So told to me by Sawa-chan, 3-year-old know-it-all and one of my new favorites at Nakayoshi.  Since the graduation (see pic) and spring break, we’ve gotten 4 new kids to replace the 5 that moved on to bigger and better things.

So, the past two Wednesdays have been super hump-days, because for two weeks in a row I’ve gotten up at 7 am, romped with above mentioned knee-highs for 6 hours, taught 2 private English classes downtown, then headed off to 8 hours of HAM.  Basically, a 21 hour day.  Ouch.  So if you’re wondering what HAM actually looks like, I’ve uploaded a PDF to the site.  Click HERE to read all the exciting business news.  I was actually kind of proud of this one because I thought of some pretty snappy headlines.

Lastly, word from the Trinity College International Hip Hop Conference this weekend is that things were “unbelieveable”.  Can’t wait to see pictures and congratulations to everyone graduating this year!

The ‘rents arrive this week for two weeks of central eastern European fun and relaxation.  This marks the first of several visits I’ll be getting from family and friends from home, including my sister and her husband in June.  Should be a fun and busy trip, with stops in Budapest, Gyor, Lake Balaton, Vienna, Prague and elsewhere if time permits!  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my family - well, Christmas wasn’t so long ago, but I’ve been living outside the US for damn near 2 years now.  All the preparations and logisitics planning brings me back to another parental visit while I was a student in Japan - wow THAT was a long time ago.  See you soon mom and dad!

The weather has finally gotten just lovely, and we spent a very nice Saturday afternoon plodding along in another slow-but-fun Critical Mass bike ride. This was my second time participating in the event, the first being upon my first arrival here as resident in September 2005. Like that one, the crowds (estimated at 32,000) made the riding quite slow, but we got to cruise up and down the river and over the chain bridge for a really enjoyable day. Later on we had dinner with blogger-buddies Eszter and Balazs (who also rode that day). Here are some of the pictures.

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Spent Easter with E and the fam in Gyor (pronounced “gyur”, kind of gutterally [see, I'm learning!]), although her mother was MIA due to some pretty serious surgery. This was pretty traumatic for me as well, because I usually go to Gyor just to get in on some sweeeet home cookin’! Just kidding. Sort of. I realized that this weekend marks a year since I first came to Hungary, on spring break from my JET job last year. Wow, the times fly.

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Had a kind of weird experience last night as E and I went on a triple date with my coworker from Nakayoshi, S-chan, and her Hungarian husband, and some of our blogger friends.  Oh, and the married couple brought a random friend along too.

Now, S-chan and I get along fine; she’s friendly and we had been meaning to meet up for some asobi (”play”) basically since we started working together.  Due to hectic schedules and such, things never materialized until last night, which was admittedly after a week of trying to figure out a good date for everyone.  E and I had noticed a new, quite nice-looking restaurant in our neighborhood and invited them to try it out with us.  We invited our blogger friends too as we’d been meaning to hang with them recently as well, and one of them studies Japanese so we thought there would be a obvious, like, connection or something.

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Finally, after 7 months of living in Budapest, I have decided to take Hungarian lessons.  The reason is multi-fold: one, I was getting pretty sick of not being able to understand anything, even “who are you?”, two, I felt a bit embarrassed about being here for so long and not even really giving it a shot, and three, I recognized that being able to do normal things like order beer(s) and falafel(s), introduce myself, or speak with people without a third party (usually E), not to mention indicate to people that I gave two cents about their proud culture, would lead to an increased sense of belonging and self-sufficiency, which had been lacking. 

All that said, I want to document this process.  So I’ve decided to list every Hungarian word I know - before I start learning anything.  Note:  I’ll list meanings where appropriate (the rest will be for my Hungarian audience to laugh at), and no guarantees on spelling!

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Have been meaning to post a link showing my first Flash “banner ad”.  Yes, I am now officially one of those people you don’t know exist, but probably hate.  Hey, I did it for E’s non-profit!

Well, here’s the link: http://www.exit.hu.  Look at the top of the page and if you see a sort of tannish ad with a face, white lettering and a “Twilight Zone” effect then that’s mine.  I’m just a few more steps from being rich and famous.

Stencils ‘R Us

Ya gonna need a bigger boat.

Flags

City of colors

Things are on the up and up, I’ve been telling myself all this week, most recently because I recieved payment for my work as an interpreter for a TV commerical being filmed in Budapest, but also because I scored a new gig working as a fill-in editor at BBJ sub-company Hungary AM.  Basically, I amass about 30 abbreviated stories about Hungarian business, economics, politics and such from a newswire and from Hungarian papers, edit them for spelling, format and title and then lay them out in plain text, Quark and HTML formats.  The briefs from Hungarian papers are translated for me by a crack team of dog-eyed Hungarians with mostly Canadian-English accents, and the work is not difficult, although a bit tedious.

The real interesting bit is the working hours: about 8:30pm to between 3 and 4 in the morning.  The “paper” isn’t sent out as such at all - it’s entirely in plain text (aka e-mail), PDF attachment, or web-viewable (HTML) for subscribers only, most of whom, I’ve been told, are Hungarian.  It’s called “Hungary AM” because it’s the first thing these obsessive business types look at when they open their inboxes at 6 am.  Now that the weather is warming up I’ve been riding my awesome racing bike to work, and I’m sure I’ll have some stories of late-night Budapest soon.  I can say so far that it’s a different world, with lots of motorcycle meet-ups and drunken people stumbing around.  Oh wait, that’s not so different from daytime.

In conclusion, I’m well aware of the irony of working for a company abbreviated as HAM, but I am happy that I’ll be bringing home the bacon.  Hyuck, hyuck.

P.S. E and I saw a hilarious Japanese film last night called “A Stranger of Mine”.  Check out the website here, and by all means see this film if it swings through your town.