Happy Halloween

... to all those who celebrate it today. BTW the Mushroom is me and the Hare is my best kindergarten friend Majka.

Бригада / Brigada

It is weird when you know the soundtrack earlier than the movie. I know the song for 2 years and saw the show just a month ago. It is said to be the best Russian series. Well, to tell the truth I like the Ну Погоди better :) Anyway, this is my favourite song and it probably saved my sanity in faraway lands. Just put on the earphones, played the music very loud and ignored the world around :) It is fun, energizing and it speaks about friendship. It helps me to hold my head high and face the problems.

Czechoslovak National Day

Czechoslovakia, the country where I was born, was declared on 28th October 1918. It is the most important date in Czech history, even though Czechoslovakia as a country doesn't exist anymore. You can read a great article about those times here. And by great article I mean that it is short, informative and with lots of pictures. I wrote something not-so-great a year ago so I'm not gonna repeat myself :)

Finally

I was waiting for it since Monday. I even stayed at home for two days to be ready for it. I was already afraid that things are changing and I'm just wasting my time. Then, after I gave up today and went to work, it finally came. Yes, it's here. Temperature. It's interesting to be hypersensitive to vaccination :)

Autumn

I am so glad that I live in a country where there is spring, summer, autumn and winter. It makes life much more interesting when the weather changes. I am tired of countries where you don't need to watch the weather forecast :) I took a picture of how our street looks like these days. Isn't it just lovely?

Rebel sheep say MOO

Success story

I met Aram in summer 2004 during my CEED / internship in Yerevan. He was one of the AIESEC alumni, just finishing his doctorate in journalism. We became close friends and met twice since then in Prague, when his job brought him here. You can't imagine how happy I was for him when I saw his name in connection with a major success in International Journalists' Network. People like him give the expression "change agent" a real meaning.

>>> If universities move with glacial swiftness, then you might call Professor Aram Mkrtchyan the man who melts glaciers. In little more than a year, he has persuaded Yerevan State University in Armenia to adopt an entirely new approach to teaching journalism.

Journalists can change things in this country.

“The market demands professionally trained journalists” says Mkrtchyan. “The ultimate goal of our program is to improve professional journalism education in Armenia.” ... And he is certainly doing that.

Thanks to Professor Mkrtchyan, students are learning journalism by doing journalism. <<<

The full article is here. When I read his words I heard his voice again, saw his smile, felt the passion for what he was doing.

It's so good when things are happening! Just in the past week:
Monday - wine with Marťa, Jiřinka and Marta. Watching pictures from Bolivia and Egypt.
Tuesday - gathering of about ten @ alumni, eating wonderful Sri Lankan dinner prepared by Ovečka and watching photos and videos from Sri Lanka.
Friday - Standa, my friend from childhood coming to Prague.
Saturday - going to amazing exhibition of aerial photographs taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

The most visited post

You would probably never guess what is the most visited post on this blog. It is this one. Apparently a lot of people google pictures of Muzzy characters. Interesting :)

Extreme jobs

Before: luxurious cosmetics. Women with perfect make-up, Giorgio Armani or Ralph Lauren tops, stiletto heels ... extreme vanity.
Now: relief & development help. My boss having tattoo on his face, animals in the office, colleagues studying theology ... extreme WTF.

I'm having culture shock but this diversity is inspiring.

Happy birthday

Confused & drunk

So I just came home from a very nice ladies' night. This was definitely a confusing day. First Andrey behaving in a way that Jiřinka thought there must be something romantic/sexual happening, then meeting Pepa for the first time since June (and him seeing this suspicious body language of Andrey) and afterwards having a decent party in a flat with an identical lay-out to my ex-boyfriend's, where I lived for a couple of weeks. Not to forget being again at the places where I had an interesting walk with him that finished with a marriage proposal several years ago. Add at least 1 liter of wine and we all know that I can expect a very interesting sleepless night. I really don't feel like going to bed now.

LOL

Source: urbandictionary.com

Yesterday

Ignoring my duties brings a lot of fun to my life. Andrey decided to enjoy one of the last warm & sunny days and invited me and some other people for a wonderful picnic on Petřín. I can't even remember when I took the funicular for the last time. Later I went for a coffee with Zuzka B. who works in Hungary now and we gossiped and gossiped and gossiped...

And something more important happened yesterday. Vlastička, tým, pupík, sporťák, VPSN to me being VPTN, my team mate and room mate, this very special person to me got married. Congratulations!

Economics in brief

Some lines cross and if you don't see connection to the real world you are doomed.

Happy birthday

It is hard to believe that this cute little puppy is 9 years old. I caught her today making the beds which is one of her favourite activities (therefore all the mess at the picture).

New job

So I was a full-time student for exactly 2.5 weeks. Having a lot of free time makes me lazy and shamefully ineffective. And when you add the apathy that comes with re-integration I was simply useless.
I actually didn’t bother to search for a new job. With my current school schedule I have no chance to fit 20 working hours into the usual office time. Luckily when you can't bring the mountain to Mohammed then you can bring Mohammed to the mountain.
To cut the long story short, yesterday was my first day volunteering for People in Need. I have several good reasons:
- reduce wasting my time
- having more diversity in my life
- gain experience in finance
- clarify if I really want to go with People in Need abroad for 1.5 years as a finance manager
I’m happy to make this decision. I know I need to last 3 months to “prove my motivation”. It seems to be a long time working for free but technically I have no chance to get a proper job till 12th January anyway. So the question was: sit at home and watch TV or make the world a better place? People in Need does a lot of cool stuff and I am part of it now.

Škoda

Škoda = damage, loss, injury, harm, detriment, mischief, ill, wrong, disadvantage, prejudice, overkill, hurt, disfavour, lesion, discomfiture, deprivation, waste, scathe, handicap (no kidding)
or
Škoda = probably the most succesful Czech export commodity (Simply clever)

I am affectionate and skeptical

At least according to the 2-questions test I took today. I like it because it gives nice instructions how to deal with me. Or maybe with every woman ;)

My Enneagram type is SIX - Questioner
Questioners are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me
* Be direct and clear.
* Listen to me carefully.
* Don't judge me for my anxiety.
* Work things through with me.
* Reassure me that everything is OK between us.
* Laugh and make jokes with me.
* Gently push me toward new experiences.
* Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

This is my absolutely favourite picture from Egypt. It was taken in Siwa desert. From left to right: bedouin, me and Adam. I got it today from Marťa while we were studying. Well, ehm, you know, trying to study ;)


BTW today it is exactly two weeks since I came back to Europe. It feels like I have never left.

No time to blog tonight

because I have to play. My toys are going to Africa with Danka soon.

My schedule

This is really not interesting but I need to have my schedule at some easy-to-access place because I keep forgetting my diary. Well, at least now you know where to find me :)

MONDAY
09:15 (P103) - Managerial Finance
12:45 (RB206) - Economics
14:30 (RB207) - Joint Ventures & Multinational Corporations
18:00 (RB213) - Joint Ventures & Multinational Corporations

TUESDAY
09:15 (SB322) - Economic Analysis
14:30 (SB211) - Managerial Finance
16:15 (RB207) - Evaluation of Investments in Non-Profit Sector
18:00 (RB207) - Evaluation of Investments in Non-Profit Sector

THURSDAY
16:15 (RB207) - Economics and Management of Non-Profit Org
18:00 (RB207) - Economics and Management of Non-Profit Org

FRIDAY
09:15 (SB240) - Lean Systems (Management by ROI)
11:00 (SB240) - Lean Systems (Management by ROI)
12:45 (P109) - Economic Analysis

It's good to be html literate

And it is even better to have html literate friends to fix everything I alter accidentally. In case you haven't noticed this place got new look. For colorblind: it is more green, brown and red.

This blogging business is very tricky sometimes

At the beginning of a new blog, you probably wish that someone actually comes and reads it. You even try to talk your friends into blogging (and show them yours by the way). You care about it, try to make it nice and you like it more and more.
If it is personal blog you decide what to write about. Do you want to blog just the big things in your life? These don't happen every day. Won't it make your place boring? Or do you prefer to blog more often and mention also the small things? Can anyone else actually appreciate those small things in your life?
After some time you have regular readers both among your friends and random readers from blogosphere. Does that make you happy? No. You lose your freedom. You censor yourself. Your blog lose the spirit that it used to have. You are stuck. How to get out of this tight corner? I don't know. I really don't know.

It seems that several friends of mine have blogger identity crisis lately. I hope they will solve it soon because I have nothing to read.

Hehe, I really suck. It is Monday, second week of school and I already skip classes. I just had no more energy to watch that beginner teacher being clueless in what to do with us. 90 minutes was enough. No need to wait for 2 hours to see it again and waste another 90 minutes of my day. I bet the poor guy had no chance to read the book yet. It was published very recently and it is not even in the university library.
Well, when I think about it, it was not the first class I skipped this semester. I don't plan to attend the Economics lectures at all. I did that last semester ... sometimes ... not very often ... ehm, it's in the book anyway.
I'm a bad, bad student :)

Re-integration

I like this part of the year when I just came from another country and I can fully enjoy the small pleasures of living in western world. I don't take them for granted yet and they are hidden in countless little surprises.
It is like: yay, flush toilet! and I can throw paper in there!
hey, water is running ... hot water!
ugh, why does that car goes so slow? oh, he lets me cross the road first!
or like today: oh no, it's Sunday again ... wait a sec, something is weird here ... yes! it's still weekend :)))