At The Movies

Today's discovery:

http://zskategoria.blog.hu

A hatékonyságukat tuti a magyar közigazgatásban tanulták, mindehova tök sokan mennek, állandóan fontoskodva fel alá rohangálnak, de sose történik semmi. Csak beszélnek, meg terveznek, közben a fél várost széthordják a színesfémtolvajok a maradékot meg felrobbantják. Ha meg beszólsz, hogy lehetne már valamit csinálni akkor mindenki némán rád néz a főnök meg kidobat a teremből. Ezt egyébként imádják, mindig feltűrt inggel , hózentrogerban vannak az irodában és kávéznak. Komolyan mondom szerintem csak azért szálltak be a kolumbiai drogháborúba, hogy ingyen kávébabot lopjanak az irodába.

[They are as efficient as [any country's] public administration, they always deploy a truckload of people and cruise around as if they were important but nothing happens. They just talk and plan while half the city is taken apart by smalltime crooks and they blow up the other half. If you stand up to them demanding they do something, everyone stares at you and the boss has you thrown out of the room. They love this; they always linger around their offices with their sleeves rolled up and wearing suspenders and constantly drink coffee. I tell you they only got involved in the Colombian drug wars to steel free coffee beans for their office.]

(Typical FBI agents in B or "subprime" movies)

Don't vote!

Random Run-ins

As you can imagine, the university itself is a huge park. It's of course full of squirrels. But it's quite surprising how these little rodents are not only not afraid of the giant humans walking around but try to play chicken with us. They lie down in the middle of the walkway and don't move until you almost step on them. Then they run like hell of course sometimes scaring me because I wouldn't even see them at first.

However it's not only the squirrels that are so brave. Apparently some people in this nation of cars were really persistent in using parking places they should have not. Thus the above sign.

And I guess now we all know what "good ol' G. W." will be up to after returning the keys to the White House.

Believe it or not, I took this picture in the University of Houston main library. Their DVD collection is rather small but still they found a way to honor the M4 under construction in Budapest. Or maybe they just loved the cover and wanted to see if the guy will actually be run over by the train. Anyway, they really have Kontroll on the shelf. (I wonder how many people have actually watched it so far... Probably more than L'auberge Espagnole, which they also keep on stock.)

Walter for President

Are you smarter than...

a 5th grader? I hope so. When it comes to law I quite possibly am. And this conviction has been confirmed when I got my first ever U.S. law school exam results back. This was in a class specifically for foreign lawyers trying to get a handle on the chaos they dare calling a legal system here, so I guess it wasn't as authentic as if I took it in any other class but still. It felt nice.

The troubling part was to see how much people have prepared and still ended up with a C or even C-. The prof constantly said everyone should prepare their outlines for each class in advance because it would be crucial when it comes to the test. (Of course we couldn't use them, as this was a closed book exam.) I suspect a lot of people have fallen behind with their outlines and instead of studying from the textbook they first rushed to finish their notes and then learned from those. In the meantime, I managed to read the book five times. They may have missed a whole lot of important parts in their papers and may also have misunderstood important concepts, which, in turn, they incorrectly studied from their papers.

I'm not much of an "outline guy" myself. I got through five years of law school with preparing no more than 3 outlines (as far as I can remember) two of which were for the final exams at the very end. (I simply didn't like the notes I managed to gather from other more diligent people.)

So, I'm anxious to see how many people will abandon their outlines. And how I will do on the REAL law school exams (and the one that I'll have at the business school with quite negligible background in economics.)

P.S.: I'll try to stop being such a nerd from now on. :)

Next stop...

Scotland. That's even more odd. Wonder when Hungary gets a tropical storm.


Update: Scotland is saved. (Lucky bastards...)

A hurricane to hit...

CANADA? This is global warming in action, ladies and gentlemen.

Hung(a)ry

I just realized that I haven’t spoken Hungarian with anyone (except over the phone) since I left NY in July. Sure, some people wanted to learn how to say this and that in Hungarian or at least try to figure out if it’s similar to any language they know. Usually they couldn’t find anything similar. On exception was when I met a bunch of Kazakhs and we found one common word: “szakáll” (i.e. beard). That's a real conversation starter. What can you possibly say about beards? How is someone supposed to talk about them for more than 2 minutes? :) And also, people wanted to learn swearing in Hungarian. At first they asked how I would say certain four letter words and when I told them it depends on the situation and I could think of at least 5 different words for it just out of the top of my head, they agreed that it is a rich language indeed.

Anyway, a couple of days after Ike hit us a friend of mine currently studying in Belgium sent me a link. I read the article, it was about a guy also in Houston who had some trouble with Ike. I sent him an e-mail asking which part of the city he lived in and we exchanged contacts. A week later he sent me a message that they are having a BBQ at his place and I should join, it will be only Hungarian ex-pats. So I went there this Friday and we had an awesome time. There were three guys, two with their wives, who are both gorgeous btw, and we had some old fashioned “shashlik” together.

It was so much fun speaking Hungarian again with actual people and not through the phone. They were really funny people, jokes kept flying around all night. Luckily, I was the only lawyer there so we didn’t talk much about work. Now I know that if I fly back home through Paris, I have to be ready to break my personal record on 400m flat run, because the layover between the Houston-Paris and the Paris-Budapest flight is quite short.

Playing cards again

No, I haven't moved to Vegas. I just got my Texas ID card. Finally, I have a better chance to fool the bouncers at the clubs (luckily the ladies don't ask for an ID when you start talking with them once you're inside). Not that they had any problem with looking at my passport for my date of birth (=DOB on my new ID, which I think is funny because of its Hungarian meaning: drum). So far, even my Hungarian ID card was good enough to let me in at places where alcohol is served (remember: the legal age for drinking is 21 and they really care about it around here). But I can finally ditch questions about my home country, which is nice if asked by some random girl but pisses me off when bored bouncers hold me up with such cr*p at the entrance. Come to think of it, maybe I will use this new ID to play some of the old games I used to. At some places in Budapest I was better off posing as some guy from NYC. Now I have "proof" for "being from" Texas. :D

I also got a bunch of business cards. From the university. Try the convince the university that you need a business card at home. :) At first I didn't know why they wanted me to have them but then I realized that all these mixers, parties and conferences are good occasions to get rid of them. And I can also add them to my collection. I always keep some of my old cards just for fun.

Another somewhat surprising development of the day was that when I started writing this post, I heard yelling and screaming from a neighboring home. I pulled up the blinds and saw someone running around with something on fire in the dark. Then I realized that the voice sounds familiar so I looked closer. I turned out that one of the Russians tried to put out a birthday cake that was on fire. Since she is in my class I went over to help her when she told me I should join her birthday party. The guys surprised her with a cake and those candles that relight themselves once you blow them out. They couldn't stop the relighting. :)

Homework

Everyone, look up Jeff Dunham on Youtube. It's R.O.F.L.M.A.O (that is rolling on the floor laughing my a** off).