this is the best it gets pc wise for a while

OK, took the keyboard back to the media mart in Tatabanya, it took them abut 10 minutes to process the paperwork needed for me to exchange 1 $14.00 keyboard for another, but i do have it and it works much faster than the board on my noetbook.
then i went ahead and bought a 16" monitor as well because it will be i think much easier to type looking at a real screen rather than a pocketbook. not to diss my litle Asus, it is great and is the power behind all this appearancing, but you really do have to squint a lot when you are reading its screen.

so chores remain... laundry just did one load, need to put it up on the drying rack), do some dishes, take out trash, then get to work on school stuff. making lists.

am about to go over and turn on some more music.

up and running

the inet is back a miracle? there is some explanation somewhere-- my ignorance? my inexperience? both? neither, just a reconne tion at a back office. still i rejoyce.

and am listening to real music for a change thank you anne trolard and then JVC and thank the Photo Mall salespeson in Tatabanya who spoke enough german to really help me out yesterday.
but i screwed up and got keyboard with pin plug not usb so have to go back to exchange it--not his fault mine i bought it at another store

saw avatar yestery in hungarian no engl subtitles. read plot summary online first and was fine. sort of like the opera, you know the story and the music tells you everything else. here it was the images, very convincing, only fakish part for me was the TOO TOO luminous nature of the planet and the choreographed worship scenes...

internet is dead again

how frustrating. was working fine last night up till midnight, and then this morning around 6:30 totally dead.
still fighting a cold but not sneezing as much. went with Viktor to the govt office in Tatabanya to fill out the paperwork needed to get a permit to stay in country longer than 90 days.
not that bad an ordeal.
i plan to take the bus back to Tatabanya to try to buy a radio-mp3 player--something i plug the ipod into that will play over speakers so i can have music in the apartment. right now my only option is the tv.

still no internet

the IT folks (or folk, maybe just one person) came by yesterday to fix things but they are not fixed. i need an ipo address which has to be assigned by the service provider. have no idea why the old one wont do, but it seems to have vanished. so no internet, just from the school, which is slow and i have to share it with others.

in the meantime i despair of getting the 10th and 11th graders to do anything but sit like lumps. each day is just d r a i n i n g.

had a dream/thought-struggle early this AM
could not remember the word for NINE in hungarian
kept counting 1 through eight, then blank, then 10
over and over again
then at 4:30 the alarm went off and into my head popped
kilenc
that was it! it was there all along, it just wouldn't come to the surface.
tomorrow we do the bureaucraczy run. hoping for smooth sailing, but hopes are not high.

a few pictures

The main entrance to the Gimnazium and the living room of my apartment

Hungarian tv porn and other fantasies

Sunday 24 Jan 2010 around 7:30 AM

So now the mouse is installed and it works fine and I have just spent an hour or more I think more combing through the kitchen and sorting stuff out. I know Carla threw out a bunch of stuff before she left but I am going to throw out more as well-- scratched and dinged baking pans, coated sauté pans with the coating all rubbed out, plus I am not going to keep any of the readymix chocolate drinks she had, I would just explode if I kept them.

I have been putzing around and still feel I am not making all that much progress, but yes now finally I do see some logic o the pantry which is great. And it must be time for the SPAR grocery to be open so I can get some more milk. I am drinking this with 1.5% and boy I can tell the difference even with just that 0.5 missing. The coffee has an edge of grittiness—not that it is bad, it is just disconcerting.

I am of a mind to go back to Tatabanya today and go see Avatar dubbed in Hungarian. What the hell. It’s all about the graphic art anyway, right? If I had internet (which, if I may be so crass as to make a point of it, I don’t, at least not yet, I keep telling myself I won’t get upset until around next Wednesday), but if I did I could look up stuff on the internet and have the plot line down pat before I went o see the film, but I can’t do that, so….

So I sit here wondering if it is worth it… $4.50 for bus ride there and back, another $7 or so for the movie ticket, figure $12 total cost. Hmm, I still might do it.

Before she left Carla mentioned that the late night TV has a porn channel, and yes I have been up late—I go to b ed at 8 oe so, wake up at 1, am up for a couple of hours, then go back at 2:30 or 3 and sleep till 5:30. So I turned on the TV and there it was, how booooooooring, I mean it is graphic and all but it is such cookie cutter stuff… man on couch with bandage on head, woman walks in wearing “nurses” uniform , has to check him out, yes, shirt off yes yes trousers off hmm what is this oh my and look it is getting bigger… but no “chemistry” whatever between the persons, it is so mechanical that I simply cannot watch it for more than a minute or two to see if there is EVER going to be any plot development (I know, as much chance as ice cubes on the sun), so I flip on over to CNN British Style (which is paying a lot of attention to Abu Dhabi these days, maybe because the country is advertising on the network???) or if I am unusually lucky I hit the bbc channel at an off moment when it is not showing the Weakest Link or Antiques Roadshow. `Last night I just gave up and composed the entry about my Saturday adventures—only I left out my moment of paranoia on the bus.

So there I am on the bus and I hear these voices behind me, female, and I swear I hear them saying “Bob” “Bobby” and “Fuck” over and over and my mind whirls and I can only think that they must be students from my 13^th grade class where I spent some time explaining the various stages of nicknames in English (in my case the age distinction between Bobby and Bob) and the social settings in which “fuck” is and is not appropriate, but of course they were no more my students than the trees alongside the lake and I was taking snippets of conversation and weaving them into a fantasy inside my head.

Hungarian keyboarding

Ok wow I just typed my first my very first words using the new keyboard I got today in Tatabanya and now that I have this Hungarian keyboard, let me see what it does: Tatab’anza hmmm no, the ‘ is supposed to be on top of the A, but that is ok, I am not going to be using this for Hungarian, not much anyway, and besides the names and cities would have to be reproduced in English spelling sooner or later anyway and we never went around spelling Zsa Zsa’s name (her LAST name ) with an accent, just Gabor and not G’abor –to say nothing of the fact that it was always pronounced ga BORE, instead of GAHbor, like it is done here in the homeland)

So what is going on is that I am looking at this Hungarian keyboard that has letters transposed on it(Z in place of Y, the zero to the left of the one, dollar sign and ‘e where we normally expect colon and semicolon-- I mean, those are the characters on the actual keys, the white writing on top of the black pushbuttons. BUT, because my pc is set up as an English language pc, it is not recognizing the electronic input as anything but a normal us keyboard. AH HAH, so all I have to do is what Mrs Underwood tried to teach me to do when I was in 4^th grade and was taking private typing lessons from her, using her big Underwood typewriter (the name thing is a complete coincidence) and she kept saying DON’T LOOK AT THE KEYS LOOK AT THE PAPER which I did, mostly, just not when I was typing numbers, because that was sooooooooooooooo hard, and I still don’t with numbers, I always look at the keyboard, it’s just letters that I ignore and just type away blithely.

Internet is all fracked up (thank you Battlestar Galactica for such a useful word) here at the house. Had to go into school today to use it which was ok even though it was Saturday because I got brownie points as a result== it was exam day for prospective students, not that I had anything to do with that, but lots of teachers were there to administer the test and they saw that I was at school and I even had a moderately extensive discussion with the Director en francais sill vous plait about how things were going and I could truthfully say fine except for a few things at the apartment that needed fixing (did I mention the internet?) well there is also the balcony door that doesn’t close quite right and a broken shelf and some of the cupboard doors are out of whack, but hey, and I will be fine, really I will, as long as I find out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, like oh yes, next Monday is short classes day, no nobody told me, I figured it out ALL BY MYSELF THANK YOU by studying the sheet posted on the bulletin board Oh yes, we are sorry, we forgot to tell you. And it is a damn good thing I do speak French and can speak frankly(ooooooh, don’t you love that pun?) to the director and say, you know, I am just clueless about the phototcopy machine here, it keeps asking me to input a code number and I have no idea what it is, and quick off we go to ZsuZsa, (not ZsuZsa the english teacher but ZsuZsa one of the main office secretaries) who informs the director that my code is 44444, I cant quite understand what they are saying because somehow I cant believe that such a transparent and hackable code would be assigned for something as sacred as the photocopy machine, but yes, that is the code and it does work and off I go and photocopy the textbook for my American history class (Paul,Perry, Lynn if you are reading this don’t get too upset –I have been repeatedly informed that Hungary gets some kind of pass on copyright laws, and even though this is a public school there is no such thing as state-provided textbooks, so…)

A N Y W A Y, like I said, I went in to fly the flag so to speak and use the internet, and then on the way home walked with one of the English teachers who was going to do some shopping and meet her son at the grocery store to go home, so we chat on the way to the store, about 20 min walk, and she is very grateful for the opportunity to engage in conversation, to be MEANINGFUL in English, not just repeat the conversations in the text

After our goodbyes I continue on to the lady who runs the vegetable stand and buy a whole bunch of veggiefruits—celery and tomatoes and cucumber bananas apples lettuce broccoli mushrooms plus some walnuts (big plump halves that strangely taste far less bitter than US walnuts) and a pound of birdseed (we’ll see if any of them start coming to the kitchen window)

So for lunch it is a big salad, then I keep putting stuff away, hang the clothes on the drying rack, organize myself a bit and then head off to the busstop to go to the mall in Tatabanya, a 10 km busride (about 15 min) where I spent about an hour in their equivalent of Best Buy (or is it circuit city, anyway, the one that did not go out of business), finally picking up just this keyboard and a new mouse (haven’t installed it yet, making do with the built in one at the moment), wandered around a bit, discovered that ALL (dammit, all!!) of the movies being shown there had the dialog dubbed into Hungarian, no Avatar in enlish with Hun subtitles, ditto for Sherlock Holmes, well FRACK is all I can say =and so I packed my disappointment along with my purchases and returned on the bus to Tata (OH VIRUTOUS ME—I got off at the bus station before the one closest to my house so I could (a) walk some more and (b) pick up some milk at the market because I am running low, but I got there just after 5 and they were closed. Is ok, they are open at 7 or so on Sundays, so I can still have my milk with coffee, only here it is 0%, 1.5%, and 3.8%, NO TWO PERCENT MILK I AM DYING HERE GUYS, so I’ll just have to buy two 1.5s and mix them with one 3.8, that will be close enough for private sector work I think.

No milk today then, but home and just fixed an omelet with onions and mushrooms and cheese using two eggs labled FRIS TOYAS, I should have checked what FRIS really means because these eggs had yolks that were the color of a Maxfield Parrish sunset, they were violently orange, like oranges off the tree orange, but what the hey I beat them up with a fork and cooked them in with the onions and mushrooms and a little Edam cheese and that was dinner and I had a beer to go with it and now I feel good and I have written all this stuff with my new keyboard I cant tell you how much faster it goes with a real keyboard instead of the little pc, well I can too, like about 300% faster, like WOWEEEEZOOOOM look at me mommy look at me type mommy see how fast I can type mommy mommy look at me……

further adventures intro to tata

Early Wednesday, 21 Jan 2010

Slowly starting to differentiate between the students, very slowly getting some of the names down. I don’t know why, but it is the boys’ faces that seem to have more character, to stand out from the background, so I am a bit more able to remember their names. I have also been introduced to a more lacksidasical way of things…teachers don’t head to the classrooms till about a minute after the hour has struck, they get there around three after, and from what I have seen, classes don’t really get going till about 5 after at the earliest. I may surprise some folks with my promptness and my expectations…

Experiment one. I created a homework assignment. Well, what I created was a new blog and in my first posting I list the homework assignment. So this is going to be a shock for them—it is going to be communicated in writing, via the internet. They are told what to do, where to go for info, how to turn the homework in. A-4 paper (European version of our 8 ½ x 11), folded In half lengthwise, name and class marked clearly on the front (like a book title).

So far only one person says no access to internet. I think I am going to say.. ok, you need to go to a library or to a friend’s house. I am not inclined to let this pass. If they want to be part of the 21^st century they need to get on board. If the family has tv and cell phones, then they need to get internet as well. Besides, this person says her mother is a teacher. Even more reason.

I am managing with my mini computer, but I do need a bigger keyboard and a monitor. So I decided to head off to the local version of Wallmart, called here Tesco.. Located about 20 min walk from the center of town, about a mile past the local cemetery. (which no doubt marked the previous outermost limit of town). Tesco has groceries and household goods, but no computer stuff. Radios and tvs and dvd players yes, pc’s no. well, one good aspect of my walk to and from.. I picked up a box of chalk. Not interested in dealing with the crumbs left in the classroom—I want my own full piece, thankyou. (side note, blackboard erasers are called “sponges” In german. The german phrase for “forget it” is “schwamm drueber”—literally, “sponge over it”—ie, wipe it out. Here the erasers are big sponge blobs, about the size of a large paperback. )

Carla gave me her key to the English teachers’ office, so now I can go in early and use the internet. I will probably astound folks when I go in at 7:30 tomorrow. It’s ok, I can just be that crazy American, the one who doesn’t know how we do things around here. But I am pretty sure I won’t get any flak from the Principal, who reportedly read the riot act to her staff about not showing up in classrooms until 15 after.

There is some discussion about my not moving in immediately to Carla’s place. Maybe the school wants to go through it and do some cleaning and repair? Or install listening devices/cameras? No one is saying anything to me directly. Of course not, that’s not how we do things. And the person who is in charge of this project, if indeed it is a project, was not there today, will not be there tomorrow, and surely we cannot reach her by phone to ask what the plan is.. surely not.

It is 1 am I’ve had about 4 hrs sleep, not really really tired but will start heading down soon. Maybe a few more pages in Half a Yellow Sun (many thanks, Stephen, it is a slow read, and I am taking my time with it, savoring it) and maybe a banana (ate the Yog Hooort already). Trying to meditate a bit as well.

tata day 1

tuesday 19 jan 2010

2 am local time

full day yest, tiring day

i start off with breakfast (got Ersebet to cut it down from the day before)

one egg with ham scrambled onions and paprika (not two) probably cooked in about 6 tablespoons of butter

2 slices toast (not six, no rolls) with butter, homemade apricot preserves

homemade sour cherry preserves homemade apples. preserved as chunks

coffee (no tea, no juice)

and one square (not two) of cream-filled pastry (homemade, of course)

then off with Szusza to the school, a distance of at most 75 yards from the PANZIO where i am

temporarily staying it had snowed, about 1 inch had collected

so we walk through the gate into the courtyard of this elegant structure

built around 1910 during the heydays of the Austro=Hungarian empire

formal, a gentle kind of classicism, a C shaped building, turned 90 degrees so that the wings to the left and right embrace you somewhat

the entrance garden graced with pines and spreading yews, now sugared with snow looking like a neoclassical version of Hogwarts --maybe the home campus of Durmstrang

the English teachers have a shared office with twelve desks, like library carrels

with a power outlet, so I hooked up the pc and did a little bit of email

interrupted by hellos and howdydoos with faculty as they came in

mostly female..mostly late 30s 40s 50s one guy, Viktor, new kid on the block

all of whom have accents-- a kind of hungarian drone underneath

so that you strain to hear the melody of english words above the incessant bass line

just before 9 Carla breezes in she is the current token American

heading back to her job in Minnesota --she took a leave of absence and her school has said

come back now or we will replace you

so off I go with her, tagging along to her classes to be shown off

well, introduced

and try to get a feel for the kids who are, by and large, quite polite

(we stand up when the teacher enters the room. Yes we do. We only need to be reminded of it a bit)

and in most cases it seems eager to learn but not so eager to actually work

the freshmen are where the big push is because they need to get up to speed this year in english

since much of their academic work next 3 yrs will be taught in english—math, bio, chemistry, econ--so I have the same freshman kids (2 groups) 3 times a week then other groups only 1x a week

in all it is 22 45-minute class sessions (start on the hour, day begins at 8, is over at 1:45) but 3 of the 22 is one group of 9^th graders and another 3 is the other group

so that makes about 40 kids. then there will be 16 other groups I see only once a week so figure 200 students there. overall then I will have to learn 250 names many of which will be hard to get down.

zoltan dori adam no prob its the Bolacs Bensze Balenc combinations that will get me down (Flashback to “Alphabits” in the National Lampoon yearbook)

so we wound up the day with a general faculty meeting at 2 pm I met the principal, who spoke to me in Hungarian while Szusza translated, till on a hunch I just flat out blurted est=-ce que vous parlez francais and she does so I said we could chat in french if need be and then the meeting started

and after about four minutes I heard her say RRRRooooBerrrrrrrt LOOOOOOOEEEEESSSSS satabi satabi then all these eyes were on me so I said about 45 seconds of how happy I am in english, 30 seconds of i'm delighted auf deutsch, and about 20 seconds of muy feliz and enchante and then it was time to present a farewell token to Carla and that was that

so Carla and I head off to her apartment which I get to take over later this week after she packs herself and her cat (dont ask) back to the usa we walk past the convent (200 yrs old, falling apart, still parts of it used as dorm for some of the kids whose home is too far away for daily commute) then past the esterhazy summer palace, along the lakeside, then past the castle with its moat and fortified wallto the less romantic section of town--grey 4- story apartment slabs gas stations grocery stores (some very much in the Aldi mode, others more like a minischnux, but more basic, no fancy schmancy—that is in the next town over) to her place where we meet and greet the downstairs folks

Istvan and Imre and Elisa and Heliforget (too many faces and names in one day) so the place is about the size of my LR and DR combined plus a separate kitchen (big propane tank sits on the floor with flexible metal hose to stove) the wash machine sits on the floor next to the tub and empties into it (WM is named Boris, seems to have a personality). I will have my own balcony (!!!!!) and will inherit stuff from Carla plus Robert, a previous incarnation of me who remains mysterious and seems to have left (unprintable) stories behind

3:30 am now back for another 2 hrs sleep (I drifted off around 8:30)

maybe a banana first?

I do have yoghurt

(pronounced YOG hurt push hard on the H in Hooooort)

the collegium

Clear evidence of grandeur and power from the past, but now much less grand or powerful. It is a quite large building, about 200'x100', at least four full stories, wide halls, patterened tile in the entranceway, an almost moorish motif in the archways. It serves as a dorm, academic offices, instruction building. Judging from my room, which after all has a private bath, the place is generous by 19th century standards, but hardly by modern ones, My quarters are about 6' x 10'. But i have a bookshelf, a closet (not built in, just a tall box with a door， no bar, no hangers)，a desk. a chair. the radiator is on full blast, so i have to keep the window open. i also nw have a bar of soap and plenty of TP.

It's PＡRＴY TＩMＥ 　

The Last Supper

Well, it was fourteen people at the table, not thirteen, but we did have bread and wine. Both good. Anne and Meredith used a pork medallion recipe from Marilyn's Kitchen, Mer did a bangup dresssing for the salad, there was a good rice recipe (brown rice, nuts, wild rice), Christina brought some excellent Schnucks bread, and in addition to the several bottles of store red wine, Anne cracked open the Syrah from the vinyard run by her friends the Carsons just a few miles north of Tecate on the Mexico/California border. And Kat had made some wonderful filled cookies, some with chocolate and Nutella, some with apricot, some with rasberry. Also we had Anne's brownbread and some very tasty TraderJoe vanilla icecream to top things off.

It has been a good run, these dinners. So much variety, so much sharing, so much plain fun, mixed with not a small amount of work. It takes a lot of energy to pull off a dinner for 12-14 people, and it takes at least two days to recover.

Petra and Kat gave me a present, a Hungarian tourist guide, which I will DEFINITELY use, especially next summer. They threaten to come for a while next May, which will be great-- they can use my place in Tata as a base for Budapest.

And Kay, the ever practical, rounded up a gift credit card as a little farewell gift. It doesnt work in Europe, so I have to spend it here, and I intend to go to Borders and see what it can be converted to in the way of Hungarian language instruction material.

Snow overnight, about 5 inches, which paralyzes St. Louis. I am still packing books and sorting through drawers of tools, combs, old medicine bottles, expired hand lotion tubes, broken nail clippers. And trying to put material together for Anne to take to the Housing Violation court next Tuesday.

I will definitely get on the plane and leave. The place will not be left as a total disaster, but I do wish I had about 5 more days before I head off. Oh well, alea jacta est, and I am off to cross the Donau, if not the Rubicon.

Just read that there is a transit strike scheduled for Budapest on 12 Jan. Maybe just take taxi to Metro, then metro to closest station, then walk? We'll see. At any rate I expect to meet Mary/ Hajni at the airport and they will clue me in.

Minor accomplishments

Found the power of attorney stuck under the real estate agreement.

Moved chairs and lamps into the storage room under the front porch.

Adjusted items on storage shelf; now the old tv and the speakers are well positioned off the floor.

Made contacts regarding the housing code violations and how to fix them.

Threw away old food in the fridge.

Was nice to the cats.

For a change.

Went to airport to meet Mer, had a chance to visit while we waited for her bag to arrive.

Got the official reading of my TB test at the clinic (negative) and convinced them to put an official looking stamp on the form so that it will look convincing to the folks that need convincing.

There is more. It helps that the cortisone shot in my left knee is keeping me out of pain (mostly) and allowing me to build strength back up in my upper leg.

Oh, yes, also updated the funeral instructions. Cremation, ashes in the Cathedral, eucharist with good wine and good bread, poems by Hopkins, no creed, no pie in the sky stuff.

See Budapest and die.

It's not unlike preparing for death. Put the papers in a place that folks can find them and go through them easily. Wash the clothes, pack them away, it will be easier to give them away to Goodwill. Do the plaster patching in the kitchen. Finally, after all that stalling. A round of social events, not unlike a visitation. (This is your last chance, soon I will be gone.)

Panic has not set in totally. I still function. I still organize, in part, and I do some purposeful things. I went to get an update on my TB status (required) and now I have to draft a letter for my MD to get him to sign.

Making a master list, revising it from time to time, but plugging along. Except that I am not sleeping well.

OH... Yesterday was a first of a strange sort. My friend Kevin, the fellow who had the Finance Manager job at Craft Alliance before I took it over, was online around 9:45 on Saturday, and we started a chat. Then we agreed to meet for brunch at Billie's, a greasy spoon down on Broadway near Soulard Market. Kevin shows up, looking anorexic as usual (he says he is holding at 136). When he walked in he was wearing a hooded sweat-jacket, and he looked for all the world like a manifestation of the Grim Reaper.

We are open with each other, talking about relationships (failed, potential, promising, and maddening). We spent at least an hour and a half talking and visiting, with Kevin and I both agreeing that the L word is one we are very careful not to use without a great deal of thought (K is all torn up about Jimmy, who is sometimes on, sometimes off, and rarely around. Then he said he was planning on going to a drag show at the Grey Fox that evening around 10, why didn't I join him and his group of friends (which might or might not include Jimmy). So I did. First time at a drag show. I do not know what I was really expecting, but I found out what it was. Not real performance, but lip-synch dance. Silly me, I was expecting to hear live vocals; instead I got head-splitting stuff out of the speakers, and the performers were doing their things as choreography. Which is ok, I guess, and I will admit that I would be unable to pull it off. But it was not for me. I mostly just studied the crowd, a good portion of which seemed to be intent on performing along with the persons on stage. This involved singing along with the performers (I must have been the only person totally unfamiliar with the material), rushing up to wave dollar bills at them, and doing various body motions that seem to be specific to the song being performed.

Was there talent on display? Yes, to some extent, for sure. Clearly the numbers had been rehearsed and refined. But was it art? Or just Gesunkenes Kulturgut?

Jimmy wasn't there. Did Kevin go home with someone else? Can't say. I left after half an hour. I was tired, it was cold, and it just wasn't a place where I felt at home.