Denisa. English version

I’m not sure you’ll even get to read this, but I’m writing it anyway.

During the past four years, your amazing show – Seinfeld – has been the soundtrack of my nights. Mine and my husband’s, that is, and he’s not as big a fan as I am. I think I know all the lines from all nine seasons by heart and when I happen to sleep away from home, I have trouble falling asleep if I don’t bring my laptop with me [for the "sleeping soundtrack", you know].

Like many other fans, I think what you and Larry David did was pure genius. I believe there’s a Seinfeld scene for almost every situation in real life and whenever I hear / see / live something that can be related to one of your shows, I laugh and think of you, Elaine, Kramer and George. Oh, and of course, evil Newman! [yes, yes, I know they're not real, just characters, but to me they are].

I just wanted you to know that at least one person in Romania loves you and your work unconditionally [in one episode, you said you never had a job, but that doesn't mean you didn't work hard] and I wanted to do it before the year ends. Let’s call it my year end resolution.

Thanks for reading, I’d be honored to know you are now aware of my existence.

Happy New Year, Jerry Seinfeld!

photo credit

I know I’m supposed to be serene and sh*t, but sometimes it feels like I’d said “Serenity now!” one too many times.

I have friends [and some none-friends] who insisted that social networks are bullsh*t and that they’ll never ever create accounts for themselves, only to see them, a few months later, as active on Facebook as they were in real life. Sometimes even more active. Sure, people change, but why be so radical against something when in the back of your mind you know there’s a slight possibiliy you’ll be using it in the future? Isn’t changing your mind making you lose [some of] your credibility? I’m just saying.

There’s something about this city that makes me love it. My heart skips a beat whenever I see images like the ones in the video below. I love New York City so much that I anxiously await the new season of “Gossip Girl” just so I can see a little bit of footage of the best city in the world in autumn.

Enjoy “The Street Aesthetic of New York City”, by Christian Andersen, and tell me you don’t love this city!

via Fubiz

If you’re ever in Romania and want to visit some cool places to tell your friends about, I have two recommendations for you. These places are so cool, we should consider them tourist landmarks!

Timişoara

Timişoara is probably the best city in Romania. I could be biased, since I was born in Timişoara, but most people still think it’s a great city. It’s definitely the best in the west. Yo!

So if you are ever in Timişoara, ask a friend – or your GPS – to take you to Scârţ – Loc Lejer, at 1, Zoe Street. Literally, it means “Squeak [interj.] – Light / loose place” — and it is! Scârţ is more than a bar, it’s a place where you should hang with friends, play chess, read, socialize – online or offline – and generally have a nice, quiet morning or afternoon. I haven’t seen it in the evening, but spring and summer mornings are best spent in the garden. You can sit on one of the logs, on an old train bench or in a hammock. There’s a hammock at each table [well, table is to much said, because even the tables are made of logs], and trees and vegetation are surrounding each table, for a feeling of seclusion [but in a good way!].

Inside the old house, each wall has been painted or decorated. I consider the entire house to be a work of art. An entire wall has been painted by an art student, while another one is covered in beer caps forming the word SCART. The opposite wall is filled with old black and white photos and someone wrote “Photoshop – 1970′s” on them. And that’s just one room, which, by the way, has a sofa in it. We asked and apparently, it’s OK to lie on it if you feel tired.

The bar room is probably the best of the three. The bar itself is covered with coins from all over the world [so I guess that if you're going to visit Scârţ (read like "skirts" or maybe like this - click on "Listen") and bring a coin or two from your country, your gesture will be appreciated!], the “menu” consists of pieces of paper placed inside of a big har that hangs from the ceiling, plus the names of the drinks are hilarious. This room’s ceiling is completely covered by colorful open umbrellas, while on the walls you can see old safety or theatre posters and advertisements, train or bus direction plates and so on.

You’ll need a few hours if you want to view all the wall decorations in this bar, but you probably won’t feel the time passing!

Here’s one photo, but you can see more on my Facebook page; there’s an entire album. Oh, and here are a few more pictures.

Oradea

The second bar you absolutely have to see in the Western Romania is situated in Oradea, Bihor County. It was just recently opened so I didn’t visit it yet, but thanks to the Internet and especially blogs, I feel like I’ve been there already.

Photo by Oradeanul

The name is Lacto-bar. The owners tried to recreate the feeling of the 1980′s, but without the communism or rationalized food [as Lili well pointed on her blog]. On this bar’s walls you’ll find a half of a Dacia model 1310 [Romanians' favorite car since 1966], old wall clocks, old vacuum cleaners, old phones, a very old TV set, an entire wall covered with beer bottles – both old and new, full and empty -, old local newspapers etc.

Chandeliers made from grates, audio cassettes, glasses or clothes clamps hang from the ceiling, and in the middle of the room lies the “masterpiece”: and old Dacia 1310 in which you can sit and enjoy a siphon, kicking it old style.

LactoBar is situated at 11, Republicii Street, in Oradea. Photos can be seen here, here and here.

I just saw this on Fubiz: Fantastic Design Works Co. decorated a restaurant in Tokyo and it now looks like a scene from Alice in Wonderland.

These Japanese! You gotta love them for how weirdly ahead of the world they are! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a fool for nice objects. Sure, I know that’s not normal, I shouldn’t be attached to things, but I can’t help it.

Maybe it’s because I didn’t have as many things growing up in communist Romania. And it wasn’t just me, none of us had many things. I remember receiving a small green [PET] bottle from Hungary, right after 1989; my family kept it for years and used it to keep the vinegar for our weekend camping trips. All the bottles we had were made of glass, PET containers were such rarities! Now there are PET bottles and plastic bags everywhere you look – we have so much garbage lying around that we needed an event [Let's Do It, Romania] to collect it al. And of course, a few days later, Romania was, again, full of garbage.

And back to my things and the strange addiction I have for hoarding – I try not to collect everything, to limit myself to fewer, nicer objects, although when I was younger I used to collect napkins, postcards, beer bottle caps, plush toys and pens. I sold my 500-pen collection at a charitable auction but guess what, I still have around 100 pens. I can’t help it!

I was thinking it would be nice if we could photograph objects in 3D and keep their images or holograms instead of the actual objects. That would save us a lot of space! Maybe 10 or 20 years from now it will be made possible.

Here are only a few of the things I bought not because I needed them, but because they looked cute. Read the rest of this entry »

I was very excited to see that the second trip from Rediscover Romania project was announced.

Rediscover Romania is a project developed by Petrom, Romania’s biggest oil company, and supported by other Romanian companies such as Dacia [car manufacturer], Romtelecom [telecommunications], Paralela 45 [travel agency], Muzeul Ţăranului Român / Romanian Peasant Museum and BCR [bank].

I was a proud participant in the first trip throughout the country and it was a great experience. Romanians like to travel the world but they haven’t seen everything their country has to offer. I’m 28 and not proud to admit that I haven’t yet been to the Danube Delta, for example. And I’m sure many other Romanians have yet to visit many cities in Romania.

I think it’s great that Petrom is redescovering Romania and showing Romanians the beauties of their country.

I’ve always been a big fan of Sony cameras. Well, not always, but ever since I first touched one, a very expensive digital camera, I was hooked. I don’t even know what model it was [well, a Google search has cleared that for me, it was a DSCF717], but it was awesome.

When I could afford it, I bought myself a nice Sony H5, probably the best bridge camera ever made. I still have it and, although it’s gonna be six years old this autumn, it still takes incredibly awesome pictures.

Since that was my first camera, I figured all digital camera have to be at least as awesome as mine. So after many years and a few hundreds of thousands of pictures taken, I “upgraded” to Sony Alpha A1. It was a second hand DSLR camera – my first digital single lens reflex. I got it pretty cheap, a lot cheaper than my first Sony, and it had two lenses. I got some macro filters, an external flash and things seemed to be good. But man, it was too big! I had to carry it around in a big bag, all the accessories took up a lot of space, using the manual settings was a bit harder than the “auto” mode and so after a few months I decided it was too much of a camera for me. Read the rest of this entry »

I found this video on a Romanian blog* that said it was 9 square meters, but 90 sq feet is actually 8.3612736 sq meters. That’s smaller than my kitchen!

I don’t know how others feel like, but I’m a “nester”**. I like my home, I need a big space for me to be able to turn around and for my latent claustrophobia not to act up. But I do appreciate this woman for creating a cozy apartment even though she pays $700 a month to live there. I’m guessing rents in New York City are much more expensive, and in Manhattan even more, but still, $700 is a lot of money for such a small place. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I updated all of my blogs to WordPress v. 3.0.5 – or maybe an earlier version, who knows?, there’s been one thing bugging me. Why on Earth has it become impossible to change the permalink structure?

I can change it, sure, but once I save the post or page, it changes back to “fit” the title. For example, I created a page called “I ♥”, with the permalink http://denisuca.com/i-love. I gave it a short name because there are so many pages on my blog and there was literally no room for a longer one.

After the WordPress update, Read the rest of this entry »