Aaaanyway…what I’ve learned so far: university here is much more ‘kick-ass’ than in Romania. You get in rather easily, selection processes are minimal, but it’s getting out that’s difficult. You work your bum off, but in the end, the diplomas are supposed to MEAN something to your employer, and not just be a piece of paper you forget in a drawer.

I’m having issues with the words ‘home’ and ‘here’. You see, I’m even having issues when it comes to talking to someone. Not that I forgot any language mind you, but that I start speaking in Romanian to Swiss people and in French to Romanians. I also now dream in English, French and Romanian. Interesting, huh?

I find out now more and more people want to go away from my country. Why? Probably because of the crisis, the lack of jobs and opportunities, the government, etc. But also, I find about their thoughts more quickly since I am seen as ‘the one who managed to leave’ and now apparently I can give advice for some reason. I can’t say I feel this way. Sometimes, I feel much more lost than I did when I was at home, planning it all.

It is also funny when I receive emails, messages, etc. with the same message: ‘I want to come to Switzerland. I don’t know any local language, I would like to study there and get a job on the side. Could you help me?’ . Well, unfortunately, there isn’t much help I CAN give. Just tell you that you should know at least one of their languages and be prepared to sustain yourself for 6 months before you will be allowed to get a job. Swiss law, mind you. Also, bear in mind it’s not easy. Getting a place to stay is virtually impossible without a permit, and getting a permit usually requires a long term accommodation. Vicious circle if you ask me. However, a certain job offer from here usually opens all the doors, to getting an apartment, a permit and everything else. It’s just that the Swiss are a tiny bit more eager to give their own people the jobs they have, instead of immigrants. However, I do believe it is possible. Hard, but not impossible.

All in all? I miss my friends at home, my family. But this is also home. I like feeling safe on the streets, I like the nice, polite people around me, I like it that now I get to meet people from different countries, backgrounds, cultures. It’s all so different and interesting.

Oh well, I’ll keep you posted

Yay, finally! I’ve waited for so long to see this movie and FINALLY, my wish was granted. Hooray! I bet you wanna know about it, don’t you? That is, if you managed to stay this long without watching it, which I doubt. But anyway, I am so excited I’ve seen this movie that I can’t stop myself from telling you about it.

So, here it goes: Carl and Ellie Fredericksen have know each other since…well, forever. They’ve been united by their love for adventure and been in love since the day they met. They were perfect for each other, they had a full life with joys and troubles and everything…Sadly, Ellie passes away (what is it with Disney stories: someone always has to pass away at the beginning of the movie so you can almost cry). Carl is left alone, determined to grant his wife’s lifelong wish: that of visiting Paradise Falls, in South America. After the community decides it is time for him to move to a retirement home, the 78 year old man considers a more original plan of spending his retirement: He inflates thousands of helium balloons and uses them to ummm…lift up his house and fly. I never said this was a true story . Unfortunately for him, he ends up with Russell, a boy scout trying to win his last badge for “Assisting the Elderly” that got on to his porch before the whole house started flying. And as you can imagine, a whole adventure starts.

After landing in South America, they find ‘Kevin’ a beautiful bird (that is actually a female) which Russell wants to adopt. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. A great explorer, himself hunting for Kevin since…forever, has established himself in Paradise Falls for years, while gathering a whole army of um, err, talking dogs. Since Charles Munz (the explorer I was telling you about) finds the two as intruders who want to capture ‘his’ bird, a whole chasing situation takes place, endng, as you might expect with the good guys winning over the bad guy, blah blah.

The animation in this movie is absolutely gorgeous. All textures, colours are drawn beautifully, which adds a whole lot of magic to the movie. In my opinion, the script could be a little bit better, but  overall the story and characters and all are fantastic. Really, really recommending it

Cheers!

But that is not my point .As you may have heard, I’ve moved on, 2000 kms to the west. Is it good, is it bad? Let’s say it’s interesting. Switzerland is the land where you can find I guess 200 types of cheese, just as many of chocolate and where people who check for your traveling pass in the bus are polite and nice. It is also the country where they value Swiss citizenship immensely, although at the same time they have an enormous amount of foreigners. I’d say it’s a love-hat relationship. But so far I like it.

I like the small city I live in, the small shops that are nothing like the hypermarkets back home, the fact that if I miss the ‘big city feel’ I can hop in the car and be in Geneva or Zurich in less than 2 hours…I do not like it though that most of their movies are translated, even in cinemas. I am not impressed.

Plans for 2010? I’ve taken up a bit of knitting, I want to improve my French and (reluctantly) start learning German. I want to move more (and, with my new Wii Fit, I think I just might) and laugh more. I want to care less about others’ opinions and go crazy more often. Let go. I want to travel as much as possible (I have miles to gather now, too!) and blog more. It’s sunny outside. I think this will be a good year.

So, I am sorry all for this long pause, but I’m determined to make it up to you. Right now I am on vacation and I’ll feel more creative I hope.

I hope Santa was nice to all of you and that 2010 treats us all better.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Note: I specifically mentioned ‘the movie’, since I am planning to read the book very soon and I am sure I will want to post about that too.

There are fewer than 4000 Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than 6000 descendants of the Schindler Jews.

Schindler’s List is one of the movies you have to see in a lifetime. Maybe more than once. It is an incredible film. It’s not very original, though. It’s about the Holocaust. The Jews. Auschwitz. Death of millions of people. But the way this movie is made…no other can compare to it. The fact that it is all black and white, with just a hint of colour now and then (to emphasize a particular red coat) gives it more depth. And the fact that great actors are in it, including the ever surprising Ralph Fiennes and the incomparable Liam Neeson just adds so much more to the movie as a whole.

The story? It’s the true story of Oskar Schindler (beautifully portrayed by Liam Neeson), a Czech born Nazi who sees the war as an opportunity for fast profit. He therefore hires Jews as cheap labour force for his factory in occupied Poland and aims to get as rich as possible. Time is passing by and the Jews are first evacuated from the ghetto in Krakow and sent to labour camps. A while later, Auschwitz concentration camp was established and thousands of Jews were gassed and incinerated afterwards, in an attempt of ‘race purification’.

But Oskar Schindler was different. He was a womanizer, a party man, he liked people to work for him and he liked making profit. However, he also had a heart. And when he saw the horrors that were happening around him, he thought his money could be put to better use. It is how he decided to ‘buy’ more than 1100 Jews from the Nazis as workers for his factory. He even promised to make ammunition instead of pots, but no decent missile ever came out of his factory. Together with his loyal accountant, a Jew himself (Ben Kingsley acts superbly in this role), they made a list of people who were to come to work for him instead of going to Auschwitz. The list, itself, was life.

The plot itself however is not the essence of this movie. Else way, there wouldn’t have been necessary 3 hours and 9 minutes of film. It’s all about the Holocaust: the terror, the pain, the merciless nazis. And this is where Ralph Fiennes comes into the movie. He portrays Amon Goeth, a commandant of the Nazi army, thirsty for blood and death, killing for his own pleasure, hating everything in relation to the Jews. He likes Schindler, develops a friendship with him, but never once does it occur to him that Oskar is trying to save the Jews instead of killing them. And here, Ralph Fiennes portrays one of the most loath-able characters ever. Cold, purely evil, Amon kills for pleasure. He adores the fact that he can kill anyone for no reason. He feels powerful through other people’s tragedies. He was, unfortunately, real.

There is more about this movie than the story of Oskar Schindler. There are the horrors of the Holocaust: the killing, the humiliation, the cruelty, the torture, the horrible feeling you get when you’re watching that all of this is true and once happened. That the extras that are being killed every few minutes actually portray real people that din nothing wrong except being in the wrong place, at the worst of times.

To see this movie, you need to prepare. You need to understand what you are about to witness, that one of history’s darkest periods will be revealed to you in its ugliest form. There is not much actual violence in the film. But there is no need. You can feel the horror and pain and desperation without seeing blood all over. You know it is there, there’s no need for them to show it.

To be honest, I think I would like to see this movie once more. Because somewhere in the back of my mind I am still hoping to understand why. It probably is pointless, I know. But one can only hope. And I also think we should all see this movie. It is there to remind us, to make us understand what huge mistakes were made and to teach us not to ever do them again.

I cannot end this review without mentioning Spielberg. Usually, I am not a fan of his work. But this is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The music (John Williams) and cinematography (Janusz Kaminski) are also works of art. Everything comes together wonderfully.

You can buy this movie on Amazon.co.uk.

You can find Michael’s albums on amazon.co.uk. Check out my widget

Job Description:

I am a Georgetown undergrad student and part time employee in the financial services industry. I am looking for someone to take care some of my everyday tasks for 1 hr a day, 5 hrs/ week, $12/hr. I live on campus which would make things very easy convenient for a Georgetown student. The normal pay per week will be $60 ($300/month), even though on occasion it will be possible to work additional hours and/or receive bonuses at my discretion.

The schedule is completely flexible because I do not need to be around when you do the work. You can even spread it out over the course of the day. As my PA you will receive an email once a day by 9:00 am with a task list for that day and a time estimate for each task. Important tasks will be bolded on the list and must be done that day (even though everything on the list should theoretically be finished on a daily basis). At the end of the day you will send me an email telling me what tasks are incomplete or that all tasks have been completed.

Tasks such as doing laundry that involve a lot of waiting around (time when you could be doing other tasks or doing your own stuff) will be counted for the approximate amount of time it would take to do the labor involved. For instance, laundry will be counted for half an hour even though a laundry cycle takes 1.5 hrs to complete.

Job Requirements:

PA example tasks -Organize closet -make bed -Drop off / pick up dry cleaning -Drop me off / pick me up from work -Do laundry -Fill up gas tank -bring car for servicing -schedule appointment for haircut -Pay parking tickets -manage electronic accounts -shopping and running errands -other random tasks.

Preference will be given to applicants who are comfortable with city driving (car will be provided) and who are available when I need to be picked up and dropped off for work. Preference will also be given to Georgetown undergrads for convenience.

Available Openings: 1

Hours: 3.0 to 7.0 hours per week

Compensation: $10.00/hour to $12.00/hour, Occasional Bonuses

Start Date: Immediately

End Date: End of School Year

Time Frame: Academic Year

Quite the entertainer, isn’t he?

I wanted sooo bad to see this movie. I was waiting for it with all hopes up, of course, since there were Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler involved. Disappointed? No. Could’ve been better? Hell yes.

The movie is your classic hate-becomes-love romantic comedy. Katherine Heigl – Abby – is a control freak, efficient, tidy woman, with a million bullet-point lists and to-do’s that help her organize her life to the very least detail. She is a smart, beautiful TV producer, top of the game at her job, but not so much when it comes to her love life. On the other hand, Mike (Gerard Butler) is a good looking, I-don’t-mince-words playboy, who has been recently hired as co-host for Abby’s show. He is proud to show The Ugly Truth to women, giving them hints about what men really want (a job and a blow, apparently).

At first, as you’d expect, the two hate each other. She despises his way of being, he laughs at her lonely life with her cat. And then decides to help her get the man of her dreams, oh-so-attractive Colin, a doctor who lives next door to Abby.

Sorry for the Spanish subtitles, I couldn’t find a better one

And this is when the games begin. She is trying to find the romantic guy, he is telling her there is no such thing. She’s wearing turtlenecks, he shows her the magic of a nice cleavage, and so on and so forth until, obviously, they fall for each other. I may say there was no big surprise there, as they even didn’t seem to hate each other that much in the beginning. There’s an obvious spark right from the moment they meet, so I really don’t think they had that much trouble falling in love.

All in all, it is a funny movie, full of sexist kind of humor and hilarious scenes (don’t miss out the vibrating panties scene!) and gets you to laugh even if the actual story is not the best. Easy going, funny, cute. Best seen with your better half or girl friends (since i don’t imagine guys would actually ever see it on their own or with their buddies). Yeah, it’s a chick flick. But it’s a chick flick with a twist

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah ohhh Yeah…

P.S. You can pre-order Jovi’s new album as well as the documentary film they’ve been working on from amazon.co.uk. Check out my widget on the right

So, the Swiss ‘traditional’ food I am presenting you now is fondue: bread and cheese and wine…all in one pot. I mean, you first put the cheese and the wine, then you dip the bread in it. Simple as that. Preparation time is virtually non-existent. You bring everything to a boil and..ta-daaah, you’ve got yourself a high calorie but oh so nice to look at dish. And if you are preparing it for two, it’s downright cute. I love my new caquelon!

With this weather, it works like a charm. And I am looking forward to making chocolate fondue as well. I need to get myself a gym subscription asap!

Yum!

P.S. That’s not champagne, it’s wine, but someone broke all of our wine glasses…