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Swing to the spring

      July weather`s succesfully gone again which is quite fine for reading interesting facts about international trade and economics that I need to master till the end of month in order to....become master. At least unofficialy for now because I don`t have time to finish my thesis in May and will have to deal with it after my final exam in June. That`s what`s nowadays filling most of my time, mostly the nights that I`m spending with lecture notes and my awesome studying friend Philip Glass. Tuesdays are an exception `cause I took part on a month-long golf course in Prague. The boring "sport" I was just laughing about. But with many people talking about the difficulty of the game I better started now in order to handle at least the basics till I get retired. It`s actually fun while mastering the basic swing and watching the ball flying straight for 200 meters without too much effort. And good relaxing activity that can be done even in the worst weather and that takes half an hour and not much money on the driving range to drive 100 balls. So, without seeing the lecture notes for two years and not ever holding the golf club in my hands at the end of April, at the beginning of June I might be master of economics with golf HCP 54. Let`s see.

      Few days after the last Red Dwarf post we`ve been to an Indian restaurant in Prague (hope the connection is obvious) to taste something from the top of the Scoville scale. It was a topic of many ours previous conversations and I have to admit as well my secret dream since admiring eating habits in the british sitcom for the first time...so we ordered what else than chutney sauce and chicken vindaloo full of Cayenne pepper and really after a while a small bowl of sauce with meat and an unreasonably huge plate of rise arrived in front us. But a few minutes later the rise was all gone with just half of the meat eaten and the waitress was smiling at us while we were in fire, sweating over the small bowl of hot sauce. Lips and mouth were burning like hell and beer was not enough to wash the spice away. A bit better job did Lasi (not just a clever dog but as well a special indian milkshake), but right after finishing the meal we better moved to another pub to get a normal healthy czech beer. It helped a bit, but the strange feeling and kind of pain in stomach did`t disappear for another while so I hope it will help me remember well not to visit this kind of restaurants too often. But at least - "tasting the real indian chicken vindaloo" - checked, and now back to books :-)

Red Dwarf`s back :)

      Weather, snow, people, one nice sun deck bar in 2600 meters, quite pleasant local policemen and even the long way there went quite fast so the week in France was perfect. The movie isn`t very objective, we`ve been on the hill before 10 every day and had more than enough time to ski as well. Now I`m back to writing even though there`s July weather out there which is quite difficult to watch just through the window.

      After so many announcements in last ten years about shooting a brand new whole movie there have finally three new episodes of cult british sitcom Red Dwarf arrived on a british private TV channel, which has a fitting name: Dave. It happened on the Easter weekend and without too much waiting in three days all three episodes of "Back to Earth" were available for download. They are difficult to judge because they just have to be compared to the rest of the BBC legandary TV series. But even with a critical view, at the end everyone has to be happy at least because of seeing those four characters (just the crew, Holly and everyone else except Kochanski`s short appearence are missing) back in action.


      From what else I was missing was more lighness in the first episode, which was with small invention sticking too much to copying and recycling the old jokes probably in order not to disappoint the fans. The episode seemed as well as without a point (revealed in 3rd episode but not so important to cover whole episode) to be heading to and after some fighting on the board of Red Dwarf ended with a dimension jump of those four to the Earth of beginning of 21st century. The jokes weren`t very surprising but still it was nice to watch something new after such a long time. I was a bit missing as well the often critised laugh track on the background during the gags that give the sitcom a different atmosphere. Now I`m sure it`s better with it although I wouldn`t be so sure where to put it in the first episode...

      The second episode was better and was offering a lot of opportunities for funny situations while comparing the future world and living in the spaceship to daily life of year 2009 (Isn't that when all the banks went belly up and money became useless). It continued with searching for the Red Dwarf creator on the Earth with many funny situations including Rimmer`s one new Spacecode directive (Spacecode superchimps before made active decency in zero gravity will lose all banana privileges).

      The final third episode remained on the same level and made up a good ending which was the series missing for whole ten years. I still think one hour isn`t that much to fill after such a long time so it could have been done much better but it has to be considered that it wasn`t whole Grant Naylor working on new episodes and that it`s actually just a "good bye" instead of regular continuation. So. Although after the first new episode it seemed that we will see just a jerky sad funeral, at the end it turned out that Doug Naylor was able to produce an hour of worthy material that I liked and that the sitcom deserved to be completed, thx:)

Winter 2009 part 2

Rules are made to be broken so one more post before spring begins. My thesis is nearly in its half which is a bit behind the schedule but far ahead from where I thought it will truly be during this time when I`m leaving to French Les Deux Alpes for a week. After two years I`ve finally had a bit more time to ski this winter but this week is different. It`s the one I was looking forward to since fall and after which I`ll have to start reading stuff my university ultimate finals. The week when I`m according to doctors supposed to avoid sun, alcohol and physical effort but actually can`t think about any other thing I was doing there last winter. Anyway, today I`m leaving to enjoy last snow, first sun, my friends and broad french slopes no matter what. I`ll have a bunch of medical students around so nothing to be worried about if anything happens:)

After mentioning the movies and especially document Man on Wire last time I can not forget the document I`ve seen a while ago. The three years old document In The Shadow Of The Moon is covering the U.S. Apollo missions flying to the moon, attempting to land on it or really landing on, and exploring the Earth`s only natural satellite. It`s full of scenes that most of the people have never seen, radio talks between Houston and spaceships (interesting especially during landing of Appolo 11 and troubles of Appolo 13), interviews with spacemen who really took part on these missions and awesome atmosphere. It`s changing from breathtaking views from the spaceship or the moon itself to critical moments where the blood stops flowing in your veins in order to experience an extatic feeling of a solved situation right few seconds after. But the most interesting part for me was in the spacemen speeches about their feelings when sitting in the spacecraft on the ground and waiting for it to start or to explode, watching the Earth from 384 000 kms, standing alone on the moon and many others that you never could have read in the newspaper or seen in the news.

Moreover, their stories and thoughts exceed the scope of science and aviation and go to the mission of whole mankind, fragility of the Earth and make people think about what is really important and what is not because "when standing on the moon, you can hide your loved ones, your business and the problems of the Earth itself just behind your single thumb". The document could easily have slidden down to a political propaganda but doesn`t do that, remains absolutely disinterested and you can not recognize which year it was shot. It`s just filling its documentary and philosophical purpose, does that as good as possible and makes you think a lot about many other things than just flying a strange aircraft somewhere to deep space. I just wish I could have seen it in the cinema because the views would have been even more amazing. But whether on computer or in the cinema, this is the document every one should obligatory see just to think for a while and make Earth a better place to live. And thats all for majestic and lofty announcements today:)

Sticking to culture recommendations there is an album imho sticking out of the line of many new ones appearing in February this year. It`s Lily Allen`s "It`s Not Me It`s You". That Lily Allen, myspace star of 2006, a favoured child of an famous father as some use to say and owner of the high voice which was not likeable to me on the first album. But as it was a kind of breakthrough four years ago for many other following single vocalists like Kate Nash, Amy MacDonald, Regina Spektor and many others, she did even bigger jump with her new record this year. Her new album has everything that it needs to have to be perfect. She`s grown up but still remaining to be cheeky and a bit arrogant. The lyrics are usally very straight without any hidden significations. They are covering her relationship to her father, fame, god, drugs, lame lovers, old singles or living in big cities spending days with TV and chinese food. And actual radio hit Fuck You isn`t hiding (25 x "f*ck) her hatefulness to U.S. former president. They are about different topics but still consistent and are not there just to fill in the space but really make the most important part of all the songs. It even seems highly probable they are really Lily`s and not just put into her mouth. This believeable feeling is enhanced with her simple, civil way of singing.

The other thing which makes the record so good lies in the strong melodies. In this pop or electro-pop genre you won`t admire bands skills but still every song is very different with many good and interesting melodic and rhytmical ideas. And it`s not just sticking to something that could be called electro pop but overlaps as well to brass music (Never Gonna Happen), swing? (He Wasn`t There) or music from spaghetti westerns (Not Fair). With this diversity might almost any of the songs be released as a separate catchy single. All the melodies will give you a pleasant feeling of nothing surprising and you might feel you`ve already heard it before but still it will let you discover a lot of new. So why to wait:)

So, that`s it what should have been just one more line. But the album was worth more so finally here`s the definitely last line and see you in the spring.

Winter 2009

OK, enough of naming the posts by every single day of the week, let`s just stick with year`s seasons, that should be enough for my frequency of writing. So. After admiring the picture from my cell phone (quite a surprise) and in case you`ve understood everything so far, you can enjoy few lines about WhateverWillComeOnMyMindHereUnder. I haven`t written anything in English for a long time, so here I go today.

Exactly after half a year, the "new post" button attracted my attention and so after clicking on it and after blowing out the dust from the keyboard, I pressed shift....and what now. I guess writing came on my mind with first finished pages of my diploma thesis which should be done and bound on May 20th and so my brain is switched on creating very meaningful and highly sophisticated sentences for most time of the day. Although most of them are concerning very funny, humorous and interesting European steel industry, a change for a while is necessary. So back to the start --> finally my second finger fell on "O" and first, the most difficult word was written. It`s true, I`ve never been continuously writing anything on any other web page and here spider webs slowly began to appear on the last post. Especially in today's time of twittering, posting dozens of actual statuses and rss readers there is nothing more boring and thousand times discussed than yesterday news and so half a year looks almost like last century. It was btw right in August 2008, as I see the last post, when the airplane going to the Canary Islands crashed on Barajas near Madrid. And right now that half a year later there is sky full of airplanes troubles again.

As well it`s shortly after fabulous Oscar awards, which is the time when cinemas and internet are packed with awesome pieces, usually last worth-seeing before summer "blockbusters" time. It doesn`t happen too often but it`s true that the Millionaire was almost unrivalled this year. Everything has been said so there is no reason in either repeating the words of glory or finding defects in its perfection. Let`s better see why the others didn`t make it.

Even though I`m quite tolerant and there probably wasn`t better way of shooting the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk in the same named movie, the movie won`t belong to my favourites. Partly it`s because the movie is not too much inventional as there are quite many movies betting on the documentary style of shooting today, partly it`s because of the topic itself and as well because of many intimate gay scenes that might be appreciated just by a certain percentage of population. Not to be only critical, the Oscar nomination speaks for itself. The 70`s atmosphere was showed perfectly and actors performances of Emile Hirsch and especially Sean Penn were the main (but probably as well the only) reasons why to see this movie again. Sean Penn was really the one who deserved the Academy Award this year and Harvey Milk certainly belongs to his best acting performances ever even though it`s on the other side as well the one where he`s at least sympathetic to me. But still high five for making all the love scenes from the 21 Grams, The Interpreter or Thin Red Line star:)

Regarding the other competitors I think I`ve seen the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with all the respect to David Fincher, with too high expectations. Those 166 minutes ran quite fast but didn`t leave in me very good impression. Except the makeup, special effects and strange and original screenplay. Cate Blanchett was likeable, as well Brad Pitt didn`t anyone let down for sure and I really liked the main idea which I`ve read about before seeing the movie. But unfortunately the idea itself wasn`t enough, the second half of the movie became a bit boring and predictable with anything to be looking forward to and I`ve found the last half an hour of teenage- and childhood of the main character even very weird.

Much better was the duel of an unsuccessful playboy moderator David Frost and not much more successful politician and former US president in Frost/Nixon. It has burned me into the brain president Nixon as perfect, absolutely unbelievable disconsolate Frank Langella from last scenes of the movie. The movie is great, full of thrill from the beginning to the very end and one really feels oneself to David Frost`s role as we can see him in different moods and under such a pressure during the preparations and especially during the exhausting interviews. The movie has filled its topic, political and moreover just a one-interview-story, on 120%, but thereby sentenced itself "only" to an Oscar nomination because its win would outrage other epic movies, even though I didn`t like them all without reserve. And from my point of view the competition was especially strong this year.

The more interesting it was that one of the biggest experiences surprisingly appeared among the documents, in the awarded Man on Wire about one unusual traverse between two World Trade Center towers in New York. A great document about something that most of the people don`t care about, but the movie doesn`t have a single moment that might let them think about leaving the cinema or switching the movie off. It`s mostly because of the good direction and balanced mixing of old original camera shootings, photographs, interviews and reconstruction of stories that couldn`t have been shot. The direction of the photography for example lets you realize as far as after a while that you`ve seen the most important part [from the walk itself] only from documentary pictures but still you`ll feel like being up high by yourself. I haven`t seen so much of optimism, joy from undefinable, intangible things in the form of fulfilled dream, joyful story reconstruction and funny french english in one movie, especially in a documentary one. I have never heard anything about any wire walker before but I have to admit I envied the Philippe Petit`s feeling when standing in the middle of the wire between those two towers like anything else before.

That`s for the movies. It`s necessary to be a bit critical, at least to those that aspire on the highest movie awards. Nevertheless as there are thousands of movies published every year, it won`t be waste of money or time spending a while with any of these chosen.

:-(

Jedna smutná zpráva z Barajas, na který se příští pátek a neděli chystám, kouř je vidět až do centra...ještě že se to nestává tak často.

19.08.2008 Kalmir (15:49): (moh bys napsat nejakej post o tom, jak ta skola funguje, resp. kolik ti dala)

Enforex je španělská druhá největší jazyková škola s dalšíma pobočkama ve spoustě států Latinský Ameriky. Má vlastní školní budovy, učebnice, ročně dvacet tisíc studentů apod. a tak jsem čekal spíš masovej přístup a jen pomoc při učení. Nicméně ve třídě jsme se během prvního tejdne scházeli plus mínus tři. Pozdějc náš počet sice postupně narůstal, ale současný maximum 8 lidí, z nichž se tři neprojevují, je pořád hodně malá skupina. Navíc jako všechno závisí na jednotlivcích, vyučujících a z pěti se kterými jsem se setkal byli čtyři celkem nadšení (aspoň vypadali že se nenudí), jsou vždycky skvěle připravení, je s nima radost mluvit. Třídy jsou malý, klimatizovaný, útulně vybavený moderním nábytkem, navíc jsme všichni zhruba stejnýho věku a tak jde celý dopoledne kromě procházení gramatiky spíš o docela zábavný neformální povídání u kulatýho stolu. Těch pět hodin i po skoro měsíci utíká jako nic. Mimo školu se sice snažíme, jinak ale převládá angličtina, i tak bych srovnal tejden tady tak s třema měsícema ve škole, kde jsem měl tři hodiny čístýho času tejdně.

Jedinej problém je že je to moje první setkání se soukromou školou, ne zrovna levně placenou, která je mimojiné v nabídce Student Agency a podobných společností. Takže druhý dva týdny byla škola plná 15-17letých dětí, který v Madridu trávili čtrnáct dní z donucení, odbíhali na cigára a některý neřekli za celou dobu ani slovo španělsky. Kanaďanka Betty zase uměla jen necelou polovinu abecedy a tak šlo všechno hrozně pomalu. Teď už to zase odsejpá. Sice je nás 8 ale všichni se snaží něco dělat a tak je tenhle tejden hned po tom prvním nejlepší. Už ho bude moct trumfnout jen ten příští. Páteční letenku jsem si odložil až na poslední srpnovej den a tak mi tady zbejvá ještě celých 12 dní.

Tercera semana

Od pondělí se to ve škole zlepšuje, skupina postupně řídne a o to víc se mluví. Často se lidi s končícím srpnem vrací domů a tak by to tak snad mělo vydržet až do konce. V úterý jsme se vydali do Prada, největšího muzea, který je sice plný skvostů z 15. století ale tudíž taky hodně monotematický, a náboženský motivy nás po hodině omrzely. Superrychlej španělskej výklad života malířů a technik malby tomu ještě uškodil protože jsme z něj nepobrali skoro nic a utrhli se na vlastní cestu. Ve středu úžasnej Královskej palác kterej je asi tim nejlepším co se tady dá vidět a ve čtvrtek jsem stihnul pravej španělskej tříchodovej oběd a odpoledne v největším Parku s Irene na její krátký pauze při cestě z Antwerp. Jinak se nic zajímavýho nepřihodilo. Ve čtvrtek jsme byli opět v Cafe Bourbon na Plaza del Sol, sváteční pátek bylo zase do rána spoustu oslav ve všech ulicích a za víkend jsem akorát stihnul přečíst jednu knížku, přebookovat letenku na poslední srpen a v kině shlídnout nejlepší film minimálně tohohle roku.

Fin de semana 2

Neni to náhoda. Buhvíproč jsou 8 z deseti taxíků škodovky, 1 je seat a ten jeden jedinej zbejvá na mercedesy, peugoty a další raritní značky. Že jsou levný, ale proč je jich tady tolik?

Vedro nepřestává, bez klimatizace jsou noci dlouhý a tak bylo až dneska ráno jen 20 stupňů a cestou do školy jsem poprvý radši přešel na slunečnou stranu ulice. Klimatizace ale tentokrát nešla ani tam tak jsem druhou hodinu vzdal a udělal si pauzu. Jinak víkend. V pátek večerní fotbal, v sobotu jsem se prošel po městě k nádraží Principe Pío, zpátky se vrátil metrem a vyrazil na setkání do bytu na severu Madridu, z něj pak pozdějc do centra a nakonec do bývalýho divadla, dneska klubu Joy u náměstí Puerta del Sol.

Ráno jsem si (aspoň na neděli) přivstal a s Nachem prošel La Latinu a Rastro - trh s oblečením a spousty levnýma a užitečnýma věcma, kde madrileños (typický madriďani ==>)


a cikáni (tady ne tak pejorativně) každý nedělní dopoledne zaplňujou stánkama celou velkou čtvrť. Potom jsme si na několika místech dali Tinto verano (červený+fanta+spousta ledu), manzanillu (hořký bílý sherry), kañu (dvoudecový pivo s gratis talířem oliv nebo jamónu), gazpacho (ledová polívka z rajčat a okurek) a huevos rotos (vejce, jamón, brambory, bageta) a po odpoledni španělský kultury jsem uchozenej prospal večer i noc až do pondělního rána.


      Při objednávání je třeba dát bacha na každý písmeno. Kaña se někdy plete se se slovem koño (to co nemaji chlapi), stejně tak jako se kuře - pollo může zaměnit za palo (to co nemaji ženský). Po objednání menu koño + palo je třeba počítat i s vyhozením z restaurace.

Santiago Bernabeu

Taková jedna na první pohled nezajímavá, přes léto prázdná železobetonová budova z padesátých let. Čím odpudivější a zašlejší stadion, tim impozantnější, jako by z něj smrděly všechny ty góly a spocený trika za poslední půlstoletí.