Serena, legenda, (...)

Serena a fost de atata timp si inca este numarul 1 mondial dintr-un singur motiv, sa fie clar: pentru ca a muncit mai mult decat oricare alta jucatoare de tenis pe teren azi.
Serena a trebuit sa se ridice deasupra conditiei de persoana de culoare dintr-o America a anilor '80, a trebuit sa invete tenis pe terenuri acoperite de cioburi, a trebuit sa cerseasca mingi de tenis de la cluburi de tenis.

Serena nu este un tanc, nu este un Goliath, este o persoana. Este o femeie cu aceleasi vulnerabilitati ca celalalte femei, care trebuie sa indure toate aceste insulte, sa se ridice deasupra lor si sa faca toate aceste eforturi sa para ca si cum nu se chinuie. Data viitoare cand o comparati pe miniona Halep cu tancul Serena, puneti-va in locul Serenei, sau mai bine, imaginati-va copilul vostru in locul Serenei.
Atat de puternica si de admirat este aceasta Serena!

Daca vrem sa amplificam succesul Simonei si sa aducem un plus de respect Romaniei, pe langa cel adus individual de Simona, numai si numai prin munca ei si a familiei ei, haideti sa ne ridicam si noi la inaltimea momentului si sa nu ne purtam ca o tara mica ce inteapa cu un ac un imperiu, ce se bucura exagerat de succese sporadice in diverse domenii. Romania nu a facut nimic in sensul punerii unor baze in sport sau orice alt domeniu, ca sa zicem ca Halep e doar inceputul. Halep este doar o exceptie.

Asa ca bucurati-va ca aveti ocazia sa vedeti un roman jucand cu o legenda vie si lasati ura deoparte pentru acest meci.
Nu "Bafta, Simona!", ci "Munceste, Simona!"

Why shouldn't we slaughter dolphins?

You will say I've become a bit obsessed with this subject of saving the dolphins, but to me, this just doesn't add up to the life we live in the 21st century. It's unacceptable.
Yes, we have starving children in Africa and decapitations in Saudi Arabia. That also should not be 21st century, but that is humans responsible for other humans, it's a totally different subject, it's very complicated. But this... this is simple. It's a bunch of "humans" murdering intelligent animals for money, which they don't truly need and for food, which they don't actually eat.

    Why shouldn't we slaughter dolphins?

I will not make the case here not to kill any animals (although...), because i currently eat meat; and I won't make it like a 10-commendments thing either, I just want you to realise this for yourself:

1. Animals with self-awareness. There is a limited number of species with proved self-awareness, like chimpanzees, elephants, some cetaceans (killer whales /bottlenose dolphins) and a few others. I would say this makes them pretty special by itself. They realise they exist in this world and they realise they can be seen by others and they want to fit in and so on. Chimps are taught the sign language and when they have kids they teach it to them; parrots are not just memorising words, they can understand them and use them in sentences. I would say that's pretty human like.

The counter argument to this would be that i am being "racist" and i accept murdering of other species just because they are not smart and they are not human-like. That is true, i am being "racist" in this case, but we have to start somewhere, and i chose to start with those cases where animals realise what we are doing to them.
When you steal a baby killer whale from their parents and then you release the parents, the parents won't run away. They will follow you and wait for you to return their baby and communicate with him, while you're dragging him away to an aquarium or worse.

2. The "cute and cuddly" reasoning. I heard this reasoning a few times lately and it basically says that activists for the "Save the dolphins" movement favour the cute and cuddly animals and they don't really care for the other species, like sharks.

Me, I support the "cute and cuddly" reasoning, but only from the human mind perspective. What i am saying is that objectively, this shouldn't matter. After all, killer whales are pretty killery. However, you have to be pretty sick in the head to murder the family dog for food, after he's been your companion for so long, after he was waiting for you when you came home from work and he played with your kid and he rested his head on your stomach when your stomach ached.
Very much like that, I consider the human race to be pretty sick in the head to slaughter dolphins, after you saw Flipper (bad thing, but it made you happy), after they splashed you at Seaworld (bad thing, but it made you happy) and after you trained them to help autistic kids (still a bad thing but it made your autistic kid happy).
Also, sharks are not that smart, they are basically driven by instinct. Still, it is a wild animal and shouldn't be killed just so some can have their fancy shark fin soup.

There's much more to say but that's all I had to say for now and if you want to help, just don't go to SeaWorld or any aquarium that has dolphins/killer whales and make other people aware of this.

If you want to help even more, you can visit http://www.dolphinproject.org and you can sign a petition or donate. You can also watch several movies and read several books on this subject, here's a few:
The Cove   Blackfish   Death at SeaWorld

Still LIVESTRONG

Photo courtesy of simplyRobin

Say some one tells you that you could save the lives of thousands, tens of thousands of people. That you could inspire hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their struggle or their close ones' struggle with cancer. That you could inspire millions of people to start running, cycling, "just do" something with their lives.
But all that will have to come at a price, at your own expense. You would have to become a sports hero, using illegal methods.
Would you still do those beautiful inspiring things by cheating?.............................................................................................................................................

Would you kill Hitler when he was still an innocent person at 19 years old? Would you stop the use of placebo medicine, just because in itself it is a deceitful medicine?

I am not saying that the answer to those questions is yes or no. It's just something to think about.

At the same time I'm not suggesting that that's what Lance Armstrong was thinking before conquering the cycling world. Actually almost definitely this was not his first thought, however... in the end, the good has been done.

My biggest disappointment with Lance Armstrong is that, even though I always knew in the back of my mind that he wasn't clean, he did not just deny the doping accusations. He was adamant against them and he went to incredible lengths to support his status. But that's probably also partly attributed to his arrogant, cocky persona.

Also the fact that he did not feel he wasn't doing anything wrong at the time, might sound ridiculous to some, but it certainly doesn't to anyone who knows a thing or two about cycling. Doping was and still might be as "water in their bottles" and "air in their tires" to the cyclists and most probably no cyclist in the Tour, at least in those times, could not consider himself as entirely innocent. So if you call Armstrong a big lie, might as well call the whole sport of professional cycling a big lie. However I can't and I still think it's a beautiful sport and I love it.

When I was younger, I read his book "It's not about the bike" (a title which coming from his mouth sounds ironic these days). It was my first online purchase ever, it was the first and only book that inspired me at that level to be a good and a fair person and to try to achieve something great.
I am one of those persons that do not possess that natural great drive to continuously work towards achievement of goals, I'm known to slack from time to time and I need these type of incentives to keep me going. His book and himself were and still are one of those incentives.

Whenever I go cycling indoor or outdoor I still wear his US Postal t-shirt in which he won his first Tour de France, a t-shirt that I've bought during a trip to London with the colossal sum for me back then of 75pounds, approximately a third of my allowance for that trip. Whenever I get out of a saddle to climb a small hill, I sometimes look back, as if I'm Lance looking back at Jan Ullrich on the Alpe d'Huez before attacking and when i look down to my shirt, I can still see his necklace going left and right in the rhythm of his upbeat pedaling.
Those are images that stayed with me and still motivate me after all these years and no one can take them away from me, no doping scandal, no confession and certainly no number of people who think the world is strictly split into good and bad, throwing rocks at him.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the emotions, the hype, the pounding of the heart when he won a climb  or when for the first time he couldn't keep up on a climb, the feeling that you can reach the moon... those were real... they still ARE.

So for all these, I felt that I needed to write this and say "Thank you, Lance!"

as i was saying

what you do in this life, does matter! this is a sentence that has been following me for a long time and always when i heard it it made my guts move around inside of me... and that is because i knew somewhere deep inside that this sentence holds some truth with it and i also knew that i am not treating this life as i should... i was treating it as if we're nothing but a quark in the infinity of the universe and we don't matter so what's the point of really trying to make the best out of this life...

right now in front of you, in front of the whole internet i declare NO MORE!... i have changed in the past month like i haven't changed in 26 years of life and it's in the best way possible and i have a most special person to thank for this... i won't say any names, because names wouldn't do justice...

therefore i have even changed the title of my blog and i am no longer imaginary... i now feel i exist and i feel that with this change i will be better in everything i do... but i will let you be the judge of that... for now i won't post any new photos because i am too busy absorbing life with the underestimated duo of eyes and brain, which is far better than any camera!

self-help from someone else

It's true! i know u can't believe it, but it's true. i can improve myself. i don't mean that i actually can, but there is room for improvement. and it's possible that the only way to do it is to compromise and express my feelings in the raw shape in which they're born in my mind. in my mind... in my mind.... and i say "compromise" because my raw thoughts would hurt a lot of people... they would make some people cry, they would make some of them laugh, and some of them go "hmm"... especially john tickle.... but it would certainly make some of them beat the shit out of me and we wouldn't want to ruin me pretty face now, would we?

so what should i do? should i say or should I draw?... should i jpeg or should i raw?...

this article is based on andrei (not me), a guy, a true story, a stig, an esteemed collegue of a true artist.. and this guy, story, stig says... u could be better: don't use the english in your stories, just spice them up with it....

mmm... considering this as the first step in improving myself i would have to say no... i love writting in english, because
a: i am no patapievici with romanian words
b: if u're no patapievici with words, my writting in romanian would sound like rudarel singing led zeppelin...

deci, in concluzie, i prefer writting in english and spice it up with romanian and i prefer to stay at this level, sounding like a semidoct... a snob above the average... a noblesse oblige lookalike... a masculine lolita pille...

andrei did give me a push to start improving myself, so the next thing i'm gonna do is beeing more honest to me, to you, to all my closest friends... but not to the world... because as we've learned in a previous post, sharing your feelings with the world is a faux pas... but beeing dead honest in a more restricted environment can be refreshing...

and on this bombshell, it's time to end... (did it make more sense now?)

Rotterdam on a noisy august day

Some would spend hours admiring a rembrandt... others would spend their day laying down on the grass thinking about how blessed they are that they're hippies... me... just show me a beautiful bridge and i'm a happy happy man!

" I stole Rossi's bike and he can't catch me hehe... they sent him directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 25 points!"

Nelson Piquet on the Renault F1 car on a roundabout in the center of Rotterdam

Today i write about dolphins

Today i write about these inspiring creatures who actually do make you feel like there's more to them than making kids laugh... they seem to know more than we do, with that smug smile on their faces, don't they?... even though when you look at them and you say they're so friendly they would never harm you, i can never stop thinking that best thieves never look like thieves.
What if some day they will say: "goodbye and thanks for all the fish" :) whilst they launch an attack on people who bathe in the shallow waters, an attack that would make sharks go "daaamn"... that would be too obvious... but what if one day, while doing a double tulup with a screw they will unveal some major secret on us.. like in the end of "the sixth sense" or like in "matrix"...
to be honest... i really think that's possible, i really think that dolphins can one day make all your history, all your knowledge about mathematics and all your accomplishments become absolete...
a dolphin can make stephen hawking pretty effortlessly look like a horseshoe... which is not far
and on that bombshell it's time to end.