Saving the Corals and Aquatic Life!

As you know I am a diver, so I got involved also in trying to save these corals and the aquatic life. I became a patron of an organization called Project Aware which is the dive industry’s leading nonprofit environmental organization. You can also make a difference in saving our planet. Please click here to read more about what they do and you can get involved and contribute as well.

http://www.projectaware.org

Of course you can say why save some corals and some fishes instead of saving the kids in Africa or any other issues. I guess is not a choice between these two, but you need to do both. This will save the planet, that will save the people who populate it. Both of them are equally important.

The Champions :)

It is quite an old news but had no time to put on the blog that the Ice Hockey Team from the city where I was born won the Romanian Leaguea and the Romanian cup. It is pretty cool and it was a huge celebration in the whole region. We all support this hockey team, just because they represent all the Szekelysz in the top level sporting arena. :):):)

The hockey games are always cool and the atmosphere is very unique. As mentioned earlier, I have been to the first game of the playoff against Steaua when I was home. Here is a short video I took there. You can understand now how much it means to won the League :):):)

Video: Csiki hoki
Very proud of this achievement by the team, it made a lot of szekelys happy :):):)

Marcius 15

On the 15th of March was the anniversary of the revolution in 1848 which happens to be a National Holiday in Hungary. It is one of the celebrations which is very close to me. One of the main personalities of this revolution and the biggest Hungarian poet died in this revolution in a very crucial battle near my town back in Transylvania. Therefore this is the biggest celebration in my town, mainly because top personalities would come there and the whole town would gather in the main square at the statue of Petofi Sandor. It is a very nice celebration and I always remember on this day all the nice moments when I was back home and I attended the ceremonies.

Now I celebrated with some Hungarians in the botanical garden at the Hungarian tree and after that, well, we went clubbing:):):).

So on the 15th I remembered being at home and decided to write about my short last trip in February. As usual, it is always good to be home, however it always shocks me the way my parents get older and older between my trips back home. It always hard to see the way they live and their struggle in order to have a decent life and to cope with the illnesses that come with the age. It is a good feeling to help them and try to sort out some of their problems when I am home, but somehow I always feel a bit helpless. I feel that there are things that I can’t change anymore and this is really pissing me off.

I think I managed to go home this time in a moment when they really needed me to be back home and I am happy that I could change things back home somehow in a very short period.

I travelled a lot in my area in those 10 days I have been home in order to sort out a lot of paperwork for me and my family and it was god to see the Hargita mountains and all the villages, the hills, the nature, Szekelyfold. It is just a good feeling driving around there and enjoy the view. Unfortunately there was just a bit of snow in the mountains, but I really enjoyed even like this.

I also went to a show of a folk group in my brother’s town and I took my father and my brother to a hockey game as well in Csikszereda. That was really really cool. When we lived in Csikszereda he always used to go, but he never was there after we moved from there. I have been few times, but I also missed the atmosphere of a good game, so it was cool to see the first game of the Play-off in the finals against Steaua Bucharest. The joy was even bigger because our team won the game and of course the whole atmosphere was fantastic (the whole arena singing the Szekely anthem in the end for example).

On the way back to Singapore I had a short stop in Bucharest and managed to meet couple of my friends for a drink and it was really god to catch up with them. Hope they will drop by Asia as well this summer, so I can see them more often, not just once a year when I go home.

Men's Remote

I got this funny picture from one of my friends and I was thinking that these kinds of jokes are always about the men side. I would have expected this kind of jokes about what men would want and I was wondering how one remote control like this would look like for a women. That would have been more interesting to see for me, because it would be something new among the thousands of similar mails sent. :):):) What would be on it? What functions and buttons??? Ladies, let me know if you have figured it out :):):)

Bad day

It was quite a bad day for Indonesians today, as they had two big earthquakes ( Mag. 6.3 and 6.1). It was felt in Singapore as well and our office building was shaking quite interestingly (some other buildings were evacuated; we just went for an early lunch). It as a wicked experience, first I thought that I am sick or something because I felt that I am dizzy, but then I looked out and saw that our building is moving. And the higher you are, the more you feel it… Glad that I was in the office and not in the bar on the 71st floor.

Thinking of it, what is scary (not referring to this earthquake but in general) that you don’t even know in the first few seconds what is happening with you, so if it would be something more serious, it would take time to react and run for your safety. The second scary thing is that this kind of things happens so fast that you don’t even have time to react. I mean it lasts for a while, but you just don’t have enough time to do anything if you are on the 20th floor for example. Now I understand why earthquakes are so dangerous and killing so many people on the other parts of the world. The third scary thing is that even a new, solid modern building like ours seems so unstable, fragile and vulnerable to this kind of things.

I think I would not like to live in areas where this can happen quite often (like Japan, Indonesia), it is too extreme for me.

Jetlagged week...

My last entry was quite a while ago, but sometimes I just don’t feel writing about the things happening to me or I just want to keep those things totally for me. I have been travelling quite a lot so had not much time to write and after my trip back home, I just could not write, at least not before re-adapting to Singapore.

It takes a while after my trips back home to get back my balance and re-adapt to my life here in Singapore. It is always hard, but at least I have some experience in it, haha. I was totally screwed up because of the time difference when I came back and I had almost a week of continuous sleep during the day and sleepless nights. It seems that I am getting old… Fortunately there were some eventful sleepless nights :) Rajiv was in Singapore and we went out Tuesday for a drink and to catch up. He did not change at all, so we could have some great fun. :):):) We ended up in Fullerton for some high priced long islands and some fun discussions.

And then Wednesday and Thursday nights I read a book (Nyiro Jozsef: Az en nepem), which definitely did not help my re-integration. So went back to the classical method: going clubbing :):):). We went out to Movida at St James Pover Station where it was Latino night and we said goodbye to Alejandro, our Mexican friend who is leaving Singapore. It felt like being everywhere else but not in Singapore, I remembered more of my trip in Barcelona where people were partying like this on the streets. I am not a Latino music fun, but I totally enjoyed this night there. It was full of life, energy and not surprisingly: foreigners. So went home at 6 am, and slept until like 1 pm.

I woke up just in time for a big lunch and some golf and there I was again ready to go out for dinner. Went to Garibaldi, a sweet and cosy Italian restaurant with good food and good wine and after that I was awake again like if it would have been morning, so Audrey took me clubbing. But this time we did not go to Ministry of Sound, or all these fancy clubs, but to a local Chinese club where I was the only foreigner (and more or less the tallest person), people were more genuine (I mean simple people, not the fancy club type of people), the music was good and everything was 4 times cheaper then usual. It’s the kind of place where the usual Singaporean dude would take her girlfriend to get her drunk (without getting bankrupt) so they have a wild night after that together. I mean after 2 hours of clubbing (and 12SGD/Jar of Black Label-coke) all the girls looked like the Asian delegation at an International Congress (in terms of alcohol consumption).

I guess don’t need to mention that my Sunday started only somewhere in the afternoon with…. with ice skating… yes…. There is an ice skating rink here…. After that we stayed to watch a hockey game from the local Singaporean hockey league….. (Yes, there is an ice hockey league here in this tropical island). :):):)

In the evening we went to watch a great and very unique performance at esplanade. It is called “A Touch of Zen” and impressed me a lot, because I have never ever seen something like this before. It was something new and a very different world, way of thinking and sending across the message of the performance. Here is a short description of it:

“A tale of revenge and Buddhist enlightenment comes to life when Shaolin martial arts masters meet Zen drummers from Taiwan’s celebrated U Theatre. A Touch of Zen tells the story of an orphan who grows up in the Shaolin Temple. As an infant, he is abandoned by his mother shortly before vicious militiamen apparently kill his parents, and left at the temple’s door.

The young boy grows up and becomes increasingly troubled by the eternal question of his identity. Upon suddenly learning that his mother is still alive but unjustly imprisoned, he leaves the temple and embarks on a valiant attempt to rescue her, armed with his martial arts skills honed from the temple’s rigorous training. And thus begins his journey of self-discovery.

In the performance, the dramatic sounds of the drums and music come together with the skilful and forceful moves of Shaolin martial arts in a spectacle of kung-fu, drums, music and drama.”

And here I am again, watching a movie and waiting to get a bit sleepy... My mind is still back home, maybe that’s why my biological clock is set still on Europe…