…

Some Russian team was playing some Czech team, apparently… I can’t care less about hockey itself, but family friends invited me to tag along . I thought ‘what a hell!’ and went along – trying to honor the sheer randomness of my existence. Used the opportunity to test my Nokia N95 ability to post pictures directly to FB.

Those handy things with ‘goooool!’ (=goal) on them were given out at the entrance. They could be folded and used for banging on something to make loads of noise. I got two and used them throughout the game – for both teams . I left the game early because I had a party to get to, but I heard Russian team (with a Czech name though and from a Czech town…) won that night.

At a special Zouk Love party later that night at the 360′ Lounge Bar I got a chance to warm up…

Zouk Night – 30.1.2013 @ 360º Lounge Bar

Only a few days later I was exposed to a b-day dinner with yet another session of Twister-’yoga’…

I also just started ballet classes for the flexibility-impaired… Highly recommended to anyone who wants to feel like an absolute, incompetent train wreck with little effort . At the second class I discovered an old family friend of ours also was taking that class! I haven’t seen her in about forever! It’s a small world…

I briefly left the house – and Prague – for a weekend in Nancy (France) where a small delegation from Prague took part in the 2nd Tchic Tchic Boum Festival and came back to my bunker.

In the meantime, Prague was covered by an unusually thick snow blanket.

This view from the window on February 24th inspired a walk through the city in the hopes of capturing some of it under the spell of both the obvious winter and the rare sunshine.

We resolved to stroll around, armed with cameras, and feed the swans on the way… Like so many of us so many times, they also tend to bite the hands that feed them, so we had to be careful. At least they modeled for our pictures .

Afternoon rendez-vous at Malostranska…

I don’t remember noticing this sun clock before!

Unsure why the picture turned out this dark… Could it be the siren on the roof?

Just a gate that closes the entrance to the metro station… Nothing special…

Sun and Moon meet on this gate

Snow-charmed Kampa

Hungry swans waiting for bread. Ducks were often quicker thieves though

Just hangin’…

One of the swans was very much into pinching others around it, even when they didn’t do anything and simply minded their own business.

Posing

Where is the food?!

Curious one…

Little swan or…

a big duck?

Can hardly call those beauties ‘little’, to be fair: out of the water and head up, they were over half my height!

Swans often mate for life

Youngsters were out partying somewhere and came late for lunch . Typical youth!

The sun was quickly working its way through the white shroud that was much thicker only a few hours before… Soon there were to be no more snow left again…

National pride… Those two gentlemen are peeing all over the Czech Republic map right in front of the Kafka museum

Open up, Pete!

Certovka

Is that the whole house?

Discovered this on one of the buildings at Charles’ Bridge… Any clue what this is?

Best shot of the day. As often – complete accident, taken on the run…

Cold…

Did you know that the Prague Castle is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest castle complex in the world?

Lovely building right across from Karlovy Lazne. Never knew what it is…

This begs for a princess to be locked in it!

Final takes before we dove into cafe Slavia…

Mission: accomplished!

Sunlight was on its way elsewhere on the planet as we dove into cafe Slavia for a bite and a coffee. While trying to select a table closest to the window and the view over the river, I’ve met the glance of no less than my university art teacher! Her mother took her out for lunch to ‘vent the brain’, as Natasha was way too submerged into preparation of her next exhibition… We joined them for lunch and had a few philosophical talks – second time that day, as I kicked the morning off with another highly intellectual discussion with my guests .

Natasha’s mother is 92 – she remembers the time when Vltava river used to freeze over during winter and the kids went ice skating on it… You would never guess her age though. She is a bright and active lady, dressed with style, with enough energy to wholesale. She continues to teach languages and also yoga-based gymnastics for seniors. In her spare time, she studies psychology…  People like her make me want to live and accomplish and keep on going no matter what, showing that age isn’t quite as much of an issue. It was incredibly inspiring to meet them both. I even walked all the way home instead of taking a tram – despite the snow porridge and huge puddles on the streets that turned the journey into a cross-country challenge .

The latest pleasant surprise awaited me at the Zouk Love party at Andel club on February 27th.

Zouk Love Night – 27.2.2013

It was a lovely party and most Prague Zoukeiros showed up. Towards what was supposed to be the end of the night I was thinking about leaving when, surprise surprise, Dadinho and Janaina showed up! I didn’t even know they were in Prague!

Happy to see you too! LOLLLL

Zouk chicas

We had a rare opportunity to mingle and dance with them at the party, which, to everyone’s joy, went on much later than initially announced .

On the following Friday we ended up at Nebe (the one at Celnice). It was an unexpected, nice night out, not without a bit of staged violence…

First punch…

Second punch… (we also ‘changed colors’ in a good ‘football’ tradition, it seems: on Wednesday at the Zouk Love party I was wearing a grey/black horizontal stripes top and Dadinho was wearing a fuscia one )

 We seem to have impressed the club photographer, too

Blinding flash…

Party people

On Saturday I received a FB message from an unknown to me person asking about stuff to do in Prague over the weekend. We ended up meeting on Sunday evening at Potrefena Husa (Na Verandach). A couple of Velvets on their behalf down the line all three of us re-located to La Macumba for the impromptu Zouk party, where I stayed while my fresh acquaintances proceeded to the city center. I caught up with them after the party finished and we paid tribute to my old time favorite Bombay bar . Yet another unexpected, fun night…

Here they are: some of my little, memorable things of the past few months… Taking me down to the pits of despair and up into the clouds of inspiration, plus everything in between…

What are the little memorable things that colored your own few months with the texture of life?

What happens when on January 1st (in Prague) I get a message saying “wanna party in Amsterdam?”

Last time I had a plan for a few relaxing months, I ended up living out of a suitcase. I start suspecting it’s a bit similar to the effect of my ‘I’ll get home early today’ mantra… Except when I made a wish for a ‘relaxing’ 2013, I didn’t expect the universe to start working on it from day 1 of the new year!

The universe, apparently, takes me very seriously though, so right on January the 1st, after the official city New Year’s eve fireworks, I got an invitation to come spend a few party days in Amsterdam… An offer I could, of course, refuse, but the people involved were hard to say ‘no’ to . Therefore, doing my best not to disappoint my fate by refusing her very first generous offer of the new arbitrarily assigned time segment, on the 2nd I bought the ticket, on the 3d I bought a small suitcase that would fit free cabin luggage dimensions for Wizzair and at 6 in the morning on the 4th I was on the plane to Eindhoven…

Aline picked me up at the airport and less than an hour later I was finally able to catch up on the sleep I missed from the night before. In the evening we set off to Amsterdam for the Zouk party at BraSa and, of course, an after-party at Candela. And this was the quiet night of the weekend…

On the 5th we began by ‘ambushing’ my host in Amsterdam: we asked if Aline could also stay there for the night to avoid driving back and forth. He was nice enough to agree . After we sorted everything out, we dropped in for Gert’s b-day party for a little while. It was unplanned – we only got invited the night before, but it was lovely to catch up off the dance floor. Then we picked up DJ Shing and DJ Nyx and drove to Katwijk for the Zouk aan Zee party at Johnny’s Mambo. The party there was nice, we especially enjoyed watching the faces Shana was making while dancing with Fabiano . But it ended, unfortunately, at 1am – way too early for the party crew, so we dropped Shana off at the house and proceeded to El Punto Latino (the nickname we gave it was a version without the first ‘n’…). When we closed the place, we still didn’t have enough. Fortunately, the afterparty spot right next door to Candela – The News – was  open, so we proceeded there. At first it was totally packed, but we were able to charm our way inside. Then eventually some more space cleared out and we burned the floor . Next time we checked the ticker, it was around 8 in the morning… We closed that spot as well, dropped Fabiano off and finally came back to sleep around 9:30am, to great amusement of our host who expected us back closer to 5am .

On the 6th we woke up late – no surprises there . Our host suggested us a very good restaurant right across the street – Buuf, not expensive and with tasty food. We opted for steaks .

Despite a very ‘democratic’ price, the steak was very nice and juicy and potatoes were delicious, so don’t hesitate to drop in if you’re in the area! (Keep in mind it gets pretty full around dinner time and lunch time)

Then we went to the Zouk party at Sao Paolo. Not the one in Brazil (maybe next time ) – the one about 400 meters down the street from the restaurant .

The ‘normal’ group picture after the workshop… (Disclaimer: copyright for the images from Sao Paolo belongs to their respective authors)

The ‘crazy’ group picture

The slightly less crazy picture by the time Fabiano managed to actually get on his head

Dancing with Roger is usually fun (unless he breaks my nose )

This is the best picture of the night! Fabiano and Shana rule!!!

Officially, the party ended at 1am, but 8 of us kind of hung out a bit longer because Nyx started playing some badass club music… Somehow this organically grew into a sort of a private afterparty right there at the bar, behind the closed roller-blinds, with talking, dancing and even some food that was served in the middle of the night!

Paul is trying out a PIMP persona

Having funnnnnn!!!!

I see you winding and grinding…

Chicken, potatoes and salad

Yumm yummm

We wrapped up past 4am . Aline dropped me off and went back to Eindhoven and I went to sleep.

On the 7th I woke up very late, took a bath and was about to text my host when he came back. He was nice enough to make a dinner and for the rest of the evening I just chilled at the house, catching up on some blogging. I’m still going through Barcelona pictures – I have just over 200 to upload from the last trip plus another few hundred from my first time in the city a couple of years ago…

The 8th was also relaxing. It turned meteorologically annoying towards the evening when it got colder and it began to drizzle (didn’t stop until the late morning!), but the brave party musketeers faced that challenge and ventured into the cold night. This time we went to Brasil. Again, not the one across the ocean, but the one near Leidseplein. Other places were empty, but Brasil had quite some life in it right until the closing time . Apparently you can’t get in unless there is a Brazilian person with you, but at 3am no one asked…

Secret identity…

Disclosed!

Party people

A more in-focus picture from Brasil bar . (c) belongs to the author of the picture

In the early pre-dawn hours of the 9th we dropped Fabiano off to rest and pack and went on to chill a bit ourselves. Not without some fooling around.

Shiiiit… Amster-daaayym…

We ARE the afterparty!

Ha! A bit of sandwich-packaging wisdom .

Later we came back to take him to the airport (hello there again, Schipol!) and finally, one hot panini per person later, it was time to say goodbye…

What a week! We enjoyed well-deserved lazy couch-potato movie and series-watching couple of days and summoned our remaining strength by Friday the 11th to go to Utrecht for the Zouk party at De Dreef.

I also got a Nokia N95 to play with (my dear Aline gave me her old one), so I’m officially among the smartphone owners now . Feel free to WhatsApp me (if you have my number) .

Originally we were thinking about going to one of the two parties on Saturday slightly further off, but in the end we decided instead to go to Santiago de Cuba (Yaaay, I’ve actually been there! I mean the real one!) bar in Eindhoven. It was a nice, chill night, although we both even got to dance a bit. We got home, had a snack, watched a couple of more episodes of ‘Heroes’, rested for a couple of hours and headed to Eindhoven airport. Now it was my time to leave Holland and get back to Prague, see if anything more ‘relaxing’ is in store for me that I know not of so far …

If all or even any of the projects and plans that have emerged as possibilities for the 2013 in its very first days, this should be one hell of a year .

New Year’s Eve 2013

I like the start of 2013 so far . Nothing too crazy, but it sure kicked off on positive vibes . Here’s a quick 31.12.12-01.01.13 timeline for the curious:

(fast-forward through canceling our intended trip to Erfurt and almost no sleep on the 30th, saying goodbye to 1 set of guests and welcoming 7 others, express clean-up and pack-up for the night to come, a quick get-together with another friend of mine in the city center and the purchase of crispy duck with noodles from the Asian take-away…)

31st, afternoon: Since my house was occupied by a herd of really nice Italians who were in the middle of cooking and what not right around the time when I was in the middle of craving some sleep, I got lucky to be able to ‘surf the couch’ of a good friend of mine. I took all I needed, got there and passed out for a few hours.

31st evening: Right before 9pm, I was timely awoken by my friend (not by my alarm, which didn’t ring for some weird reason) and got on Skype call with mom and dad and our mutual good friend in Moscow. I got to listen to a part of Putin’s speech, watched my parents (in silly hats, no less!!!) hop around after the stroke of midnight and thus sort of celebrated the 2013 by Moscow time . Then I had to run get ready.

31st, a bit past 9pm: My second attempt at fake eyelashes in life (first one was rather successful – for the show in Lloret del Mar) was supposed to be a quick fix to avoid bothering with mascara (hate using mascara…)… The ‘quick fix’ turned into a half an hour battle. These were a different type of lashes, less flexible (hard to make them follow the eyelid’s shape), and the damned glue would dry before I could even transfer the thing the 30 cm from sink level to eye level! Oh, of course I also forgot the tweezers… Roarrrr… I sorta fixed them on in the end, hoping they’d last at least the first 10-30 minutes of the party . The remaining face-paint took the 10 minutes remaining until arrival of the taxi.

31st, about 11pm: Got to Dancers’ Club, had some tasty cheese and snacks, danced some Salsa and Zouk. Best thing was that everyone could bring their own drinks and food to the party . Knowing that I usually get hungry half way through the night, I brought the duck…

31st, 23:50: Weather conditions: absolutely beautifully clear night, moon just past its fullness lighting the starry skies, fresh air.

Everyone got dressed and walked onto the roof terrace to watch the fireworks. Not the official city ones – the ‘whoever wanted to make any’ ones. It’s probably the first time in my life that I watched New Year’s Eve fireworks of any sorts live… Around midnight, we could them all around us – some pretty impressive, and some guys who probably robbed a Vietnamese-run pyrotechnic store of some sorts the night before were launching fireworks from the club’s street somewhere, so we had them explode basically under our noses . We launched a few of our own as well and then enjoyed the rest of the ‘show’. The city sounded like it was under gunfire .

1st, 00:25: Weather conditions: so smoky after the fireworks that you can barely make out the stars and the panoramic flight airplanes circling the city that were perfectly visible half an hour ago.

We slowly start to freeze and return indoors.

1st, around 1am: Kicking off the hilarious competition of Street dancers vs. Zouk dancers, for some reason for one bottle of alcohol prize… In the end, it was a tie, so the drinking members of both teams had to somehow share 1 bottle between like 12 or so people . The eyelashes were still attached, although the right one’s outer corner gave up… That’s about one hour better than I expected!

1st, around 2am: Time to make it to where I originally planned to be going tonight… I sent the duck flying back to my friend’s place (together with the friend, of course, who was also leaving but directly to the casa instead of any other party) – for some reason I wasn’t hungry at all (must be the cheese and other snacks I collected from around the place ).

Some of the friends were taking a taxi to the city center, I hopped in with them. Took the taxi 30 minutes to arrive to us, but at least it was normal, cheap price – not the shark price we’d get if we caught one on the street.

1st, around 2:40am: Got to Bombay Bar. It was full, so they were only letting people in as others were walking out. Big group of french guys outside was ahead of me, but I was in after only about 10 minutes. First person I saw there was an old friend of mine I haven’t seen in ages – nice welcome .

Had the greatest time at Bombay. Don’t know why, but it’s always a fun, positive, cool place for New Year’s, lovely atmosphere and people… If I’m ever in Prague again for the symbolic stroke of midnight, I’ll just go there directly for the night .

People were dancing, fooling around, I had some huuuuuge (probably like 5 of me in diameter, but taller) Turkish guy lift me up in the air a few times. Better yet, at different times he lifted my friend up, too… And both of us… I guess just because he could… Good times .

1st, some time around 4am: I started finding money on the floor. First I collected 70Kc in 10Kc coins… Then my friend found a 5 Euro note… A bit later I found a 10 Euro note… Basically, I got a full refund on the entrance fee . If this goes on like that for the rest of the year – I’ll be minted!

1st, hell knows when: Left Bombay to check out the club next door (former Fragola, forgot what it’s called now). Not many people there, but awesome music, so danced around a bit. Lashes still attached – I’m impressed!

1st, 7am!!!: I thought it was maybe 5 at best, but my friend said “are you aware that it’s 7am already?” WOOoooOOoOT! That’s what I call a good night out – when you have no idea what time it is and feel like you can keep going still, then it turns out you’re hours off your guesstimate . No wonder I was getting sleepy! Left the club, walked to my other friend’s place.

1st, 7:50am: After another small battle with the surprisingly durable, given how badly they were attached to begin with, fake lashes (this time, trying to take them off…), final crash-landing on the couch…

1st, a bit before 5pm: Finally woke up (sort of). Had a very pleasant rendez-vous with a cup of coffee and last year’s duck. Got ready, packed up my stuff and made it to the street near the National Theater minutes before the official city firework display at 18:00. Lovely stuff, choreographed to music and all… It then took me roughly 20 minutes to cross the bridge (because of the sea of people) and less than that to walk all the way home . Happy to see that my apartment is still there and Italian invasion is, thus far, seemingly peaceful .

1st, 8pm-ish: a couple of friends popped in for a tea and a chat . My wish to ‘have a relaxing 2013′ is already working: I might be going somewhere on January 4th for a few days…

1st, 23:16: Finishing this blog entry… Can’t wait to get into the shower but still have to wait a bit for the water to heat up…

So here is to the New Year, year of the Snake:

Dear 2013, a very warm welcome to you! I think I like you so far, and we hit it off pretty well right away. Wanna be friends for the remaining 12 months? Maybe you liked my shiny outfit that I greeted you in, or you’re simply aware of the fact that I like snakes, but you’re already being very nice to me. I appreciate it! . Keep it up! I hope we can carry on along those lines all the way. Good to have you here, 2013 – let’s rock and roll!!!

How did your New Year’s go – anything fun? Unusual? Exciting? Share the story below!

Happy New Year 2013!!!

Dear all, I would love to wish you a very successful 2013! To avoid double-entries, here is the link to this year’s New Year’s Eve Message to the World .

Insights into promiscuity: confession time.

It is confession time, my dearest, and I’d lay it all out for you plain and clear, no secrets. Here is the truth: I may have a favorite man, or maybe a few, but I can never get enough. Each new one is an opportunity for different experiences, and those experiences allow me to grow. Most often I have little control of who comes up and gets a hold of me. I actually hardly ever say no… Almost anyone has a chance… On occasion, I venture out after someone myself… I will tell you a few stories of how it sometimes happens and leave you be the judge…

It’s always great with the favorite ones… We already know each other’s body and movement, we already can easily read one another… I know I can trust them not to hurt me and to do everything just the way I like it, so I simply relax, close my eyes and enjoy the ride. Their hands find their way to all the right places, we fall into the hypnotizing rhythm and at times I am so into it I forget to breathe… Most of the times we end up accidentally discovering some new tricks we are actually physically capable of – this ability to venture out of the comfort zone, to leap into insanity, this is what marks my favorites out for me… I give in to it 100% – this is what people call “flow” or hypnotic trance… It is my oxygen and dopamine and my raison d’etre all in one. Whatever minutes actually pass, they seem eternal while they last and short as one moment when it’s all over. By that time we’re both usually high, sweaty and slightly out of breath, hearts pounding, yearning for more… On lucky occasions we can carry on to round two or three, but then the rules kick in and we have to swap – until the next chance…

Other times it’s complete strangers. Once I was looking and I saw someone interesting. The more I watched, the more I liked what I was seeing. It wasn’t long before I made my way towards him to have a go… Introduction was customarily very short – people in these settings go pretty much right down to business within seconds. There is little time to be wasted. So it was more or less a mutual “hello”, a couple of smiles and then hands right on each other. I was correct in my assessment – he definitely knew what he was doing! It was a smooth and jazzy ride with a lot of joy and several pleasant surprises along the way, a fair deal of fun and definitely a lot of passion. I even came back for seconds a few times during the night .

Another time I was taking a break when one guy came up to me who I’d probably never even notice out in the street. Or maybe I would – he wasn’t the smallest kid on the block – but certainly not in the same way… I thought to myself “wow, okay this looks risky but what a hell – let’s see what happens. After all, I’m sure I can survive at least one session, however terrifying it may end up being…”. I went ahead and said yes – did I mention I’m not too choosy? To my astonishment, it was one of the most memorable experiences in my personal history! What we managed to do together was an absolute masterpiece of crazy sweaty fun, and not for a second of all the five encores that we had did I feel his size!

I was even approached by a few girls at times – they surprised me as well. This is what’s great about swapping – you never stop being amazed, surprised and pleased. True, on occasion it’s just an average experience, but most of the times it’s really much better than drugs…

I’m sure you’ve guessed what I’m talking about .

(p.s. if you enjoyed this, you’d probably have even more fun reading about my life-long addiction, or about something wet, warm and pleasing…)

Terminal afterpaaaahhhrty… And related stories.

Maybe it wasn’t as extreme as in the movie “Terminal” (watch if you haven’t seen yet!), but I did get to bond with Schipol airport a bit closer than I expected to over the past week… I swear it wasn’t MY fault! It’s just that SOME people seem to have been jinxed in some strange travel-related way and spread the jinx over to some of the rest of us mortals, including the guess-who’s-writing-this person… This is what happened:

It all began in Prague… Actually, scratch that. It all began in Zurich, because this is where the fateful star alignment brought together the main protagonists of the whole shebang to begin with.

Saga cast
(main characters): your humble servant (whose every plan of a chill-down summer has been shattered mercilessly by this heartless bitch called ‘unforeseen circumstance’); Aline (someone who probably regrets having a driver’s license and a car by now ); Fabiano (aka DJ Nyx, who must have either angered or enchanted – we’re still debating which one – enough Schengen gods to be so determinately held back from leaving the zone)
(supporting characters): Dadinho (THE man who coined the currently trending in select circles inclination of the word ‘afterpaaaahhhrty’); Kendra (Nyx’s gorgeous dance partner, and a beautiful human being whose ability to keep her cool in all situations and remain absolutely charming no matter what is something I want private lessons in); Jonathan (Kendra’s boyfriend/Fabiano’s good friend, entangled in parts of this mess entirely by proxy, who probably didn’t expect quite THAT much adventure out of this vacation); Natasha (partially responsible for the Tarzan story and for organizing everyone to transfer orderly from BraSa to Candela for the nights out ).
in episodes: a load of other people.

Chapter 2 (because chapter one was in Zurich, remember ): Post-Prague Samba/Zouk Congress 2012-Stress Disorder.

The Prague Congress (August 16-19) was fun, although a bit smaller than I expected turnout-wise. On top of that, my intelligent strategy of hiding behind tall people didn’t quite work…

Trying to stay out of Sofie’s line of vision to avoid being dragged into the competition…

Someone tipped her off and she got me…

I did NOT agree to this, rrrrrrrrr!

We were supposed to parody this bit of choreography:

And, of course, it didn’t end well…

Popular poll suggested we actually won, but the prize was awarded to a different couple – they had more friends and those were louder… There is never any justice in such competitions!

Anyway… The congress, of course, didn’t lack the customary set of afterpaaaahhhrties (drinks, talks, laughs, music and even some food ), but they are not the focus of the current story. The focus is the events that began on Monday, August 20th. The three musketeers – Fabiano, Kendra and Jonathan – were bound to go to London on that day, which they did. Except that they have managed to win the Murphy’s Law-ttery and run into the most grungy immigration officer of the day. Hours of unpleasant nonsense later they were back in Prague Ruzyne airport…

Cut to my crib, circa 00:30am. My Dutch crew of congress guests is gone. I am still under the legitimately substantiated impression that I have a flight to catch to Paris in a few hours, so I am amidst an extensive clean-up before leaving Prague yet again for a month. Enter the Facebook message (in reply to my inquiry on how was the flight) from Fabiano: “well… things didn’t go as planned”. And here began the international rescue/reorganize operation of the upcoming 24 hours.

Step 1: get them a taxi from the Airport to my place. One trick was making Fabiano tell me which exit they are nearest to (to tell to the taxi driver where to park). Then, somehow even though I sent the address of the destination, the taxi driver didn’t have it when he arrived, so an extra trip to an available WiFi hub was required to get my address.

In the meantime: I learn that Paris is off. Way to tell me – a few hours before the flight! Could well have been done on Friday, but oh well – gives me time to sleep the Prague Congress off . That, and I can help out with the current situation better from the home base…

Finally, the weary travelers arrived.

Step 2: organize sleeping spots for everyone, all the while listening to what all happened at Heathrow airport. In short, it was some silly miscommunication (advice to travelers: always know the address of where you’re staying in UK when you travel there – might help! ) that resulted in immigration services saying that every one of them is required working visas to enter the UK (even Jonathan, who wasn’t involved in anything in any remotest way). That is, even for visiting friends… Yeah, go figure… And consequent un-pleasantries… We look up what times are the US and UK embassies open for the morning.

Step 3: get a little bit of sleep.

Chapter 3: A long day in the city.

Morning of August 21 – vaguely memorable to me because I slept through most of it. Up-date from the misplaced crew was amusing (in a “WTF” kind of way): no one at either embassy could believe that whole situation even happened. Oh and by the way, unfortunately, working visas to UK for US citizens applying from within EU are only issued in the main headquarters in Warsaw. Ah, but they only communicate on those issues by e-mail, not phone. Ehm, but it takes them roughly a week to answer e-mails… Should I mention that everyone’s flight back to the USA was scheduled to depart from London on the 28th?..

Step 4: spend a few hours of group online/on phone efforts trying to re-route everything and explore other available options. In the end, Kendra managed to get through to an airlines clerk who said it was possible, after all, to waive the fees for changing the outbound flights’ departure point. New route was set: instead of flying from London, flying from Amsterdam. Bus tickets to Amsterdam were arranged and we finally went for a well-deserved dinner (joined by Dadihno and Leo). The rest of the night was spent wandering around Prague, wondering why every bar seemed to be so empty (besides it being Tuesday and summertime…), eating some sausages on the Venceslaw’s Square, making a final pit-stop at McD’s and finally heading back to the casa around 6am. Curtains down, blackout…

Chapter 4: By the skin of their teeth...

I set my alarm to 14:00. The bus was leaving at 17:00. That would give everyone enough time to wake up, eat something, get ready and go. I also presumed everyone else also had alarms set… Whether they did or not, the next time I woke up (after hitting the “off” button) was 15:25 – roughly half an hour before we should have ideally left for the station.

Cue: mild panic and futile attempts to make Fabiano – of course, THE one with most stuff out of the bags – wake up, start moving and pack everything.

Kendra and Jonathan were awake and pretty much packed up from the night before. With some collective effort, we managed to leave about 16:15, arrived to the station 12 minutes before the bus departure (could be 15 but wasted a few because out of all the days when this could have happened I got caught without the ticket by the control. Saddest part? I DID send a text message to buy the ticket. I always do in the metro. Except this was a special day and I sent it to the wrong number. Here go 30 Euros… Granted, I found some money hidden away between my papers a day before AND was riding the system dirty for many years, I figured I won’t let that episode upset me… ), had (almost) enough time for the guys to get some food. Kendra and I were at the bus platform with the suitcases 1 minute before departure time, Jonathan and Fabiano joined 1 minute past departure time. It was THIS close, but I told them right away they’re NOT missing a connection under my supervision .

Chapter 5: A few extra days in Prague

Only for me. I was so tired that I didn’t even bother telling anyone I was still in the city and slept it all off for a couple of days, finishing the clean-up in between. Besides, I got a request to help someone work on a specific piece of writing, so all the relatively sane waking hours were devoted exclusively to that task – all the way till the end of the story . On 24th and 25th I stopped by shortly for the parties at Dancer’s club and then finally packed for Amsterdam.

It’s not me! I’m not here!

I’d make a good fan-operator!

Great fun dancing with Kamacho, if only he could understand me when I explained that the more force he applies to me, the less controllable I become because I start fighting back

Somebody heeelp! There, in the background – I’m being kidnapped! Oh historic event: managed a dance with Adilio Porto that night as well – something with a probability pretty near zero

In the meantime: Fabiano owned another nickname (Tarzan… For this (although you may not be able to see it due to privacy settings… Here’s viewer’s digest: after one of the parties in Amsterdam, a canal near Leidseplein. Roughly 5am. Natasha and Fabiano decide to take a picture on the boats, jump into the canal, swim to the boats, take the picture… Natasha swims back, Fabiano catches a big tree branch and swings towards the shore… Video ends there, but a few seconds later he crashes right back into the water… In other words, just a regular night out ) and they got to teach a last-minute workshop in Paris on the weekend.

On the 26th I, of course, haven’t managed to sleep (hardly ever happens when I have such an early flight). The whole home – Prague airport – Rotterdam airport – Rotterdam Central – Amsterdam Central – Wilco’s place stretch was one zombified blur, but at least I packed my MP3 so it had a soundtrack .

My very kind host has a twisted sense of humor, I suspect… First he subjected me to torture-by-camera, otherwise known as ‘an interview’ – in my current half-dead state! And then, of course, there was a party to go to (I mean, who would have ever thought…) at Monte Christo – good news was that it’s just a stone’s throw away… I managed to forget my irreplaceable hairbrush (yes, they exist) there, but picked it right back on Monday afternoon . Otherwise it was a nice but early (thank goodness) night, followed by well needed sleep.

Chapter 6: Goodbye party Vol. whatever…

This is kind of the day where it all began to get more spooky… August 27, Amsterdam, evening. Meeting up at BraSa then going to Leidseplein for the last night out with the whole crew whose flight back to USA is tomorrow: Nyx, Kendra, Jonathan.

Last night out in Ams – for some people…

Kendra and Jonathan were tired and went back to catch some sleep. The weird and crazy people carried on… One of the Latin clubs we went to had a House party, so we went to Candela. They had an open mic night there and we ended up having a live concert by the very one person responsible for all the hassle :

Unexpected performance
(Natasha, hope you don’t mind that I used those couple of pictures – I don’t have any others from that night!)

Round of applause

So far so good… The end of the night was slowly approaching and, finally, it was so late/early that Aline realized we might just as well drop Fabiano off at the airport. We grabbed some coffee and croissants at a gas station while he was getting ready, then picked him up and went to Schipol… (keep track now, this is round 1)

All the customary goodbyes behind us, we parted ways. We just left the parking lot when Fabiano messaged to tell that Jonathan and Kendra were not at the gate and he won’t be leaving without them… A few phone calls and messages later, however, they showed up and all was quiet on the Western Front – for the time being. I was back soon and in bed right away, so I had slept through the further developments of that day…

The developments were rather ‘interesting’. Namely, Fabiano didn’t get on that flight! He was stopped for questioning at the gate or something like that and didn’t make it… So he had to get back to Amsterdam – yet again… Aka “Just when I thought I was out – they pulllllled me back in!”…

Tuesday night everyone was so tired that even the already-customary evening out was skipped.

We did, however, go for (yet another) goodbye party on Wednesday 29th. This time Jonathan and Kendra were not there – they were back in the US. It began, yet again, at the same place where you can get 10 shots for 10 Euros:

Jeger!!!! Since I’m not into shots, and definitely not into Jeger, I’m the one taking the picture . For those more interested in that offer, the joint is called, I think, Pancake house and is on Leidseplein on the corner right next to Burger King

We were joined by a few other crazy Zouk people – it was good fun .

The last last goodbye party

We then moved on to Candela (yet again) and had a lot of fun dancing and fooling around. As last time, by the morning it has been decided that we might as well drop Fabiano off at Schipol (round 2)… In a Groundhog Day type of a deja-vu, we also used the time he took to get ready to go to the same exact gas station for the same exact croissants/coffee/apple juice deal . Except this time we also danced a bit near the coffee machines, to great amusement of some random guy who popped up to fill up the gas tank .

Maybe our ritual dance at the gas station appeased the Schengen gods, or maybe us praying to the airport deities when we got there had an effect, but this time the scenario in Schipol repeated only partially. Oh, and we were smart enough to try to arrive there well ahead of time – he thought the flight was at 09:50, but it was actually 09:15! Phew… So even though the ladies at the check-in already recognized him and said welcome back – the story had a different ending. For one thing, Fabiano’s suitcase gave up on all this bullshit (as in, tore) and had to be sealed. For another thing, this time he actually got onto the flight – wheee!!!!

Hence finished our party spree with DJ Nyx (by the way, if you haven’t heard this yet, you’re from the wrong planet!), but not my strange ‘love affair’ with Schipol airport (and, to be fair, Candela as well )…

Chapter 7: Amsterdam Zouk Congress – afterpaaaahhhrty!

Okay, so I fell asleep at the Thursday night congress pre-party… I mean, every number of sleepless nights has its limits… By the way, I have a complaint to make: on the website (and at the door to the pre-party, when it concerned ALL the other people) it said that the entrance was FREE for both full pass holders and PARTY PASS holders, like myself. Several people with party passes I spoke to confirmed this. However, when I had arrived, the girls at the door said that I had to pay the 5 Euro entrance fee… Why? So girls, whoever you were: please give 5 Euros back to Wilco, who was kind enough to chip in for me (I didn’t plan on spending anything, so I left the wallet at home), because I TOLD you at the door I had a party pass and I thus didn’t have to pay to get in. I mean it – I’ll check later on if you did. It’s bad karma for you.

As for the congress itself – seriously, what else can you do when it finishes at about 3am (for NO good reason, mind you, as I’ve recently learned… No it has nothing to do with permissions/noise levels… Which means that if certain people made slightly different arrangements, which would NOT cost them all THAT much more, we all could go on dancing well into the morning hours, getting far more than 3 hours of dance-time for the money… Yes, this is supposed to be a hint )? Exactly – go for an afterpaaaahhhrty! Friday and Saturday nights this is exactly what has happened. I think the fact that bouncers at Candela started greeting us like friends by now speaks for itself . I am probably missing someone, but this time the composition of the crowd roughly included: myself, Aline, Nicky, Natasha, Sula, Dadinho, David, Kamacho, Nicolas and a few others.

Dancing in Candela

Buncha posers hehehehe

THE afterpaaaaahhhrty crew

Morning after Candela

Sunday Congress party finished at 4am – same time as Candela closed up… But by the time everyone said goodbye to everyone we realized that, well, we might just as well drop Dadinho off at the Schipol airport (round 3)… So we did, then I went to get a bit of sleep and later that same day – Monday August 3d – I went back to… you guessed it – Schipol airport (round 4)! I was catching a train to the Hague from there.

So here I am now, with a slight flu after all this, finally able to relax a bit after what started to seem over the past few weeks as one never-ending party with very short breaks . As far as the magic goes: what do YOU think – were Schengen gods enchanted or pissed off?

7 Free Education Websites You Don’t Want to Miss – Goodnet

Great news for all the knowledge-savvy people out there: some good quality stuff IS out there for FREE! Take advantage!

1. COURSERA

WHAT Coursera strives to make education accessible to anyone.

HOW Free courses online from world-class universities, including Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The topics are varied, and lectures are formatted into series of 15-minute-long clips.

BONUS POINTS Freedom is the name of the game: students can watch videos at their convenience and in their own time.

2. UDACITY

WHAT A free education website for brainy types, founded by four Stanford roboticists.

HOW Udacity currently offers 11 courses , all of which are in science and math-related topics. According to the website, plans are underway to expand the curriculum.

BONUS POINTS Udacity is free of deadlines, free of prerequisites, free of quizzes and other annoying school stuff. Needless to say, courses are also free of charge.

3. OPEN CULTURE

WHAT High-quality cultural and educational media.

HOW A staggering collection of 400 courses, online, for free, from Ivy League universities, such as Stanford, UCLA, Columbia and Oxford University. Courses run the gamut from science and art to math and economics.

BONUS POINTS Classic and indie films, including many from the 1940’s and 1950’s, are available to watch for free.

4. TED-ED

WHAT TED, The powerhouse of jaw-dropping lectures needs no introduction. Now, they’re bringing their talent into education with an offshoot, Ted-Ed.

HOW A treasure trove of beautifully animated and gripping videos on a wide array of subjects, such as The Power of Simple Words  and How Many Universes are There.  All videos are under 10-minutes-long.

BONUS POINTS Supplemental materials such as quizzes and discussion questions are also available.

5. MENTORMOB

WHAT Curating and ordering learning materials.

HOW MentorMob is like the YouTube of learning materials: users create learning “playlists” from first-rate websites.

BONUS POINTS MentorMob is a community, whose members share and rank each others’ learning playlists.

6. MEMRISE

WHAT Effortless learning based on three pillars: science, fun and community.

HOW Based on scientific methods for implanting new information, Memrise proves that what may seem impossible is in fact doable – yes, even learning Mandarin Chinese.

BONUS POINTS The Guardian Wallcharts are mapped Memrise style, teaching you all about cheeses, herbs and other wonders of life.

7. LEARNIST

WHAT Learnist is the Pinterest of learning.

HOW The interactive platform allows users collect teaching materials and educational content that are grouped into “boards”.

BONUS POINTS The platform is equipped with the Learn it! bookmarklet, which enables picking images anywhere on the web and automatically shoots them to your Learnist board.

Know of any other websites that should be on this list? Tell!

via 7 Free Education Websites You Don’t Want to Miss – Goodnet.

My own addition to that list:

8. LIVEMOCHA

WHAT Platform for learning the basics of a foreign language.

HOW Following online courses and conversing with native speakers.

BONUS POINTS Your exercises can be reviewed by actual native speakers, helping you to learn the language more organically. Video and audio content as well as in-built homework assignments and tests available.

9. DUOLINGO

WHAT Again – learn a language for free – this initiative deserved its own TED talk!

HOW Online courses.

BONUS POINTS Wile completing exercises, you are simultaneously helping to translate digital library of human knowledge (for example, Wikipedia entries) into different languages.

Logical puzzle… of a kind…

I’ve recently come across a “great mystery” that keeps bugging me: I can’t seem to solve it because I fail to see the logic in it, so since it usually helps to vent stuff that bugs me out, I’ll try to outline this one in writing as well – maybe it would help to see to the solution . Fair warning – fully irrelevant to anything relevant, just an interesting little life situation that puzzles me .

Ok let’s imagine the following as given:

1. You have a best friend who moved to another city from where you live. You only get a chance to see each other every few months. Usually you end up going there for a few days because your schedule is more flexible. Your best friend is very busy and usually has very little free time to dedicate to anything and you know it, of course.

2. Both of you keep talking about taking a long weekend trek into the mountains. In fact, you’d both absolutely love to go, and definitely together – to relax, catch up and simply interact outside of the usual “between working hours and other engagements” setting. You’ve been talking about it on/off for almost a year though but, sadly, somehow there’s just never much time, especially on your friend’s side.

3. You two are really, really close and value each other and the time you spend together – especially since it is so rare. You on your side, having the flexibility at hand, on the very few occasions your friend makes it to your city for a visit, make sure to completely clear the schedule so that you two could spend as much time together as possible.

4. One of those rare times you go to visit your best friend for a couple of days. You, obviously, find what to do during all the “work and other engagements” times. Your best friend is still your best friend, however, and you are having, as always, a great time after hours.

5. Then you hear from your best friend’s new pal that they are going for a week long trek into the mountains. You’re not invited. You don’t even know about it coming up. Your best friend is as busy as always with a lot going on and a few deadlines approaching, yet somehow managed to crave out not a day or two from the busy schedule but a whole week. This means your next chance to go anywhere together is pushed over to “at least another year later”, most likely, due to a limited number of days that can be taken off work by your best friend.

And basically this is where my cognition fails me because, like… WHAT A FUCK?

The situation described is 100% hypothetical and purely illustrative, but the line of logic is preserved. My question is, in a given scenario, is it just me who would see a bit too wide of a gap between words and appearances and actions, or is there simply too wide of a gap? What could possibly cause such dissonance?

I can think of two scenarios:

A. The best friend is sincere in intentions and truly values your friendship.

B. Or not.

For the sake of making the puzzle more complicated (because in case of scenario B, the answer is rather self-evident ), let us presume scenario A applies.

Question: how could such a situation possibly arise?

And voila, can’t solve this one, so… any help/guesses?

I am a crazy jet-setter!

Well, maybe not as crazy as some, but I’m doing fine on the travel tales that can be fit into the ‘huh?’ category . My latest and greatest were the trip to Italy and getting from Moscow to the Hague via Prague – while practically not sleeping for 3 days . Here’s how it went:

1. Italy.

I just got back from the Berlin Zouk Congress and was looking forward to chilling off. This was not, however, meant to be. It turned out that two Russian ladies who spoke absolutely not a single word of any other language bought themselves tickets to Italy for a conference and a specific event following it. My mother asked me to go with them to help them out… I have to say I can’t imagine how they were hoping to manage the trip alone, but it sure was an adventure!

To begin with, I booked an EasyJet flight to Milan, having checked and double-checked everything several times. Or so I thought… On the day of the departure, I arrived to the airport but my flight was nowhere on the ‘departures’ table… I found the office and asked them to check it, since I don’t have a printer to print out the ticket and only had my booking number. It turned out that I managed to book the ticket for the right dates… but the wrong month – July instead of June! The lady in the office gave me the EasyJet service center number, where they were kind enough to change my ticket for the right month without the administrative fees. Since it was about 1pm and the flight was leaving at 10pm, I went back home and slept…

Thing is, I actually needed to get to Turin. I found out that there was a direct bus from Milan Malpensa to Turin at midnight, but wasn’t sure whether I’d make it. Alternatively, I could spend the night at the airport and leave in the morning… Luckily, we landed around 23:20, so I was able to take the bus. I arrived to the hotel where the Russian ladies were already chilling since afternoon in the middle of the night and went to sleep for a bit.

The conference wasn’t the focus of their trip, but our technician was actually able to connect them to the Russian translation line. So far so good.

On the 2nd day of the conference I skipped the afternoon session to walk around the city, take pictures (coming up soon – I’m still working on Berlin album!) and enjoy the warmth of the summer sun. I walked all around the place and got to the cemetery around 5:40pm. It said it was open till 6pm, I thought it was small enough to walk through in 20 minutes… However, since I was busy taking pictures, I ran a bit late. When I made it to the entrance gate, it was closed and I was locked in . Good news is there was an emergency button, so some guy arrived a few minutes later to let me out . I was also smart enough to hide my camera before he got there because I noticed the sign that taking pictures is prohibited without permission (ops!). He asked me how come I was still there, I told him I was far from the gate and by the time I walked back it was locked . It was kind of true, but in reality when I realized it was 6pm, I decided to not rush it, finish picture-taking then work-out my escape-plan later on…

The ‘fun’ began when on the 17th it turned out that instead of June 18th, the exact event the ladies were so determined to attend was moved to June 19th – and we all had return tickets for that same date… Thus began a session of an international effort (involving my mom in Moscow) to change (most importantly) their tickets for the 20th.

Towards late evening it was finally determined that a) their tickets weren’t possible to change b) they didn’t care and were willing to buy one-way tickets back instead c) there were two acceptable flights (price-wise) back to Moscow – this time from Milan, one morning and one 14:50pm and d) since my own (newly changed) flight was at 19:50pm on the 20th, I would not go with them to the airport if they would decide to get the morning flight (and they kept saying that they didn’t want to fly the airlines that had the 14:50 flight)… 

Around midnight we tried buying their tickets. My mother had to walk to the bank in the middle of the night (around 2am) to deposit some money into her account since neither one of the ladies had a credit card… Unfortunately, the initial transaction didn’t go through due to a technical error, but the money was blocked from the account (they’re due to return within 30 days, but it’s bloody annoying that the sum gets blocked for a month when transaction doesn’t even get confirmed!). My mom said that this means we are on stand-by till later on the 18th because she’d need to find some more money to throw into the account to buy these same tickets from the other website…

When the rest of the group has left to the next city on the itinerary on the 18th, we stayed in Turin (in case we wouldn’t be able to sort out the tickets – since their original flight back was from Turin) and did some souvenir-shopping (well, my ladies did…), while we were slowly advancing towards the main train station. Early evening was when my mom finally gave us green light to proceed with the trip – new tickets were bought.

At the train station, we were relieved to learn that we won’t need to get an overnight train to Cesena (the event was to be held there), thus loosing 1 paid night at the Turin hotel. We could get an early morning train with a change in Piacenza. We bought the tickets there and also from Cesena to Milan on the early morning of June 20th – to get to the airport. Thank goodness my ladies agreed for the afternoon flight! In the evening I checked how to get from Cesena train station to the hotel, we packed and passed out to sleep a bit.

Around 5am we walked to the Turin train station, took our train and made it to Cesena by half past noon – totally frozen! AC in the trains is set on super-cold for no good reason … We then caught one of the buses we could take and then walked for about 10 minutes to the hotel…

The rest of the group was supposed to return at 3pm. We relaxed, showered and waited for them. No one showed up. Better yet, everyone’s phones we tried were unavailable… Had we known they’d be running late, we could go eat something, but oh well – we didn’t know if the program didn’t change again, so we waited, hoping they’d re-emerge soon. At about 5pm we found out the address of the venue for the event and wanted to go there by a taxi – we even called one. However, 2 minutes on our way I finally got through to one of the people – turned out they were simply late, everything was pushed to later in the evening and they were on their way to the hotel to refresh. Oh, and the venue was in some black hole where there was no cellphone reception… We turned back – luckily, because the venue was quite far away and it would cost us a fortune for no good reason to get there.

We got a ride with someone from the group to and from the event (which finished right around midnight) and, happy with the sense of ‘mission accomplished’, returned back, packed and slept a bit.

The next morning we took the first train to Milan, froze once again, but made it otherwise without much adventure. At the central station, my ladies discovered a few more things worth buying, so it took us a while to get to the airport express bus. I had a mild panic attack when it turned out the bus would take longer than I originally thought after checking online to get to Malpensa airport, but we made it about 15 minutes before the end of their check-in, so I successfully waved them goodbye, finally took out the magazine I was planning to read on that trip and spent a few hours with it, some pizza and coffee before transferring to terminal 2 to catch my own flight back to Prague.

2. Moscow-Frankfurt-Prague-Eindhoven-Utrecht-Hague in 24 hours and 3 sleepless days .

My next unplanned trip (courtesy of my parents, yet again ), was to Moscow. We had a financial 3-day seminar with a new marketing plan and a master-class by one of the most experienced in our mode of business figures on June 30th and July 1st. The last day was actually July 2nd, but I already had a flight booked to the Netherlands for the early morning, so we were lucky to find a flight from Moscow to Prague on Sunday evening.

My flight to Moscow was on June 23d. I was, for some reason, convinced it was at 7-something pm. I was smart enough to check the time online at around 4:35 to discover, to my horror, that it was at 18:10 (and the 19:50 was my connecting flight from Frankfurt to Moscow, ahem… Maybe i should buy a printer?), I won’t be making it if I took the bus, and I was still unpacked. Therefore, I called a taxi and threw everything into the suitcase in under 7 minutes. So far so good .

But the real fun began on Friday. As it turned out, the Moscow Zouk & Samba congress was held that same weekend. Of course, I decided to attend at least one of the parties. I was late for the warm-up open-air party on Thursday, so on Friday night I went to the congress itself. There were roughly twice as many girls as there were guys! Something must be done next year to address that issue! The party finished around 4am – a silly time, since metro is still closed and most public transport isn’t running yet. I took a taxi back home, but by the time I got there and into the bed, and by the time I chilled down enough to get sleepy, my parents woke up and made enough noise to keep me awake. A short while later, it was time to get up anyway and get ready for the seminar…

It finished in the evening, much later than I hoped for. I was planning to catch a nap but it didn’t work, so I went to the Saturday night party without any sleep. Whatever . On Sunday morning we walked around with another Zoukeiro from the Netherlands trying to find a specific cafe, but we couldn’t. We found a 24h supermarket instead though and got some food, then waited for the metro to open. Needless to say I got home too late for much sleep, since yet again we needed to leave by 9:30 to the master-class.

We only stayed for the 1st session with my mom and then left back home to pack. I think I managed to sleep for 10 minutes but it didn’t really help much. Finally, it was time to get to the airport…

At least I can sleep in airplanes – I know some people who can’t! Frankfurt was hell this time – I had 1h 10 minutes between the flights, some people had even less time, and in that window I had to go through passport control (which took forever, because only a few windows were open), walk a mile, go through security check, then make it to the gate which, of course, was on the opposite bloody side of the airport. Needless to say this was a rather athletic experience, but I made it .

I was back home in Prague around 1am. I had just about enough time to unpack my suitcase and pack again for Holland, take care of a few things, have a cup of tea – and then I headed right back to the airport again to be there in time, since my flight was at 6am… Like a BOSS!!! .

Once in Eindhoven, I took a bus to the main train station, then a train to Utrecht, where I was meeting my friend in the Starbucks. We had a ‘breakfast’ then got to her place, where I finally got a few hours of precious sleep in the row – after 3 days of only occasional snoozes! We then went to get lunch and I set off to the Hague. I got there around 9:30pm and spent about 2 hours in the shower trying to make a human being out of myself again . I then finished the rest of my take-away beef noodles from lunch and, happy puppy, went to bed. PHEW!

Ready for the Scheveningen Salsa-Zouk Beach Congress I am now!

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A near car-crash, state of zero gravity, a crazy mouse, a bench up the tree and a murdered dog: just another normal Friday.

16.03.2012. Morning.

I’m not sure if it was lack of sleep the night before, lack of coffee in the brain cells, or a simple system failure, but during the morning driving lesson I was supposed to turn right at one of the crossings.. except I think I at first continued to go straight, and then remembered that I should turn – a bit too late . The wise thing to do would be to keep going straight – but nooooooo, I had to try and make it, at a speed unfit for doing so with my current beginner reaction-time.

The instructor hit the brakes – just in case. Well-done! I’m unsure I wouldn’t wreck the car straight into the mid-road concrete blocks… Then again, were I alone, I’d never bother trying to correct for missing the turn (or simply forgetting to?), I’d just keep going straight and suffer a slight detour – I only gave it a try because, after all, I was told to go right, not ahead… Other than that – I had passed the theory and maintenance tests this Monday and next week on Wednesday will be the moment of truth – the driving test .

16.03.2012. Afternoon.

After a brunch that ran a bit too long and got us late, my friend and I went to Roudnice nad Labem to pilot a little airplane .

My friend went up first, while I took a short rest in the sun. Then it was my turn .

The pilot was a fun guy. He did a couple of sharp turns and free-falls; on the second zero-gravity ride some car phone charger flew over from behind the seats into my lap - we had an epic laugh at that . We flew around the area. Operating the little plane is tricky - you need to stay aware of the horizon and your direction of flight, as even the slightest push/pull or torque sends you elsewhere. Plus there is a decent lag between your action and the plane's reaction to direction change.

The pilot even had some music playing in the headphones! . It also turned out that the little hill we flew around is allegedly the exact spot where the father of the Czech nation had began it.

We both saw some castle from up above and Petr suggested we check it out. Except we both forgot the name of that thing and where exactly it was located...

16.03.2012. Early evening.

After a long online search for some castles nearby, one was discovered that also promised a geocaching opportunity.

When we got there, it wasn't the castle we saw from above - in fact, there was no castle and just the hill left from it.

We walked around searching for the hiding spot of the geocach... Obviously, whoever chose the place ignored the "private property" sign

Each hiding spot has some container with random items and a notebook. You're supposed to write the date and names of who and when found the place. You can also take some item from the jar in exchange for another. We discovered this crazy mouse - it was super cute, but I thought it'd be more practical to keep a picture instead of the item (not like my house isn't already flooded by random items ) - so here it is .

After we hid the container, we went to search for another nearby spot and stumbled upon those guys on the way. We watched for a little while how they learned to control the wings - looks like it's pretty sophisticated! I've mentally added this one to my bucket list .

A lovely spot to watch the sunset! Pretty big bench on the tree - I wish I wasn't wearing a white jacket and had more time to monkey around that tree, but the sun was setting and we still had to find the other container and make it back to the car before total darkness fell.

The phone GPS kept sending us around in circles again, but we found the container, signed in, hid it back and hurried to the car. I managed to earn a significant blister somehow and happened not to have a band-aid with me

16.03.2012. Evening.

I only ate a piece of pizza and an apple pie that day, so I was HUUUUUNGRYYYYY!!!! We dropped by a cool sandwich place at Andel for some soup and sandwiches and I headed home with a firm intention to sleep, because I only caught on about 1 hour of snooze the night before…

16.03.2012. Late evening.

Which, of course, never happened. Unfortunately, my Christmas presents arrived… (They didn’t make it to the country by December, and then I was away, and then Petr was away, so he finally passed on the two books he got me today – lovely to stretch x-mas to March!).

I checked out the first few pages of “A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” at the sandwich place… I shouldn’t have… I was only done with the book by way past midnight and I wish it was thick like an encyclopedia!!! If you haven’t read it – I highly suggest you to! Absolutely loved every page of it!

Of course, not every Friday of my life is so eventful – some Fridays I spend lazying around the house in my fluffy bathrobe . But I have to admit having friends who can talk you into something random – like flying (or jumping with a parachute… Or bungee jumping… (I am STILL scared!!!) ) – definitely can make an occasional Friday (or any other day) much more memorable .

Designer-fever?

Springtime. Regular humans start seasonal clean-up, fall in love, combat post-winter fatigue or get hay fever. In the meantime, I designed a dress while riding on the tram…

It’s a great dress. It is classy and gorgeous at once, has unusual elements and I totally want one! So what’s the big deal, you may ask? The big deal is that I’m just about as much of a designer in any respect as I am of a proverbial rocket scientist.

Fact 1: When it comes to visuals, I don’t have much of a creative vision. I only have creative hindsight. What it means in practice is that I normally have a very hard time coming up with something visual that I haven’t seen before – and it is probably the worst when it comes to clothes and shoes. On the other hand, once I see something – then I can say if it’s great or not. I can also tune it up a bit, but I’d never probably live to the day when I can creatively combine items to create a killer look from scratch. Namely, because

Fact 2: I wear jeans. And something I grab from the closet on top. With enough layers of something else I grab from the closet to keep me warm when necessary (read: almost always). That’s about where it ends. What it means in practice is that I vote for function in my clothes and I don’t give a slightest damn whether the ensemble goes ensemble or whether its parts would rather scatter in opposite directions in protest – if they so could. So my daily ‘style’ can be summarized as checking for a) is it clean? b) can I move in it? and c) does it keep me the temperature I need to be kept in under current weather conditions?

My own mother occasionally tries to trick me into using a bit of make-up during the day – just to make, say, the eyes stand out, and to make me buy and wear something prettier and more “appropriate for your age already, not some teen stuff!”. Score to date: me = 1, mom = 0. Sorry, mom!

I was, actually, a better dresser when I was a teenager – but only because I had to. We often had different work-related dinners and events and I had to ‘represent’ the family, too. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would never learn to walk in killer heels, wear anything but pants, use make up and deal with my hair.

Fact 3: I actually really like nice clothes and style. I enjoy seeing people who are very well-dressed and have a cool style. I just honestly can’t be bothered though . Which is why I don’t follow fashion/trends either.

Fact 4: My graphic skills haven’t progressed past those of an average 10-year-old. What it means in practice is that I can’t draw – unless it’s a little plan on how to get somewhere. Trying to sketch an idea on paper? Yeah, GOOD LUCK, me!

These are exactly the reasons why I had a rather ‘WTF?!’ reaction to my all of a sudden very clear vision of the dress. I managed not only to work out the details while on the tram, but also sort of ‘draw’ the idea down while I landed at the pizzeria for lunch! I am shocked.

At least it paid off that I decided to carry the notebook – I did because way too often I come up with my native domain of creative while in the worst possible places for recording anything: trams, stores… After one too many times of having to write down the incoming stream of (mostly) poetry on stuff like napkins, tram tickets, phone or my own hand, I finally geared up on paper, a few pens, and a random pencil (thank you, pencil! I’d never sketch the dress in a pen – I hate smudging and erasers don’t work on pens ).

I’m not sure what was it about driving the car today that triggered such a traumatic response, but if it goes on at this rate I may have a fashion line by the age of 149 . Or earlier, if another system glitch happens to me of the type that did when I was on the plane from Casablanca to Barcelona…

Now, THAT was pure torture! Not the flight – the glitch. On descent to Barcelona, my brain went into one of its weird modes, but instead of giving me something I can work with, you know what it puked out? An entire bloody fashion line. That’s right. Details and all. From trousers to coats to dresses to suits to you name it. Of course, that happened exactly when I neither had anything at all to even attempt to sketch anything on, nor the time to focus on that task without losing all the fast-coming ideas forever again to that bottomless black hole of ‘I forgot’.

So I was sitting there buzzed-up with this first-time-in-a-lifetime experience of such a vivid, colorful video rolling in my mind full of some pretty awesome stuff and absolutely incapable of doing anything productive about it. The ‘buzz’ continued through baggage claims and slowly wore off as my friend and I got anywhere where I could have potentially tried to capture at least the basic outlines of some items I liked the most from my own private fashion show. Thank you, brain. You seriously ARE a major jackass sometimes… (Yes, I am STILL pissed off at you, brain. Next time please consider the consequences of your decisions on people).

That was, until today, my one and only (rather traumatic) case of imagining apparel. Makes me think that maybe there exists such a thing as ‘designer fever’ and one can get occasionally infected by it? It’s difficult to presume that there is an actual inner designer in ME, out of all people, waiting to be unleashed – I write. I take lots of pictures. I dance. Designing though? Puhlease! I’d blame this one on springtime .

Oh, and is anyone good at proper fabric-selection and relatively complicated clothes-making, by the way? ‘Cause I DO want that dress!

Those cars!

You may be aware I am amidst earning my driving license… Well, yesterday I began to doubt I deserve one!

My driving instructor, of course, told me that every car is different in terms of the pedals, reactions, steering wheel etc. But THAT different?! See, one of my friends for whatever the reason was willing to jeopardize their car’s safety by telling me we can practice somewhere. Choosing that somewhere to be in the city center, however, was far from a wise decision. It turns out that I can drive pretty fine – but only the car that I am learning on . That one is a small Fiat that reacts to slightest touch on the pedals, starts rolling with geared up clutch alone (no gas needed – great thing for parking/wheeling out of parking spot) which hooks almost right at the floor level, and is light as a feather.

Well, my friend’s car – not so much… The clutch catches on half way up, but that won’t be as bad if this car didn’t need a serious amount of gas to even move! I also was horrified to learn that the brakes don’t even realize I’m using them until significantly pressed to accept that fact – the Fiat’s brakes react to slightest touch. Needless to say it took a while to get out of the parking spot and while the first 300 meters while the car was moving around were, thankfully, uneventful, I, of course, managed to get the engine to die right at the first street light . My friend said that after 10 years of driving even he had trouble with this car at the get-go and had it stop dead on him at numerous occasions, but it probably didn’t help the confused guy waiting behind us at the light .

The wise decision was made to swap seats right at that damn light and leave experiments to a location with no traffic, where I could figure out the tricky pedals without freaking out any poor drivers around, including my poor friend, although I must say I doubt I will catch on to THAT car as easily as I got used to the driving school Fiat… My next lesson is only in a week’s time, so it would be nice to practice, and in theory it would be good to learn to operate a heavier, less responsive version of the transport as well (otherwise they really should give you a license for just one kind of cars you learn to drive!), but I’m starting to really miss my little responsive vehicle! See you in about a week, little Fiat!

ZOMJ it snows in winter!

Simple observation: every year something so unexpected happens that no one is ever prepared for the scope of that disaster. Namely – it snows. In winter time…

I can perfectly understand how the recent snow-dump on Istanbul could wreck havoc: they had more snow than ever in recorded history, disrupting transport and air traffic. I can sort of relate to the normally Gulf-Stream-warmed Netherlands experiencing a short set-back that delayed my own flight by a total of almost 2 hours due to some snowfall. But there is one capital city where such calamity is as regularly unprepared for as regularly it happens: Moscow.

You see, in Moscow every year the municipal infrastructure is completely taken by surprise when the first heavy snowfall of the year inevitably arrives. Usually happening well into December, this yearly occurrence never fails to cause a major mess-up in the city traffic, as cleaning vehicles happen to still be in maintenance and meteorological forecasts seem to never hit the channels of those, who are responsible for having the snow-cleaning fleet prepared in time .

I was pondering over this strange tendency of many places to be taken aback by not only major, but also relatively minor weather fluctuations as our flight was circling Amsterdam unable to land, and the train delays equally fired my suspicion that weather channels may be out of the vogue among some key groups of people who manage appropriate response agencies…

But enough about the snow. At the very least I am lucky to swap the ice age of Prague for that of Holland for a while . The lower lands have welcomed me, albeit a couple of hours behind schedule, into their icy embrace last night. Being me, I, of course, managed to run into the “does not compute” case right upon arrival, but what would life be without a little fun?

I got onto the train from Schipol to the Hague where there were almost no free seats and decided to put my small suitcase up onto one seat and my dear self onto another. Some man materialized behind me and informed me “I’m going to sit here” (pointing at the spot I eyed for myself) by the time I placed my suitcase. I told him I was going to sit there. He directed me to sit where my suitcase was. I asked him how and where does he suggest I put my suitcase then (there are no shelves and leaving it between the seat rows in the way of other people was not the best option). He insisted that he would be taking the seat I was planning to take and that he doesn’t care about my suitcase – I could put it anywhere else just not on the seat…

Now, I understand sound reasoning when I’m given some, and had he told me something on the lines of him having to travel for over half an hour and if I could please find some spot for my stuff that would allow him to take a seat, there would be no issue. However, he said something so stupid I wanted to mentally punch him, albeit he was otherwise a nice guy and I was too tired to engage in empty polemics. He said he had paid for the seat…

Reality check: the local trains that run without seat reservation do NOT charge per seat. You pay for the ability to ride the train – not for a guarantee to land your butt onto a chair. That ability is left to ‘first come – first served’ system. If it were true that someone ever paid for the actual sitting spot on those trains, it would mean that a) ONLY the exact number of people that corresponds to the exact number of seats on the train would be able to board the trains (clearly NOT the case, as the number of passengers traveling standing up is clearly an indication of something else going on) and b) there would be a fare difference between the ticket prices between “yes you can land your bottom” and “you have to travel standing up even if the whole train is empty”. There is none. The ticket price corresponds exclusively to the distance traveled, whether you’re lucky enough to find a free chair or not.

I now regret I haven’t brought that simple fact to his attention. I should have. Uninformed citizens shall be corrected . Instead I just put the suitcase on my lap, having on the go also ignored the “it’s hard for foreigners to understand” and “you have to pay extra fee for such big luggage” remarks – both of them utter lies. I am yet to see a single person pay extra or be demanded to pay extra for a small suitcase, or even for a huge one for that matter (yes, I seriously doubt the ginormous suitcase of the Italians sitting next to us had been paid for… or that a Dutch couple with a kid who had landed their big backpack onto one of the free seats after ‘the man’ disembarked the train paid extra for the backpack seat…), on a local train with no assigned seating. He may have confused the seating business with international or local express trains and luggage fees with actual oversize luggage on some specific train connections somewhere in the world (I can’t judge as I rarely travel by train, but I am yet to run into ANY restrictions in size (well, as long as it’s possible to fit in)/weight of luggage…

Such was my adventure set upon arrival this time . Other than that, it’s cold but sunny and I’m looking forward to the Latin Charity Gala in Leiden tonight .

Latest fun and funny news

Nothing heavy this time, just an up-date on the miscellaneous events of the first couple of weeks of 2012 .

1. In case you haven’t noticed it yet all over my Facebook and elsewhere – the MAD DAWN Challenge project is up and running . You can find out more about it here. We are going to shoot the intro video early/mid February in Amsterdam (dates to be specified) and you can meet us both there, if you wish!

In the meantime, don’t forget to friend and/or follow us on Foursquare (newest and shiniest addition to our network!), subscribe to project up-dates via e-mail on our website, join our ginormous (and growing) LinkedIn network, give us a thumbs up on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, add us on Google+, Flickr, subscribe to our YouTube, TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THE PROJECT, and maybe even throw a dime to our cause on GoFundMe or directly on our home page.

2. I’m starting to get a decent grip on driving. The only trouble still is multitasking on short-notice . In addition, my dyslexia kicked in big time when I actually turned left when the instructor said to turn right. I warned him to tell me ahead of time, as left/right verbal commands often get mixed up by my brain and I need time to figure out what ‘left’ and ‘right’ actually refers to… Oh well, so far it was only once .

3. Everything broke!!! Almost in one weekend! Last weekend my electric kettle stopped working, the heating system thermostat went kaput, the actual heater’s electric panel got some contact un-fused (this all resulted in my house slowly descending into a 4-day ice age, as temperature dropped to around 12 degrees inside…). The landlord dropped by and replaced the thermostat, but the electric panel needs to be fixed separately. Good thing is we found out that hitting it makes the contact catch back up and turns the heating back on, so it’s at least a temporary solution that enables to keep the place warm . Oh the shower head and shower hose ka-boomed as well. In short – it was a fun weekend .

4. I have a new super cool fan! . Well, maybe not, but I recently got a comment on my “Happy 2012 – be vulnerable!” entry that showed me much love . Am a bit too lazy to re-post it all here, but I created a public note on Facebook with the original comment, my reply and consequent reply back to me by that same person… You will see why I had to delete it from the actual blog comment section .

5. It actually SNOWED here today! Like, properly snowed, covering cars and streets with a layer of white! First time proper snow in the city – woohoo!!!

It all melted off in a few hours and changed to rain instead, but we had at the very least some precious minutes of real winter .

That’s all from my corner of the universe for now!

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This post has been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been removed.

Happy 2012 – be vulnerable!!!

Greetings to everyone from the first day of 2012! I was wondering what type of a message to release into the world at the new symbolic beginning cornerstone and the message actually fell into my hands all by itself. Thus, instead of boring you with more of my lengthy scribblings, I leave the floor for someone more entertaining and educated to give you some food for thought for the upcoming year .

Have a happy one!!!

Holiday cheers!

Very happy holiday season to you! Whether you celebrate anything or not, spend the money you’ve been putting aside all year on presents or not, or just get a day off, holiday season is here again. It’s all good – the traditions of family gathering at least once a year is a healthy habit!

In the spirit of the holiday most often celebrated in our neck of the woods, allow me to brighten your day with a couple of takes on the topic that you can insert into your holiday playlist

First is Santa that you may wanna keep away from your spouse:

Second is Santa you might wanna keep away from your planet (listen through – you won’t be disappointed ) :

Finally, a little reminder about all those people who celebrate this year exclusively for cultural reasons:

I personally don’t mind keeping it Christmas: in the memory of CHRISTopher Hitchens. Or some other special people who changed the world…

Happy holidays to all!

Fishy business…

“Give a man fish – he will live for one day. Teach a man to fish -he will live for a lifetime. Teach a man religion – he will die of starvation while praying for fish…” (somewhere on the internet…)

Group pictures? ROFL yeah!

This is EPIC . And the guy deserves a medal .

Light up your plastic bottle!

Ever thought of switching electric light bulbs to used plastic bottles and saving on electricity bills? Maybe you should!

It is amazing how resourceful and creative people can be under conditions of scarcity… We are quick to forget that all of the comforts and technologies of today are not a result of lazy, comfortable life someone led – we fail to appreciate how dire circumstances and pressing needs of the past have shaped the society of today through all the new amazing things we get to experience every day.

These two videos show an example of the thinking and the spirit that we so pressingly need in today’s world. Instead of waiting for top-down salvation of any sorts (governmental or, worse yet, divine), we need to take the initiative into our own hands and employ the grassroots approach to the living, to the society and to the initiative.

Watch how ”Isang Litrong Liwanag” campaign headed by philanthropist Illiac Diaz turns plastic soda bottles into nifty light bulbs in small homes, which absorbs sunlight and spreads it out inside a house.