Hi! Would you help me manage my business?

It happened to me more than a few days ago in Bucharest, while I was heading for a meeting. As I stopped to buy me some ice tea, the shop assistant asked: “What kind would you like?”
“What kind do you have?”
“Unfortunately it seems that I only have green tea…”
“Perfect”, I say
“Oh…” he couldn’t hold back his surprise at my positive answer. “I usually have a lot of problems with this”
“?!”
“You see, I am the owner of this shop and I always have problems with the suppliers, because they bring me lots of ice tea during the winter when I cannot sell it, and during summertime when everybody asks for it, they say that they cannot match the demand. So I always have shortages.”
“So tell them that you’ll stop buying from them if they don’t start supplying more in the summer and far less in the winter”
This was when I realized how bright this guy actually was, “Oh, I could do that but it won’t be enough to scare them and they’ll just tick me off”
“So talk to some other shop owners. You’ll see that they all have the same problem”
“Hmmm! That’ll be four fifty please.”
As I paid and walked away I thought to myself about the weird things that I get to live once in a while. Then, more or less serious, I was contemplating on the possibility of killing myself if I ever get to see him in the Fortune 300. Of course these were all jokes, but this happening lingered on in my memory and I decided to go check up on him and see how he is doing. As I stopped there yesterday I asked for some ice tea.
“What kind would you like?”
“Do you have anything else except green tea?”
“Of course” he said “We have peach, lemon and red!”
“Oh, so it seems that you managed to solve the ice tea issue, right?”
As he looked up to me, I saw the spark in his eyes… He had remembered me.
“Yes, thank you. How are you doing?”
“Fine thanks. How much do I owe you?”
“Four fifty please.”

Food for thought: (this was “fed” to me by a very dear friend) Are you able to write down the names of all the people in your life that really matter?

I say "YES" to Romania!

Urban culture… This is one of those phrases that I’ve always known, but never quite grasped the full idea of it. Urban culture… Every city has some elements of culture present within its boundaries; these elements are all referred to using the phrase “urban culture”.

There are two moments that I have lived and that inspired this post: a short movie that I’ve seen a while ago that showed a fountain in front of a something-bigger-than-three star hotel that “danced” elegantly on classical music. The title of that movie was (among many others available on DC++) something like “you’ll never see this in Romania”. At that time I thought to myself: “Another one of those fucking ‘critics’ that are sure that they live in the crappiest country on the face of the world, but don’t have the mind, heart, balls or anything else to make it better”. The presence of these particular idiots is one of my biggest frustrations; but at least I will try to open their eyes (when I meet them) every time I get the chance.

The second moment was some time ago when I was in Craiova with my loved one. As we were walking through the town on a random evening, we stopped to see the city's newest part: it's center. I had already heard that they have built some wonderful fountains there, but I was not ready for what was to come. These are only some pictures that I took, but if you want to experience the full greatness of what's happening down there, go and see it!

I spent the rest of that particular evening contemplating on all those things that I could think of and that seem impossible to become reality (whether it's Romania or me, humankind or Africa, the US, Afghanistan, the EU, basketball, soccer, tennis and so on).

Food for thought: Think of something that you presume would be imposiible to achieve and then do your best to transform that into reality. How long did it take you to succed? How nice is this new reality?

You are what you eat

There's this saying that you are what you eat... I like it; it sounds rather funny... But we all know that most of what we eat during our lifetimes "leaves" our body in a quite familiar shape. This is one thing that really makes me question the possibility of my ever being what I eat. It sounds like a crazy world to me... It sounds like plums and yoghurt for breakfast… for ever!

Instead of being what I eat, I have another one: you are what you choose. Or, to be more at the point, you are your choices. Because it’s one of the most real facts of life that our almost every moment spent on this beautiful planet marks a choice; a choice that we either take, or pass it along to others so that they will make that choice, not us (which is, in fact, another form of choosing yourself). It really is crazy, because, as I’m writing this stuff here, I realize that I’ve seen at least half a dozen movies that have these exact same lines. Despite that, I never took the time to really see myself as the sum (or product, or as the exponent) of the choices I make. And I don’t speak about those few, bigger ones, but rather about those that I rarely even take any time at all to acknowledge their existence.

It sounds a lot like another thing that I’ve learned these days: vuja de. “Vuja de” means the opposite of “déjà vu”, to be more precise, it means that you have the feeling that you have never done a certain thing (or been in a certain place), but you know very well that you have done it (or been there). I like the concept and, moreover, I very much like what certain people are doing with it… And I have to thank one of my friends for telling me to “Google” this phrase.

The connection between this Vick that is the sum (let’s say) of his choices and “vuja de” is that I live my every moment, I know I have lived before (over and over again, especially during this period of not-really-doing-anything-with-my-life that I’ve been passing through) with a lot more consciousness. I acknowledge that the way I act and the way I feel are not the logical results of inertia, but are choices that I make…Or they are non-choices (a word that I find suitable for expressing my choice of not making any choice about a given fact; the choice of inactivity, if you like).

As silly and simplistic as this may sound, I am rediscovering my circles of control, my comfort zones and so on. I very much like these simple things that can (and do) have quite a bigger impact on you than what was normally expected of them.

Food for thought: One in-fashion question was: “Would you have the balls to catch your moment if it ever occurred, or would you let it slip?” I think a more challenging question would be: “Would you have the balls to create your moment, or would you stay low and hope that it will spring out at some point in your life?” Would you?