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The highway of ... tomorrow in Romania. Neverending story

or lack of. Because the term highway is a SciFi term in Romania’s authorities dictionary or fact books.

Most of the Western Civilisations prefer to build up highways for speeding up the expedition of goods from one place to another, but also to cut the traveling time by personal car between cities. In Romania, 20 years after the fall of the pro-soviet regim we have around 200km of highway, all starting from Bucharest  and ending up on the leisure points for the capital of Romania citizens: Constanta – at the black sea, or Brasov (mostly still underconstruction after 7 years) and the rest of the winter ski resorts in Carpathians Mountains.

While most of the border countries – like Bulgaria, Serbia or Hungary – prefer to build up between 70-200km of highway / year we still struggle with our 22 million people to get the country highway kilometers to 200. In total. As road infrastructure of Romania, it’s a known fact that the EU countries started building the better roads towards West; Austria did the best job on getting closer to Swizerland, Hungary to Germany, Czech Republic and Austria and even Bulgary did a great job in building highways and national roads towards West – Serbia.

The government of Romania doesn’t give a penny on others did right or wrong. They have their own way: the corruption way! This is why the most important city in the civilized Romania, Timisoara is not having right now an road to get the traffic that comes from Arad to Lugoj (North-West) out of the city and this is why it takes about 10-11 hours to get from Timisoara to Bucharest, which is 550km away; Budapest (200 km ~ 2.2 hrs drive), Belgrade (120 km ~ 1.5 hrs drive) and Wien (900km ~ 6 hrs drive) are cities that you can get easier and faster from Timisoara if you travel by car.

Basically, the structure of the roads in Romania is on ground zero, with only 200 km (most of them still underconstruction, on repair or with speed limitation) for a country that has 300.000 square km and 22.000.000 people living in it. And it’s a member of EU since 01.07.

If you think you can come to Romania and use the car (perhaps your car?) to move from one place to another, think again. Or get an helicopter rented. Or just skip coming, you’ll get your nerves drained on the road.

If you want to build up a highway here, this is the place to do it: the price that you can ask for the roads are 300-1.500% higher than you would ask in Croatia (think about the mountains, tunnels, bridges that you will have to build in Croatia) or EU. We have a range between 5 and 60 milion euros / km of build highway in the plain, while in a mountain country (Croatia, Slovenia) you would have to build each km with only 3.5 millions euro.

Btw, the introduction sequence of Borat movie is filmed in Romania. Do you remember that wonderful blue car? that’s the national Dacia vehicle – still in use on the country roads, build and used in Romania by people who doesn’t have the money to upgrade to Renault’s Logan version.

… but, the flipside of the story is that in Romania you’ll find the newest Mercedes, Lamborghini or Ferrari cars before they hit the autostores in rest of the world. And that’s another story

social bucharest, highway, roads, Romania, status of romania transportation, timisoara

What will we see new in the technology next year. What will make the stand-out from the crowd of the gadgets announced, and what will make it’s way into our life ? Well, here’s my list of what to expect for 2009 in the IT&C business:

1. New Intel Core i7 processor from Intel; although the quadcore and core 2 processors are still ruling the market, Intel has prepared probably for the Q3 09 the new generation of processors Core i7. They will probably have 4 times the processing power from the current top processors, incorporating 8 to 16 processors in the new microprocessor; also, with the new processors, Intel has rethinked the whole internal structure of the microprocessor, and the way it reacts to the impulses inside.

2. OLED technology will become a certitude on the market; and what does it mean to the user? New Star Trek gadgets, from the folding and thinner TV screens to new computer devices (remember the folding piano keyboard from the Star Trek? well, it’s here with the new tech). Cars, TV’s, Ad Media Panels most will switch to the new technology

3. Windows 7 - although Microsoft said will be delivered on 2010, i don’t think they afford to wait untill than for the new operating system launch, and here are the reasons why: Google will probably launch at the Q3-Q4 the new operating system for the PC’s, they already have Android for mobiles, Apple’s Mac is getting a bigger slice of the pie each day, Linux is stabilizing on a 12-14% market share, and Vista is still far more unpopular than XP. So, the new Vista 2 or Windows 7 will be forced our in second semester of 2009. The much promised WinFS will still be a promise for future, but the touchscreen technology and wireless integrations to the new OS will gain some points for the Redmont giant.

4. Apple’s rise - iPhone3G is a revolutionary phone, but still it has 2MP camera, still has no MMS, no way to change it’s battery and much more things to improve. And probably with the new WiMax, will have a new iPhone on the market, probably not in the summer, but the bets are for Q3 09.

5. New broadband connection: WiMax rules in predictions, but maybe only US will get to step to the new nationwide broadband network. In Europe, the 50Mbps internet access will gain more popularity, and in Eastern Europe, the standard will stabilized around 15-20Mbps speed,

What we will still miss in 2009:
- the US government will still keep Tesla’s inventions filled under top secret, so we will probably not have in 2009 wireless electric power everywhere
- the planet still have oil reserves, so there’s no point in letting electric cars rule the world / market
- the new inventions in airplanes will still be under top secret, so we will still make over 7 hours from Paris to NYC and 15 from Europe to Brasil; no point in speeding things up to more MACH speed, while you can have a video call with friends instead of dinner or youtube for the Rio festival, instead of being there
- no jump to hyper-processing era of 50-100 GHz processors, 10TB of storage on a CD, USB 500MBps transfers
- no alternative energy burst (solar batteries, eolian energy) we still have the nuclear, hydrothermal and oil energy to waste, so the owners of the resources will still force the non-disclosure of the new energy saving technology
- no Venus Project application (or adaptation to 2009 realities)

Communication, social, software 2009 gadgets, core i7, iphone, wimax

Vodafone Romania – how can u have the same brand, but don’t give a shit about your customers?

Probably many of you have been a customer of Vodafone Europe; probably not many have been using the Vodafone Romania’s services and customer support; if not, then let me tell you that IT’S A BIG DIFFERENCE between how the Romanian customer is treated by the Vodafone customer support and how the European (France, UK, Italy you name it) is taken care of.

For starters, my general impression after being almost 10 years a Vodafone subscriber is that Vodafone now doesn’t give a shit about me, my options, the services they offer to me or anything else except for me having the phone bill payed on time. It’s becoming harder and harder to get to Vodafone support people, and when you have an request that might seem normal in European market and services, you get the answer days away, if they will even bother to give it to you.

It doesn’t matter that you have stayed with Vodafone in crisis times, through changes time and against all odds, you kept on haging on that red and white logo like a beacon in the communication market. You don’t even get a bonus for being in their network after all that time and if you pay monthly bills around 150 euros, you get after 3 years a bonus of … hang on … 100 euro. 150 euro x 12 x 10 = 100 euro. That’s the bonus you should expect when you buy a new phone from Vodafone.

But since the post is about Vodafone, lets talk about the services: if you have a roaming and you want to call in Germany for example, you pay over 80 eurocents, this while the EU legislation is reglemmenting the fees for roaming within EU around 45 cents and lower. If you want to call other mobile networks from your country you get call fees around 16 cents / minute; while in Frances, for same situations you get 3-4 cents / minute call fees.

Now the best of the best: Vodafone mobile. You stay online 7 days, and Vodafone charges you for 2 weeks in spend online times. This while the 3G connection speed is a little bit higher than dial-up connection.

Now, if you are a Romanian, there are chances that you are used to be cheated by almost everyone. The state and government steals from you, makes you pay for everything – like from radio fee, raindrops fee, chairs fee – so Vodafone acts like a Romanian company, although it’s a world-wide corporation. Don’t you love this ? ” I do”

Communication, Internet General, Personal, social fees, romania communication, telephony, vodafone, wireless

Over the ocean, it’s an intense battle between Obama and McCain. They say Romanians have 2 strong points when it comes to life: politics and sports. On political side, we have a Parliament who doesn’t care for it’s supporters, voters and population unless it’s election’s month; untill then it doesn’t matter that we’re poor, miseducated, close minded and so on, they just care about making a business from being a political figure – close high profit deals with the state, scamming the official founds and so on. when it comes to voting time, they place the “friendly face” on and start making promises. lots of …. but, wtf ? do we get tricked each time, don’t we learned something in the past 20 years. US citizens at least know what they vote ,and know how to cast their vote and for what they cast it. We also know, but …

Don’t vote! a social vote awareness clip promoted by the US government on social media, tv and print.

Politics, social elections, Romania, USA, voting

Although I’m born and raised in Romania, I’m almost sick and tired of watching and witnessing the things populared called “romanisme”. I made a list of 10 reasons that should keep you out of investing in my country, maybe in the near future the reasons beyond this article will change, but here’s the situation now.

1. Although the medium salary is around 1.000 RON (~300 EUR), if you will place an hiring ad on the market for a job that requires a lower salary than the medium one, you will hardly find youth people(18-25 yrs old) that will comply with your requirements and will be able to function within the job’s parameters. You will get CV’s and salary proposals from ppl without any experience asking you for 2-3 times the medium salary, although they don’t even know how to deal with the job requirements. If it’s an international job, you better go an hire Chinese, Africans or even Arabs, they will do the job more properly.

2. Be prepared to pay more than in European countries like Italy, France, Spain, UK for almost everything; even the legendary burger for Hard Rock Cafe costs in Romania 15$ compared with NYC 9-12$ price; be sure than you will pay more for everything, starting for the basic bread till the meat and every vegetable that you want to eat.

3. Remember, you have to stay in a store less than 10 minutes if you don’t want  to buy something. If you stay more, the sale person will regard you with suspicion, going on the idea that you probably are a theft.

4. Don’t apply the American way here! You can’t make it your own way; you will be at the mercy of authorities, state or other persons that have higher ranks than you. Corruption is still a growing business and probably, if you decide to invest in Romania, you will have to pay for things that comes without any problem in democratic countries.

5. Prepare to be treated like dirt by state institutions and employees. Although most are public functionaires, they act and react as gods; they know everything that you can afford with your money and if you’re not willing to pay, than you will have to wait a couple of months for everything that can be solved within 5 minutes or on email. It will stay the same way until you’re exasperated, you address petitions to EU instances or courts; after that it might resolve everything.

6. Do you have a car? Well, don’t bring it here: we have the crappiest roads in Europe, and on a EU Road you will make about 9-10 hours to get from Timisoara (Western city) to Bucharest (Capital city) for about 550 km, but for the first 300km you will probably make about 7 hours if you want to travel by car; every country in Europe makes the better roads to West, we make them near East; did i mentioned that we have about 300 km of highway, but they are always under construction or on repair? and you will find them near Bucharest. Trains will take you within 8 hours for 550 km so, the medium speed should be around 70km / hour; compared with France’s TGV 350kmh …. sorry, cannot make that comparison.

7. We have beautiful and affordable girls, if you plan to have fun; but watch your pockets, credit cards and everything that has connection with money and your account. A night can cost you a lifetime savings sometimes.

8. Did you know that EU threats the E’s within the aliments, food and drinks carefully; we don’t. You can eat cancerigene food anywhere: hotels, restaurants, fast-foods (more than usual).

9. Justice is for money. Everything is right for you if you have money; if you don’t then you can die with the justice in your right hand, cause almost no court will give you a win in a case you clearly and undoubtely have the winning reason on your side. It’s not enough!

10. Everything works on relations: no public bidding will help your business if you don’t have connections to help you win; you have the chance to find and witness corruption in everything, from sports to media, and from politics to farmers and small state employees. If you’re a non-smoking person, there’s little chance to find a restaurant where you can eat without the cigarette smoke in your nose; If you’re a vegetarian, remember that there are 3-4 restaurants for you at each million ppl, so keep close to big cities: Bucharest, Timisoara, Constanta, Cluj, Brasov.

You don’t have to be sorry. just walk away; Romania is a beautiful country, but unfortunatly … the management sucks!

Update 10.2009: we have a prime-minister that is also the education ministry. His job, according to his words is NOT to take out the country out of the crysis. We have electronic engineers as agriculture minister, we have lawyers as monetary experts on Romanian National Bank, we have about 5 ministers that are in charge of 2 ministry, each of them. Corruption – we got it. Rotten politicians -we have them. Incompetent governance – say no more, we have it. Why would you put your money on a fixed  lottery called Romania?

Communication, social conditions, corruption, investments, restaurants, roads, Romania

Beijing 2008 was for most of us just the Olympic Games, which are held each four years; it was the time when world records don’t count anymore, and the time to new world records to be established … we have 9.69 the new time measurement for running 100 meters, and we have a legendary crossline from the world champion in men’s 100m, Usain Bolt with the face on the audience and clapping his hands on the chest, in a crazy gesture, the beautiful type of crazyness. We had also a 14 yrs Chinese champion on the gymnastics with the world title performance and age analyzed by the CIO but what is the most important, we have new world champions after these 16 days of competition, ….  and we have China, as expected, with 80+ gold medals crowned as the best Olympic country, followed by USA, also as expected.

But, what will stay in my mind is the opening and closing ceremony. The footsteps (don’t care if they where artificially created for TV) over the Beijing heading to the Olympic Stadium, the paper monitor, the sidewall run to light up to Olympic Torch, the human spectacle in the field, the strange of the entrance order for the country teams, when from J we skipped to A then to M, and the closing ceremony with the torch tower, Jackie Chan singing,  the silk flower and the London bus, as in expectation for London 2012 Olympic Games; another thing that will stay in my mind, strange as it seems, is the inner need to visit China, to see close-handed the dog-hamburger, to eat the red fish and to listen to the beautiful Chinese songs (actually to see the beautiful Chinese singers, but hey … ).

Over all, I think that although China is a closed system, with it’s own values, restrictions and rules, they and we can all dream the dream of Pierre de Coubertin: one nation, one heart … one dream. We can take a deep breath of air for all the chinese and say, without modesty: thank you China for the beautiful show you offer us in the summer of 2008, and I hope to see you soon.

Sport / Football, social Beijing 2008, China, Olympic Games

Until now the energy that camed directly from the sun couldn’t be stored because of the high price on the storage equipments and the high proportion between costs / energy; starting yesterday, we have an announcement from the enery dept. of Massachusetts Institute of Technology that if it’s totally correct with Daniel Nocera’s declarations, is the most valuable invention of this century.

According to the MIT researcher, he and his team found a way to split the hidrogen and oxygen from the water at the room temperature, and they are doing this without any expensive matterials or items. Again, if this works 100% then within a few years we can forget the oil, we can forget the oil crisis and we can start using the new solar energy everywhere and anywhere; it’s almost like Tesla wireless power invention, but this time I think the US government will no longer classify the information. Good job guy, and welcome into the top celebs of the 21st century!

Read more about this invention and view the video interview here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

Internet General, Personal, social low cost energy, new discovery, solar energy

Over the last weekend I’ve considered to be a good time to spend some time knowing my city; oh no, that was a total mistake. Except some customization made on a general level, and the pubs in the Pta Unirii – the Timisoara former city square – nothing is changed in the past 3-4 years. Nothing new worth mentioning, nothing new worth speaking about. I can recall most the the places being the same as 20 or 25 years ago, as if the years just made scars on the buildings walls but forget to improve them. Same pipes, same “under construction” with no constuction sites, maybe the same construction workers on the city streets and roads trying to fake the working process over a pet of beer (I especially love the working crews with 1 worker and 5 people watching him doing the jobs, you can almost say the worker is the medic and his bosses – I guess they where on higher ranks in the construction company since they where not working, just watching – as I said you can almost compare them with an student crowd watching the doctor doing the daily round).

One noticeable fact over “my promenade” was the attitude of the sales persons: most of them where more friendly, almost approaching to the European attitude of a vendor/tab person. I’ve even seen ice-cream people selling their products with a smile on the face, which is an totally unseen attitudine in the Romania, happiness and smiles from the person that sells you something can be seen starting from the Romania / Hungary border, heading vest.

Iulius Mall: ofc, I’m there almost every 2 days but now I spend more time watching over people’s faces; and my Romania’s impression was confirmed again: sad or grumpy selling people, with eagle eye, watching you all the time and worring that you might steal from them. WTF’s wrong !!!!

Personal, social timisoara, walking

Friday was the chores day. One of the stops: RETIM – the Timisoara garbage collecting and recycling company. Over the past months, ReTim was trying to improve their image with lots of new programs, ads and improved garbage collection. Their staff has been submitted to qualifications and send to specialization courses for working with clients and software programs. In a word RETIM is trying to improve the image by using the means available on the market; ofc they are doing 10% of the job in marketing, but that’s call for willing in Romania. So, here’s the story:

- After waiting for more than 14 days for the monthly invoice, the person that collects the money from the clients arrived at my house with the wrong invoice

- One visit two days later at their invoice center; it’s morning, 9:30 AM, much too morning for my taste. I got to the office, and took the seat in front of a sales manager; she was talking to the telephone, of course to a friend or relative, about some trivial stuff. As I seat down, she noded at me, but she didn’t rush her call to end. Noooooo. …. telling to her friend what she watched on tv last night and her impression of someone she and the phone interlocutor knew WAS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THEN ME, THE CLIENT WHO JUST ARRIVED. After a few polite attempts to capture her attention, she FINALLY said “talk to you later” in the phone and hung up; this was 7 minutes after I was arriving and took the seat in front of her. 445 seconds counted. RIGHT! 445 seconds later! So I wasn’t important, I’m just garbage people (and BTW, what’s the trend of speaching from the company phone hours with your friends? RETIM, any idea why your phone bills are so high ? ). Finally, I started explaining that they made a wrong invoice, doubling over the night the number of people from the invoice, and the amount they perceived, and that I wanted to be billed by the number of persons from the contract signed 2 months earlier; she told me to make an request asking them to bill me after the contract. WTF did I signed the contract ? Again, for RETIM policy, CLIENTS = GARBAGE = AREA OF ACTIVITY AND EXPERTISE. The good news was that they promised the send the new invoice in two days. There’s no why in discussing openely with the lady in front of me, so I made the request to be billed according to my contract not to some fantasy some worker had over night, and leaved the building with the promise that 2 days later I will have the new invoice.

- 6 days later, oh you already guessed ? no invoice. So I called today, monday at their 0256 499 490 phone number. BIIIIG MISTAKE. The first men that answered was the centralist; with a tone raised he asked me what I want; no hellos, no how may I assist you; just a shouted what do u want. Again the garbage stuff. I started politely to tell him the story of the invoice, and he decided to transfer me to the payments dept. With an irritation on he’s voice (did I interrupted him from a BJ’s or something ? ) he made the forwarding. Again a lady, irritated and shouting at me; I haven’t said a word yet, but I was already yelled at. WTF! Again, I started to explain the invoice story, but the lady, with a more aggresive and much more irritation in voice than the previous men,  decided to interrupt me 3 times, just without reason. As if I was GARBAGE, not client.., After finishing the story, the lady shouted at me: what do you want from me, this is an invoice problem, why did you get here. Ofc, I asked for the invoice phone interior number, and also for the invoice value, which she could tell me. Again, no presentation, no hello, no how may I help. WTF is wrong with the people there? and WTF do you have against your clients RETIM Timisoara? Why do you treat us so bad ? Having the monopol over the garbage market doesn’t give you the right to have grumpy employees that shout just when they answer the call, and ignore you when you seat in the clients chair.

Conclusion: I know I used and abused of this word in the article, but WTF is wrong ? Is anyone responsable for this situation (I’m already guessing not, but what the heck)? Long live and prosper Timisoara and the garbage monopol! I love you RETIM, keep it up the same way, we, your clients, just LOVE to be treated as garbage!

Personal, social Client Treat, Garbage, RETIM, timisoara

In the past days, during some small talk conversations I’ve been asked by at least 5 people, in a way or another, who are the music artists that made their influence over me, in my life. Of course, I’m not a singer , writer or composer, but the question made me think: do I have a top 10 or just a top 10 now. For now I think the music artists (just can’t call them singers) that made their influence over me, through songs I can never forget are:
- Michael Jackson ( a big childhood fan)
- Elvis Presley
- Julio Iglesias
- Madonna
- Selena (have you heard of the Tejano singer ? Or just seen the movie with J Lo? )
- Willie Nelson
- Whitney Houston
- George Michael
- Abba
- The Beatles
of course, almost each one represented a phase in my life, but I can say now that without them, the whole Earth experience would’ve been at least unpleasant. I don’t see myself growing up without black and white or give into me from MJ and for sure I don’t see me as teenager without Vogue, Freedom; I will always love you is probably the most beautiful lie that I can accept, and sometimes, it’s natural to cry in the chapel. Yesterday, the name of the game may have been different, but the words are still the same.

Communication, Entertainment, Personal, social childhood, music, singers, songs