Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts


That saying refers to the famous trick of the
Trojan Horse, when the gift was actually the means through which the clever Greeks destroyed their enemy.

In this short story, the Greek doesn't destroy anything, although he is just as smart as the heroes of Herodotus...well, maybe there is a compensation here, in that those were Demi gods, some of them, but did not have an iPhone, Internet and the other amenities that make modern day man or woman more knowledgeable than Achilles...maybe.

This present day Greek man is all kindness and affability.
When we meet at the health club, like earlier today, he greets you with

Hello my friend...how are you today.

He is also very amusing.
Complicated matters of state are explained with ease and jocularity...

'The Americans told the Greeks and the Macedonians:
Fuck you
And fuck your too
You have to solve this'

On the issue of Trump, when asked if he likes him, our friend says...

'I have enough brain cells not to...'

He is funny then, resilient, for he has survived the harsh conditions here, sometimes ironical, for he has to muse over shortcomings...saunas don't work, an aggressive fool kicks him out when he tries to compensate and use the outdoors jacuzzi...

Our friend has shocked me though, for I had thought he is near perfect as an interlocutor.
Alas, nobody is.

He told me yesterday, with emphasis and deep conviction...

'Hillary Clinton is a monster!
What?!
She has sent IS fighters to Syria...and other such foolish things...'

Changing the subject, I tried Greta Thunberg, but my former friend was adamant here as well...

'She is autistic...
I hear it is the syndrome...
It is one form of that...and she has abandoned school
Yes, but her campaign...
She should get back to school...thank you child, but go to school
Well, her voyage in a boat...
I call that bad parenthood...what the fuck!'

In conclusion we can't see eye to eye on everything, even with the most charming of people...and the most pleasant often have some fucked up opinions'

Although, I still strongly believe in Blink, The Thin Slicing Theory as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his Magnus opus.

Planet Class Gazette

Planet Class Gazette


I was thinking that, given the multitude of earth shattering events that take place at our health club, I should start printing a newspaper or magazine...well, printed is not the right word, but this is a joke and as such, it already happens...in digital form, there is gossip, innuendo, fore play, everything here.

I left unaddressed the talk with that former top spy.
He said that the Ukraine is an artificial state...the Russians would be exalted to hear how their propaganda machine is working, even with people who should better...much better.

Anyway,I heard something else,of much greater consequence...
Forget the war with Russia!

There was a little war at the club.
One client seems to have been excluded and we do not know why.

It is also very odd, given that saunas do not work, for most of the time, the temperature is at least inadequate, often unacceptable.
As for the hammam...it only works with...paper!

That is, one has to get some paper, wet it with cold water and then you stand a chance of kicking the sensor into action and evrika...you have some steam.


Earlier today, it did not work though, as it happens.

True, there is a vicious circle...perhaps a few.
Customers act with flagrant insolence, 'defekte' manners, destructive aggression and then we all pay.

Many visitors brazenly break the rules, jump into the outside pool when it's closed, repeatedly, leave shit - I mean literally- all over the toilet, break the stove, insult, the list is long.

Thus, employees get disgusted, annoyed and end of saying:

Fuck you clients, if this is what you are...Australopithecus erectus

And the reverse is true.

When clients find that quite a few main facilities are not working, they act with viciousness or carelessness.

When the shit hits the fan, “I am a river to my people’

When the shit hits the fan, “I am a river to my people’

We meet some gruesome figures in this health club of hours and this is a carnival of the extremes.

On the one hand, there is this plastic woman, that has had surgery over all the face and presumably all the rest of her body, who comes for some group thing hour – in fact I know the name of the class, but I better watch…she can bury me with her money…judicially, if not literally…and she can do that also with the many millions she has.

She drives an SUV of one of the most expensive cars in the world; let us Rolls Royce, although it might be one of the other models, but in the same money segment.

I was wondering why on earth is she coming here, when she can build a whole arena – maybe, probably she has one at the mansion cu palace – and have a whole team of instructors, an army actually to come and all sing and dance for her…modesty?

Not likely

See, if she drives that SUV, with a price tag of maybe in excess of half a million dollars, there is no humility…is there?

Then there is this other rich individual, but he has to have a separate, if not five or ten chapters, because in this case we interact quite often, whereas for the rich owner of a network of private medical clinics and possibly a few hospitals…I have never talked to her.

The point is that this is a…shitty place!

Literally!

Yesterday, as I tried to use the rest room, big pieces of faeces were hanging on the covers, very possibly in many other places – I have not stopped to search or even look for more than two seconds I guess.

To top this off, a different gentleman – this is the male locker room, maybe we should add evidently – has dirtied a sink near the sauna, where he had cut his beard – although on a different day I had seen a football player gardening his bollocks and surrounding area – and left a massive pile of hair, dirt and water blocked in there.

I told one of the nice women, who has a position of authority in the cleaning department and she called the janitor and told him about the problems downstairs.

Nonetheless, the individual took more than two hours, maybe three, to fix the problem and when he did, it became something like bathroom humor, or maybe just a short horror scene.

I was about to get ready to leave for my boys at home – the two macaws, Puccini and Balzac – and had to move back and forth, to the shower, to ready my swimming suit for the bag…

The janitor was throwing buckets – maybe just one? – Of water at the installation covered with excrement.

Alas, the water that had shit in it was then moved around with his T stick towards the next hole, near the showers, but ten meters away…

With other clients – if they passed at the moment…I was too concerned with what was going on to notice other sailors through the river of shit – we would have to navigate the polluted waters that flowed through the locker room…well, a big section of it…

Swamped by shit?

Quite…

I was talking with someone and we came to a somewhat harsh disagreement, although we generally agree on most things- so far nonetheless – over the matter and I was thinking that the client who left that horrible, disgusting present- and others like him- might make life very hard for all.

Employees conclude:

Fuck these bastards…look how shitty they are!

And then the rest of the clients bear the consequences…’even to the edge of doom’

Saunas and almost everything else stop working at various moments – frequent moments I should say.

Moreover, the joke earlier today was…

Maybe we are stupid to think of multiple reasons for that…software, investment, water on the stove of the sauna…

What the employees probably do is just say that they are going to turn on the machines, when they provide no heat, vapor or whatever, and then do nothing or worse…

You damn idiots…you want the sauna working…well, wait for The Doomsday Machine…

Monsieur Pompadour and the Intelligence Agency Chief

Monsieur Pompadour and the Intelligence Agency Chief

As it happens, I have been in the sauna of the health club this morning with…Monsieur de Pompadour and one Head of an Intelligence Agency and it was rather strange.

Monsieur Pompadour is just a name I use for this pompous guy, who seems to share with the famous lover of the king of France a tendency to reach beyond means, making efforts to pretend that he has skills which are actually lacking and making rather absurd propositions, as he comes once in a while and I have had the chance to hear him talk.

Once, he took out at the exterior Jacuzzi a can with coffee, which he left there, to become garbage carried by the wind and when I told him, he reacted with the preciousness that Madame de Pompadour would have had.

Another time, he spoke of some gay individual, who looked strange and that made me a bit irritated and said to him something, to which he replied and that is how I recall it, mostly…

‘You say he was gay, but how do you know?

He was strange

Since you mention it, you seem strange…you gave some opinions on conspiracy theories, candidates for presidency and more that appear more than peculiar to me…

Well…’

So we have had some interactions which made me place this person in the category of those that I don’t really need to interact with more, for we have different political views, he believes in conspiracy theories and other concepts that are almost anathema for me’.

This morning, as almost always, there was only one sauna working, out of the two and so I had to stay inside with Pompadour…there was no choice.

As I came in, the temperature was at about forty, which is rather low and hence I asked…

‘Do you mind if we put water…

Well…if it is three spoons, it is ok

I sort of laughed a little, then threw some water on the walls, and then decided to stay and forget about bringing more water…

The guy was annoyed and became agitated and immediately used the second singular…a form of address that is rather rude, if the difference in age is more than a decade, one does not really have a close connection with the interlocutor…

On the other side, quite often this is likeable, because it makes me feel younger…at times

So the Pompadour man was offended somehow because of the water on the walls…

Why did you do that…I said some spoons

Look, we do it your way…you want no water, that is what we do…what more do you want from me?

At this stage, it was not clear that the water on walls was seriously upsetting him and I didn’t know what his problem is.

Anyway, throughout, he acted with that pretentiousness, superior air, pompous attitude that I knew he has showed before

Finally, he talked about the water on the walls and thus I explained to him that that was in response to his request that we use no water – well, we can’t call three spoons using water – and so I thought of getting some heat from the other surfaces, indirectly, if we are not going to get it from the stove.

He sort of explained that this is the dry sauna, as if I didn’t know, and some other aspects of life at the pool – I guess, for I wasn’t really 1005 there for the preaching and the proselytizing.

Then the chief of an Intelligence Agency came in…retired.

We talked about some issues of the health club, and they have plenty, one is actually offended that Radisson makes such a fuss over the quality of its services and here they just bring it to the lowest level possible…saunas don’t work, rust is staining the walls in the hammam, they have had scaffolding on the side of the hotel for 4 month now and there is nothing happening there, plants in the garden have dried and died out for nobody has been watering them for weeks on end, they have an employee who is asking for bribes for access in the outside Jacuzzi…

Then we talked the Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Iran…but that is for tomorrow …the time for our show is up for today.

How Not to Live Your Life

How Not to Live Your Life


This is the title of a very amusing British series.

But this is also the mantra of some of the scoundrels that show up at the health club where I do my rounds.

Take this fool, who comes regularly and jumps into the fast lane.
He swims just like a snail would if he had the means to tread on water.

But the thug doesn't care.
Is above the petty consideration for the others that use the lane.

If there are four in the same space, the biker - he rides a motorcycle and that seems to be a large part, maybe the most important of the explanation for his abominations...organ donors ...this is what they are called on some latitudes - is still in the fast lane.
Even if there are only two...or probably none in the other lanes, for medium and slow swimming.

As for his style, he looks like he is punching a boxing bag and using the lateral swings, not the uppercut or some other direct means.
Thus, as mentioned before he barely moves in the water.

And he blocks the lane.
Who gives a fuck?

Not him anyway...

One day, I told him that he hadn't thrown the plastic form the chocolate he always ate in the jacuzzi to the can.
He says...

You're talking to me? Ah...come on...or get lost

And he wasn't satisfied with that.
Aft a few days, when he saw me next, he comes over...

'Hey, watch out!
What?
You have no idea who I am!
Oh, yes, I do...you're the guy who asked me to film your swimming and then came again to tell me to give you an invitation - these are some of the perks of the club, we are allowed to invite a guest or a few, up,to the limit of ten per year...

Then the idiot said something somewhat amusing...

I hate your philosophical conversations anyway...

That was meant in the sense that yes, he can throw garbage for he is some big shot and I have no idea how big a kahuna he is and further more, I also disturb him if not with physical waste, at least with my conversational refuse.

Actually, I don't discuss philosophy there...but I wish I would.
What passes for philosophy for the likes of this brain fart is any dialogue which lasts more than one minute - he seldom finds words and connections between them for longer - and doesn't include

Five pula mea
Three Gura masii

Translating that...his vocabulary is limited to expletives and a few other words that help him get food and create the image of the tough man.

Maybe I should feel sorry for him, instead of mocking him here.



Sauna EQ


We have talked about EQ today, in the sauna of all places.
It was somewhat irritating at one point, although the very idea of having such a pretentious talking point at 89 degrees Celsius is flattering.

One of the men argued that a very disliked character has a tremendous EQ.
To me, he seems to be the opposite of emotionally intelligent.

This is a rich, uneducated, flaunting, arrogant red neck, with a bizarre religion, owner of a football club, infamous for rather atrocious behavior...

She some thieves have stolen his car...I think it was that, he had his bodyguards play the roles of vigilantes.
When his Bentley had a problem, I think it was a minor accident with some door twisted, he took a crow bar or a bat and started kicking to fix the thing.

The scoundrel used to be, maybe he still is, weekly in the news...the tabloid kind.

His statements are ridiculous, show a lack of understanding of the world, his language and he seems to be a small Trump.

To be fair, the argument in the sauna was not that he has a high IQ.
Indeed, the interlocutor used the fact that this man is not intelligent in the traditional sense of the words as an argument in favor of his theory...

This shepherd became rich because he has intuition and knows how to make deals...

The Local Art of the Deal.

Only just like the idiot from the States, it is a question of false image and pretenses.
The leader of the US has actually been bankrupt a few times, made profits when he did, based on not paying those who worked for his buildings, cheating fools or naive people into coming into his pompous, useless university and buying other shoddy products or services from him.

In the local version, the rich simpleton has just sold land in crooked deals, making the army and other state bodies pay or swap property that he would later or immediately sell for much more...

Talk of high EQ...




Oil at or over 100?


Now that someone has attacked installations in Saudi Arabia, we may see the oil price jump over one hundred dollars.

If 'the very stable genius' in the White House decides to use the brain which actually functions with frequent, outrageous breakdowns and launches an attack on Iran, we may see the price go over two hundred.

Let's hope it would not go that far.
But Calamity Trump is always very close to disaster...

A category five hurricane hitting Alabama in his mad imagination could become a real catastrophe of the idiot is allowed to act without some restraint.



Serenity


Serenity Now! Is the shout that has become one of the most appreciated Seinfeld moments.
Constanza Senior aka Stiller senior, the father of Ben Stiller, shouts at Elaine, just as they are about to fight...

Serenity Now!

This is the feeling of the moment.
There is an ambulance in the background.

But there is also the chirping of a bird...a more unusually one.
We have magpies, pigeons, sparrows, but this is different and so lovely...sweet.

A corny atmosphere in other words.
Up to point where Puccini starts singing at it is not so cozy anymore.

But he is fun.
The other noises that end this sense of bliss and serenity are less elating.

They start the engines of the cars and vans at this offensive operation they have next door.
Guys who only pay for two people at the 'intretinere' , the upkeep, but have a business next door, with some chemicals they distribute.

Indeed, two houses down the street we have the infamous HUxi company.
Not its real name, on the off chance that they hear of this and then come with guns blazing.

Those people have been responsible for deaths.
They gave hospitals doctored cleaning solutions which evidently affected the elimination of viruses and bacteria.

Anyway, this was about serenity.
It is true that it is a delicate balance...

'A delicate, exotic fruit...touch it and the bloom is gone' Oscar Wilde on a different subject...that of ignorance.

There are minutes, moments when one can enjoy a silence, almost.

Then the dogs bark...fuck their owners.
We hear the cars on the national road 1A, but they are in the distance Alhamdulillah!

This being so close to the limit of the town, it has this advantage.
Were we to stay at St. Vineri, it would be a whole different ball game.

It was noisy when we stayed there.
But for now, it is so quiet.

Well, it is for the next couple of minutes or so...wait, there's a plane on its way to Baneasa.
But it is still so magical and a state of things to be grateful.

State of Grace and it will be like this for a long time

Insh'Allah!



Tusnad, maybe Predeal or Caciulata


I seem to wonder off lately,  thinking it is perhaps time for some traveling...

For the past twenty years or so, I only went out of town on two occasions.
Once invited by Madi, my sister, to spend a couple of days in Brasov.

The other time, Gale Cramer and her husband paid for a one day trip to Bran.
Come to think of it, on another day we drove to Snagov and then for that day in the Adventures Park.

But that is still rather pathetic...four or five days over two decades.
Granted, the time before that accumulates too much moving around...I was in the tours business.

In 2,000 if felt like staying put would be the best option.
A much less intelligent version of Immanuel Kant, who I understand never left town and villagers could check their watches over his regular schedule.

One way to move forward would be to try it for one day first.

Predeal by train, leaving early in the morning, on a Wednesday for instance.

Leaving at ten from the railway station, I could get to Trei Brazi, then the chalet which is next to it, Poiana Something...secuilor maybe.

That's a grand total of eleven kilometers or so and could be done in just three hours.
Then back to the station and off to the boys, back home.

Another time, or an alternative to this would be Sinaia, with a trip to 1,400.
Upon returning, a stop could be made at Peles.