RIP Michael Jackson

I wouldn't say that I was a big fan of Michael Jackson. But he is someone who definitelly represents the '80s to me and like this he was a part of my childhood.
His death is like missing someone who belonged to my life in a way.

Shopwiki

The month of great singapore sale in Singapore is from 29 May - 26 July 2009. We will be visiting Singapore next month but now is Spring time in Budapest and my sister will be visiting with her twins over the weekend and spending some time together.

In July is the kids birthdays, every year, we will buy presents and this year we found a cool website called 'Shopwiki.com' which actively seeks out every store on the internet in a similar way that Google finds every web site, by crawling the web.

The difference is, traditional shopping sites will only show you stores that have paid for placement, and ShopWiki will give a shopper everything regardless if they can earn anything. Thus, for a shopper, this means they can find anything and everything for sale on the web at ShopWiki.com.

Since we are shopping for items for the Toddlers, they are toddlers by now (see how fast they are growing)



We are considering to buy something that will be suitable for them such as Activity Sets for the Summer. In Hungary, sometimes the winter can get really cold, so children can be kept occupied indoors with these home activities that will ideal for children.

My sister has a pair of twins (both girls) and they are not identical twins





It is also a good idea to buy them clothings. There a lots of beautiful dresses for girls to choose from. Eszter loves to read, and there are books and some children's Nursery Furniture. Oh, it seems this website could read our minds, solving the headaches with good suggestions of what to buy!

For little Tomika, we can also get clothings for boys, all these can be shopped online, all at one place. And what's a birthday without toys and games for boys or girls as presents? :)

I miss the mood of sea

I miss the mood of sea
Remember the smell of salt?
Naples wind

Knowing

Yesterday we went for the movie 'Knowing' (Nicolas Cage was in the movie). It was quite impressive and even if its the 1000th similar movie about the end of the world in a way it touched me.

Not because of the story. I guess the catastrophe of the Air France plane last week somehow reminded me how fragile we are and this movie just enforced this feeling.

Leaving the movie there was sunset in Budapest with special lights.

Lights in Rome

Rome is a paradise of photographers. You can find little details with special mood at every corner.

Blogs in Plain English

A video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal. This video comes in an unbranded "presentation quality" version that can be licensed for use in the workplace.

http://www.commoncraft.com/store-item/blogs

The voice of "peace"

Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address

What are PTC sites about?

PTC stands for Paid-To-Click. PTC websites are places where one could earn money on a daily basis.

How does it work?

You simply click a link on the PTC site and view a website for usually 30 seconds to earn money. You usually get paid $0.01 for each website you personally view and you can see up to 4-10 advertisement a day.

Ok, only with this won't make you rich unless you live in a country where the average money that people make a day is around $1.

If you want to earn a little bit more you can buy/rent so called referrals on PTC sites.

What are referrals?

In fact referrals are people like you. Registered members of the PTC site. People that want to make money online. So just like you do, they are sitting in front of the computer and click every day on the given advertisements. To have this people as referrals means these people will work for you for a certain period which is usually 30 days. When they click on the advertisements as your referral beside the money they earn you also will earn money after their clicks. Usually this is $0,005 for the beginning but after upgrading to a higher level you can earn more.

So how to make more money with this?

I totally understand if you are not interested in making $0.04 a day. So do I. But if you rent referrals you can see how your income will increase step by step. Start slowly, do not trust and do no invest if you are not sure. To register is totally free, if the PTC site requires some money for joining/registering leave them immediately because you will find plenty of other sites for free. I give you an example of NEOBUX which I have already tried. You can register to it for free here.

After you have registered click every day and collect some money for your first referal. On NEOBUX you can rent your first 3 referrals for $0.75 so be patient and use your time to read carefully the forum posts and the FAQs of the site. It helps you to get familiar with the site and you will get the answers to your 1000 questions.

If you are done with your first referral rent and your new "workers" are clicking every day as you do, you will make already $0.055 a day as a next step. You got to know that at the end of your "journey", after upgrading, you can rent as many as 4000 referrals which can bring you up to $160 a day and you are still just sitting in front of your computer and click on advertisement 4-10 times a day.

Why is this clicking thingy good for the advertisers?

Although being an active member you deal more with your referrals and with your account management than with the advertisements themselves I have to admit that clicking every day to those ads is one of the best imprinting. I have joined this site just couple of months ago but I remember all the advertisements since I see them every day. NEOBUX has 3 million registered members recently which means potentially hundred thousand more people are seeing the ads every day while they are clicking.

Very important rule is that you get your money after your referrals only on the days when you click it yourself too, so the system is motivating everyone to keep seeing the advertisements and even to encourage others to do the same. I guess this is the clue of the whole idea.

What are the possible pitfalls?

There are two ways of failure if I don't mention the case when you simply give up.

1. The site is a scam and it disappears after a while or it simply doesn't pay you.
2. Bad account management.

Its unfortunately true that there are plenty of fake PTC sites out on the internet. So never ever join or especially never ever invest to any of them until you have checked it carefully. Some hints how to make sure its real:

- google it. Read reviews, opinions, forum posts about the site just by typing its name into the google. If they are fake some people already failed and some of them would have written their opinions on this. Learn from the mistakes of others. If there is no independent info about the site its a turn off itself.

- if the PTC site doesn't have a working opened forum, leave them. Forum is one of the best way for opened communication between the members and between the members and admins. If the admin never appears, not available, if there are no answers to your e-mails or support tickets, just pack and move away before you wasted too much time and money.

-if the PTC site doesn't have any advertisements but its own or other PTCs its most likely a fake or just a very new one. My experience is that these sites are fluctuating very quickly, the market is full of cheap cheaters, so look for the mainstream.

-if you are a bit more experienced on Internet you can check the domain registration and you will be able to find out something about the owners of the site. Useful information is to know for how long they have paid for they domain and who is behind the registration. With some efforts after a while you will recognize easily those cheaters whatever names they put to the window.

Account management is the other critical point. Through on a good PTC site, you can earn without any single investment too. If you want to earn more than just a few coins, you will have to invest into referrals by an upgrade, buying packages and recycle the lazy ones. These actions will cost you and its only up to you if at the end your incomes are higher than your previous investments. Though I don't find it too difficult to manage an account reading carefully the forums and learning from other's mistakes or successes won't hurt.

A Hungarian wedding

Last Saturday was Kriszta's big day. The wedding was held at
three different venues, the first reception was at the Conference Room
of Parish Bull in Kisvarda', followed by the local government of
Kisvarda' and finally in the Catholic Church which is a few minutes
walk from the local government office. Zsolt and I were invited as
Kriszta is our friend, and Kriszta was my witness for our wedding
when we had ours last November.

There are three houses, one of which is the conference hall that is
transformed into the wedding venue where the wedding dinner is held.
It was decorated in thematic colours of green and magenta.

Well, I know Kriszta's favourite colour is green, so how can her wedding be without
it?:)  To get there, we drove about 3 1/2 hours from Budapest. Before
arriving there, I packed some snacks for my road trip since I was
going directly from work, I ordered one Mushroom Borekas and one Big
Meat Borekas at one of the pastry store called 'Princess' in Budapest. I also had
the Cappy 100% Orange juice to maintain my hydration.

Finally arrived, and somehow our GPS took us on a longer road which
Zsolt recognised. First we get the reception to collect our keys to our
accommodation which was the other side of the building which faces directly
to the above photo, (at this perspective from our window, I saw even at 4am in the next morning after the wedding, there were still music and some people were still drinking
and dancing!) We got the keys to Room 10 on the second floor and it's
a cosy looking room with just one triangular shaped window.

The wedding starts at 4pm when we only get to see the Bride at 5pm. I saw my ex-colleagues there and we sat down altogether on a long table settings of the thematic colours. Placards of our names greeted us. That was a nice detail. I felt different otherwise as there was a display of one bottle of each different types of soft drinks, mineral water, sparkling mineral water, beer, fanta, coca cola.... right next to us on the other part of the long table. Zsolt reached out to pick up the bottle opener next to the other side of the table and asked 'so what would you like to drink?' That's one difference to a singaporean hotel wedding :)

Here, we will help ourselves to the drinks. Of course, in Singapore, the waiter or waitress will serve us by a soft gentle prompt and the choices are usually 'Fanta Orange' and 'Coca Cola' too Some of the
restaurants also serves tea along with a side dish of salted peanuts.

So during this one hour, it is like a reception where you get to eat
salads and appetizers cold cuts and some fruit assortment of salads. I
like the Potato Salad, I think the magic is the whipped cream on it.

This wedding has the atmosphere set mostly by a Ceremony Master, (at
some perspective, when he look at you, he looked a little like the
'Benjamin Linus' in LOST :))



In a way, this guy talks a little too much. He first teases the groom.
Poor Roli was 'put in the spot' for his cheesy jokes where there were
just a handful of people who laughs socially at it'. His job is to
partly entertain with skids like bringing in first a bride who is the
young girl (the ring bearer), then an old lady, then a man in arabic
costume and finally, Kriszta at about 5pm.

So here came the beautiful bride. Be aware that a crying part of the
wedding is coming. A very touchy moment which is a tradition where the
bride and the groom will 'say goodbye' to their parents/family/siblings. The custom was as if, they were still living with their parents (which they usually did when in the olden times in
Hungary) and now they are married they are ''leaving''. Though, it was
just a custom, many people will still be deeply touched and cried.



Lots of people cry and it's too touchy a moment (ok, quite a long
moment like 20mins). I wasn't prepared but luckily my husband gave me
a tissue paper for drying my tears.

The next part was proceeding to the local government for the signing
ceremony to officiate the wedding papers. The custom of pressing
the horn of the cars along the way was the way to announce that there's a wedding
couple. Cars that passed us by will normally horn back, loud horning is
the way to celebrate, so it's kind of funny where you can behave like a
child, playing with your car horns.

Arriving at the local government office, it started to drizzle. Just
been late for about five minutes, partly due to the 'crying part' just
now and the officiating officer who is like a mother hen, telling them
with a stern face and harsh tone.



That's before their signing ceremony at the local government.
Even the officer was unhappy and she puts up a 'face'. The couple was waiting for the identity cards to
arrive. Someone who is holding to it was held up and the couple got a little worried. That's the officiating officer. She was rather annoying at this moment in the photo cos she said this 'My Kriszta,
you SHOULD be in a hurry!'

The IDs arrived. Relieved, the couple finally marched in. Poems recited by good friend of the bride. Champagne toast at the end of the signing. This champagne toast is usually for immediate family members and we had the same in Budapest.

The Ring Bearer girl marching in the Catholic Church.



Back to the wedding dinner hall. The mother of the bride and sister of
the groom greeted the guests who came back from the wedding ceremonies
with a big loaf of traditional Hungarian Bread. It was tied with ribbons in the hungarian colours Red White and Green. Champagne is the entrance drink and of course music were played 'live' with synthesizer keyboards greets you. The ceremony master again, and he often starts
by saying 'Hear the words, hear the words!' which is a very old
traditional language, cos in those days, the hungarian village
weddings are conducted in this manner. To introduce the first dish,
which was the Chicken Soup (leves), he also did it with this traditional
style.



That's me. Already drunk. By 8:30pm, I was socially drinking the
Palinka (a hungarian drink that is very strong and tastes like vodka).
Only one shot with another two glasses of VILLÁNYI dry red wine
Portugieser, I was already high and drunk. During this time, lots of food were served. A Hungarian wedding is like this, lots of drinks, lots of food, lots of dances!! So be sure if you
are attending one, eat really slowly as the food keeps coming....

One of the traditions, is the Bride Dance. It means the bride will
dance with the invited guests before the midnight. Invited guests were
told about this dance in advanced, for instead of receiving presents, they
preferred 'money' which they can collect with a big basket container
(in olden times a cauldron which they will knock with a spoon to make some
noise with the cooking equipments). The Ceremony Master who is partly
the 'entertainer' and partly the person in charge of this money
collection task while the bride is dancing. He shouts in order to be louder than
the loud music, managing who shall be the next to dance with the bride and
making sure the next person ''PAYs''. Hard job for the bride as there is a long
queue of invited guests and friends who wants to dance with her...



A point will be when the bride is 'kidnapped' and the groom must do
some tasks to get her back or PAY to 'buy' her back. Then at late
night, the bride reappears with a red dress :) this to signify she is now
a married woman, a wife - a change of status.