LexArrow - it’s in your mind…

This is the title (translation: the time of the cathedrals) of the song that opens the Notre Dame de Paris show. I’ve seen it for the first time in high school at a French class. I’m not a fan of musicals, not by a long shot, but this one is really amazing. Great music, great voices, great choreography, great scenery!

This is the title of a book I’m reading, written by Daniel Goleman. It has too many anatomical details for my taste, but it’s interesting none the less. It sustains that IQ plays only a small part in professional success and in fact EQ makes the difference. EQ meaning capacity to form human relations, self awareness, self confidence, pro-activity and other feelings like these. Everything is based upon documented research. It emphasizes awareness and trusting your instinct. It explains the fact that people are not rational in a mathematic/computer kind of way. The human brain makes decisions based on perception and former experience.

This is not astonishing news, as I’ve heard these things one by one in different situations. The fact that much of the scattered information I’ve been acquiring are in one book is an important value added.

I see this book as a tool to successfully prove some points I couldn’t prove before. For example school teaches only hard skills/technical stuff, but never the soft skills needed in life, not just in business, but in everyday life. It also raises some questions. If people don’t make rational decisions, why try to explain human behavior through inflexible mathematical patterns. I’ve learned so many economical models that our teachers even said they will never happen in reality, but YOU HAVE TO KNOW THEM. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think practice is possible without theory (or the other way around), but I feel I learned a lot of useless things in college that I never applied in almost 2 years of working experience. Well, that’s just the result of going to college in Romania. I had a great time both in school and in high-school with very demanding, but awesome teachers. College was a biiiig disappointment. On the other hand, as a student, I had time for extracurricular activities (a.k.a working) that shaped me and taught me essential things that I will detail in further posts.

Back to the book, if you’re not interested how the amigdala and the limbic system make you react in certain ways, then read this book on the diagonal in some parts. You’ll essentially learn what EQ is, how it manifests, what is it useful for and a few tips on how to improve it.

Today, I presented my graduation paper on “The implementation Knowledge Management Systems”. It wasn’t perfect as I got 9.2 out of 10, but I can live with that. I’m going to have a break for a week or two and then start looking/deciding for an AIESEC traineeship somewhere in Western Europe. This is the plan, at least, but reality may differ .

Here are some photos from my graduation ceremony on 19th of June

This is awesome!!!!! Just put your headphones, make sure there’s silence in the room and play this…It’s scary and funny, but most of all, it’s amazing!

Virtual Barber Shop (Audio…use headphones, close ur eyes) – Click here for the funniest movie of the week

Yellooo there. Mozilla wants to establish a world record for downloads/24h. What’s to download? Firefox 3! I’ve been using it since Beta 3 and I had no problems whatsoever. It’s faster than Firefox 2 and with a lot of new features. INJOY!

You gotta’ check out this site!!! I cried myself to tears!!! Unfortunately, this site is in Romanian because is dedicated to a special type of Romanians: cocalarii. For all of you that don’t know what a cocalar means, well, let’s just say they are a special type of people that act, dress, talk, sing in a specific manner. INJYOI!

The first video is the promo of a Microsoft prototype, the second is the reaction to it. U judge…

Some time ago I was writing about an application for a NATO internship. After 3 months I got to the last recruitment phase, an interview with the head of the Executive Management Division, Communication and Information Technology Service. I was sooo excited…I felt everything was just a reach away and that I could do it…until I got the job description: junior programmer, with main tasks to update and maintain applications and websites.I was pretty dissapointed, as I don’t want to pursue an IT career. Also, Cori asked me to look over once again the material side, as they pay 600eur/month without taxes and the minimum one needs to survive in Brussels is 1000eur. Although I knew that, I wanted to go so bad that I overlooked this matter. I overlooked another matter: the internship would begin April 2008 and I have to give the bulk of my most important exams and graduation paper in between June and August 2008. This being said, I had to do a thorough rethink of the situation. I put all the pluses and the minuses in a balance and I concluded with a very heavy heart I have to give up this internship.

I would like to thank everyone who supported and encouraged me with this, it really helped.

I do not regret applying for this internship as this process in itself was a very useful experience. I’m soooo sorry I had to do this but maybe it’s all for the best…all roses in the end remember?

I’m back from a very special holiday this year…a week in Budapest and a day in Vienna.

Cori’s working in Budapest and it was a great way to spend some time together.

I don’t know Hungarian, so it was really funny to see advertisements and don’t have a clue what they were saying.

I was surprised at first by the public transportation – BKV. The distance between stations is very small compared to Bucharest’s RATB. Had to change 2 bus lines, 1 tram line and 1 subway line to get to Cori’s place.

We visited the singing fountain in Margaret Island, The Parliament Palace, the Citadel on the Gellert hill. We strolled on the banks of the Danube and even went on a boat ride where we saw Alan Alda (fom MASH).The Palace of Arts – finished in 2005 – and the National Theatre – finished in 2002 – are state of the art contemporary buildings

Budapest is a very nice city, especially at night when the Danube banks and bridges are lit.

We also visited Vienna. It was easy, cheap (about 30eur – you get a 4 day open ticket Budapest-Vienna and return, including public transportation fare in Vienna) and fast by train (3hrs). The railway station where we bought the tickets, Nyugati was built by Gustave Eiffel

The Romanian Crib founders in Vienna, Mugur and Vlad fed us, then showed us the most important sights (thanks a lot guys!)

We visited the St. Stephen Cathedral, The Parliament and the amazing Schonbrunn gardens. Didn’t have time to scout Mariahilfer Strasse(de) as we had to get back to Budapest…maybe another time.

I liked Vienna more than Budapest, not because it would be nicer, but because of the atmosphere. Budapest is more “to live in” and Vienna is more “to stroll” in.

Biiiig fluffy kisses to my pink buterfly Cori for making this my best holiday ever! :*

Below you can see some pics

The last week has been pretty intense an they reminded me where I live…Romania. So here it goes… In the first semester I failed an exam in Commercial Law because…(let me think for an excuse)…I don’t like learning things by heart so I didn’t study enough. Anyway, I had to give the exam again on June 30. Two months ago I found out about an internship opportunity at NATO. The deadline for the application was June 29 but because of school, work and other things, I kept delaying it. On top of that I had an unexpected problem occurred because I should have been moving from a campus to another for the summer, but I forgot ASE(ro) (Academy of Economic Studies – Bucharest, Romania) can be surprising and they left around 1000 working students with no place to stay for the summer. In short, I had a nasty exam to give, I had to come up with the best application ever in order to win the internship and I had to find a place to stay, all in 1 week.

I came home to Brasov to study, then I went back to Bucharest, called anyone I knew so I can rent something. I also waited for 3 days for ASE to resolve the problem (God I hate state owned services in Romania!!!!). In the end, on the 27th, late in the evening I get a call from a friend that I can stay on his place in the campus (he is in the last year and he had priority to receive one) because he is renting a house. On the night between 28th and 29th I wrote my NATO application and I really gave my best. There is no way I could have done it better. On the 29th I spent the whole day carrying stuff from the old campus to the new one. On the 30th at 07.30 hrs I gave the exam and I took a far better grade than I expected.

I have these kinds of periods at least 2 times per year and I always get the same conclusions out. It doesn’t really matter if you think you’re going to fail as long as you give your best to do something and solve things. Have you ever noticed how much time we spend on stressing ourselves and how little we DO something about it? I hate it when people tell me it’s gonna’ be OK. How do they know? I don’t think any relative of Nostradamus is still living. On the other hand you need someone to support you morally, friends, family, it doesn’t matter as long as they care about you, because their encouragements are really said from the heart.
About the NATO application, I’m really proud of it; it made me learn a lot of things about me. In September when they will give the results, even if they won’t choose me, I won’t be sorry because I did my best . Maybe you have wondered why the motto “It’s in your mind…” , well because there’s the place where you create your own complexes and ultimately, the place you will take them down yourself.

In the end there will always be roses at the end of the road if you work smartly and never give up.