Although it was just a simple mistake, it proves to be incredibly appropriate.

In a country of the European Union, Romania of the year 2008, the vice president of the National Liberal Party, a governing party who’s president is the prime minister, declares this (my approximate translation):

RO: “…mai bine se face o eventuală nedreptate decât să fie tolerată o dezordine”.

EN: “…It’s preferable to have a possible injustice rather than tolerating disorder.”

I am really, really ashamed I am a citizen of this country, and it saddens me even more remembering I had the opportunity to leave for good, and I didn’t.

There is no hope, this country will never change. This nation is like a flock of stupid sheep, constantly driven over the cliff by scum rulers.

Source: Mediafax, via Gandul (Romanian language only).

OK, let’s back up a bit.

My cousins want to start a business in catering. They are pretty determined (or so they seem) and have recruited my wife too. Since she is supposedly the one with the most spare time on her hands (OK, with marketing experience too), she was asked to try and make up some sort of business plan.

I have only a very fuzzy clue what that means, but it’s common sense that you need to make some kind of calculations, some kind of projections, to have at least some idea about the amount of money and time and effort you’ll need to put into such a thing, and what kind of return you can expect (if any, obviously).

So you guessed it, she needed some reference prices for food items and also for some other things needed in a kitchen: dish washing liquid, towels, stuff like that.

So it was noonish on Saturday, I had my notebook with the item list 4 pages long, and I was entering the closest supermarket, not very enthusiastic, but determined to get it over with as quickly as possible.

About 5 items down my list I got the attention of a saleswoman at the dairy department. She asked me who I am, who do I work for, and if I’m aware I’m not allowed to take notes of the prices.

SAY WHAT?

I respectfully replied that since they DISPLAY their prices, they can’t possibly be a secret. So since they are not a secret, why shouldn’t I have the right to put them down, if that’s what floats my boat? Anyway, she was sticking to her version, so I decided I don’t have time to argue with her. I told her to get real and moved on to another category of products on my list.

Another 5 minutes and lots of cross-eyed glances from various employees later, a dude from security approaches me and asks me what am I doing. I asked what seems to be the problem, so he gave his speech about how it is forbidden to take notes in their supermarket!

No I was starting to get pissed! I asked to see the source of that regulation, I demanded to see with my own eyes that interdiction! He replied that it’s part of their internal rules, and that he’s not allowed to show that to me. Now that was great! My next question was haw am I supposed to observe some rule since I’m not allowed to see it? He replied: “Because I said so!”

I believe that this was the point where my blood started boiling. Of course, I asked to see some ID, besides the plasticized badge he was waving beneath my eyes (I forgot to mention that I was totally dominating the guy, who was at least 15-20 cm shorter — some security guard, heh?). I told him I can come back in half an hour with a hand bag full of the cheap badges he was waving, so I demanded to see proper official identification. He declined. So I told him that as far as I’m concerned our little chat was over, and that no random jerk is going to tell me what I can and can’t do, so that he can just bug off.

His next move was to threat me with the police. Oh, I was scared! I tried to get on with my business, but he kept getting in front of me, trying to block my view of the price tags. I was now completely surrounded with supermarket employees, most of them talking at the same time, but basically telling me the same thing over and over: I’m not allowed to take notes of their prices.

I was already way too pissed off, and since I was getting the urge to smear the little security shit all over his precious price tags, with a last drop of reason I decided to back off and left in a hurry.

In hindsight, I could have been smarter about it and dictate the prices to Crenguţa over the phone. Or simply get a shopping cart, put some stuff inside in order to look less suspicious, and then try to get the prices list. But I wasn’t.

I don’t think what happened was right, to be mild about it. And I certainly don’t think this is the way to handle customers or public relations. Even if I was from some competitor, I still fail to see what was the problem with getting their prices on paper.

And I will probably never will. Because this is Romania, The Country where Nothing Ever Changes™!

Jesus, how I hate this fucking country…

The event management on the other side — typical for this fucking country: a complete mess.

Firstly, due to the lack of advertising, my estimation is there were just about 2000 people there. I think it should (and could) have been at least four-five times that amount.

Then the pretty expensive VIP tickets I bought were almost useless: the seats were not numbered! We sat in other seats because the ones I presume were ours were already taken when we got there, and since there was no sign of any kind of official around, there was no way to force anybody out of any seat.

But let’s keep a bright memory about this, the show was absolutely great!

Unfortunately my friend Irina didn’t bring her camera along because she feared she won’t be allowed to bring it inside. But I’ve seen some incredible scenes inside the venue (I told you the event management was absolutely disastrous): some people not only managed to bring camcorders inside, but they were also fully equipped with tripods!

So I’ll leave you with these beautiful pictures lifted from Robert Plant’s official website. They are from a show in Greece, but they look quite similar to what we saw in Bucharest.

It’s probably better to start with the picture. On the following satellite view lifted from Google Maps I’ve overlaid a small blue car and arrow to represent me and my direction of driving. The red car is, of course, the other car involved.

The green cross is in the front of my apartment’s building, the spot I had just left one minute prior to the accident.

Satellite photo with crash schematics overlaid. Moving the mouse over the picture reveals a slightly larger version.

So, this 25 year old dude driving his girlfriend’s VW Polo rushes into the crossing not only completely ignoring the Yield indicator, but also looking towards his right for incoming traffic! What a stupid fuck! He literally jumped right in front of me, from beneath a line of parked cars!

Of course, there’s no excuse for me driving a little bit too fast, but it was 1 P.M. on a Sunday, the street was virtually empty, and I was on my way to the office, to get it over with my weekly chore of replacing the back-up tapes.

Anyway, so I was driving a little bit too fast, and although I have stepped on the brakes immediately and turned the wheel to the left (there was no incoming traffic at that time, luckily), I couldn’t avoid the crash. I don’t think he saw me until I was inches away from his car, already way too late…

My feeling is the dude got lucky that day, although the whole picture might suggest otherwise. If I hadn’t turn the wheel to the left, I would have probably crushed right into the driver’s door. And we all know the cars aren’t performing very well when it comes to sideways impact… I think he would have sustained serious injuries.

But we both got out without a scratch, thank God! We spent the next two hours of our lives in a police station filling up piles of papers, my car stayed in a repair shop for the next two weeks (and I suspect there’s still something wrong with the front right-side wheel), but that’s OK.

I don’t want to think about how my life could have changed if I’d killed the mother-fucker!

Tomorrow night we’ll have the privilege to see the great rock legend Robert Plant performing live in Bucharest.

I’m very excited and I can hardly wait. I hope it will be great. I haven’t followed his music in the recent years, yet even if I (supposedly) don’t like it, it’s going to be a great show, performed by true musicians. A must see.

I’m a little bit concerned about the location though. It’s going to take place in a parking lot and it’s going to be the show that concludes a series of live performances starting today with some (crappy) Romanian bands. I’m really curious about the acoustics in that parking lot.

But I’m more concerned about the seats. I’ve bought the so-called VIP seats because I wanted this concert to be a surprise and birthday present for Crenguţa, and of course there was no way to get her standing for several hours into a crowd of thousands of crazy rockers. The website I bought the tickets from had a really bad schematics of the stage and seats areas, one thing being clear though: the seats are at an angle from the stage.But there was no way to tell how the visibility is going to be. But we’ll see.

I’m on a roll, I’m on a roll, this time, I feel my luck could change
Kill me Sarah, kill me again with love, it’s gonna be a glorious day
Pull me out of the air crash, pull me out of the wreck, cause I’m your superhero
We are standing on the edge
Radiohead – Lucky, OK Computer (1997)

The story in another post, soonish.

This seems to break all conceivable diplomatic protocols, but there’s this newspaper which pretends the Romanian minister of foreign affairs was searched at the arrival in the U.S. just like a common immigrant. His fingerprints were taken, his iris pattern was scanned, he was ordered to take his shoes and his belt off, and he was questioned on the purpose of the visit.

This story was not confirmed yet, but if it is true, it really really sucks. I couldn’t care less about Romanian politicians, ministers or not, but this is a major diplomatic incident which says a lot about how the U.S. believe they can bully anyone. News flash for you: nobody made you the world’s police, and by the way — your fight against terrorism doesn’t look all that good, you know?

I hope you feel more secure now, knowing that our foreign affairs minister won’t be able to slip any bombs through your airports.

What a world of morons…

Note: Image borrowed from the “Ziua” newspaper’s website, at the above mentioned link.

All has been said on the subject, so I’m not going to repeat it here. Just a quick reminder: he forcefully took the mobile phone of a journalist that was filming him, apparently bothered by her questions. The journalist asked for the return of her device, saying that is going to press charges with the police. The president’s response was: “Go ahead and press charges, let’s see what happens!” – actually meaning “I don’t give a fuck about your complaint. Nobody is going to touch me, I’m the supreme wise guy of the nation!”. Basescu then took the phone inside his personal car (he was leaving a hypermarket after shopping and the media was there because they were announced about his schedule), and just as he was pulling off he said to his wife seated next to him: “Can you believe the nerve of that filthy gypsy?”

He later returned the device, after the secret service or even himself tried to erase the recordings from the phone’s memory card. But being such morons, they had erased only part of the recording.

Logically, the TV station broadcasts the recording later that night, and all hell broke loose. Lots of voices cried out to the president obvious racist way of thinking and speaking, and absolutely un-fucking-believable — lots of voices cried out in favor of the moron president Basescu, making up all sorts of excuses for his behavior.

The next day Basescu issued a public apology, but didn’t bother to do it himself, he put his spokesman do it. And in fact didn’t apologize for his absolutely idiot behavior, he “was sorry that a private conversation reached the public”, actually accusing the station for broadcasting the recording! How cool is that?

Now, the real problem is this (and I only heard it once from an analyst in a TV show): not the obvious racist and stupid way of thinking and speaking, but his strong belief that the law can’t touch him, because he’s above the law!

Unfortunately, one will encounter this behavior many times while living in this damned country, at all levels. From the wise guys that hang around your building and just chew the fat at any hour of day or night, spitting on the pavement and speaking and laughing very loudly; to the wise guy that cuts you off on the street, in his fancy sports car or SUV, or even in his cab, which curses you if you speak your mind about what he just did or just makes some phone calls and immediately gets off the hook if his mindless behavior results in damages or even casualties; and so on…

And now all this was taken to a completely new level by this motherfucker that I even voted for! I hate this country, and I don’t really think I will vote again, ever!

Satellite photo of the area I live in. Moving the mouse over the picture reveals a detail version.

The picture above is a satellite photograph of the area I live in. Roll your mouse over it to see it slightly zoomed in. Near number 1, in a blueish hue — the building where my apartment is. The yellow dotted line is the way I normally drive to work in the morning. But today the boulevard where I usually turn left (the point below no. 2) was so crowded with cars going both ways, that it seemed easier to turn right instead, and get back on track at the first stoplight (3). You can’t count on fellow drivers to be that nice and allow you to get in line, so it usually takes many minutes before there’s a big enough space for one to sneak in.

This meant a detour of at most 500 meters. Only it took 20 minutes to make that detour! So I finally gave up, turned back home and left the car, then took the subway to work.

It’s basically a one-man company, which allows me to issue invoices for my services. I had to do it because my employer back then was paying salaries based on invoices issued by employees in order to ditch taxes (a very common practice these days).

There are two types of PFAs, but I won’t go into much detail (mostly because I don’t really know all the details). The type I have, called something on the lines of “fixed income”, was coined as an incentive for IT professionals (as well as a few other professional categories) and there are a few differences from the other type. Most important are the fact that I don’t have to keep accounting books and stuff, and the annual taxes I have to pay are computed based on a fixed theoretical income. In other words, whether I make money with my PFA or not, there’s a (surprisingly enough) decent tax I have to pay each year, and this tax differs from town to town because it’s computed based on local employment conditions or god knows what else.

My legal residence back then (the one written on my ID) was still in my home town, so I had to get my PFA there. In the meantime I have managed to change my ID (and my legal residence) so I was now in a rather gray area, legally speaking. My residence was in Bucharest, but my PFA’s working point was in Buzău.

To cut it short, almost two years after the fact, the authorities in Buzău found out somehow that my residence no longer matches my PFA’s working point, so they now refuse to take my tax money because I’m supposed to move the PFA to Bucharest and pay here.

I’ve tried to be a low abiding citizen and pay my taxes here, but it would have been too nice to be that easy. They refused to take my money too, because I need to transfer the PFA to Bucharest first. But this transfer can only take place at the beginning of a new authorization period, which is one year. So I cannot pay my taxes neither in Buzău nor in Bucharest until January or February next year, when I’ll be able to transfer the PFA!

You can imagine there’ll be penalties by then, and there’s nothing I can do. And they don’t give a shit I’m not responsible for their fuck-up and I shouldn’t pay penalties for their incompetence. But one can never reason with moron clerks in this country, and frankly I’d rather use my time in better ways. And fuck me if I’m going to beg the mother-fucking state to take money from me!

I’ll probably dissolve the PFA altogether starting with next year. And I’ll also probably pay the penalties, just to get it over with.

I’m so sick and tired of all the crap I have to swallow each day in this damn country… it just never ends!