Things are not going ver well on Rimor lately. Guilds break and dissolve; people go mad and jump from guild to guild seeking for more and more power; wars break out, neighbours who lived peacefully until now suddenly start to massacre each other. And people I liked leave. I was shocked by the news that a person whom I look up to as a player and RL person as well leaves AO. His name is Armaklaesy and he was one of the reasons I joined Velvet a year ago. AO starts to resemble its name: anarchy.
To counter these black thoughts I have now the weather is very nice outside. The sun shines on the cloudless sky and it is very hot. It's hard to believe, that not that long ago it was freezing cold and snow outside. Well, as predictions say cold will visit us once more in the weekend.
Today morning I was woken up at around six by loud music playing outside. No matter I closed the windows, the volume didn't decrease by much, it only got hotter inside. I think as this is a military establishment they may have had some kind of gathering outside. However I do hope this does not happen very often...
Almost all my belongings have already been moved to my new dormitory. They still need to be sorted out though, which is not a very pleasant work at all. But then again the work you never start takes the longest time. :)
Finally we started some programming stuff at IT lessons. Only Visual Basic which seems to be a toy compared to Delphi, but it is still more fun than Excel. I will need to get it to my home computer as well and write some example programs just to see how it works...
Well... deep breath. I will try to summarize my experiences (I never know in which meaning is experience countable...) in Graz.
Arriving to Graz the very first thing that I remember is that it was hot. Warmer than in Hungary, though the Alps are quite near. Weird.
Graz proved to be a very interesting city on the second day when I and some AIESECers from LC Pecs were wandering in the town all morning. The vivdness and the liveliness of the Town was shocking. There was a project running at the time, which - I think - covers the year with the title of "Graz, the capital of culture in Europe". The whole city was full of posters and green number 3-s advertising this event. My favourites were the lamps on which they put green and blue polyester sacks making them light in colours.
The whole inner city was like a pedestrianised street. Only trams and bicycles could be seen, plus many people walking. Everything and everyone seemed to be so full of joy that is unlikely in Hungary. At least not in cities where most of the people hurry with their heads down to their work or back home. The people were kind as well. Most of them knew English; even in the Pharmacy the woman spoke English, which is very untypical here. People proved to be very patient as well, a proof of which is that cars stopped every time we stood by the pavement as an indication of wanting to cross. In Hungary cars rarely stop out of their own will, you have to wait out when the street becomes partly empty at least.
The coolest part of Graz is the hill in the middle hosting the Grazer Uhrturm (A clock tower) and a castle. The old buildings that stopped Napoleon some centuries before are fascinating and also the view of Graz from up there. There is also an endless throng of stairs that lead up to the clock tower and for those who are old or tired an elevator is available, too.
In the afternoon we attended the conference "Dialogue for Europe" at which the top guests were Mihail Gorbatschov and Dr. Helmut Kohl. It was fascinating to see such once-powerful people who at their time formed history. The actuality of their visit is that they helped Europe towards the goal of integration (be the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the reformation of the Soviet Union) and with that indirectly contributed in making available our and the other former communist countries' EU membership. They also talked about recent hot issues like the Iraq war.
Gorbatschov spoke very passionately regarding the war, underlining that the UN should have accepted the attack, and without it any war is unjust. It is a very warm thought that such a great politician has a similar opinion about this war like me. :)
As you could see above I had a great time in Graz, and I think it is a nice city to visit if you are looking for a neat and very hospitable European town.
While spending my time in Austria, my long-awaited Verbatim 8cm mp3 CD player has arrived. It is awesome! :) I wanted a mini-CD mp3 player because buying mini CDs is much cheaper than buying memories and I have tons of tracks I like to listen to. It is easy and comfortable, you buy a mini CD, you write mp3s on it (about 4 hours of playing at 128kbps) and you are done. The gadget has a neat clip with main control buttons and an LCD for displaying the ID3 info. With one charge it can work for approximately 4 hours out of my experiences, but I think it depends on the volume as well. (It has some memory inside so it switches off the CD rotation during tracks to spare with the batteries.) Needless to say it has a cool silver/blue design, too.
I also moved to the other dormitory I was talking about. Not much to say about it, as I have spent only a couple of hours there yet.
I have a very good, almost unbeatable excuse for not updating in the weekend. (No, bad guess, I am still alive. :) I happaned to be in Graz (Austria). It was great, and there are many things that I want to tell you about my journey... another time. Today I am too exhausted to write long posts, and surely the one about Graz will be a long one. Tomorrow I will move to another dormitory as well. So this is it for today.
Again no update for a while, mainly because I had exams. But I guess I will compensate with a very long update now. Well, we will see, I planned to at least.
First of all about exams. I had analysis on Monday, which pretty much didn't go as I expected. I got only a few points, barely enough not to fail this time but with a little prospect to my next exam. You need to collect a certain sum of points and as things are now, I will need to write an outstanding second one to gather enough. I tend to think it was not only my fault. We were promised to have a test-like exam with a couple answers out of which you have to choose the right one. We were also promised not to be able to receive negative points for wrong answers. Neither of these promises has been kept. We had no choices but spaces for the answers, which is the worst kind of exercise in my opinion not giving the chance to receive points for your part work. I mean if there is a long equation which I solve right I only make a mistake at the last line of the solution I will still have a wrong solution and zero points. Plus for the wrong answers in the true/false choices you could get minus points. A right answer meant 2 a wrong -1 point. Shall I expect this all the time, not getting what I expect? Strangely enough there are some subjects where professors can keep their promises.
My second exam was information technology, which went well. It could have gone better of course - as always - but because perfectionism will kill me someday I'll only say it was ok.
I'll rather write about my weekend experience. I watched The Ring with my brother in the afternoon. (We waited for the sun to set to maximise the fear effect.) I have to say that movie is good. It is tense from the beginning to the end. Though many elements of it can be familiar from other previous horror movies, The Ring is a mixture that is better than its components alone. I like these kinds of movies where tension and fear in not kept up by constant spraying of blood and still moving ugly cut-down monster body parts. Simple pictures can give you much more thrill. Like the one when the journalist woman (cannot remember her name) comes out from the doctor's house on the island and as the camera closes up on them suddenly the mentally challenged boy swings into the picture with his pale face. It scares you because you don't expect it.
Another thing I liked is the ending. Simply the fact that you think it has come to an end and eventually it turns out it didn't is good and then the very end is cunning too. After seeing I wrote the text "COPY" on my CDs on which I have The Ring. Who knows?
To my great sorrow you don't have to watch films like The Ring to see horrific things happen. You just have to torn on the TV and see how it shows 7/24 the war in Iraq. I didn't write about this before not because I tried to avoid political content but because I thought it is only a plan, a game of diplomats, and why shall I write about a thing that is only a plan yet.
I am sad the United States decided to attack in the end. No matter what do some people say the US still remain the aggressor this time. Yes, I know Saddam is dangerous, that he is a dictator and he uses evil things and methods to keep up his power. But then again, who is the United States (and UK and Spain, and all the countries that are in the military alliance, even Hungary (we let US planes to fly through our country)) to judge that and decide that it shall come to an end if not diplomatically then by force. No, no one has the right to decide that. The only institution that could justify this war could have been the UN in my opinion. The United Nations as its name indicates is an organisation above national level. Supposedly the UN is not affected by national interests and interests of various multinational companies. The UN does not need to collect votes to be elected next cycle again. Therefore only a majority vote in the UN could have justified the war against Iraq.
With this move the attacking countries just threw away the main idea of our governing: democracy. How could we expect our enemies i.e. Iraq to follow our rules if we are the ones who cross them? We are obliged to follow the rules of democracy if we want to stay justified and authentic in the eyes of the other part of the world. I think this is very important. Why democracy when you can go there like the US and smash the puny Iraq? (That seems not that puny as news say, almost like Vietnam.) No one said democracy is easy but we didn't find any other better way to rule so we need to stick to it.
I have never been and I am still not a supporter of any military action. "War never changes" as the intro of Fallout says and it is very true. No matter if that's in the desert or in the backyard of our homes still people die. But if the war had based on a decision made by a majority vote in the Un I would have accepted its necessity. Things turned out to be different though.
I think the alliance is strong enough to defeat Saddam and exile him the only question is the losses... on both sides. And the mistake these countries made by neglecting the decision of the UN will not be forgotten either.
In an hour I will be writing my second-chance analysis exam. Why am I here writing an entry then? Well, because we students weren't informed about the exact timing of the exam again. I was pretty sure it would start at 2PM but the information system said between 12AM and 4PM... so you can never know. Needless to say this resulted in having free 2 hours of waiting before the exam starts. I don't think this has a very good effect on my future successfulness but then again what can I do about it? Sidenote: Did any of you notice that I am rather sarcastic before exams? Weird.
I wish it were evening already so that I could shift my mortal soul to a certain adventurer on Rubi-Ka.
Two thoughts about Chicago which I was thinking about yesterday afternoon. Firstly the acting of Renée Zellweger. I first saw her in Me, Myself and Irene where acting wasn't that important really. I missed her as Bridget Jones which I am sorry about. That movie is also said to be hilarious. However I didn't think she was this good as in Chicago. I especially like the part when she plays a puppet. It is perfect. Plus her voice is outstanding as well. For me she meant the biggest surprise in Chicago.
Secondly a sad thing is coming. At least sad for us Hungarians. Do you remember the Cell-a-tango? Well in that song the foreign language you can hear is *supposed* to be Hungarian. The bad thing is that I only noticed this because the subtitles went away in the cinema. First I thought, well, they didn't want to translate this French or Russian or... wait... my god! This is Hungarian! I could understand *some* words of it. I was informed later that the woman who plays the Hungarian murderer is originally Russian. And now after seeing Chicago two times I still cannot understand the whole story she tells in my mother tongue. I found this outrageous. How on earth can a director allow disgracing a language in this shameful way in a hundreds of millions dollar movie? Couldn't they find a Hungarian dancer/singer for this role? Or couldn't the woman speak her language, Russian? Probably they found this unimportant. Hungary, oh that Asian country in the Balkan that has a Slavic language... who cares. Actually Hungary is in Middle-Europe and our language is of Finno-Ugrian origin. Minus one Oscar. Or two.
To soothe my wrath outside the sun is shining and birds sing a song of the just-arrived spring. It's hot compared to last month; I don't have to button my coat even. :)
First of all, if you wondered what 28 days after is... it is {28 days later}. I wrote the English title incorrectly, sorry about that. Least it was good for the fact that I needed to dig up a link for the movie.
Lately I am not very joyful for some reason and I compenstae this by watching films all the time. Yesterday I saw {Chicago}. I had high expectations because of the 13 Oscar nominations. The movie entertained me for sure. Luckily they didn't try to dub it so I could enjoy the original English speech and songs. (I doubt a movie like this can be dubbed at all...) The film itself is very good in atmosphere. The dances, the songs and the moves of Zeta-Jones and Zellweger are fascinating and also the behind the scenes parts are. A strange world, where corruption, blood and murder are presented to the joy of the audience dancing and singing. Should you have commited the largest crime against the law you can still prove innocent. Publicity and money is stronger than anything else. You are free to choose if you like it or not, but Chicago and lately the whole world works like this.
Now if you read a post from the beginning to the end empty your minds as something very different comes: {Spirited Away}. An anime nominated for the Oscar. I saw it today morning (As it is supposed to be a child-movie.) and I found it very entertaining and enchanting. If you saw only European and/or American animated films this will be unique for you too. It somewhat resembles to an Alice in Woderland story in Japan. But this film is more than that. It even has blood in it. Have any of you ever seen a disney animation with blood in it? Plus it lacks the sugarsweet candy ending. All is... enchating, there is no other word for it. And not only for children around 10.
Looking out of the window I see the sun setting. The walls of the houses are turning reddish-yellow. Time flew by for when I sat down outside it was springtime sunshine. My stomach also warns me of time so I am off to eat.
No update for a long time. It's entirely my bad, and the reason is pure laziness. I have always had something else to do rather than updating and I chose the former. Not that there weren't anything to write about, on the contrary I saw movies and played some AO and had experiences worth sharing. It's just not that easy to sit down and write them down.
I haven't read Ragnar's journal for a while now which I need to do soon out of curiosity. However when I last read he wrote about a very interesting plan of his, namely that he is writing a script (I guess this is the right word for the writing out of which movies are made) from the novel Rules are Rules. The one I have translated. It would be immensely awesome to be able to watch the movie made from that novel. I would feel special. :) Well, it might cause troubles as well as I had no written permission for translating... Anyway even if it will be made into a film it is an event of the future still.
Last week I saw 28 days after. Being Fallout 2 one of my favourite game I liked the movie very much. It somewhat made me think of Resident Evil as well because it starts at a point Resident Evil ended. The film was thrilling, it makes you feel uneasy in your seat. You can truly understand what insecurity is, when you are alone or only a handful of people around and you are too afraid to shut your eyes and sleep even. This movie is a must for post-apocalyptic fans.
Yesterday's event was the Hungarian Anarchy Online meeting held in a restaurant. I spent a good time there chatting about our recent experiences on planet Rubi-Ka. It is nice to meet the people who are behind the characters ingame. However they kept joking on me being the only one out-of-guild person. I wasn't absolutely positive if they didn't mean it seriously sometimes.
It's Sunday and here is a short update. As short as Sundays are. Unlike Mondays. Mondays are dark, grey, long and exhausting. Getting up at the crack of dawn, watching as the trees run away from the window of the train, going to classes and stay at the uni late in the evening then go home and fall to the bed and sleep like a log just to wake up next day for the same schedule. Long. 52 words in a sentence.