Alanica Fara Frica

Well, obviously since I haven’t posted on this blog in over year, I probably wont again.  I do plan to keep my picture site updated.  Don’t hesitate to send me an email and I’ll be happy to let you know how things are doing here and what future plans may be.

-alan p

Sorry I haven’t written in about a month.  Don’t really have any specific excuse.  Of course, I choose to update you now when I have to catch a train in a matter of minutes to head across the country.  So here is the past month or so…

1. Had a party for Women’s Day on 8 March.  It was an office party that raged from 3pm till 11:30 on a tuesday.   
2. After chipping my tooth on a homemade bagel, I had to go to Bucharest for a dentist appointment.  Met up with some friends and we hung out a few days to check out the city.
3. My fountain project is moving along extremely slowly, but it is always moving foward.
4. Began talks to start a new non-profit organization the will be some sort of arts association that will promote events and arts education.  More details to follow.
5. Agreed to participate in the first showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Transylvania some time in may.
6. Suttlely beginning to rock out on the ukelele.
7. Kept my plant alive.

Well, I haven’t been taking too many pictures lately, but I’m heading out for the next week to visit volunteers that live in the area of Timisoara in the southwest of the country as part of a work exchange that we have organized.  Then over to buch for a follow up dentist appointment. 

Everyday I get emails from people in the states all asking for the same thing…  “We want to see old timey pictures of Reghin”  I mean, my inbox gets filled everyday with requests.  Come on people, is it really that important?  Oh who am I kidding, of course it is!  So here ya go.  Check out http://www.szaszregen.ro and just to make it easier for you, its all in Hungarian!  I think kepek means pictures and kovetkezo is next.  So if you are one of the big Reghin fans you’ll find hours of entertainment… well if you spend an hour looking at each photo you will.

This and the picture above are how the central park looked after it was first built around 1960.  My project is in the place where the square pool is.

Well, today the mayor and I met with the local news station so they can do a story on the project.  I am making some images for them to put on screen, but I think they are just going to talk about it behind the desk… you won’t get to see my pretty face tripping over the romanian language in an interview.  I was surprised that the mayor allowed this interview to happen.  It is a really good sign of progress because once the images get shown to the public, they are going to hold him accountable for its completion.  The story should air next week, as soon as the engineers office is able to estimate a budget for the project. 

I am trying to bring back the original theme of the blog of exploring what I am doing at 8:28pm….

Well this weekend I found myself walking into the Sighisoara Blues Festival at that time each day.  The festival was great.  I hadn’t seen good live music in a while.  Although I didn’t really get to see much of the actual concerts because we would leave early to get a table at the restaurant where the after party was each night.  The musicians (mostly romanian and hungarian bands) would play till 5-6 in the morning.  I also got to work on my own musical chops by jamming with a few other volunteers who brought their guitars to sighi that weekend.  Them on guitars, me on the ukelele… I did mention I started playing the ukelele, didn’t I?

Another volunteer fowarded me a link to a video on youtube from a phone company here that just about nails all the funny stuff you see on the streets here.  Check it out, and believe me, maybe the actual video has actors, but I definately see this stuff on the streets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv_fV-SfWmQ

My coworker brought his new born girl to work today.  I think she is about 2 or 3 months old now.  After ten minutes of taking all the layers off (think the little brother in A Christmas Story) I was surprised to see her ears were pierced.  I asked if it was common and they said all girls get pierced 3 days after birth.  It was pretty wierd to see such a small child with earrings.

So I headed to Zalau, which is a town about 70 km north of Cluj for a superbowl party with other volunteers.  They show it on a sports channel here live at 1:30 am.  There were about 20 people there, and after a satuday night of all being together it was hard to stay up till 5am watching the game.  But what was really interesting was that not only were the commentators speaking in Romanian, but the station only had a commercial break inbetween each quarter, and they were just promos for the sports channel.  It was kind of nice to be able to watch the champion match as a football game, and not the commercial spectical it has become.  Plus I knew I could just watch the good commercials on the internet later.  In the end, I was happy to see the Colts win because the other two americans who stay in Reghin are from Indy and are big fans, plus, I don’t care for Rex Grossman at all and don’t think he deserves a Super Bowl ring.  Professional football doesn’t need two mediocre quarterbacks getting a ring two years in a row.

Many people have asked me to see images of the project I have been working on and I kept putting off posting them because I am constantly improving on them.  However, I will post what I have so far.  The project is in the central park in Reghin.  There is an old fountain that hasn’t worked in decades and it creates a major hole in the park.  So I am hoping to demolish the fountain and replace it with a new one and a gazebo.  The gazebo can be used as a stage for small events, which now they bring in temporary stages for.  The new fountain will be in the shape of a violin (the towns pride and joy) and will actually be more of a reflecting pool more than a fountain.  I haven’t worked out too much of the plan for water jets seeing how I don’t know too much about the insides of fountains.  So here are two pics of the existing site…

And here is an model of what I am purposing…

Well that’s enought excitement for now.  I showed these images to the head of the landscaping department and he really liked the ideas.  He has worked for the city for 20 years and hopefully will be very instrumental in pushing the project through.

Well, I must get out and enjoy the beautiful snow!

Some more random facts that I randomly came across on wikipedia:

• The population of Reghin, Romania is 36,173
• The population of Marrero, Louisiana is 36,165
• The area of Reghin is 56.1 sq km (21.6 sq mi)
• The area of Marrero is 22.2 sq km (8.6 sq mi)

Went to Cluj-Napoca to meet with a civil engineer who helped me get a better understanding of how projects get constructed in Romania.  While there, I realized why I liked going to Cluj so much.  It is the biggest university city in the country so there are lots of people in their early-mid twenties.  There aren’t many young adults here in Reghin, so it is nice to get out and know that I won’t be surrounded by high school kids when I go out at night.  Even when I was in Ploiesti, there were university age kids, but it was different (it was the south).  Many of the kids there dress in cheap european fashion and listen to awful manele music (modernized gypsy music).  But in Cluj the kids seem to be much more… uh… individual.  And the cafes, bars and restaurants reflect it.  They play good music that isn’t just the same bad american and romanian pop music that plays on all the radio stations.  Once I saw that there were kids with dreadlocks there, I knew I’d be able to find some good music.  Isn’t it funny how that always happens?