Time to hit that Road

The time has come to reveal our plans for the near future. Tomorrow we are leaving for Egypt, the land of the Sun ... I hope, because after this winter I do want to see that strange ball of light on the sky again. I will blog about that after we return. And speaking of after we return ... This is when our true next journey will begin. Our destination ... pretty predictable considering my business trip earlier this year:

Luxembourg

My business trip went quite well actually and, as a result, Andreea and I will pack up and move our General HeadQuarters to Luxembourg. And what a great HQ this can be.... Paris in 3 hours, Amsterdam a little more ... and tons of castles and wonderful locations within our grasp. We will travel by car, and yes, finally, the baboon will be able to come out and play ... Nurburgring is probably just one of the places to have fun nearby.

However, it's not all milk and honey... Besides the obvious effort of leaving basically everything behind, it will take a while before we will get settled in appropriately, but we shall do it.

So ... how long are we planning to stay there? For now ... forever...

My New Car

Yes, this is my new car ... uhm ... what was that? You are saying this is the exact same old crazy fat baboon I've been blabbering about already for a couple of times? Well ... you are ... almost wrong.

There are two NEW things I love about the baboon ... first one is the fat paint job which fixed some problems. The car looks sooo goood, I just love it love it love it... took some nice pics today when I picked it up.

and here comes another one...

The second thing ... well ... the fat crazy baboon has now become PSYCHOTIC! With just a push of a pedal, the otherwise very pleasant and almost gentle car becomes an nutter and starts wooshing and swooshing and pulling like a maniac. This is all because of something that young kids these days would call a remapped ECU.

Here's a short flick where I was not pushing hard, had AC on, and 3rd was very slightly uphill:

yeah ... Brian Adams didn't help much either ...

As usual, please don't try this at home... go to a track or a freeway with no traffic ...

So ... the baboon is then almost ready to take us on the big journey ahead ... what big journey? ... coming up ... next...

The Copper Trees

I've been quite the absent blogger lately. But the truth is a big important change is about to happen for me and Andreea, and we don't have that much time left until it does ... and still so many things to do...

But, in the meantime, we payed a visit to Andreea's parents this weekend. It was amazing as usual and I ate once again just like a big fat pig. On Saturday however, we decided to take a trip down memory lane, and went to visit Ipotesti, a place where we've been before ... about seven years ago ... yeah ... that's quite a long time. For my less educated brothers, this is the hometown of Mihai Eminescu, romanian poetry Legend.

Actually, we didn't visit his hometown. We went to the forest where our national hero gained his inspiration. The translation would be The Silver Forest and the Copper Trees ... or was it first the copper trees and then the silver forest ... or something like that.

Equilibrium ... this place can give that.

Say hello to our little friend ...

and that little friend ...

and his little friend too

Andreea walking the silver pathway ...

In fact she liked it so much she started jumping for joy again!

Beyond the snowy path through the copper trees lies the frozen lake. Which looked quite amazing. It was so sunny outside, and yet the lake was fully frozen.

It was a great morning, and we should definitely try this again some time ... seven years from now sounds good.

So, what was I saying... big change ... stay tuned...

Alice? Who the #eck is Alice?

I was quite eager to see this movie. Alice in Wonderland, what a lovely tale to be seen on the big screen in 3D... and by Tim Burton. Can you imagine that? Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton. Well, if you can, then there won't be any big surprises for you.

This movie is exactly  what you would expect, only maybe a little bit more boring and with Johnny Depp not delivering quite the stellar performance you could expect. Tim Burton fantasy is flying all around with very strange characters and a dark-ish tone everywhere. But there are, of course, a few problems so let's start kicking away:
 - Johnny Depp - His performance is not very convincing, as  his character seems to be  unfortunately lost floating somewhere between the scissors guy and pirate from the carribbean throughout the movie.
 - Alice ... who is Alice actually? They could have picked someone better for the part ...
 - "Are you THE Alice?" question... which makes me wonder once again ... who in the heck's name is this Alice everyone keeps asking about ...
 - The ending of the movie kinda made me LOL ... I don't wanna spoil it but let's just say rough business men are not what they used to be ...

All in all not a bad movie, but I was expecting a little bit better ... mister Tim Burton ... off with his head!

Magic Number Seven

Today is a magic day. Seven years ago Andreea and I were going out on our first date.  We were so young and restless then ... and we still are ... I hope. The day we met was a magic moment that turned both our lives around.

I don't have any pictures from then, but I wanted to use this opportunity to post some photos from Morocco, which was kinda magic as well, and only one year later. We had some good times, and some very bad ones, so here are a few pictures from six years ago ...  hmmmn ... it's been six years already...

yes ... two very confused tourists we were ...

still confused ...

but not confused enough  to skip the henna treatment ...

Whatcha lookin at? she's NOT for trade, take your camels!

They say seven is a magic number, which may actually turn up to be true, as this year is looking up to be another life changing moment for us ... here's hoping for the best...

kisses ... hearts ... red BIG HEARTS

Dinosaurs went extinct?

I was a bit shocked today when I read this article on yahoo. It seems like 41 "scientists" from around the world spent a lot of money probably doing their monkey business stuff and in the end came up with this crazy theory that Dinosaurs were killed a couple many million years ago by an asteroid which is such a GROUND BRAKING theory...

Anyway, if you wanna see some scientific and cool but yet unintelligible information on the subject you can go here.

Amateurs ... extinct ... I KNOW Denver is still alive somewhere in USA.

UPDATE: Following a very heated discussion with Lucian we finally discovered what TRULY happened.

The TRUTH is that Chuck Norris came down from the sky on a ball of fire and wiped out all life so that he could start spreading his seed on yet another planet. A mere blast from the meteor was not enough and  Chuck Norris had to finish the job himself, so he hunted down all the remaining dinosaurs and killed them with a roundhouse kick.... which took like a blink of an eye ... because, yeah, Chuck Norris can!

Yes, I know you just dropped your coffee cup from amazement...

Shatter Island

I don't really know what to say here without spoiling the movie. The way Shutter Island met my expectations is closely related to some heavy spoilers, so I'm not gonna talk about that.

Instead, I can describe what I think of Leo ... awww ... beautiful Leo ... He really started going downhill after Titanic. He grew a pseudo-beard ... grew a small beer belly ... he's not that kid who stole the hearts of millions around the globe any more.... Which is why I actually started to like the guy. I think he may actually have become one of the best actors around.

So did Teddy manage to pull himself together after all? I guess you need to go see the movie to find out ...

Sushi Time

Happy 1st of March everyone!!! On such a fine spring day I thought it would be a good idea to talk about Sushi, and since we are on the subject I will also recommend two pretty good sushi places in Bucharest ... So, chop chop, let's get to it!

You will easily notice that this post contains only photos grabbed off the Internetz. That's because ... well ... I'm busy eating when I'm eating ...

Tuna ...mmmmm

We had some very good sushi last evening, so why don't I start with that ... we had a couple of California rolls, a couple of sushi, maki, it was a nice combo. I am a big fan of wasabi, so I put a lot of that into my soy sauce. And, yes, gari shoga  has to be on location for the enjoyment to be complete. What I like most about sushi is that it satisfies my hunger and leaves me with a very soothing Zen sensation in my stomach after I finish eating. It's lite but satisfying at the same time ... giving you everything the body needs through a blend of exotic and sometimes spicy flavors. It can become quite addictive ... Andreea and I are unfortunately hooked ... and it seems we need to start increasing the dosage...

Octopus? I don't mind that ...

The place we got last night's fix is called Sushi To Go and it is the place where we buy our sushi most of the times. You can check out their website over here. They don't have any other Japanese dishes except sushi, but that's not really a problem. What I like most about the place is that it feels fresh ... They don't have a lot of different combos you can buy, and it does seem to be a tiny too expensive to start making your own, but we get our 16 different pieces there for about 80RON, which is not really that bad.

Another place where we had sushi (and enjoyed it) is Sushi Ko. Website is here, but it's pretty useless unfortunately. This is actually a restaurant, unlike Sushi To Go, and they have many Japanese traditional dishes, so you can experience a wider array of flavors from the Japan cuisine. You can get a pretty humongous sushi/maki combo for about 70RON, so it's pretty OK price-wise considering you can expect it to be quite expensive since it's, well, sushi ... in Bucharest. Definitely worth a visit...

There are, of course, quite a lot other places to get expensive Sushi in Bucharest. If you want to get a cheap fix and are in luck, you can find a nice combo at MegaImage for 50RON which is quite OK just as well.

...did I mention Tuna?

If you haven't eaten Sushi yet ... you should go do it .... NOW!

Really ...

Hands will start trembling for sushi... soon ...