Category Archives: Hungary

Hey! What song are you listening to?

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Asking random people on the streets of Budapest with headphones on what song they are listening to – based on the idea of Tyler Cullen @ NY

Tracklist:

  • Survivor: Eye Of The Tiger
  • Alice In Chains: God Smack
  • Freundeskreis: Tabula Rasa Pt. II
  • Emilie Simon: Fleur de Saison
  • Fort Minor: Believe Me
  • Doctor P: Gargoyle
  • 2NE1: Kiss
  • 2Pac: Changes
  • Paul Kalkbrenner: Aaron
  • Sak Noel: Loca People
  • Moldvai Furulyaszó
  • In Extremo: Sieben Köche
  • 10cc: I’m Not in Love
  • Wheatus: Teenage Dirtbag
  • Killakikitt: Ösztön
  • Diana Krall: Love Scenes
  • Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus
  • The Chemical Brothers: Hey Boy Hey Girl
  • Rise Against: Give It All
  • Kispál és a Borz: Ha az életben
  • Váradi Roma Café: Minden egyes éjszaka
  • Queen: You Don’t Fool Me
  • Khaled & Cameron Cartio: Henna Henna
  • Rudimentary Peni: Him Hymn

The State of Democracy and Freedom

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Excerpt from the Testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas O. Melia (House Foreign Affairs Europe and Eurasia Subcommittee) “Eastern Europe: The State of Democracy and Freedom” on July 26, 2011. Source.

Several recent events are cause for significant concern about Hungary‘s democratic trajectory. Hungary is an important EU and NATO member. At the same time, we have seen the current one-party government use its unprecedented two-thirds parliamentary majority to lock in changes to the Constitution that could solidify its power, limit checks and balances, and unduly hamstring future democratic governments in effectively addressing new political, economic and social challenges. The government replaced members of a media oversight board, for example, with candidates aligned with the ruling party. More disconcerting, the board has been given the power to issue decrees and impose heavy fines – up to $950,000 – for news coverage it considers “unbalanced” or offensive to “human dignity.”

Secretary Clinton stated during her June 30 visit, “As friends of Hungary, we … [call] for a real commitment to the independence of the judiciary, a free press, and governmental transparency.” We are urging the government to temper the pace of change, to be more inclusive and to limit the number of issues covered by so-called ”cardinal laws,” which require a two-thirds majority to change. In particular, we will ask the government to carefully reconsider the new law on “the Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion and on the Status of Churches, Religions and Religious Communities,” which requires re-registration of all but 14 religious groups, negatively impacting the religious freedom atmosphere in Hungary. We will continue to engage Hungary in a broad dialogue in coming months, as the government works to implement its new constitution.

EFOTT 2011

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This year the annual ‘convention’ of students of higher education – which translates to an outdoor festival really – was held in the town my parents live in. Not attending was out of the question.

Due to the nature of the event the performers were almost exclusively Hungarian bands, to which I rarely listen. I just went for the company. Regardless, two performances really came as a surprise.

Firstly, following my brother I ended up at Supernem. Their energetic pop-punk-rock music had the audience jump by the second song. This gig also proved that with a bit of luck the Nexus S can take semi-decent photos even in such low-light conditions.

Secondly, locally famous they might be, I haven’t cared much for Quimby before. However, they were pretty amazing live. Thanks to radio stations I knew about two-thirds of the songs but even the rest had something extra to them: a jazz-interlude or megaphone-vocals, etc. One may not like these musicians but it would be silly to question their professionalism.

I couldn’t find one, so I set up a Last.fm event page, post-occurrence.

Armed Forces Protest Against Rolling Back Early Retirement

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It’s a sad day when my dad has to go on the street in contempt of the government effectively taking away his pension. While the system of early retirement benefits for the armed forces can be disputed, nothing gives the right to any government to retroactively change laws.

Thousands of Hungarians, some dressed as clowns, protested against government moves to roll back early retirement benefits for the armed forces, police and firefighters and abolish the system of negotiating with unions. (Reuters)

I took the picture during a run. Since PM Viktor Orbán mocked the unions by saying he’d send his “clown affairs secretary” to negotiate, many wore clown outfits, masks and face paints. The protesters marched to the presidential residence carrying torches, creating an impressive sight of a fiery snake. It is more like frightening, however, that these are the people that protect our land, fight crime and put out fires.

Animals

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Recycled content. — In another life, I went to the Budapest Zoo. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it is, after all, a great place. In the end I almost ran out of CF card space.

I just remembered I had the pictures because Semcon was doing some decoration and we offered our pictures to be framed for the office walls. Mine didn’t get used, but I was reminded to make a Flickr gallery of my favourites.

Also, the white wolves are the coolest.

állatkert 026

Corvinus University of Budapest

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The rector of my alma mater had to send a letter to the students and staff today to react to the leaked proposal by the under-secretary for education Rózsa Hoffmann according to which Corvinus University may be closed, its faculties broken up and merged with four other universities.

Rector Tamás Mészáros wrote that the university has not been contacted or asked to participate in any consultation regarding this plan. He believes that such a decision would be inconsistent with the European values as well as diminish the competitiveness of Hungary. The popularity, achievements and international recognition of the university are values to be improved not destroyed.

Corvinus University is currently ranked 62nd in the Financial Times European Masters in Management rankings.

Közösség

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Derek: Wait a second, wait a second… That doesn’t make sense. Nah, you didn’t get… you didn’t get six years for stealing a TV. Come on.
Lamont: I go in the store, I come out, the police officer grabs my arm, the TV falls on his foot and breaks it. They said I threw the TV at the officer. Assault. Six years.
Derek: Come on, tell the truth. You chucked it at him.
Lamont: Like I said, I came out of the store, he grabbed my arm, it fell… on his foot.

(American History X)

Budapest Cycle Track

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Just the day after I wrote about BAM I bumped into this piece of news about a project called Budapest Cycle Track. The creators attempt to collect traffic data via iPhone and Android apps to map popular bicycle routes through the capital in order to find out where new tracks are most needed.

The app itself doesn’t have much functionality other than mapping, calculating the distance and sending over the data. This is where I see the issue, similarly to BAM. Why would anyone bother loading up an app just to supply data. Many would, I guess, but if penetration is the goal, something like this won’t be enough.

At the time of writing this only 114 km was submitted to the website. The visualisation would be created once they reach 10.000. I have my doubts.

Not to mention, given the current leadership, building new bicycle tracks look like to be the lowest priority.

BAM

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BAM is “bringázz a munkába” which translates to “go to work by bicycle”. It is a joint project of the Hungarian Cyclists’ Club and the Ministry of National Development. Every spring and autumn – this time between 4 April and 8 May – people who ride a bike to work at least eight times are eligible to win prizes.

People can log their journeys on the website, join up with their colleagues to form company teams and compete with each other. Cyclists can indicate if there was rain on a particular day or if they got a flat tire.

Admirable the initiative may be the website itself is barely passable. The menu system and site structure is convoluted and unintuitive, the whole thing looks a decade old. The social aspect is severely lacking, for example I can’t check on my own teammates or find out how much they ride every day. There isn’t any option to invite people either, or at least I haven’t found one. Social media integration is limited to a Facebook app but its functionality stops at offering bragging rights for distance traveled. It’s ugly as hell and I couldn’t make it work either.

A shame really, because there are so many great possibilities here, as the Chromaroma project proved. If anything, riding the bicycle to work makes a perfect candidate for gamification. The whole project has been running since 2007, it’s high time to make it more enticing. Prizes are great but there could be an achievement system with award badges. Foursquare integration also comes to mind where routes are calculated from start and endpoint check-ins. People with smartphones could opt to use GPS apps to track their journeys. Monetization would be possible via targeted cycling accessory offers, etc.

Anyway, so far this month I traveled 128 km by bike which burnt 2580 calories (so little, compared to running). If I’d had a car I wouldn’t have needed to buy 10 Euro worth of gas and would have prevented 24 kg of CO2 from getting into the air.