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.

USA 2nd time

My second stay in the US surprisingly keeps changing my attitude to this country. Last year I was impressed so much by the nature and by everything what makes the US that what it is, but at the same time I was disappointed with all those things that make the US so unfriendly and anonymous. One of the reasons was definitely my first impression, which I made in Chicago. This industrial city, second fattest in whole country, so dirty around the Loop and full of dangerous districts occupied by Hispanics, Mexicans and afroamericans was great to find out how do the US really look like, but couldn`t make me feel wanting to spend more than those ten days there. It was really that what I expected from all those movies and it was fun to experience that personally, but it also made me considering the US as an unfriendly country, where only money counts and where`s no space for anything else. I haven`t felt the same in much bigger New York neither in San Francisco last year, but the first impression was too strong and the rest of my stay didn`t change my opinion.

But Manchester and whole New England brought me another surprise. I arrived with the same idea, thinking about a summer that could bring me nothing else but some money, improving my English skill or experience of living on my own. The more I was surprised after a month. Although it`s difficult to judge it objectively because all those bad things like working 60 hours in one week while frizzling on the sun in 100 degrees and eating pizza three times a week are usually very fast forgotten and only good memories remain.

The city is much different from those we`ve learned last year. Although it`s the largest city of New Hampshire it`s not too busy, reaching from the slow flowing river Merrimack up to the hills on the east. One hour of driving far from White mountains, it`s one hour to Hampton beach on the seacoast and the same distance south to Boston. Cities, nature..everything much more european than what I`ve seen before. But the biggest diference is probably the friendliness of most of the people. Of course we`ve met many exceptions but I was surprised and it took me a long time to believe that it`s really not predicted. Most of the people are mostly purely happy when they see us in the bank, café, at the gas station, even while shopping in a supermarket..and of course in a pub. Everybody`s smiling all the time, ready to talk and frankly interested in one`s problems. Maybe local relationships are not to so developed like in our neighbourhoods and villages, but the feeling, that you can be sure you`ll be treated like an old friend by almost everyone you`ll meet is really very nice. It`s even kind of strange for someone who is not used to to see the courtesy of most of the people. It starts on the street where it usually looks like a contest where people try to let as many cars as possible to overtake them, take a turn or pull out ahead in their lane. When you look like being lost on street or anywhere, you can be sure there`s gonna be someone in a minute to ask you and help you to find what you are looking for. And the same anywhere else, you just won`t be refused when need help. Vice versa, the help will probably be offered to you sooner before you`ll request it:)

This evaluation is maybe too positive, of course there are things that disappointed me and they are reasons why am i looking forward home and in addition, my stay isn`t over yet so there could many things happen. The main difference that influenced me at most of course is meeting all the people that we didn`t have an opportunity to meet last year and it`s really nice to feel like home so far away after not whole two months of living.

© td 08.19.2006

American Freedom

The problem I’m going to examine is the American freedom. It’s usually the first word that crosses everyone’s mind when talking about the United States. And to experience meaning of the word ”freedom” was the first thing I expected from the US when I was going there for the first time last summer. I’ve spent there one month in September last year visiting my friend’s sister in Chicago for ten days and travelling on the western cost with my friends, work and travel program attendants, next three weeks. Concerning the US, freedom is very controversial topic. When you hear the voices of people coming back from their first visit, they definetely won’t describe their feeling from their stay as freedom. They usually wonder why they couldn’t drink or bath wherever they wanted or just couldn’t suspiciously watch something, but they saw people keeping a loaded gun or shotgun at home allowed to use it freely without being suspected of anything.

First days in Chicago I was surprised by many things. By all the big cars, wide streets, huge shopping malls and the whole city which looked like much different from those European ones, exactly like in all the movies I’ve seen. Everything was more American than I expected, but I couldn’t find out where the famous freedom is. I’ve seen only all the warnings and regulations on every corner and everyone was telling me permanently what to do and what better not to do, not to have any problems with police or other people. And after a while I trembled only when I saw a police car driving around.

The main point is, that the basic meaning of freedom there does mean something else than here in Europe. During the second half of 20^th century we were used that someone was still watching our life, telling us what to do, we had to be afraid of being fired, arrested or even killed in the 50s just for saying something against the government or wanting to leave the country. And that’s why our only idea of freedom lies in lowering the number of acts, rules and administration which control us and limit our lives. In the US, this process started from the other side, securing the freedom by looking for new and new acts, which could protect individual’s rights in daily life more and more. That’s why the freedom there is connected with much of limitation. There are many strange things you’re not allowed or you have secured on the other side. You’re not allowed to drive a car with alcohol inside even if you don’t drink it or take photographs wherever you want. Or you can be sure you won’t feel any pain during any of operations or surgeries in the hospital. Because when you do, you can quite easily earn money for the rest of your life on compensations. And all these regulations are used surprisingly to ensure more freedom and people are reconciliated with it. In this legal system, everything that could have just a small influence on anyone else’s life is prohibited and punished by the law. That’s the main difference, because in Europe we expect abolishing as much of restrictions as possible to give people their freedom.

The next meaning of freedom which I knew from all the indie movies I’ve learned in the west because of all the distances we had to pass there. We were driving on never-ending roads meeting not more than five cars every day (in a country with 790 cars / 1000 inhabitants). We could have been doing everything we wanted to because no one had seen us whole day. We built a tent and cooked the lunch on places we liked, slept and made trips wherever we wanted and felt like everything around belonged to us just because there were only us many miles around.

Last but not least things not to be forgotten are the prices that make people free. As a student with a bad job you can live very comfortable, buy whatever you want and don’t need to think about every lunch, shoes or electronics you’re going to buy. There is an old true saying that money makes you free and it applies to everyone there because you can really survive easily a long time with money earned after a few months of work. And with regards to the fact that most of the prices are on the same or often lower level than in Europe, we could easily have bought a full tank in the car, plenty of food, a tent and could disappear from all the people into the mountains and all different parks for two weeks and have a great carefree time without going bankrupt.

In conclusion, I find the US great place to gain new experience, earn some money and meet a new lifestyle, culture and way of thinking, but from my point of view not much frankly friendly for living, with a strange legal system, where freedom developed into a complicated system of many different acts and which is very difficult for other people, used to the european lifestyle, to get accustomed to.

© td 04.06.2006