Everytime I look at my right wrist and I see the light blue bracelet from last year's fantastic Rock Werchter, I feel a pang of nostalgia and sadness that I won't go this year. I'm missing out on artists like Kings of Leon, Metallica, my old faves Placebo, Pendulum, The Prodigy, Bloc Party and the whole amazing atmosphere there :(
Buuuuuuut there is a substitute for that: B'ESTFEST! Between 1-4 July I will go to Bucharest to meet up with my dear friends from there and have an awesome time! The line-up so far is pretty OK:
Day Zero July 1
Snails: Moldavian indie band....haven't heard of them before
Patrice: quite cool raggae-sorta artist
White Lies: I love these guys!!!! young post-punk band with a very catchy debut album and I'm really looking forward to seeing them in concert
The Killers: of course, the headliners of the day :D i hope they'll play very few songs from their shitty new album "Day&Age" and delight us with tracks like "Mr. Brightside", "When You Were Young" and "Somebody Told Me"
Day 1 July 2
Polarkreis 18: no idea who these fellas are
Les Elephants Bizarres: some Romania indie band
Grimus: very nice band from Cluj :D
Ayo: soul-chick
Motorhead: old rockers...still undecided whether it's a good or not-so-good thing that they're gonna play
Moby: yes!! after not seeing him properly at Werchter I finally have the chance to see him again! Can't wait!
Day 2 July 3
Gabriela Cilmi: 'nothing sweet about me' :P
Alternosfera: very good Moldavian alternative band
AB4: another Romanian band that I like
Orbital: electronic music legends, not a massive fan of them though
Klaxons: Klaxons are a very entertaining band and I like most of their songs from their debut album
Franz Ferdinand: not much to say 'bout these lads....except that they're in my top 10 bands and I LOVE them!!!! This is going to be huuuuge!!
Day 3 July 4
By far the weakest day of the festival. Plenty of bands I've never heard of (Persona, Gravity Co., Looptroop Rockers), or that I don't give a crap about (The MOOOod, The Charlatans), and the 2 "headliners" of the day are The Ting Tings who are decent and Santana, who is a legend and blah blah, but really....I can name about 2-3 dozen bands I would trade him with.
There are two more months until this cool event and I really hope that they'll add some more bands to the line-up :D there are a few Romanian bands worthy of playing here.
Meanwhile, let's all enjoy the Champions' League semifinal :D Go Chelsea & Arsenal!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, March 13, 2009
Tag, you're it: 6 things that put a smile on my face
I got this one from Andreea and I'm not a spoilsport, so here it is :D
6 things that make me smile
Rules
1) link back to the person who tagged you.
2) post these rules on your blog.
3) share 6 things that put a smile on your face.
4) pass the tag along to other fabulous blogs.
5) let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.
And here they are (in random order):
1) the song "Float On" by Modest Mouse (youtube's being a bitch at the mo and i can't find a link)
2) the upcoming B'Estfest
3) Marius and Sorana, university would suck without them
4) browsing through older photos
5) tennis
6) heavy snowfall :D
and noooooow I tag Sandra
6 things that make me smile
Rules
1) link back to the person who tagged you.
2) post these rules on your blog.
3) share 6 things that put a smile on your face.
4) pass the tag along to other fabulous blogs.
5) let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs.
And here they are (in random order):
1) the song "Float On" by Modest Mouse (youtube's being a bitch at the mo and i can't find a link)
2) the upcoming B'Estfest
3) Marius and Sorana, university would suck without them
4) browsing through older photos
5) tennis
6) heavy snowfall :D
and noooooow I tag Sandra
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
S is for Spring, Sibiu, Safin...
Davis Cup Tie: Romania vs. Russia
After a long wait, the weekend of 6-8 March arrived with the beautiful promise of live tennis and heaps of fun. I hopped on the bus to Sibiu and met up with my friends from Bucharest (whom I hadn't seen in eons!) who miraculously managed to snatch some tickets to the DC tie (I must mention that the venue in Sibiu is minuscule! 2000 seats only, so you can imagine the whole fuss to get tickets)
We got to the Sala Transilvania after the first match began, so our seats were taken by some "gentlemen" so we resorted to the stairs to watch Marat Safin, Russia's number 1 player and my friends' favorite player, versus Romanian Victor Crivoi. In spite of Crivoi's decent display (it was actually quite remarkable for such a mediocre fella like him), Marat was clearly better and won in straight sets 7-6(5)6-4 6-4. No surprises here. The second match of the day put our no. 1 player *cringe* Victor Hanescu against Mikhail Youzhny and everyone expected an interesting encounter between players of close value, considering that Hanescu had beaten Misha in Doha earlier this year. The outcome was a bit surprising as Hanescu was totally crap (he is usually crap, but on Friday he was TOTALLY crap) and the Russian had no problems whatsoever, winning 6-4 6-2 6-4. The score was now 2-0 for Tarpischev's boys and we left the arena to have some fun around in Sibiu, ending Friday in a bar called Nadine.
Saturday! The second day of the tie brought the doubles match, but not before the official presentation of the two teams. First up was the visiting team starting with Marat Safin (crowd: regular applause; us: *fangirlish screaming and clapping :))*), Mikhail Youzhny, Dmitry Tursunov, Teimuraz Gabashvili and the captain Shamil Tarpischev. Then the Romanians with Victor Hanescu *yawn*, Victor Crivoi, Horia Tecau and Marius Copil, lead by the new captain Andrei Pavel (who got more applause than anyone, obviously :P). Next up was the match: Safin and Dmitry Tursunov paired up against Horia Tecau and 18 year-old Marius Copil. The Russians won the first two sets 6-4 7-6(2) after some signs of nervousness from debutant Copil and lack of concentration from Tecau. Loudly and loyally encouraged by the crowd (who even sang the anthem! awesome!), Marius and Horia managed to turn the match around claiming the next two sets in tiebreaks. They got a break in the third set and Copil served out the match with an ace. What a classy way to make your debut in such an important competition!
Unfortunately, our "no.1" managed to crap his pants and lose to Tursunov (who replaced Safin in this match) after leading with 2 sets to 0 and a break! So typical of him. If I were Pavel, I'd be really pissed at him. After all these years in which Hanescu pissed all over DC matches and Andrei had to clean up after him every time, now he chokes like the loser he is. Not that I expected Romania to win, because none of our second-choice players stood a chance against Youzhny, but Hanescu was very poor and it's sad to think that he's our best player at the moment. I had to leave after this match, but I'm sure that Gabashvili vs. Crivoi, the dead rubber, was not such an interesting match :P Ah yes, I almost forgot! Before Hanescu's display of helplessness, all the women and girls in the crowd got flowers from the Romanian players as it was March 8 :D We got flowers from Copil :D
All in all, I had an amazing time with my friends in this beautiful city (with EXTREMELY cheap taxis!) and had the opportunity to see live tennis and the Russian team, my third favorite non-Romanian DC team (after Spain and France).
Here are some photos from the tie. If you want to see all the 260 photos that I have uploaded on Picasa (out of the 600 that I took :P) go to my Picasa page (Non-tennis photos will follow in an upcoming post, so stay tuned)
After a long wait, the weekend of 6-8 March arrived with the beautiful promise of live tennis and heaps of fun. I hopped on the bus to Sibiu and met up with my friends from Bucharest (whom I hadn't seen in eons!) who miraculously managed to snatch some tickets to the DC tie (I must mention that the venue in Sibiu is minuscule! 2000 seats only, so you can imagine the whole fuss to get tickets)
We got to the Sala Transilvania after the first match began, so our seats were taken by some "gentlemen" so we resorted to the stairs to watch Marat Safin, Russia's number 1 player and my friends' favorite player, versus Romanian Victor Crivoi. In spite of Crivoi's decent display (it was actually quite remarkable for such a mediocre fella like him), Marat was clearly better and won in straight sets 7-6(5)6-4 6-4. No surprises here. The second match of the day put our no. 1 player *cringe* Victor Hanescu against Mikhail Youzhny and everyone expected an interesting encounter between players of close value, considering that Hanescu had beaten Misha in Doha earlier this year. The outcome was a bit surprising as Hanescu was totally crap (he is usually crap, but on Friday he was TOTALLY crap) and the Russian had no problems whatsoever, winning 6-4 6-2 6-4. The score was now 2-0 for Tarpischev's boys and we left the arena to have some fun around in Sibiu, ending Friday in a bar called Nadine.
Saturday! The second day of the tie brought the doubles match, but not before the official presentation of the two teams. First up was the visiting team starting with Marat Safin (crowd: regular applause; us: *fangirlish screaming and clapping :))*), Mikhail Youzhny, Dmitry Tursunov, Teimuraz Gabashvili and the captain Shamil Tarpischev. Then the Romanians with Victor Hanescu *yawn*, Victor Crivoi, Horia Tecau and Marius Copil, lead by the new captain Andrei Pavel (who got more applause than anyone, obviously :P). Next up was the match: Safin and Dmitry Tursunov paired up against Horia Tecau and 18 year-old Marius Copil. The Russians won the first two sets 6-4 7-6(2) after some signs of nervousness from debutant Copil and lack of concentration from Tecau. Loudly and loyally encouraged by the crowd (who even sang the anthem! awesome!), Marius and Horia managed to turn the match around claiming the next two sets in tiebreaks. They got a break in the third set and Copil served out the match with an ace. What a classy way to make your debut in such an important competition!
Unfortunately, our "no.1" managed to crap his pants and lose to Tursunov (who replaced Safin in this match) after leading with 2 sets to 0 and a break! So typical of him. If I were Pavel, I'd be really pissed at him. After all these years in which Hanescu pissed all over DC matches and Andrei had to clean up after him every time, now he chokes like the loser he is. Not that I expected Romania to win, because none of our second-choice players stood a chance against Youzhny, but Hanescu was very poor and it's sad to think that he's our best player at the moment. I had to leave after this match, but I'm sure that Gabashvili vs. Crivoi, the dead rubber, was not such an interesting match :P Ah yes, I almost forgot! Before Hanescu's display of helplessness, all the women and girls in the crowd got flowers from the Romanian players as it was March 8 :D We got flowers from Copil :D
All in all, I had an amazing time with my friends in this beautiful city (with EXTREMELY cheap taxis!) and had the opportunity to see live tennis and the Russian team, my third favorite non-Romanian DC team (after Spain and France).
Here are some photos from the tie. If you want to see all the 260 photos that I have uploaded on Picasa (out of the 600 that I took :P) go to my Picasa page (Non-tennis photos will follow in an upcoming post, so stay tuned)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Pink Ego Box Reloaded.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy...
...says a dude called Edgar Bergen. I have to say, I am a lazy person by definition (a big flaw, I know, but soooo hard to overcome) which is the main reason for my unexpected and long hiatus from the blogging world. Everytime I planned to get writing, I would postpone it and so heaps of cool events have been robbed of a blog entry.
I don't want to bore you too much (in case anyone remembers this blog) so I'll summarize some of the autumn and winter's events.
1) I turned 20! Yep, in September I grew out of the teenage era into the third decade of life.
2) Champions League matches!!!! Romanian football champs CFR Cluj were drawn in group A along Chelsea, Roma and Girondins Bordeaux, so I was to attend three lovely Champions League matches (ok, 1 was not lovely at all, but still ;)). The first match with Chelsea was an overwhelming experience. I had never been to a football match before and I was fascinated with everything. The game was high-quality, but the ball stubbornly refused to enter Petr Cech's goal, so it ended as a blank draw. Next came the disaster with Bordeaux. They are such a crap team with crap attitude and crap players (the only good thing about it is the coach Laurent Blanc, but CFR totally choked both matches and screwed up the entire qualifying campaign. The last match was against Roma, on a bitter cold November evening, and despite CFR's loss and me not feeling my legs from the knees down, it was a nice ending to CFR's Champions League saga. [i'm never good at keeping my sport-related posts short ;), so bare with me]
3) University: Year 2 After succesfully finishing my first year as a Civil Engineering student, October came with a total bullshit uni schedule and with some 'awesome' subjects: PE and English again! (don't roll your eyes, these are serious subjects at UTCN, you should never underestimate them)and Numerical Analysis. Now that I'm in the second semester, the schedule is the same bullshit (we are the black sheep of this faculty; I guess it's because everyone tries so hard not to favour us -an already established myth, that us from the English group are favoured by the professors- that they come to do the opposite), the subjects seem a bit better, but I don't want to make any judgements until I see the profs and grasp the main idea of the subject. (Meanwhile, I should study for Numerical Analysis, as I have to resit my theory exam :( )
There would be some other points worth mentioning like my trips with BEST, ice skating in Drobeta and horribly brusing my knees, the Night Of the AdEaters 2008, Christmas and all that but I think it's enough recapping for a post. (I don't plan to write any other recaps soon)
Excuse me if my writing's a bit rusty, but it's been such a long time since August and my mind is juggling Numerical Analysis, the upcoming Davis Cup tie in Sibiu which I plan to attend, the very promisingly-looking Bestfest (a substitute for last year's incredible Rock Werchter)and Jon Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara (which is as huge as a dictionary!).
And to conclude, I must urge you to read 1984 by George Orwell!!!! It's the best book ever! I've been doing some shameless pimping of this book lately but it really is the awesomest book! (ok, maybe not the best, but among the best)
...says a dude called Edgar Bergen. I have to say, I am a lazy person by definition (a big flaw, I know, but soooo hard to overcome) which is the main reason for my unexpected and long hiatus from the blogging world. Everytime I planned to get writing, I would postpone it and so heaps of cool events have been robbed of a blog entry.
I don't want to bore you too much (in case anyone remembers this blog) so I'll summarize some of the autumn and winter's events.
1) I turned 20! Yep, in September I grew out of the teenage era into the third decade of life.
2) Champions League matches!!!! Romanian football champs CFR Cluj were drawn in group A along Chelsea, Roma and Girondins Bordeaux, so I was to attend three lovely Champions League matches (ok, 1 was not lovely at all, but still ;)). The first match with Chelsea was an overwhelming experience. I had never been to a football match before and I was fascinated with everything. The game was high-quality, but the ball stubbornly refused to enter Petr Cech's goal, so it ended as a blank draw. Next came the disaster with Bordeaux. They are such a crap team with crap attitude and crap players (the only good thing about it is the coach Laurent Blanc, but CFR totally choked both matches and screwed up the entire qualifying campaign. The last match was against Roma, on a bitter cold November evening, and despite CFR's loss and me not feeling my legs from the knees down, it was a nice ending to CFR's Champions League saga. [i'm never good at keeping my sport-related posts short ;), so bare with me]
3) University: Year 2 After succesfully finishing my first year as a Civil Engineering student, October came with a total bullshit uni schedule and with some 'awesome' subjects: PE and English again! (don't roll your eyes, these are serious subjects at UTCN, you should never underestimate them)and Numerical Analysis. Now that I'm in the second semester, the schedule is the same bullshit (we are the black sheep of this faculty; I guess it's because everyone tries so hard not to favour us -an already established myth, that us from the English group are favoured by the professors- that they come to do the opposite), the subjects seem a bit better, but I don't want to make any judgements until I see the profs and grasp the main idea of the subject. (Meanwhile, I should study for Numerical Analysis, as I have to resit my theory exam :( )
There would be some other points worth mentioning like my trips with BEST, ice skating in Drobeta and horribly brusing my knees, the Night Of the AdEaters 2008, Christmas and all that but I think it's enough recapping for a post. (I don't plan to write any other recaps soon)
Excuse me if my writing's a bit rusty, but it's been such a long time since August and my mind is juggling Numerical Analysis, the upcoming Davis Cup tie in Sibiu which I plan to attend, the very promisingly-looking Bestfest (a substitute for last year's incredible Rock Werchter)and Jon Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara (which is as huge as a dictionary!).
And to conclude, I must urge you to read 1984 by George Orwell!!!! It's the best book ever! I've been doing some shameless pimping of this book lately but it really is the awesomest book! (ok, maybe not the best, but among the best)
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