Posts Tagged ‘coffee’

Life going nowhere …

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Meaningless_life-picture

Seems, My life is going nowhere. Today I drinked half of a bottle of Wine and 1 beer. I was out with Alex. We drinked in the city park. Through the day I started my first bsd jail using a tutorial online. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and I want to stop them again. Most of the people I met are not a good company for me that's what I'm thinking more and more. Also I'm thinking more and more I have to change my living place. If only I could find the love of my life … We moved bookshelf and stuff from our room ( My mother again has decided to make repairs in our room. ). I'm asking myself why shall I live a meaningless life. At least my interest into computers and computing started to appear again (this is cool). My faith is really going away since I pray and pray for something .. and I don't receive it ( Or at least I don't see it). I'm tired of waiting. I need to have this physical healing to continue my normal life. I'm not proud of me I was a little aggressive when we was in the Mino's coffee before an hour or so … Now I intend to watch another episode of stargate SG1. And to go to the DreamLand. If only I could live into a Dreamland all the time. I'm starting to realize I should change the music I listen, I should change a lot of my behaviours If I want to have a new and happy life. Autumn is a beautiful Season 🙂 The autumn rain shall come and restore us :)END—–

Quick shortcut to lock your Linux computer desktop (Few words on Linux screensavers)

Thursday, November 20th, 2014

quick-way-to-lock-desktop-linux-howto-key
Locking the PC while going for a coffee break, Lunch or toilet is longly used to secure physically your PC display from spying eyes or prevent you from  someone to install a spying software or leak private data from PC HDD to an USB drive.
People who are coming from the wonderful MS Windows OS   are certainly used to quick shortcut key combination to lock PC screen with:
 

Windows key + L

 

So how to do Lock Screen on Linux?

On Linux locking your Screen the Quick Shortcut is:
 

CTRL + ALT + L.


Locking the screen is done (depending on the Linux distribution) by using by either using historically famous XScreenSaver if non-gnome / KDE graphical environemnt is used or if in Linux Gnome GUI with  gnome-screensaver and on KDE desktop manager with kscreenlocker.

 

Exact command executed on CTRL + ALT + L keypress on GNOME is:
 

gnome-screensaver-command -l


On KDE to manually lock screen command is:

kscreenlocker

Nomatter whether with GNOME or KDE its worthy mention that xscreensaver is more Screensaver rich than kscreenlocker and gnome-screensaver as it includes about 200 different Screensavers making screen nice to watch when you come back from a lunch.

For people with Windows key keyboard who are too used to using Windows XP / 7 lockreen WIN + L key shortcut to make Windows (key) + L keys combination work on Linux with GNOME desktop:
 

System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts

Make Win + L keys combination work on Linux with KDE desktop
 

  1.  "System Settings" (KDE menu).
  2. Choose "Keyboard & mouse" (on "General" tab).
  3. Choose "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" on the left.
  4. Choose "Run Command Interface" from "KDE component" dropdown list.
  5. Choose "Lock session".
  6. Select "Custom".
  7. Click on "None" (button changes to "Input…").
  8. Compose your desired sequence by pressing appropriate buttons on your keyboard.
  9. Click "Apply".

 


For other desktop environments like Window Maker you can use xmodmap command to bind Win + L keys

Sick again – Hoping God to solve it all – and no desire to study

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Yesterday I was out for a coffee with Tony an old frined from the Old metal days, after that I went outwith Lily I drinked 200 gr of Vodka and a Beer. I was pretty desparate actually and I got very drunk I got home 04:10 and got to bed at 4:30. What can I say life is hard. Today Mitko called at dinner time and we drinked a coffee on the fountain. The night we went out in the Central park and drinked a beer per man. I’m starting to think about the meaningless of my life again, since my life seems without a real purpose and seems not going nowhere ( we humans are so weak ). Yesterday I have almost taken the decision to suicide. It almost a miracle after I send lily to her home and was going back home with the idea of my mind to suicide. Lily called and said she can’t unlock the door and everyone inside is sleeping and she didn’t want to disturb them. So we spend more than an hour outside. Today I feel terrible physically again. I really can’t take it anymore I need Jesus to bless me with a healing (Save me Holy Lord, Lord Jesus son of the Blessed God have mercy over me the sinner heal me Lord and Deliver me from all sickness and affliction and pain Heal my Soul, Body and Spirit, make me whole to be able to serve you again :[ Amen) My computer went down twice today I have a problem with the cooling. The cooler should be cleaned but I guess this will happen after our Room’s repair is completed. By the way Both Pc-Freak and Jericho are on the terrace. Because repair works are being done into the room. Day after day I ask my self the question when I will be healed again. I do smoke a lot of cigarettes for which I’m ashamed of myself (But it’s an act of desperation). By the way I don’t have any desire to study anymore I’d like to do things with FreeBSD and learn stuff. If God is merciful to me and heals me probably I’ll continue to live otherwise I guess I’ll end badly. Very often come to the point Nobody out there cares, them I feel the presence of God’s spirit I remember the Bible’s instruction towards doubtful mind and try return back to the Faith of the Eternal, It’s like a sort of schizofrenia (I believe, I don’t believe). I’m sure both cannot be true. Very often I think I deserve more but since God’s rightous probably that’s what I deserve. I tried do good for so many people and to care for as much people I’m very discouraged because as a reward I see it like receiving this infirmity and sickness … Something have to change or I’ll be gone …END—–

The Driving Polygon – My adventures of learning to drive a car

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Today the day was pretty normal for which of course I have to thank to Our Awesome God :)I didn’t have much work, I stand up somewhere around 11 o’clock. I did my usual morning exercises.By the way since I started practising everyday exercise I feel physically better. After that I prayed a bit.Afterwards I red the road regulations and laws book (as I mentioned in my previous bloggings I have starteda driving license courses). Somewhere around 12:30 Gery did called and asked me if I’m willing to go outfor a coffee. I accepted and we saw each other infront of the fountain. Because all the tables outside wasoccupied we and in the coffee itself was too hot we decided to move to the Kukla coffee. We coffeed a bittalked about stuff shared how our lifes are going etc. etc. After that I had to go to the college becauseI need a copy of my school completion diploma because my driver lessons teacher requires as well as therest of the documents my ID card, a picture etcetera, etcetera. In the college I met Todor Dyankov who wasteaching me at Statistics and in Marketing II at the college and Ertan also Nina the librarian, I have tosay all of them are pretty cool :). Ertan showed me what he has made using Adobe’s flex product andexplained how convinient it’s usage is for creation of books and various other web based sort of manuals.Later at home I red more some chapters of the road regulations book. After which in 18:45 I went to the stomatology(this is the usual place where driving teachers park their cars and where we met with my instructor), he askedif it’s possible to change the driving lesson to be in Tuesday for 18:30 to be honest I haven’t had much choice since theteacher had some urgent job to do. Right after that I went to my mother and father grocery shop because previously wehad a stipulation that I my father and a close family friend (Georgi a namesake) would go somewhere out of the city becausethe 32 hours for which it suppoed that I had to be ready for the exam were far from enough for me to become a proficient driver.Eventually we went with my father’s car (Opel Astra) to a place which was before used as a Driving Polygon and is a perfectplace for a novice driver like me. The most hard thing for me in governing the car was starting the car from first speed usingthe clutch pedal simultaneously with the “gas” pedal. With some practice there I can say I got better at starting the car on 1st speedalthough still it’s pretty hard for me to move the car on 1st speed from stopped position when the car is on a small hill.After that we went out of the polygon and I drive on the road of Bogdanovo village. Right after we went back to the city.I went to see Bino because I have promised him to go out for a walk together. We had a nice walk in the city park, I came backhome I went to see my grandma just like I often do lately I stood there for 20 minutes and went home, ate and here I’m now blogging :)END—–

Convert WAV to MP3 in command line with LAME on Linux

Friday, April 8th, 2011

I needed to convert a bunch of files from WAV to MP3 format on my Linux desktop.

I’ve placed all my wav files to the directory /home/hipo/wav

And then I issued the small one liner script to convert the .wav files to .mp3 using the niftly lame linux mp3 convertor.

Here is how I did it:

linux-desktop:~$ cd wav
linux-desktop:/home/hipo/wav$ for i in *.wav; do
new_name=$(echo $i |sed -e 's#wav#mp3#g');
lame -V0 -h -b 160 --vbr-new "$i" "$new_name";
done

After executing the little script you might go and have a coffee, if you have thousands of files, each file convertion takes about 10-15 seconds of time (speed depends on your CPU).

Here is some output from a lame convertion to mp3 taking place:

Encoding as 8 kHz single-ch MPEG-2.5 Layer III VBR(q=0)
Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA
27237/27237 (100%)| 0:12/ 0:12| 0:12/ 0:12| 155.89x| 0:00
64 [27237] ***************************************************************
----------------------------------------------
kbps mono % long switch short %
64.0 100.0 84.1 8.9 7.0
If you want to save my convertion quickly for a later, download my Convert WAV to mp3 from a directory with lame shell script here

Actually there are plenty of other ways to convert wav to mp3 on Linux through mplayer, ffmpeg even with mpg123.

There are also some GUI programs that could do the convertion like winff , however for some weird reason after installing WinFF on my debian it was not able to complete convertion to mp3?!
But it doesn’t matter, the good news is I did what I wanted to via the simple lame program and the above script, hope it helps somebody out there.

Flight to Dubai via Istanbul, my Dubai first impressions and how it feels to be in Arab country

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Burj Al Arab and the 360 degree club

On Sunday I had a flight to Dubai – the the United Arab Emirates. The flight's goal is to do some business meetings with potential investors willing to invest in Cadia Holding 's Ofsshore Solutions
I'm employed as IT & Security Specialist and business consultant as well as doing the system administration for the company

The company has already scheduled a business meetings to look for new investors in order to finance the current company offered products and services as well as finance its entrance in the field of biometrics technology for the people to allow people to pay in stores with no need for plastic cards only using a finger partial imprint and a code.

The flight from Sofia to Istanbul was about 1 h and 15 minutes and it went quite smoothly thanks God. It seems Sofia's Airport has changed a lot since my last flight before more than a year and half to Dotmund Germany.
Now Sofia's airport looks way more modern than before, which means Bulgaria is slowly but surely developing it's infrastructure 😉
Sofia Airport long distance view

I used an electronic ticket for the flight which was pre-purchased by Cadia so what, all I had to do on the airport is show a copy of my e-ticket and immediately, they hand me in the fly ticket necessery to check in for the airplane

I should say the flight with Turksih airlines was really enjoyable and the plane we flight with felt much more secure compared to the WizzAir's airus.

It is true the last time I flight with with Wizzair's Airbus it was in January and the weather was quite bad as there was harsh winter with a lot of snow and this might be the reason, why my flight with them felt so shaky.

Anyways before entering the plane I had to go throught the regular security procedures, where I had to remove all kind of metals in bas, pockets etc. and go through a metal scanner, they sa an (anti terourisim) measure, besides that one of the airport security personnel checked me thoroughfully if I dont' bring any kind of objects hidden in m clothes. Generally during the check up with the metal scanner and the check up person I was treated like a criminal …
The Turkish airlines, stewardesses and the service was wonderful and we were given a not too bi but decent lunch (my first time I eat in airplane ;)).

Turkish Airlines Istanbul Airport

The flight as went smoothly and we were in Istanbul about 12:00 at midday, after coming down from the bus we were transferred with a bus from the plane like 1 or 1.5 km to Terminal 2 (the terminal of arrival scheduled).
I travelled with another colleague Krasimir, so we had to check our Tickets in the ticket office and let them issue us the flight ticket based on the e-ticket.
After a quick check of our International travelling passport, so called red passpower we were let to enter the duty free zone full of stores for food, beverages, clothes, parfumes suits cafeterias and everything, tech equipment stores, book stores, turkish ice-cream, duner kebaps and mostly any kind of shops and tings one can think of.

AtaTurk airport Istanbul picture
Ataturk Airport Istanbul

Something that catched my attention was that actually the model of how things are ordered and what they sell, the elevators the materials for building in the airport was very much like how things are in westerm country.
I thought it's a bit sad that everybody, everyone is following a modern design and a specific kind of order of things literally followed after the way things are in the western world. This somehow kills partially the uniqueiness of the country's culture and gives it a taste of the west, where the original culture and traditions the country possess somehow stay in the background.

What made me a bad impression on the airport is the too high prices of food and drinks. I just took one coffee (cappucino) and it costed me the solid sum 5 EUR!!
I was even fooled by the Turkish guy as if converted the coffee price from Turkish currency (Liras), when I calculated the price of the coffee was actually about 4 euro.

I've also spotted that in Turkey they're big nationalists. I've been told by Krasi the airport of Istanbul is called Ataturk and it appears this is the biggest airport in all Turkey. I've noticed in the bookstores we went through many many books even in English talking about the greatness of Turkey's first president Ataturk. There is no doubt that Ataturk has done a lot for internationalizing Turkey, it seems in Turkey they consider Ataturk as a national hero, but in my view it is a bit too much, somehow it looked like Ataturk's great respect in Turkey is comparable to the Chineese's love for Mao Dun ….

We had to spend some 4 hours with Krasi before the time for the second fly comes, so we had 4 hours to take a general look over everything offered in stores on the airport to kill some time

I was quite amazed to see so big variety products and goods on the same place, there was basicly everything one needs except furniture offered ont he airport.
The bookstores English books was reallya lot, where I should say it was quite good that about 40% of the books to be sold, were in English (quite odd especially if I take in consideration that most of the Turkish people I know couldn't speak too good English).

The flight to Dubai was scheduled for 16:45 in the afternoon, so 40 minutes earlier I and Krasi went again through the metal scanner again and thanksfully this time we were not searched for guns and bombs by airport police.
 

Emirates Company Logo

The airplane, we flied with was Boeing 777 – really a beatiful flying machine. We were lucky to travel with two other Bulgarians Nikolay and Gergana, who were flying to Chennai India for some kind of personnel training of some company personnel for the company http://Yazaki.com (an international company producing vehicles components) .

Emirates Boeing 777 nice airplane

Emirates airlines's organization service and convenience was really incredible! Emirates has done a great, job really. I had a lot of fun in the airplane in the flight, as they had every passenger sit with a touch screen display computer with a joystick similar to the ones with playstation.
< img src="https://www.pc-freak.net/images/emirates_passenger_personal_touchscreen_computer_Boening_777.jpg" alt="Emirates Boeng 777 Passenger personal computer touch screen device" />
A Boeng 777 Passenger seat view , the passenger touch screen device mounted on seats back

The little touch screen computer had a number of capabilities the passenger could watch a movie, get information about Dubai play his favourite old fashioned games like Pong, Asteroids, Galaga like, Checss, Arkanoid and like 10 outhers of classic games I know from my childhood.
Besides that the passenger's flight personal computer was equipped was even capable to make satellite phone calls chargable directly from VISA or Mastercard Debit or Credit card. The telephone was embedded with the joystick, so on the back of the control device joystick one has the satellite phone, the phone had the capability to call passengers who are inside the plane. To call another traveller inside the airplane you just need to have the passenger seat number.
As a computer security hobbyist, I've noticed one major problem with the phone calls in between airplane travelling passengers.
By default each sit's phone was sett upped to automatically answer phone calls from other passengers, Which means that if I'm a malicious abuser I can easily just call random people in the airplane and do social engineering pretending to be the plane Commander, stewardess or any other personal from the plane crew 😉
On the other hand calling random people, by getting advantage of how the system "hole", could easily give you the opportunity to make yourself random friends or share contacts with people from around the world 😉

Another handy thing about the onboard touch screen computer, I've noticed is the possibility to listen music from a list of a huge database with music. Also a huge database like (300+) movies ready to be seen was available, as well as some serials and some popular podcasts as well as the device even supported e-mail check and some basic internet functionalities (which unfortunately had to be used only after payment with a debit or credit card :|).

Emirates Passenger personal computer touch screen incredible device
Emirates / Skywards Passenger personal computer touch screen device

In the middle of the 4 hours and 15 minutes flight, we were handed in a good portions of dinner meals, which obviously was properly selected to be suitable to be easily digestable and vitaminous food. Also alcohol arabian Coca-Cola, Coffe and tea was offered.

Before the meals was handed in by the few stewards in the airplane, each passenger was handed with a (hot) towel, to carefully clear his hand or face!

Many of the Arabs used the towels to wipe their face sweat, where europeans tended to clean up their hands (probably shows something about the each about arabian and european habits and culture?).

Dubai side view from the airplane before the landing was really amazing, I've never seen so much light concentrated on one place never ever in my life, landing went pretty smoothly thanks God, though it felt a bit more risky than the landing done by the Turkish airlines, pilots.
Maybe there is difference in the landing because it was done during night time and probably landings in night time a way difficult task for the pilot.

Just like in Istanbul, after going down from the plane, via the plane step-ladder we were transported to the Airport with Buses (I was told by Krasimir that, the bus transportation is used becuase, it's a way cheaper than using the equipment for "hot tie" to connect the plane with the terminal via "tuble".
Also maybe its difficult in terms of parking the airplane as the airplane has to drive like 1.5, 2km and park this is an astonishing amount of petrol plane fuel 😉

Anyways just to sum-up my first flight with Emirates/Skywards it was more than enjoyable and nice, everything from the plane take off through the overall airplane experience to landing felt like a veery well crafted, organized and stricktly managed process. It felt like verything happening is perfectly tuned, again really nice feeling 😉
Interestingly inside th airplaine they had a stewardesses which were either Malaysian or Indonesian. The reason for tat was probably because Arabs are crazy about chineese and the variations of yellow races as I've heard from Baky (an Egyptian) as well as from some few Egyptian colleagues I had.

After we went down from the bus transporting us to Dubai's terminal arrival terminal 3, which I think is the only terminal dedicated for visitors in Dubai, we couldn't freely anter Dubai, but we were supposed to go through a biometric security measure the airport here implemented few years ago an Eye Scan .

Dubai Airport Arrival in United Arab Emirates - Airport Terminal 3

The organization on the airport and the information that we were supposed to have the eye scan in order to enter Anyways after some questioning near few of the airport desks and offices, we found or way to the device place where the eye scans took place.

The eye scan process is quick and not that scary as it sounds, they ask you sit on a chair cover left eye, then cover right eye and open the eye widely to make a picture of the iris, then based on some algorthim for interpreting the data and through a complex IT develoepd system a check is done against a database of well known criminals and if no match is found you're given a seal which lets you in Dubai.

The only concern, I have is once they took your eyescan they have this information stored so basicly they have your biometric data and if the information is stolen or send to third parties you can never know, but that's how it goes you know it's life, if you don't do the eye scan you can't go in.
You don't have the option to just choose if you want to have the eye scan or not … My company boss tried to cheat them and walk through inside Dubai without ahe eye scan as he said he went through the eye scan so man times, but still he was obliged to go through the eye scan in order to be let in the city.

After the eye scan on the airport, we had to line up on a long line with arriving people waiting for being let in Dubai, show the copy of the visa with the eye scan seal to airport police officer. He checks the seal the visa, the international passport and then one is asked to stay in front of another camera snd they take a picture of him, once again a security measure …
This is just crazy, I understand that security is important but the measures implemented today on airports are inhuman and even abusive, not to mention they break any privacy one can have in today's world … I'm even scared to think about how a security check on an airport will look like 20 years from now.
Anyways after all the aforementioend checks we were FINALLY allowed to enter Dubai, what first striked me was the size of the buildings, its the first time in my life I've seen a buildings of this amazing size, just incredible!
Also all the buildings are all in color lights and are flashing like spaceships, probably requirement to make sure no airplane tries to land over some of the buildings at night time 😉

Roland, a part time tech consultant for Cadia Holding and a colleague, took us up from the airport and drove us to the hire apartment in Jumeirah Beach, Rimal 6 – ap. number 53, where we're currently settled.

Jumeirah Beach Residence Rimal
Jumeira Beach Rimal buildings

I'm very thankful Roland was there otherwise if we were supposed o pick up a taxi, they would have charged us at least 80, 90 EUR! for bringing us to the apartment.
The prices of transportation here and in general prices are a killing onse. I guess this is pretty normal especially if you consider the countless amount of money invested in Dubai.
Honestly Dubai looks like a paradise on earth, everything is amazingly well organized, as well the technology involved everywhere is on a perfect and a better level than almost everything, I've seen in Holland, Germany and probably almost every other of the Western Europe countries.

Something strange that took my attention here was that in every big mall or big store, they have a special prayer room, which are suited for pracicing muslims to do they're 5 times daily prayers 😉
Here in Dubai I was shocked to see many of the native arabic ladies to be completely wrapped up inside mostly black dresses, where the man were often dressed in a complete dress without a zipper called thobes as well as a sort of a hat like long veil very similar to our orthodox christian priest monks viels.

Dubai man with Thobes in order smiling ;) Dubai man with Thobes lined in order smiling

The veil like dresshing the man wears has a ring on top of the head which has some kind of muslim symbolism probably I'm not aware of. An interesting thing, I've found out here is that this veil for the hat has colors, if it's red this means it's Saudi Arabia a white one means usually the man is from Dubai and the nearby regions o something like that.

When we went out of the airport here the temperature difference was killing it was like 35 Celsium degrees at 21:00 o'clock night time!!

I'm actually lucky to come here in Autumn, temperatures on Autumn are acceptable at night it's like 20-25C and in day usually 35-40C.

The private apartment, where we're accommodated is amazing, it's big like a place, it has everything a flat TV, wireless internet, 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms etc.
To enter the buillding one needs to use his special ID card which is secured by a bar code, which has to be tagged on a bar code reader on the building entrance door.
Dubai itself seems more international at times, even than Western europe, you can see everything in Both English and Araabic, so you can understand basicly everything. Everyone speaks from the lowest employee to the office workers an acceptable English and thus communication is not a constraint like in Holland, where many people speak English which is too much influenced by German and german lingual structure.

I'm very thankful to God for blessing me to come to this nice place, now I'm laing over a nice coach and blogging.
By so far, I've seen two of the biggest Dubai Malls and some general architecture, all is collosal in size and reall amazingly built. I've heard from people quality of buildings is not that good as everything is being built in too short time and with cheap materials and by Indian labours who earn like 5 dollars a day. I'm not sure though how truthful is this as I think the quality of the apartment, we're accommodated is great.

Each room is equipped with a Clima, so the temperature inside is steady 22- 24C degrees. The body shock when you go out hence is really severe as usually there is like 10 or 15C degrees difference in temmperature.
Climas are, good but they create too much noise at night it's a bit noisy, but maybe with time one can get used to it.
The cars I saw here in Dubai are amazing, all the cards are really really expensive maybe the cheapeast car in Dubai worths no less than 10 000 o 20 000 EUR.
Euro, Dollars and the official UAE currency dirham are accepted everywhere in shopping malls and food stores and this is really nice.
The taxi drivers charge normal prices here, I was out with Jure and we took taxi few times and each time for like 5-7 km distance, the taxi charged approximately 30 AED per drive.
Random Taxi in Dubai

The Taxis are all luxurious cars with a (airconditioners) climas, it seems they have a metro already operating here as well as comperativfe cheap transportation with buses, but I'm not sure if something could be really cheap here 😉
Everywhere I went here I can notice something really beautiful in terms of either mostly modern design with arabic elemnts or technology. The elevators here are really quick. To go to the last stage of the 36 stages building here in Dubai it tooks the elevator no more than 1 minute 😉
The food here in Dubai seems decent, though its not that good like naturally grownned products or a chicken or cow who was rised in a private farm.
Anyways the food here in United Arab Emirates seems to be way better than the food in Holland and Germany, where it is a bit like plastic.
I don't know if its because of the Sun excessive warmth, God's grace to me or what but I should mark, here in Dubai and maybe in rest of UAE one feels warmer than in Western Europe.

People don't smile too much here especially the people who work on the lower levels of job, clear indicator that they don't earn good money.
I like that they don't smile too much as this reminds me in Bulgaria, where you can see sour faces a way more often than a smiled one.
Here people look a bit less soury than in Bulgaria.

I will be in Dubai 6 more days, so I'll have a clearer picture in my head about the place after some few days. Nevertheless from what I've seen so far, I'm really very amazed and very thankful to God to leeting me see all this new interesting things and culture.
I should take the time to find and take a look in the more traditional places here. Pitily globalization is seriously destroing the local people culture here, and you can't feel the real culture besides the arabic kind of dress, the mosques , prayer rooms and some entwisted muslim architecture with the modernistic buildings.
It will be very nice to see some real camels, elephants or some typically arabic kind of things 😉

Summing it up, the overall atmosphere here, the organzation of thingsm the business climate and infrastructure is something we europeans should learn from.

Trip to Romania ( TTR ) – Few of my impressions from Ro-Mania :)

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

I just came home from a short 4 days trip to Romania. I'm truly impressed by the beauty, the people goodness and their piety.

Over the last few years, I've visited Romania numerous times, most of the times I just crossed by car while traveling to Holland. My impressions the previous years were quite good already but I didn't have the opportunity until now to see how the country looks "from within" – I mean how the life flows there etc.

I've heard quite a lot of BAD thinks about corruption (from european parliament critics in new) and gipsy like people and plenty of bad stuff over the years.
This is all lies, the country people are not corrupt, they're just smart and find plenty of ways to earn money. For instance while I was traveling there were Romanians people selling raspberries brought by the nearby woods, the raspberry selling is not entering the treasury of the country and this is considered by the European Union corruption and a crime 🙂
Well talking about police, they're a bit corrupt and stopping you for no reason sometimes to ask if you can give them some coffee or cigarettes but i wouldn't put this police act as corruption it is rather an act the patrol police do in order to find some extra cash near the low sallaries received for serving in police 🙂

Well anyways my trip to Romania here are few of my travel notes. The whole travel Route was Bulgaria – Romania, the aim of my travel can be classified as business trip, since I was travelling with a relative's husband who was their to transfer some physical goods (a kind of logistics). The wohle trip started from my hometown Dobrich; we went through Silistra and Ruse and then the so famous Danube bridge. The roads in Bulgaria are not perfect and some regions were full of road holes, but this is normal since we have a harsh winter here and now a road recovery works are in progress on the roads. Crossing the Danube bridge, there is a custom police and they charge something like 23 BGN (Bulgarian levs) for crossing it. Then there is a border police check which as most people who travelled by bus or car over borders (out of Schengen) knows pretty well. You have to hand in your ID and it is checked by a policeman and if you're not in the list of WANTED CRIMINALS 🙂 they let you go. Some 500 meters or a 1 kilometer after that is the Romanian border police which (since not part of Schengen yet checks your traveller ID again).

In Romania we travelled through Gurgevo which is one of the closest cities to Danube river bridgeroad and one of nearest romanian cities to Bulgaria.
Our first destination was a place in Romania called Targo Mures, to go their our route passed through the side road of Bucuresht – Bururesti as Domneles (misters) calls it.

As I'm trying to live an Orthodox Christian life the most striking think from the moment we entered Romania to the one we went off it was the number of Churches, Crucifix and religious references one can see by just crossing the country roads.
Many villages in Romania had 2 or 3 Churches a small chapels a Cross on the road sidewalks etc. Even many Romanian houses almost everywhere had a Christian Cross on top of the house or on the house door. Putting a Christian cross on top of your home is something I myself has thought of and wondered why Christians did not put here in Bulgaria and other Christian countries seeing this being a reality in RO-MANIA 🙂 was unexpected.

Other from my impression is that Romanian people work hard and a lot of them live in the village, owning a small land to grow vegetables and animals (sheeps and cows) mostly. While driving we saw on many places shepherds with large herds of sheeps, people mowing and generally many people who seemed to be working hard to grow their own food. This really made sense since here in Bulgaria grievously animals are rarely grown by country people and most people are living in cities (our rural population is very small).
Growing myself vegetables and having sheeps and living a village life is one of my dreams so seeing so many people growing big portion (if not all of their food on their own) especially in this crazy super-market times is really something that gives me hope, we're not completely doomed yet.

Biggest part of Romania is Orthodox Christian, while the deep central part and the western part is Roman Catholic. Nomatter the differences between the two the people in both parts seemed to live in piece. The western part was visibly more developed than the eastern.
In my observations the western part of Romania is highly influenced by Hungarian culture and architecture, while a lot of Hungarians live their today. We went through Sigishuara which seemed to be mostly Roman Catholic though I saw some Orthodox Church too on the city center. Sigishuara is amazingly beautiful. The people we met all throughout the trip was extremely friendly and always wanted to help and threated us like true Christians, something one can rarely see happening nowdays …

Most of Romania we travelled is mountain covered and the air was extremely clean, so when you're even breathing you feel very different and alive if compared to whether in my hometown.
Brasov is one of the big cities in Romania but its construction is not too much concentrated, the city is quite scattered consisting of neap houses up to few stages per hight. Generally in Romania I haven't seen too high buildings almost anywhere, in Bucurest there are some but still they're not so tall as the blocks in Bulgaria or some other ex-communist countries.

Something interesting about Brasov is that near it is Transilvania and a castle in a small village (or town) called Bran, the castle is dating back from the 12 century and is told to be the original castle where Count Dracula lived. Perhaps the region is filled with Vampire stories but unfortunately my knowledge in Romanesco was so poor so I couldn't get into contact to locals to ask for that (neither I had the time to).

Bran Count Dracula Castle

Bran castle was restored a couple of times and has been a host for the royal family of Romania (many Romanian kings, princesses) through the middle ages in Communistic time it was abandoned and just recently it was turned to a cultural museum (probably part of UNESCO).

The castle is located on a high rock and near it is a beatiful garden and an old times mention. In the castle there are plenty of objects left and traditional princess dresses, pictures, a cinema room, an ancient torture room and plenty of other medievel furniture.
The price was normal 25 LEU (the romanian currency), this equals to something like 6,5 EURO.

On the road, while travelling in Romania on many places you see the signs reading <b> DRUM BUN</b>: which in English means <b>"Have you a good trip"</b>.
During our way back from Bran we travelled through another mountain region – Sinaia.
The prices of food in the super-markets in Romania are quite almost same like in Bulgaria and if compared to western europe many products can be considered even cheap. The quality of food I found to be quite satisfying. A lot of people in Romania are still selling home made yellow cheese and natural grown products in villages as well as I've seen plenty of this street old fashioned tradesman which I like so much on the streets. The country roads especially the central ones and highways were quite good too. Well there is a lot to be said but unfortunately I don't have the time to prolonge this post anymore. In the mountain areas there were some sinaguture for monasteries according to what I've heard from some priests here in Bulgaria in Romania currently they have 7000 Orthodox Christian MONKS! ! ! The number is amazing high just for a comparison in Bulgaria as of time of writting we have not more than 300 monks.

Our trip thanksfully was safe and every romanian we met or ask anything was more than welcome to us and tried his best to help us. Finally it was time and we hit the road back to Bulgaria through Danube riverbridge – the bridge road is a bit better than before some holes are filled in but still there are plenty of holes.
We had to pass through the Romanian Customs and pay a fee for passing by and later were checked by Bulgarian border police – thanksfully with no problems. We had to deliver some cargo to Karnobat in Bulgaria so we passed by there and then through Burgas headed back through Stara Planina (Old Mountain) which is amazingly beautiful mountain and is a must visit place for any keen on mountain tourism.

Thanks God I came back home alive and well and here I am writting this post. To sum it up if I have to grade America and being asked if it is worthy as a tourist destination I would say not only worthy but it is a real pearl you must see!
 

Geri’s Birthday

Friday, January 18th, 2008

The day before yesterday, I was in a pretty bad mood and decided to went out. I went to the Mino’s coffee and accidently it happened that Geri a friend of mine had a birthday it was refreshing to spend some timewith real people even thought I thought about all’s behaviour and particularly “how hipocrity they are”.I drinked two glasses of wine for which Miro (Geri’s husband) said it smells like socks. Good heavens my nose was stalled. Yesterday I was out for a coffee with Lily :). 

The weekend was a sort of peaceful.Servers and everything runs fine thanks to the Lord! (ofcourse). I’ll end the post with a quote fromthe bible through the small program called “verse”.

Here is the quote” “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him…” II Chronicles 16:9 :)END—–

The last two weeks

Saturday, December 16th, 2006

Heya. Few weeks I can’t take the courage to write on the blog. But today I’m spiritually (Praise be to God!). So I was able to write that. The day passed away in a very traditional way. I went to the collage in 10:15 instead of 08:15 again I was not able to stand up from the bed. We had some International Law lectures up to 11:30, after that we drank coffee with Nomen. Smoked few cigarettes. Later on I had a Deutsch 12:30 to 15:45. We made a test the time between 14:15 – 15:45 ( I was not ready for that test ofcourse :] ). No matter price be to God I succeded to write stuff in the test. After that I spoke fo 1.5 h with the College Sys Admin we discussed mine idea to migrate some Windows 98 boxes to just dumb terminals connecting to a central Terminal Server. In monday maybe we’ll start doing the terminal server. Other things I saw Nomen and Habib in 17:10 in the college. Mitko give a promise to Malin to check something on his computer, so we had to go Malin’s home. So we went there nothing special their we put Habib in front of the Malin’s home door and he rang we with mitko hide and watched. Dori (The woman of Malin), went out looking shocked at Habib, she was possible wondering who is that strange (nigga like guy). Habib said: “Malin, Vkyshti” :]. Dori said: “Malin ne vkyshti” then we showed ourself and laughed;] We tried to fix the malin’s problem with the Audio Drivers but was not able the problem seemed to be a hardware one. After that we went to Mino’s coffee we saw Miro and Gosho with Zuio Kiro and Maya. We drinked some beer and went our homes. End of story. The last days were hard for me. I really have no idea where my life is going into nomatter I hope God will think about me a good way the best way. I had a big spiritual pain over the last days, and I said to God a lot of times I hope he will take me away, from this hellish earth. But I guess his plan is another for me. Will live and will see. Now God Even now you see me. Please help me fix the mess I am into and forgive me for all my awful deeds. Will go now. Blessings in the name of Jesus Christ.

Passed the Statistics exam Glory be to the Creator of Heaven and Earth!

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

Aloha. Yesterday was a nice day. I was on the marketing exam, and after that I suggested to one of my collegues (Narf) to drink a coffee together. We discussed various stuff IRC(mainly), and then computer general stuff. Then he explained me about some interesting scripts that enhance the irssi irc experience. Then we I suggested him to go home to show him my FreeBSD box and geek for some time. In the path to home we saw Nomen, he just checked if I’m home and was going to his home. We stayed home for some time, watched BB, some games Diablo II with wine etc. After that he said he had to go. Later we went out with Mitko to one pub called regal we drinked a bear per man. And decied to go to his home to watch a film concerning the life of One very famous (now dead) “prophetess” called Grandma Vanga. As I thought before that and most of my friends christians from what I saw I’m almost convinced this woman did prophecised and did stuff with the help of the Evil Seducer ( The Devil ). Praise the Lord I passed the Statistics exam thanks to the Lord’s help HalleluYah to his Heavenly Throne. After that I went home and decided to take a shower to remove the EGG I put on my hair few days ago :], and after that went to bed. Today I feel really awful I probably get cold Yesterday :[. Hope I’ll be okay for a day or two. Thanks God for being merciful to me. As soon as you see and hear me I hope soon you’ll set me up on the place you’ve prepared for me Lord 😛 :]. I should start learning soon for my next exam which is in International Law, but again I’m too lazy.END—–