Music flavors

I just remembered that a few months ago I signed up for audioscrobbler, a program that tracks all the songs I play on Winamp and makes a webpage with the history of my music. So I guess this is the music I have been listening to lately.

Living expenses

It's a slow Saturday morning and I have nothing better to do than being nerdy. I was curious to see how much it cost me to live in Boulder for a month and a half and what did I spend my money on. I tallied everything up, I looked at my receipts and and my credit card statements and here's the conclusion:

Between June 13 and July 22 I spent a total of $1845 which was broken up as follows:

• 15.24% food
• 3.20% clothing
• 3.25% entertainment - going out, beer, movies
  
• 29.10% utilities - rent, cable, electricity
  
• 4.34% insurance - car
  
• 0.51% transportation - gas + bike expenses
  
• 18.08% household - furniture, appliances, cleaning supplies, etc.
  
• 15.10% computer - monitor, dvd, memory
  
• 0.00% education - books, texts
  
• 0.44% health - medicine, hospital visits
  
• 7.78% other
  

I surely spent too much on food, and it looks like the expenses on the household will be high until I get all the stuff that I need for my apartment. Also, the computer expenses were a little steep this month because I needed to make a serious upgrades to my 4 year old beast. Will see what happens next month.

Branding Romania

I have recently stumbled upon Branding Romania, a place where people share ideas about the most effective way to change Romania's image abroad. Being here in the States for four years I can say that most people bring up a slightly negative third world country image when they hear about Romania: ugly people with sad faces, bad teeth, russian-like brutality in language and actions, Dracula, and tiny but very serious gymnasts. Fortunately, since I have come to Boulder I saw the other side of the fence, that is an American community where people know a lot about Romania, its culture and centuries old traditions.

Last weekend, for example, the Romanian festival took place down on Pearl street. Yes, an entire festival with food, dances, clothing only from Romania was the main weekend event in Boulder. It turns out many Americans find the energetic dances and unusual Romanain songs extremely interesting. I guess it's just like bagpipe music which some native "green men" might not find that exciting, but which I love very much.

The Romanian festival was organized by the Romanian American Freedom Alliance, a handful of Romania-enthusiasts (both American and Romanian). I think that RAFA's actions are the most compelling argument in building Romania's image. I haven't seen anywhere in the US people so open and knowing so much about Romania's geographical location, its problems with joining EU or even knowing the detailed stories behind some "doina de jale" traditional Romanian songs. Now, that's changing Romania's image!

Mountainbiking trip - Sourdough trail

Markus against "Lefthand" reservoir

Like almost any other day here in Boulder, today was "active" day. This time I went mountainbiking with Markus and a couple of his buddies. We went up in Ward on the Sourdough trail. Although my bike and other equipment is not up to the highest standards I had a lot of fun going up some steep and narrow trails. This time I couldn't help taking some gorgeous pictures so if you go to my website you can check them out in the Photos section.

I finally had time to take some pictures of my new Boulder home. Check out my homepage under the Photos section. Yesterday I went climbing with Zack, Oscar and some other chemistry people and it was a blast. Today I ran 6 miles and it fealt great.


Tantra Lake - my home in Boulder

My famous hummus 

Romania living in the middle ages

Yes, I am back alive in the blog world. Boulder is awesome, summer work is enjoyable but more about that in a future post.

A recent article in the New York Times brings about a very careful analysis of the most recent case of Eastern Orthodox fanaticism. I understand that people have spiritual needs but is religion belief the grounds for killing people? Hell NO. I hope that so called priest and those nuns stay in prison for a long time to show that there is a clear separation between religion and state.