Spinning Words

Hello everybody! Sorry for being so quiet, nothing much happened since I last wrote something here. Well, ok, nothing is not the proper word to describe what’s been happening around here. A lot of stuff was or still is going on. For example I turned in my first course paper. On short, the final grade of my first course will be made of class activity plus first assignment (comparing two public lectures held at JMK Department by two guest teachers) plus a course paper in which I cheerfully wrote about Roger Federer. I hope I pass.

So I believe it is time to talk about school. I am a student at Stockholm University, happily studying Media and Communication at JMK Department (Enheten för journalistik, medier och kommunikation). Of course that after being away from school for so long I find everything here amazing, and in a way it is. First of all I have the opportunity to study something that I always wanted to, second of all, if I make a comparison between what I saw here and what I saw in Romania, the difference is huge. We barely began having classes that we woke up with guest professors. Cool! Or not. Cool because you don’t always get to hear internationally renowned teachers talking two meters in front of you, not cool because it can be very confusing having 3 new teachers talking to you in the first two weeks of school. Each has his/her own style, ideas and ways of approaching media theory so in the end there’s a bit too much information to deal with. But here comes the solution to that: write a first assignment comparing the two public lectures, that should put some order into your ideas… or prove that you didn’t exactly get it. I didn’t get my results yet so I don’t know if I got it or not. So after things calmed down and the guest left it was time to finish reading the course literature (about 5 books) and write the final assignment using a newspaper article, some news you saw on TV, anything that can be interpreted using the theoretical background we gathered in these weeks. So of course I found two brand new articles on Roger Federer and wrote about him. I hope I understood the theory and the guidelines for the paper well enough to get a passing grade.

Other exciting things: people here create all conditions for students so that you don’t want to stay home, you want to go to school: you have libraries, study rooms, public spaces with sofas and tables, lots of cafeterias, just grab a cup of coffee and a kanelbulle and start reading, writing, debating with class mates or whatever you want. The best part comes now: what better way to celebrate (at least till we get our results) turning in the first paper than going out for fika with your classmates? Today we went to Citykyrkan and I had a delicious slice of Prinsesstårta. Swedish sweets rock!!

I am looking forward to the new course starting in about 10 days and I am also getting ready for my Swedish exam. Which reminds me, I have to go study now. I will come back later these days with another story that I am already knitting on.

Finally some time to sit down and talk about the city I currently live in and the things I do here. On brief: I am in Stockholm and I got back to school. Oh, how I missed it! It wasn’t exactly the strong desire to be a student again that determined me to do that but the wish to study Media and to do it somewhere up North. So I moved to Sweden.  Of course first I had to get my admission results, plan my trip, worry, stress, nag people, put everything on paper, draw the line and get the result which was a plane ticket with my name on it, destination Stockholm.

Stockholm from Above

I arrived here at the end of Summer, theoretically, but got 3 more weeks of it. As a first impression everything here seemed blue, maybe because they’re by the sea? And if it’s not blue, it’s green, because the city is full of parks, squares with trees and benches. Lovely! My favourite place to sit, hang around or call it whatever, is on the sidewalk next to the sea. However, I spend most of my time in school, in the study rooms or in class with a pen and notebook, a pile of books and a hot cup of coffee. And with a lot of people that I just met, people that come from many countries with different views and each having an interesting story to tell, or two or more. You just need time to listen, and again, a cup of coffee. And a kanelbulle.

A Youth Hostel

After long walks, boat rides, worries about not getting your student card in time, finding a place to live, papers you have to submit to live legally here, walks with the classmates, bus timetables, papers to turn in, Sweden’s tennis matches to watch and the instinct to look at 3 different things in the same time, things that are in 3 different directions, one takes a break and… visits the King’s palace. Last weekend was the anniversary of 40 years or Reign for King Carl XVI Gustaf and there was free entrance at the palace (will have to revisit it when it’s less crowded and there is time to sit and read every label) plus the Royal family greeted the audience from the front of the palace. The event itself was pretty impressive and a bit overwhelming for someone who comes from a country that has no Monarchy (theoretically, because yes, we do have a Royal family). As much as I was enjoying this event, I left it to go to the protest for Rosia Montana. So I spent a few hours freezing on the streets of Stockholm, together with other Romanians, all of them pretty cool people that I am very happy to have met.

So after all the excitement one has a reality check: nope, still seems unreal. Better to just go back to school and enjoy all the interesting things that are discussed in classes, all the books in the library, the study rooms, the huge campus, hot coffee, great company, and yes, even the Swedish lessons are enjoyable though they give me a headache. And dig deep to find some good Swedish music.

So, even though I was supposed to watch international news channels in order to do my homework properly, all last week I ended up watching Romanian TV stations. But relax, the homework issue was successfully solved, long live online TV. Going back to Romanian TV stations, all I heard was related to the problem of stray dogs and gold extraction. First issue: stray dogs. Those of you who live in or visited Romania know that stray dogs are a real problem, the streets are full of them, every block of apartments has one or two dogs, every deserted factory holds tens of dogs. Not all are cute puppies. These days the discussion went viral on Romanian television channels because of the death of a four years old boy killed by a pack of dogs. The tragic aspect of the story is both the boy’s fate and the outcome: the boy died, measures need to be taken therefore we kill the dogs. If it were that simple than probably in 30 days all cities in Romania would be stray-dogs free. My simple guess is that a few dogs will die, probably the more friendly ones who trust people and will be easily caught, and the violent wild ones will live happily and free behind the ruins of factories and abandoned buildings. I do agree that dogs do not belong on the street but I am not sure that killing them will solve the problem for various reasons that are financial, practical and strongly linked to education. However, do not for a moment think that I agree with the idea of people being killed by dogs. A really good friend of mine told me a just a few weeks ago that her elder son was attacked by dogs. No, the little guy was not injured, a man passing by sent the dogs away. However the scare was quite huge for the little man. I don’t think it’s fair that children get attacked by dogs on the streets and have to suffer the trauma of seeing a beast running towards them, because yes, a dog in rage is a beast. Even I am afraid of stray dogs. And to share my part of the story: a few years ago while walking to work, right in front of the entrance to the office, a dog tried to bite me. My luck was that it grabbed me by my winter coat, pierced it, scared me but I wasn’t bitten. I was just one of the lucky ones because in Bucharest there are tens of people going to the emergency room every day because of dog bites. Second part of my story: A few months later, me again walking to work, different job, different location. By my office building there were 3 dogs I used to feed and play with. I heard that somewhere behind the building, between some ruins, there are a lot of black dogs, quite wild and mean. One Sunday morning I found myself surrounded by 6 or 7 huge black hounds, 50 meters away from the office door and with just one man in sight some hundreds of meters away. I don’t think I would have gotten out of there without a bite if it weren’t for the 3 dogs I used to feed who got themselves between me and the hounds and offered me the opportunity to rush inside. That’s all I am going to say plus this: if you have the possibility, adopt a dog, don’t abandon and watch out when you get out on the streets.

Second issue: gold extraction in Rosia Montana using cyanide. On one hand there are the people who keep saying that they depend on working in the mine, on the other there is the potential ecological disaster caused by cyanide. Everybody knows that the consequences are drastic, the pollution is huge and the profit… Well, the profit will go to the corporation that handles the extraction which corporation is not Romanian. I think that avoiding the potential ecological disaster is more important than any money one can ever make, but unfortunately that does not apply for everybody. So last week-end Romania was the stage of massive protest against the project of gold extraction using cyanide. The protest itself was peaceful, lots of young people took part in it, some of my friends as well. There are huge amounts of money in the middle of this but I doubt that any money in the world could fix the environmental problems in Romania, not only the potential ones that can be caused by cyanide in Rosia Montana but also all the other problems caused by massive deforestation, floods, industrial pollution, pollution caused by cars and many others.

So please do excuse me if, after all this, I am a little behind with the other issues that occur in this world, I will get back to them as soon as possible.

Note to myself: when meeting a teacher on the school corridors, say hello!!!

All right people, I am back in business. Did a bit of rebranding, it only took me one year to change the name, the appearance and clean the blog up a bit but here it is. Right now I know I have a reason to write, a good reason, something else than wake up – go to work- go home – go to bed habit so maybe I’ll push myself into writing some more as I once did. OK, maybe not 3 posts every day but 3 posts a week would be decent enough, I don’t promise it though. For a brief introduction, the blog still needs cleaning, renaming and moving it a few times led to missing pictures and there are a lot of posts I have no idea what they are about. It will take a while to read all 200 posts and see which ones are worth keeping and which ones are just midnight nonsense. Also, starting from today I will go back to writing primary in English, reason why soon to come. Will try to make new categories “Romanian” and “English” so that I can filter the old posts. I am also open for suggestions though if you suggest I disappear from the blogosphere (quick reminder of today’s lecture, small teaser here as well) you might not be taken into consideration. Another thing: yes, I could have started a new blog but as you can see, if you are curios enough, this blog goes all the way back to 2006 and it’s a bit hard to just start all over again and leave behind all the stories. It might not be interesting for readers but I like to keep my stuff all in one place.

Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing. And please do not forget my blog on tennis, http://ontennis.wordpress.com/, with a bit of luck there will be a new tournament to write about pretty soon. And enjoy Davis Cup week-end! Go Sweden!