Thursday, March 25, 2010

Circus

A couple of days ago, the news broadcaster on Channel 2 announced the coming of an animal-free circus (her emphasis). In the following reportage they showed various acrobats from that same circus who've been injured (took them years to recover) and some others who perform dangerous acts without a safety net. Although they are experienced, all it takes is a momentary loss of focus and they drop dead.

Not that I am for any form of animal abuse, but didn't we lose proportions here? Now that we stopped abusing circus animals, it's about time we legislate mandatory safety nets so that injured or dead acrobats will not be part of the show.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

A Breath of Fresh Air

This was my first time at the Dead Sea in springtime. Turns out that the otherwise barren hills of the former seabed are not barren at all. They are covered with vegetation, which made me somewhat ashamed of the imminent bulldozer I mentioned in an older post. The water temperature was absolutely perfect, the weather great and there was a huge bonus too: I met a very special young woman, the meeting being the reason for booking this weekend in the first place.

She is the daughter of Peter's former boss (of 30 years ago) and friend. When he last saw her she was 6. I never met her before. She found me on Facebook several months ago, pursuing a childhood image of our wedding picture. We started emailing and then she booked a week-long Dead Sea vacation. That's where we met.

She was born in Oradea, our hometown, to a couple of engineers who got divorced after we left, while she was a teenager. The father, who turned out to be a Don Juan with children from different women and an ego constantly hungry for women to boost it, didn't talk to her for 2 years despite living only 15 minutes away. Following the divorce, her mother went through very rough times financially and emotionally and kicked her out at 18. She is independent ever since. She is a nurse, she lived in Hungary and obtained Hungarian citizenship, then moved to Göteborg, Sweden. She lives in a lovely apartment, cooks and bakes, trains and does her best to live a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle despite her hectic work schedule at the hospital. She is knowledgeable in many areas, including Bible, with independent thinking and great human relations. She is funny and smart. A breath of fresh air.