Holiday in Indonesia

Last night I had a dream about Indonesia. I had been there working in a children camp that was located in the middle of the jungle. First it was exotic and wonderful, but suddenly its started to rain. A very heavy rain which seemed to be raining forever.

A local guy that was responsible for the camp asked: you didn't know that it is the rainy season now? Why did you come here?

The 5 best commercials of 2009-10 on the Cannes ad festival

These are the selections by the Film jury at Cannes for the world's top commercials that first aired between March 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010.

GRAND PRIX WINNER

BRAND - Old Spice
SPOT - "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like"
AGENCY - Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
COUNTRY - USA




17 GOLD LION WINNERS

BRAND - 13th Street Horror Channel
SPOT - "Last Call"
AGENCY - Jung Von Matt, Hamburg
COUNTRY - Germany



BRAND - Axe
SPOT - "Cleans Your Balls"
AGENCY - BBH, New York
COUNTRY - USA



BRAND - Canal+
SPOT - "Closet"
AGENCY - BETC Euro RSCG, Paris
COUNTRY - France



BRAND - Foster's VB
SPOT - "Regulars"
AGENCY - Droga5, Sydney
COUNTRY - Australia



See more winners here.

Personalized drug rehab

When it comes to drug rehab or alcohol rehab programs I believe in residential treatment programs for two reasons.

1. I think both drug problems and alcohol problems (and any other addictions) are in close relation with the environment of the a affected person. Even if the symptoms are visible on one person only, it is a family issue, a community issue or even a cultural issue rather then pure individual illness of brain or genetic damage. To get rid of the problem you need relevant changes in your life and first of all you have to be out of the environment that lead you to be the symptom holder.

2. To get out of a bad circle (dealers, influence of friends, scolding family members, labeling community) its just the first step of your drug treatment or alcohol treatment. You also need to find a next environment that is containing and gentle enough. A place where you can face with your failures, with your mistakes and with your lies without being pushed down and being labeled continuously.

Hard to establish and maintain a gentle drug and alcohol treatment center like this. I feel a certain resistance if the place is too medical, and looks like a hospital. They are usually very controlling, preferring the hierarchy to the relation. To me the setting is very important and a place has to be friendly, inviting and containing enough to let myself to fight with my own demons in safety.

Our culture doesn't support weakness and failures. At times I have the feeling we live in a world where only superman is accepted. Thats why we need some places as an oasis where we can afford to be little, weak and not always nice.

Dream

I couldn't sleep last night because in my dream I was a singer in a pub and I had to sing Tankcsapda, Sepultura and Rammstein songs.

But I didn't know how to sing them so the original performers of these bands were coming and helping me.

Gold rush

Our friend Richard lives in Toronto, Canada and recently he updated about the G20 summit in his Facebook with photos especially about the security. There were a lot of tension even by walking on the streets, it felt intimidating with all the inner security zone controlled by a three-metre high fence and vigorous security checks. 

Gold on the other hand, is the focus other then this big event where world leaders gather to discuss how to keep the world economic recovery on track. Just before the G20 summit this weekend, gold futures had extended gains.

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That is probably because the investors who spot gold remains fluctuating. Gold prices rose to an all-time high, all due to the effect of the sovereign risk which has attracted establishment money into gold (which tends to be long-term money). From this on, the gold price on the coming days will be upwards. Even the possibility of an Atlantic tropical storm developing affects the price of gold.

Gold is written as 金 jīn in Chinese. The Chinese population and government are dumping the paper currencies be it US$ or Euros. Now they are investing in gold, afterall, price of gold is certain and it cannot be printed more like how Western governments have done to their paper currencies. Watch this video and you will see:-

There is also a hype over gold at the Shanghai World Expo. Other than the golden toilet bowls, the UAE pavilion whose sand dunes composed of gold-colored panels cannot be missed.

China also featured Golden Pavilions and Expo stamped gold collectibles. You can imagine those pure gold and collectibles lovers grabbing these limited edition commemorative Expo gold bars, coins and stamps. In the Egyptian Pavilion also exhibits 8 items, one of which the gold collar of Queen Ahhotep and the other, the gold mask of Sheshonq II.

Just the safety insurance premium alone was $66 million!

outrageously funny tattoos - 生活创造

Today we went to buy the remaining items we needed at IKEA. Funnily, we spotted a Hungarian girl with a tattoo, in a vertical column down her spine. The chinese characters read ''生活创造''

Zannnie was almost laughing and started bursting out.

To be honest, to have these four characters as a tattoo is totally weird. Maybe she was thinking to 'have a constructive life'! The person who did this tattoo for her had either translated what she wanted to express with a free online translation software or this tattooist was simply unprofessional (most probably doesn't know chinese).

What these four characters mean:-
生活=life, livelihood, activity
pinyin: shēng huó

创造=create, construct, produce, bring about
pinyin: chuàng zào

So go figure.

As for David Beckham, his tattoo was styled in Chinese Cursive Script (also known as Grass Script) that reads 生死有命 富貴在天 shēng sǐ yǒu mìng, fù guì zài tiān. It is a Chinese proverb that translated as "death and life have determined appointments, riches and honor depend upon heaven."

Selene Gomez video filmed in Budapest

szólj hozzá: Selena Gomez - Round

BP spills coffee

Genetics and nationalism

Xenophobia is the dark side of human altruism.

This is the conclusion of the theory of ethno-symbolism that tries to explore the nature and understand the origin of nationalism and ethnic conflicts all over the world. Recently there are attempts to extend this view with the Genetic Similarity Theory.

J. Philippe Rushton in his study "Ethnic nationalism, evolutionary pychology and Genetic Similarity Theory" claims that the evidence that genes incline people to prefer others who are genetically similar to themselves comes from studies of social assortment, differential heritabilities, the comparison of identical and fraternal twins, blood tests and family bereavements. And he argues that DNA sequencing studies confirm some origin myths and disconfirm others.

Genetic Similarity Theory predicts that many other seemingly purely cultural divides are, in fact, rooted in the underlying population genetics. But its not always true. Genetic studies can thus confirm (or disconfirm) people's ideas about their origins.

And from this point on every conclusions are rather political. Genes are only whispering but the interpretation of their message is often just the abuse of pure science in the name of any political ideologies.

Advertisement of the Budapest Public Transportation Company

The text on the picture:

Nervous?
Sweating?
Trembling?

These are the typical symptoms of "traveling without tickets".

We have a treatment!

Treat your symptoms with buying tickets or month card!

Hungary's new leaders count cost of loose talk

This is the title of the article of Financial Times on Hungary's recent government and on their "very successful" first two weeks activity.

"Changes of government are never easy. But rarely can one have been as badly bungled as in Hungary.

Most investors had welcomed April's election of the centre-right Fidesz party with a rare two-thirds parliamentary majority.

But it soon appeared Fidesz had not spent its eight years in opposition planning for the seamless assumption of power." (Financial Times)

I totally agree with these sentences. Popularism is one of the most threatening phenomena in democracy. And these guys didn't learn the lesson from 2002. One of the most annoying figure of the Hungarian politics is Viktor Orban who was still a young, democratic, liberal guy until 1994 but after a bad election result he has decided to change his political views to a conservative, right wing approach and since then he acts like a popularist despot. And now they are back in the power with all their bullshit. Thats what you could see in the news last days all over the world. And they have just started.... 

Örömváros

A cool video of Budapest.

Why I hate iTunes?

Because to refresh to the newest version (last time I have touched it two years ago) and to sync it with my iPhone for the new songs took 2 and a half hour.

Guys at the Apple. With other phones it takes like 30seconds with copy & paste from one folder to the other. I find this entire iTunes thingy a useless, time wasting blublublabla to annoy people!

paintings

I like this painting of the horse with its silhouette in the sunset by Zannnie. Lately she is into painting with watercolour and this is one of her recent work. You can imagine our place is filled with a lot of her works :)