It will however be a miniature garden, somewhat like the photo below. And it will probably also host my cactus, Kimmy, and her bamboos. Not quite traditional, I know, but there’s no other more appropriate place in the house for them.

Now, my room will be a mixture of Japanese culture, Turkish symbols, modern technology (my laptop), lots of light and whatever else I can put my mind to. Sounds just about right, don’t you think?

In other words, I am waiting for the sun to finally show up for work. The weather reports stated he should be in by now. But he's not. Has anyone seen him?

Labels: Alina, Japanese Garden, Personal

Labels: Fun

We went to meet another agent and see another apartment. It was in a way better area than this one. We went in, talked to the owners and also fell in love with the place. We also closed the deal. We paid the agent last night and the owner today. We've got ourselves a nice little place! Not very expensive for what it offers (we have air conditioning, can you imagine what that will mean this summer?) and it's about 15 minutes from where I live now. All peachy!

We're moving on March 1st. A lot of packing and a lot of baggage carrying will follow. But starting next Monday, it will all be settled. As soon as I manage to arrange everything, I'll post some photos of the new place.

After agreeing to move there, I started to feel really sad. It is final, I am moving out from a place I really love and far from memories of many happy moments. Of course this was a great time to remember each smile and all the laughter the apartment was filled with. Luckily for me, Silviana stayed for a sleep over, so I felt a little better. Now that the melancholy has passed, I am thrilled we managed to get it all solved so quickly.

Labels: Alina, Personal, Real Estate

Labels: Customer Service, Real Estate, Romania

Labels: Alina, Fun, Personal, Travel

Labels: Alina, Books, Movies, Personal

Labels: Books, Bookstores, Joseph Conrad, Reviews, Stories

Labels: Alina, Books, Personal

Labels: Fun

Labels: Alina, Lyrics, Music, Personal

I started to read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” because I was curious. I knew a bit about the idea of the novel from school, which was then trivialized by a certain movie, but I thought I should really read the book, as I was sure it bore more meaning than a few details in a school book or a fugitive character in a Hollywood movie. And I was right.

The book reveals views (different, contradictory, innovating, challenging) on everything that matters: life, art, relationships, people, artists, sins, souls. And the quotes I chose open a window into the wonders of this book and will make you want to read it. At least I hope so.

What surprises me most about this book is that it is impossible to loathe or simply dislike Dorian. An innocent, impressionable young man, corrupted by too much flattery, strange ideas and yes, certain books. Subjected to a very cynical idea of life and how it should be lived, his dreamy mind and his pure soul end up loosing everything that is good, turning to way of life too dreadful to be described in detail.

The illusion of youth and beauty, the ability to go on unmarked by what you do and who you have become, all sustained by a society treasuring money and looks only, all of these give him the benefit of doubt.

There is another interesting question: who has corrupted Dorian Gray? The painter who worshiped him and made him think exterior beauty has a very high price? The lord who filled his mind with dangerous ideas and gave him poisoning books. Who also gave him the impression all that is good will not outlast his beauty and youth? Or was it Dorian Gray, because he never tried to filter the ideas or principles shown to him as relevant? His own calling to be shallow?

Or maybe all of them. As they are all punished somehow. And which is the biggest punishment? Death or living without your dear ones, with the burden of what you have done?

Labels: Books, Oscar Wilde, Reviews

Labels: Alina, Personal, Thoughts

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think.

There is a fatality about all physicaland intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others nor ever receive it from alien hands.

You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas,reveals himself.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

If one puts forward an idea to a real Englishman,— always a rash thing to do,—he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it one’s self.

the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

There is nothing that art cannot express

The harmony of soul and body,—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial, an ideality that is void.

We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.

‘There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,—immoral from the scientific point of view.’
‘Why?’
‘Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly,—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals,the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,—these are the two things that govern us.

I believe that if one man were to live his life out fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream,—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal,— to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of atemptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

It is only the sacred things that are worth touching

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional colored life of the intellect,—to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at what point they were at discord,—there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

Soul and body, body and soul—how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating,—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic.

As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self- denial, whose origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape, Nature in herwonderful irony driving the anchorite out to herd with the wild animals of the desert and giving to the hermit the beasts of the field as his companions.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and charming. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and the highest respectability is of less value in its opinion than the possession of a good chef. And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays charming. Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly-built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings strange memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play,—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.

There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven.

Labels: Books, Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

The AXIGEN team had a three-day team building experience in Predeal, a beautiful mountain resort in Prahova Valley. So that explains my silence over the weekend. I was busy climbing Everest, aka Chomolungma. Yes, that is right, the name of our adventure was "Conquering Everest"!

We left Bucharest on Friday, with a bit of delay, but still, before 10 am. About 3 hours later we were in Predeal, checking in. The hotel's name was Eden. A good name I think, given the fact that you might reach the real Eden if you try climbing such a dangerous mountain. After lunch, we started making money for the trip. Divided into 7 teams of six, which then formed 3 larger teams, we spent about 5 hours outside, trying to get the sum we needed, about 3000 dollars.

Team names? Well, mine was called Undisclosed Recipients. The others were Highlanders, No Name, Faith, Nepal Death, AxiGentoo and Galactics. I loved them all!

Did I mention it was quite cold and that there was a lot of snow? Oh, and that it was, for most of us, the first real encounter with winter and its cold weather this year? Still we managed quite well. And pleasantly surprised myself with the courage and initiative I had to go running around Predeal to get crazy things like used train tickets or yesterday's paper. I was not alone in this. My team-mate Serban convinced a taxi driver to lend us his spare tire for about 5 minutes, while the rest of the gang collected insects (live ones), paintings, spoons, mirrors etc.

We then had dinner and a nice little party with music and lots of drinks. I had to say pass though because all that running around got me really tired and I hadn't had that much sleep before getting there.

The second day was dedicated to the actual ascension. Which happened indoors :) We had a map, our budgets (Undisclosed Recipients had 3070 dollars), a list of supplies we could buy, people we could hire and a nice little old man giving tips and tricks for a certain amount of time spent with him. and John Powers who was buying rocks from the top of the mountain, 10000 dollars a kilo.

The purpose of the game "Make as much money as possible". And the fun part started. No Name won (with about 200.000 dollars), Undisclosed Recipients was second, with 170310 dollars. And two teams died out there. What we really didn't understand was the actual purpose. Which did not mean a team should win as much as possible. No, it was all about the whole team of AXIGEN coming back with the largest amount possible.

Yes, we can all see it now, it was a genuine team building game. Designed to make you wonder a little, learn something and also have some fun. And we had lots of fun, that was the greatest achievement of the game, if you asked me.

FOOD
The meals at the hotel were not that hot. But not half bad either. However, we went to "Taverna Sarbului" (Serbian's Den) on Saturday night and to "Cabana Schiorilor" on Sunday, both in Sinaia. And that my friends was pure pleasure.

ADRENALINE RUSH
There were no extreme sports this year. But the two trips to Sinaia compensated, they did so more than enough. Our huge bus drove on some roads I wasn't sure I would drive on with my tiny Little Mushroom. There were moments when we all stopped breathing. And the guys also had to move a car (lift it and move it to the left) .

All in all, it was a great experience. I was really glad I could manage some real outdoor action. And learn some really interesting details on mount Everest.

The rest of the photos here!

Labels: Everest, Fun, Mountain Resorts, Predeal, Team Building, Travel Destinations

Labels: Environment, Sustainable Growth

1. She is one of my best friends.
2. She knows me better than anyone, thus always gives me the best advice when I ask for it
3. She cooks everything I like when I go visit her and I feel really royal-blooded due to how she treats me. I practically do nothing. Just enjoy and relax.
   
4. She likes eating at McDonald's from time to time.
5. When I am not allowed to eat something, she does not eat it herself, so that I am not tempted to eat it anyway.
   
6. If we share something (an orange, a cake, whatever), she always makes sure I get the bigger "half". If I feel guilty about it, she accepts half and when I'm done eating mine she asks if I want more, cause she can't finish hers alone.
7. The name "Mami" said in a really childish tone suits her perfectly.
   
8. When I really enjoy something she had prepared for me, she has a glowing light in her eyes and in that specific moment, she still sees me as an innocent and funny two year old.
   
9. Over the years, we adapted our taste to eachother's likes and dislikes, so when one of us buys something, our opinions always match.
   
10. I sometimes feel how much I am like her when acting, thinking or smiling in a certain way.
    
11. At certain moments she still calls me "Tandarica". Hard to explain, it is something like a little piece of some broken wooden object. It has to do with my impressive height of course

Labels: Alina, Family, Personal

Labels: Alina, Fun

Yes, Reamonn will come and play in Bucharest this summer. To be more precise, the end of June or beginning of July. Photo and information from EVZ.

I can't wait to go. So I will keep my eyes on music stores selling concert tickets. I have to get mine as soon as possible! I really don't want to risk missing it, as it happened with the Depeche Mode concert last summer. Luckily I was blessed with tickets a day before the concert.

See you all there! Well, at least I hope to see you all there! Looks like it will be a summer full of great concerts!

P.S. For those of you who have no idea who these guys are, let me tell you their first hit was Supergirl. It was launched seven years ago and it's been my trade-mark song for about four. And I am pretty sure I have posted the lyrics here at least once.

If that was not enough to convince you, their latest hit it "Tonight". Lyrics follow:

Labels: Concerts, Music, News

• Took exam. French, if you are wondering. About 4 people copied everything I wrote, which was far from brilliant. I usually don't like people copying what others write, but given what our French classes looked like (a complete waste of time that is), I actually felt good knowing they would all pass.
  
• Went to Carturesti. A bookstore and a tea house combined. I had a Japanese tea, sencha, cherry blossom. With a little honey. Simply delicious. It is the perfect place to shop for books, then read through them or simply read one you brought while having great tea and listening to beautiful music (it was jazz mostly when I went there with Silviana).
  
• As none of my friends felt like going to a club, although we had been planning this for some time, we decided to go to the movies. We chose a really light one: the specifics were no need to think too much, funny, not complicated. So we saw Code Name: The Cleaner. Not even close to the best comedies I've seen, but the only one available on Saturday night. And it was quite fun to watch in the end.
• As we were hungry, Silviana and I also had dinner before the movie. At a Lebanese place called Coltul Verde (Green Corner), conveniently placed on the same floor as the movie theater. Great food! Chicken with oranges and rice.
  
• I eventually got to work on a translation on Sunday. Which was great, since it was kinda due this weekend. The not so great part is that I have not finished it yet.
• Sunday night came and we went to Carmen. My first "live" opera, as the ones I've see were aired by the national TV channel years ago. It was a perfect way to end the weekend. A relaxing yet overwhelming experience. I have to do that again.
  

Labels: Bookstores, Cuisine, Movies, Music, Opera, Restaurants, Tea

It was indeed a beautiful experience: beautiful costumes, exquisite music, and the ballet in itself, well I am speechless when it comes to praising it, as there are no proper words. This is one of the ballets they are always making a wonder of, unless others I have seen.
But! There is a but of course. They changed the prologue and the one I have seen 2 years ago seemed a bit better. Also, Swan Lake only highlighted the first-ballerina. Ovidiu Matei Iancu was there to make her look good most of the times. Not that there is something wrong with that, but I have seen them both at their best and it looks even more amazing.
It was great going there again and not being disappointed, as it happened last year. As for the photos, well, the opera does not have that many of the dancers, so, these are a few of what I found and liked online.

Labels: Ballet, Opera

Labels: Romania, Tourism, Travel Destinations

Labels: Fun, Prejudice

Labels: Health, Romania

Labels: News, Romania, Survey and Research, Tourism

Labels: Fun, Future

Most of us fell in love with someone that never knew we existed. Someone we watched from afar, daydreaming and making plans based on what we thought of that person. The drama and pain of it, the pleasure and hope of it, the humiliation of it, these are all common places.

Inspired by Cristian’s story, I thought of writing mine, the story that started in 96. Of the first such love in my life. I was in the seventh grade, secondary school, I was 13 going on 14 and I was one of the kids running on the hallways of the I.L. Caragiale High-School (later changed to National College, although it was still a high-school mainly). It was a new custom among high-schools then to also have about 2 secondary school classes (intensive English and intensive French in our case), to form them in the Caragiale way. Admission was based on taking an exam in English, Maths and Romanian Literature and Grammer (it was the only time I was first on an admission results list).

So, I was facing the wonders of the high-school world, not from within and not quite from the outside, with the elitist feeling you get after being good enough to be accepted. We knew nothing of love and relationships, but we knew how to make fun of people kissing from our classroom's open windows. A pair doing so outside, during the break. Nothing weird, just that it was non-stop and we started to make fun. “Let her breathe” and “She already washed her teeth for the day, leave it be” were commonly used. I was on top of the game, screaming my lungs out. Then the guy turned around to say something not that nice to us. And then it was all over for me, I could say nothing…

He looked perfect. Tall, dark, long hair, like Ocean Summers of Trade Winds, if anyone saw that soapy short series. Of course, I saw the movie after falling in love, so it was actually the actor playing Ocean Summers who looked like him…

My habits changed: breaks meant chasing him around the school yard or on the hallways. Before that, I used to read during breaks, but afterward, going out (on sunny, snowy, rainy days, whatever…) in the yard just to see him was much better.

I even found out his name. By mistake. As someone called him and he said “yeah, what do you want?”. It was Edy. From Eduard, of course (yes, Romanian form of Edward). No name sounded better to me. I also found out what class he was in (followed him again), 12A, informatics.

My imagination and the stories and novels I wrote at the time were all going in circles around him. I was not in any kind of pain right then, I was just enjoying each moment when I could talk about him. Because of course I wasn’t the only girl in my class in love with an older student. We could all talk of our feelings freely.

On of them befriended his girlfriend and eventually met Edy (officially). She had nothing better to do then tell him I was in love with him. His reply was something that still brings thoughts of revenge to my mind. I was so upset! He was not supposed to know! Especially when it came to finding out like that! My dreams and hopes and stories were revealed, when I was trying so hard to keep them in a circle of secrecy, among a few going through similar experiences. I felt ultimately humiliated and deprived of what was mine and mine alone.

Anyway, the great adventure of happily watching and chasing him from afar could not last for ever. And the pain did come. Not because he had a girlfriend, she was really pretty and nice anyway. Not because he found out, as he forgot all about it almost instantly. Not because he was considered to be a ladies man and cheated on his girlfriend either. That was reality and had no connection with my image of him. The problem was summer came. And 12^th grade also means the last year of high-school. You cannot imagine the amount of crying you could hear in our classroom in the last two weeks of school! I did my crying at home mostly, but still, I was always upset.

I saw him one more that summer, when I dragged my mom after me to see where he was going. She said nothing, she just got me a book I really wanted. I do love my mom for being so great with such a crazy daughter. The long summer without him (the sight of him actually) was not difficult. But when school started and I had to go back there and walk on the same hallways and not see him, that was the real tragedy of it all.

About 4 years later, I saw him again. Changed, but still gorgeous. He walked by me and it took a while for me to gather my thoughts and react somehow. I turned around, dragging my friend Diana with me, wanting to chase him again on the streets, wherever. Then I stopped and thought about it for a while, asking my self why would I give in to old impulses. So I just carried on with what I was supposed to be doing. It did not matter anymore, it was all gone...

Labels: Alina, Personal, Stories of the Past

Labels: Alina, Books, Games

Every once in a while I amaze myself with how much I don’t know about my country. What is even more amazing is that some truly appealing travel destinations are never promoted. Thus, lots of Romanians don’t know about them. So it took a visit to CNN’s Travel Section to see this:

“There is only one count in this remote Transylvanian village of 512 souls nestled in the wilds of the Carpathian Mountains -- and it isn't Count Dracula.

Meet Count Tibor Kalnoky, a dashing 40-year-old entrepreneur and son of Transylvania descended from a noble family which settled in these misty lands in the 13th century and lived there until communism forced the family to flee.

Kalnoky's manor, which opened in 2001, lies deep in southern Transylvania, an area where myth and reality are loosely entwined. But you'll hardly hear a word here about Dracula, the Romanian warlord Vlad the Impaler or Bram Stoker's novels.

Instead Kalnoky lures guests with the old world of Transylvanian customs.

Many visitors come from Britain and the United States to feast on tasty fare of pork or chicken stew, mashed potato tinged pink by paprika pepper, home-baked cakes served by women dressed in traditional costume.

Dinner is washed down with red Romanian wine and guests are warmed by a roaring log fire in the wine cellar before snuggling into decades-old goose eiderdowns in rooms decorated faithfully in the style of the Szeklers -- the ethnic Hungarian minority to which Kalnoky belongs.

(Photo from here)

Take a hike in the hills and you may come across bears and wolves. Bird lovers can look out for eagles, black storks and woodpeckers. You can also travel in a horse and cart for a mountain picnic, cycle to nearby Transylvanian towns or visit the Kalnoky family hunting lodge. Just north of Miclosoara, there is the cave where the legendary Pied Piper lured the children of Hamelin.

When visitors return to the manor at sundown for dinner they are serenaded by Szekler music in the soft green drawing room, with antique furniture and dark wooden floors. It's low-key and relaxing.”

I wanted to learn more about Miclosoara and the manor, so I did a little research. Not much to find on Romanian sites though. But I did find this presentation of the Kalnoky hotel. Take a peak, it’s all fascinating. And a 49 Euro price for bed and breakfast is really cheap by Romanian standards, given there is no real competition in the area.

So, my immediate plan is to get there sometime soon. And then keep recommending it to Romanian and foreign tourists.

Update
The CNN article is also mentioned on Core Target.

Labels: Tourism, Travel Destinations, Kalnoky Hotel, Miclosoara, Romania

Labels: Kalnoky Hotel, Miclosoara, Romania, Tourism, Travel Destinations

Their attitude does annoy me. Even if they are aimed at career women, the attitude is a bit wrong. They still promote diets. None focuses more on careers, on experiences, on real accounts on everything. They still all make a purpose of discovering what’s behind the masculine mind. Well I don’t care about that when reading such a magazine. I want to read about women. How they handle stuff. Not a psychologist’s opinion on how men think.

Anyway, back to the respective magazine. I loved the slogan: for women who successfully combine their career and family life. Great! I need some advice on that. Then I saw the sections. Career is fourth, after Home, Family and Beauty??? And the square in front of it has the ugliest, least attractive colors of all: a gray of some sort.

Then I read this article in the Lifestyle section. About successful business women in a man’s world. OK, enough of that. I am tired of people talking about how women become more and more like men when they handle important affairs. How the eternal feminine might be lost on the way to prove their independence, their leadership abilities etc.

Just because women want to do what men do does not mean they won’t bring in their own style. Yes, they might experience lack of time and everything, but as Cris said at a certain point, they still have similar issues when it comes to relationships and life in general. They won’t turn into copies of men in their field. Not all of them anyway. Some might!

So maybe a HowTo on how to stay a woman when doing a man’s job? That would be an interesting subject for me. Or maybe an extensive article about day care (or the lack of it) in Romanian companies? Or more statistics or employed women vs housewives. Or women’s salaries vs men’s salaries. Or Queen Bees in Romania. Do they exist? Single women and single mothers. How to handle all life’s responsibility on your own when clearly the stay at home option is not available? Maybe we should focus on that more and less on pathological fights within a relationship.

Tags: Women, Career Women, Family, Lifestyle, Garbo, Women's Magazines, Journalism

Labels: Career, Family, Journalism, Lifestyle, Magazines, Women

Labels: Alina, Lost and Found, Music