Woke up at 7:24, 26 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Laid in bed waiting for it to happen, then got up and made a typical breakfast of toast with three or four cheeses, tasteless out-of-season tomatoes, a hard-boiled egg, soysage, fruit juice from concentrate and a half grapefruit, sections sliced very carefully. No tea this morning, because getting up wasn’t so hard. I got “dressed up” in a collared shirt, way-too-tight black pants that I bought in New York City for my sister’s beautiful wedding last summer, and the only sports jacket I own, perhaps because I never wear one, somehow retaining from my skateboarding years a feeling that it represents the robotic monotony of the “real world”. I normally dress more casually, but I knew tonight I would be going to a restaurant to do a “review” with one of my female colleagues, and it always pays to look nice around women, as well as the people who are giving you money. What a sellout I am.

I walked to work because it appeared to be raining outside, and biking in the rain is neither fun nor remotely safe, what with the decreased visibility and Budapest’s terrible, arrogant drivers. Sometimes I’ve been honked at for not letting people turn in front of me even when I have the right of way. As if pressing the brake, then the accelerator is such a burden for you lazy asses. I am usually the first or second person to arrive at the office, apart from my two bosses, who must get up at an ungodly hour, and that’s probably why they look so tired all the time. Today I was second. I hung up my coat and put my lunch, sent the previous day from Győr by mama Wolf, in the fridge before turning on my computer and checking my task list for the day.

Much of the day at the office was uneventful. I wrote a few articles - something about going to yoga a little hungover that attempted to be funny, some event descriptions for the upcoming Budapest Spring Festival - and updated the website. I also went through my daily dose of ’net reading, usually first the blogs from my RSS agregator, then the Hungarian portals, then the NYTimes headlines, maybe skimming an article or two, and then to boingboing.net, that reliably excellent directory of wonderful things. Edited a few more articles after lunch and listened to the latest Budacast and Radioclash podcasts. Spent a while reading about the recent evolution of BitTorrent to a pay service and naked yoga. Outside the freezing rain turned to a nicely proportioned snow that stuck to the rooftops and car hoods, then faded back to rain, then stopped.

Dilly-dallied a bit waiting for my coworker Jenny to finish up her work and then headed to dinner around 7:30 p.m. Tonight we visited Cream Café, a recently started restaurant downtown. The food was fine- nothing special but tasty nonetheless. Dessert was the best, for once- a sintastic hot fudge torte of unbelievable richness. An owner of the restaurant and his assistant joined us for dinner, a first for me on these assignments, and a bit irritating as neither spoke English and thus I had a quiet time. Usually we’ll have a talk with the owner, manager, or PR person and then they’ll leave us alone to eat, which I prefer because I get to gossip with my coworkers. After 3 hours we finally made it out the door. I walked to the nearest tram stop at Blaha and rode four stops on one of the new trams, without stamping a ticket, to my stop, called Mester utca (”utca” means street). The tram smelled a bit bad, and I was happy to be out in the cold air, protected by my long green coat that for some reason makes me feel like a WWII German soldier and the scarf my other sister knit for me for Christmas.

Walking towards my apartment building I passed a smoky cafe, glancing inside as I passed to see a pretty dark-haired girl with meticulously-plucked and shaped eyebrows exhaling smoke from a thin, feminine cigarette and laughing. Hungarian women are fanatical about their eyebrows. I realized it wasn’t raining any longer and closed my umbrella, my thoughts drifting from the umbrella’s half-broken handle to the massive lump in my stomach, complaining rather urgently that my tight-ass pants needed to be retired for the night and perhaps indefinitely until I lose a couple of pounds. I walked up the stairs to my apartment, which is on the fourth floor if you live in Hungary, and the fifth floor if you live in the U.S., two at a time as usual, and entered my dark and empty flat, quietly and patiently waiting just as I’d left it for some life to return. I went through the bathroom routine of contact lenses, washing my face and, after stepping out to push the power button on my laptop, brushing teeth. It was 11:15 p.m. and I’d been working for 14 hours, and I felt like I’d done nothing. I wasn’t even tired.

I had a strange feeling at dinner as my coworker chatted amiably and incoherently (for me) with the owner and assistant, her bright eyes open wide and her movements nervous, as if she was at a job interview. It was a feeling of unimportance, even abject meaninglessness in my job. For just a moment, all this stuff that I do for work seemed like such bullshit, everything a paid PR piece or false celebration of some boring Hungarian sight that no, you really don’t need to see. Whatever status or respect I might feel able to claim by being deputy editor of the only “serious” and high-quality English program guide in the country seemed to just disappear, carried away by a pathetic market and poor management. Our top sales person, with the company from the beginning, just quit/was fired last week (for reasons I cannot write here) and for one small second I envied her, saw promise in the lifting of the crushing weight we feel to break even. The feeling passed before I’d even realized it, but in retrospect it was perhaps significant. Sometime, it seemed to say, it will be time to move on.

I recently read the novel Saturday, by Ian McEwan. Set in London in 2002, on the day of the largest international protest against the upcoming Iraq war, the story takes place over an unusually long and eventful Saturday for a neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne and his family. Upon the stage of a world at a turning point, Perowne, who is approaching middle age, goes on extended episodes of self-examination, comparing his life with that of his two children, his demented mother and his unruly father-in-law, while going about his normal routine for the day. This includes making love to his wife, playing squash with his colleague, going grocery shopping, visiting his mother at the old-folks’ home, arguing politics with his budding star of a poet daughter, seeing his son, an also-ambitious blues musician, practice a new song, and so on. Along the way, shaping much of the focus of his musings on conflict and resolution, is a minor car accident with a wannabe thug named Baxter, who later shows up at Perowne’s house and terrorizes his family. Using his neurosurgeon’s spidey sense, Perowne knows that Baxter will soon succumb to a disease of rapid degeneration, perhaps Huntington’s, and thus, framed against the debate of going to war against an agreeably vile dictator for also agreeably sketchy pretexts, Perowne weighs the decision of how to combat his various assailants, real and immediate or long-term and just beyond his grasp.

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Folkdancehall

the first poems ever
are the words to songs sung
by people at dances
and I was there with my Mama

in a different world within the one we dwelt
in suburban Budapest in early 1980s of
my early childhood years
concrete council blocks and communal dancing
houses

yes there they sang we sang
folk of high rise evenings me with them
winding through the dancing hall

and there was Mr Sebő like a Homer
wearing his Health Service prescription specs
he played on contra-fiddle and the hurdy-gurdy
and crowds stepped to the ancient dance recalled
rocking floorboards clapping calls and calls
I called and stepped the steps and danced

alive with no signs of traditionalism
requiring not at all to be explained
the words were songs the people chanted as we danced
our first poems were lively warm and fun

I know now how it was a movement nationwide
that folk bands dancers halls communities thrived on
and beside traditional songs Hungarian poetry
from times historic to contemporaries was embraced
and sung

lard and onion and pickles on bread and jaffa orange squash
served to refresh spiritual Hungry everyone
the dancers and all those who watched and
sat and stood around and wound the strand
of conversation spun here lighter and here thick and grave
as slurred

as the tune was as the hours progressed
matched masterfully to the lurching of the crowd
we danced what we could ultimately
disoriented as fiddlesticks

-Dániel Dányi

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A long time ago, perhaps the 4th century,
There lived a figure, now most legendary.
While the history itself is mostly unclear,
He was the inspiration, for lovers most dear.

A martyr unlike those, we now see in the news,
He mostly kept Romans awake in the pews.
His crime was to marry, those both earnest and just,
Against the wishes of Emperor Claudius.

Alternatively, as the story professes,
He restored the sight of his jailor’s most precious.
This gift of pure love, in his last moments alive,
Became the legacy of Saint Valentine.

Sir Geoffrey Chaucer, a millennium later,
Made Valentine’s love official, putting pen to the paper.
In accordance with women, were the laws of courtship conceived,
In a High Court of Love; judges chosen by poem-reads.

Then came a time, when free-love was the way,
But vanished in the smoke of the hippie hey-days.
Now all that will work, to get a little neck with her,
Is an SUV trip, to the nearest confectioner.

Shower her in chocolate, until her defenses break down,
She’d taste good at least, drenched quite in dark brown.
Bring out the roses, perfumes and parfait,
So that we might smell nice, at least for one day.

Enough is never enough, in terms of her worth,
So prove it, you dunce, until your wallet hurts!
Run all over town- hither, thither and thee.
Purchase her diamonds and pearls, hopefully conflict-free.

All over the world, sorry shmoe’s do the same,
Lest not le jour end up “Singles’ Awareness Day”.
In Japan, however, the hardest put are the dames,
To all – including their boss – they must give gifts away.

Draw up a verse, put it to paper or bark,
If you’re stuck for a rhyme, there’s always Hallmark.
Go on a quest for the keys, to her chastity locks,
Or you can just make like JT, and put your ______ in a box.

Here in Hungary for sure, where chivalry still reigns,
You’ll catch many a fíu going to great pains.
To convince his dear love, with hair of magenta,
That in truth he does love, her paprikash polenta.

The lányok, for their part, go to lengths great and tall,
To spend hubby’s dough, on stringy things at the mall.
What’s an eyebrow’s intention, if not to get plucked,
What’s a good boy’s reward, if not to get _________.

Nowadays all is fair, in love and in war,
In our heads we are rich, and in heart we are poor.
But comes a time, ev’ry February fourteen,
To show our beloved, how much they really do mean.

So put on a show, make this day really count,
Take her out on the town, max out every account.
Put all else aside, except thoughts of true bliss,
And say to her softly: “I love you Dear Miss.”

I’m BORING. I never update my blog. I’m too busy with work. So, here’s what some OTHER people, whom I consider friends, are doing. They should all be famous, so I’m doing my part.

Some people are definitely more poetic than me. Check out my girl Bron, for example. Sometimes you haven’t the faintest idea what the hell she’s writing about, but it just pulls at your heartstrings nevertheless.

In case you wanted to get some web design done by a funky guy with some funky beliefs, peep my man Alain’s website, Omo Osun Designz.

THIS chick can really write, and does so, amazingly well for such a busy professional. I mean, I struggle for hours looking for appropriate synonymns and whatnot. Every two or three weeks, that is.

My homegirl Maya the destroyer is the hippest person I know. She and her rockin’ brass street band, the What Cheer? Brigade, are planning a European tour this summer. How cool is that?

Speaking of epic travelers, my homeboy DJ Magee just spent 4 months in Caracas filming a documentary of the election there. Next, he’s going back to Senegal to make more docs about their election.

One of my best friends from back in the bean, Peter, is also making a documentary about MMORPGs. It’s going to be sick. I’m talking, SUNDANCE 2007 SICK. Don’t sleep.

Khaiim, a really nice family man I know back in the HartBeat just also happens to be an amazing rapper. He just dropped an album with another guy. Check it out here.

One out of the woodwork is the son of a Finnish exchange student my mom’s family hosted. Now he’s the lead singer of Finalnd’s biggest musical act EVER. WTF?

Oh, have I mentioned how awesome my sisters are? One of them just had a baby, is going to business school, and runs a fantabulous aerial theater company (that’s her on the home page). What did YOU do this week?

That’s about it for now! If I forgot you and you want to be famous on what-what.com then holler at me!

お久しぶりです！お元気ですか。長い間手紙を書かなくてほんとにごめんなさい。生活が忙しく、練習時間がないのに日本語がとても下手になってしまいました。ハンガリーで一年と六ヶ月を過ごしました。秋の涼しいお天気は長かったけど、今のお天気はとても寒くて空がグレーばっかりです。雪はまだ降っていません。

今までの生活は浮き沈みでした。九ヶ月ぐらい仕事が見つけにくかったんです。でも、たくさんのアルバイトをして、とても面白かったです。最初から英語を教えることはしないと決めました。なぜなら、新しい経験がほしかったからです。最初の仕事はビジネスの雑誌で写真家でした。ビジネスのセミナーや高いビルの写真をとって、けっこうつまらなかったです。次は日本人の幼稚園で先生になりました。その幼稚園のウェブサイトも作りました：http://www.nakayoshi.hu/.　一回、日本の靴の会社がハンガリーでCMを作ったことがあって、私は日本語·英語の翻訳者でした。すごく寒い夜に２０時間ぐらい性格が強い二人の監督の真中で働きました！その後、他のビジネス新聞で、コピーエディターをしたり、個人英会話したり、インターネットのCMを作ったりしました。

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