Ideas from the other side...

For people interested in Chinese Studies

2012-01-27T19:10:00.000+01:00

Just recently I stumbled upon an interesting post on Chinese Debate blog directing towards online Harvard courses with the topic China: Traditions and Transformations. I'm sure someone might be interested in the modern history of the "buzz" country of the 21st century.

Railroad car manufacturing plant in Wien, Austria

2011-06-20T23:14:00.000+02:00

On 9th of June I took part on a case study for Siemens Management Services. They took us for sightseeing into a manufacturing plant for railroad cars. As I'm a huge fan of everything that runs on rails, I really liked it. Here I present few photos from the plant.

An essay into Europe-Asian Diplomatic Mechanism

2011-05-26T14:00:00.000+02:00

I was recently working on a short essay for a class called Europe in International Relations. I finished it and was thinking I will put it online.

In the paper I describe a specific dialogue mechanism between Europe and Asia called Asia-Europe Meeting. The essay talks about background, goals and framework of ASEM whereas it tries to identify its weak points, mentioning its diminishing importance because of rising China. In the end it tries to propose possible scenarios in which direction the European Union should move when approaching wider Asia.

You can find the document on scribd.

Schumpeter for today...

2010-12-02T19:54:00.000+01:00

Joseph Schumpeter was an Austrian Economist most famous for his work in his Schumpeterian waves ending with creative destructions (more about him from wikipedia). Active in the first half on the 20th century, many of his ideas and opinions focused on capitalism and its life cycle.

I have read today an interesting thought from him and I think it's definitely worth of sharing.

The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers' goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization, that capitalist enterprise creates...

For us to keep working as a society we need a constant inflow of something new that allows us to live onwards! Try to add to Schumpeter's ideas Friedman's greed and we can sum up how the World works.

Reconstruction

2009-11-29T12:08:00.000+01:00

Long time I wrote something on my blog ^_^ because....
The blog will undergo a reconstruction (focused on content) in the following days.

Blog bloging

2009-10-16T01:50:00.001+02:00

I blog on a blog. Yes you read right. I became a, I call it "associate" blogger at the oikos Autumn Meeting in Belfast. Yep I'm there in Belfast and you can find my blogs here at our oikos page. And yeah I'm a member of the student organization oikos :)

World Press Photo in Prague

2009-10-10T19:14:00.005+02:00

From 18 September till 11 October we had in Prague the World Press Photo exhibition. It went on paralelly with exhibitions in Spain, La Coruña and in Bolivia, La Paz. The exhibition was held in historical building of Charles University, Karolinum & what is it whole about? Here you go...

The World Press Photo mission is to encourage high professional standards in photojournalism and to promote a free and unrestricted exchange of information. World Press Photo aims to support professional press photography on a wide international scale. Promotional activities include an annual contest, exhibitions, the stimulation of photojournalism through educational programs, and creating greater visibility for press photography through a variety of publications.

The outcome is the World Press Photo exhibition, and international and local awards (as for example the Prague Award). You can find more about the winners here. From practical reason, I didn't take a photo of single award winning photo, because taking a photo of a photo sounds ridiculous :)

I don't need to mention that the general public was very interested. You could hear various languages and a big plus for the organisators is that the exhibition was friendly for disabled people so even they could enjoy it with everyone.

Train information system solitaire

2009-09-27T14:20:00.002+02:00

Photo taken at Main train station in Prague. Not only the train information system is not working, someone was playing solitaire.

IT admin must be bored at work :)

Prague student dorms

2009-09-24T16:17:00.000+02:00

Staying at a student dorm in Prague has many benefits. Dorms are cheap, can be good located, are full of cool young people and when there are no students they work as a hostels for everyone. But when you visit some of them, beware of accidents. This sign is located on a elevator door and it says After opening the door, make sure the cage is in place! So remember, enter only the elevator cage, they warned you about entering the shaft :)

800km by train

2009-09-01T11:29:00.010+02:00

It was the 29th of August,Saturday, the end of my summer school in Tübingen Germany. I spent there a wonderful month, but it was time to go home. Hard to close even my suitcase I made the decision that taking my bicycle that I bought there, back with me to Slovakia is a TOP priority. So a full packed guy with a bicycle will be taking 5 trains on his trip.
It all started in Tübingen Main train station around 4:00, where I waited for my train to Plochingen. Already sleepy, tired (the reason why could be another post) and many, many hours of travelling awaiting me. So 4:21 departing from Tübingen...5:12 in Plochingen. Hurray, and now waiting till 6:09 for a IC train. Finally will have some sleep because the previous regional train was not very much sleep friendly.

8:19 in Munchen. Very critical, when you are full packed, are on a huge train station, have your bicycle with you and have 8 minutes for changing the trains. The photo of this train station is from Jule, when I was travelling to Tübingen, because lack of time!
Vienna at 14:18, almost back in Slovakia, home. Tired, sleepy and urgently needs a shower. Approximately in 8 hours I will be at home.Sunday 30th of August. Finally after a long sleep I feel like being at home. It was a long trip but I called it a small adventure (because of the bike). And the bike? It will arrive on Wednesday, tomorrow, hopefully in all pieces :)

Bus-line coffee

2009-08-25T18:29:00.001+02:00

OK here is the deal. Why do we have the busses for? For travelling, that's clear. But lately in Tübingen, a city in Germany, where am I still at btw, introduced buses with coffee. Like, have a cup of coffee while you are traveling in our bus. In the picture, bus-line number 8 and on the right side of the 8, you see that? A coffee cup! Or maybe is it something like buy 8 tickets and one coffee-cup for free. This coffee idea of mine is still a sci-fi. To be sure there is a bug in the display, there is no coffee for you in Tübingen busses:) But would this be possible in you country? To buy a cup of coffee while you take the train or a bus?

Advertising in the previous era, the era of socialism

2009-07-22T18:38:00.034+02:00

Recently I have been traveling to Zvolen, a city in Central Slovakia. As some people know, Slovakia was before year 1989 a country of the Eastern Block, it was a socialistic country. The advertising in that time was quite unique and more than advertising the exact product or a brand, the advertising focused on... well things. Imagine: "Buy sausages, because they are good"! So nothing like buy our XY sausages, just buy sausages, buy books, buy radios, buy things, because they are good, healthy, etc. As mentioned before, in Zvolen I arrived at the local train station, where I saw this "relic".

I call it "mirror-board" and the idea is a quite good one. The topic of the ad is about clothes and you can imagine in what way is the advertising made.

The upper sign on the mirror says: "Be every time neatly dressed"!

The lower sign says something like: "Available at the Clothes shop"! But you should remember the name of the shop, which is easy. Simply Clothes. So the shop called simply Clothes was where they were selling clothes :), for illustration other shop-names. Butchery, Grocery, Car accessories, Furniture etc. So nothing like, Joey's Grocery, but just Grocery. In addition all the groceries more or less looked the same and guess what? As a socialistic country all the groceries were owned by the country/government. Hard to imagine? I can imagine that :)

Slovak National Foklore Ballet

2009-07-12T17:13:00.007+02:00

Slovak folklore, very spectacular, picturesque and famous part of the Slovak culture. Important part of folklore, traditional folklore dances. The most famous folklore group is the Slovak National Folklore Ballet - Lúčnica. Tradition lasting over 60 years back to year 1948, with it's founder Professor Štefan Nosáľ. Few ballets can be proud about over 2000 performers with performances all over the World from Japan to USA.
Thursday the 9th of July I had the opportunity to be in the audience of this spectacular ballet. It was a open air event and it was marvelous. Click on the photo to get to more images.

Learning Japanese in Prague

2009-06-21T18:51:00.001+02:00

こんにちは, should be hello in Japanese. Prague and generally speaking the Czech culture is quite popular among Japanese. I just recently saw an advertisement at my dorms for Japanese language classes, but there is no information about the price. Other similar language classes start from 300 Euros for 45 classes. Maybe the best way hot to learn Japanese would be to learn for your self with combination of a professional language class.

Long live God

2009-05-18T16:48:00.002+02:00

To put it simply:) "Long live God" found on traffic pillars not far from Prague City Center. & then, that czechs are not religious...

Karlstejn castle

2009-04-27T13:41:00.002+02:00

Was on a beautiful trip, not far away from Prague. Karlstejn castle ,was really beautiful, definitely a must see if staying in Prague.

Global warming in Davos

2009-01-31T17:20:00.004+01:00

Global warming is in the world crisis definitely a luxury good. There are far more other problems to solve right now. The timing for a new round of debates will be after we cope with this crisis. Luckily there is still snow in Davos right now. Maybe when in January year 20xx there will be no snow in Davos, the World leaders will think about global warming as problem number 1.

Koniec krízy alebo Slovensko je už za vodou...

2009-01-13T15:07:00.003+01:00

Slovensko je už za vodou. Žiadna svetová ekonomická kríza sa nás týkať nebude. Možno.
Píšem možno z toho dôvodu že minimálne v psychologickom uhle pohľadu to tak naozaj môže byť. My sme pokročili natoľko že nie ekonomická ale surovinová kríza je u nás bodom číslo jedna. Lebo pri ekonomickej kríze môžete vyrábať ale nie je "vôľa", zatiaľ čo pri surovinovej môžete akurát tak nič. Preto máme ďalší dôvod nezúčastňovať sa na dialógu, ktorý sa točí okolo svetovej krízi ale radšej si naše červené tričká zakriť modrou košeľou so zlatými hviezdami.

Disappearing people

2009-01-05T23:16:00.000+01:00

Homeless people really do disappear randomly :). Photo taken in front of the Prague Main Train Statiom.

Ochranné krídla plynu

2008-12-25T18:22:00.000+01:00

Na svetovej mape nám vzniká nové energetické zoskupenie. V utorok 23 decembra 2008 sa v Petrohrade zišli zástupcovia krajín združených vo Fóre krajín vyvážajúcich zemný plyn (GECF, Gas Exporting Countries Forum). Ak Vám spojenie Fórum krajín vyvážajúcich "niečo", to niečo pripomína tak je to určite OPEC, alebo Organizácia krajín vyvážajúcich ropu.
Odbočme trochu k OPECu. OPEC je kartelom, ktorý na svetovej energetickej scéne pôsobí pomaly 50 rokov. Slovo kartel som použil zámerne, lebo je jedno či je alebo nie je OPEC podľa tej alebo onej literatúry definovaný ako kartel. Ten kto dokáže ovplivniť svetovú cenu ropy tak že sleduje vlastný záujem, kartelom musí byť a to prostredníctvom ťažobných kvót, ktoré znamenajú jednoducho všetko. Darmo existuje voľná ruka trhu kde existuje vzťah dopytu a množstva ktoré je k dispozícii, lebo žiadne množstvo na uspokojenie dopytu nemusí zajtra byť (to by sme tu už asi neboli ani my).
Čo má však OPEC, ktorý má v hľadáčiku záujmu hlavne ropu, spoločné so zemnýn plynom? OPEC dlhú dobu diktoval na základe cien ropy aj ceny plynu, ktoré sa od ropy odvádzali. Obchody zemného plynu boli uzatvárané vždy na niekoľko rokov dopredu. Jednoducho to boli kontrakty na dodávku množstva v určitom časovom horizonte na základe dohodnutých cien. Zatiaľ čo ropa je na výslní už niekoľko desitok rokov ako surovina číslo jedna a plyn bol dlho niekde v zadu v zabudnutí (spomeňme ropné šoky v 70. rokoch). Dnešný trh požaduje viac plynu ako v minulých rokoch. Z toho dôvodu rastie nie len dopyt po rope ale aj dopyt po čoraz atraktívnejšom plyne.
Takže dopyt po plyne stúpa a my sa stále riadime cenami minulosti. Lepšie povedané riadili sme sa. Dnes to ešte platí ale s veľkou pravdepodobnosťou môžeme predpokladať že v roku 2009, alebo v nasledujúcich rokoch to tak nebude. Práve vďaka Fóru, ktoré sa v utorok konalo v Petrohrade to tak nebude. Fórum GECF si dalo za cieľ kontrolovať ceny, vykonávať prieskumy a monitorovať trhy. Od kontroly cien je už len krok k ovplivňovaniu cien a že skupina G3, akýsi prominentní členovia Fóra, ktorú tvoria Rusko, Irán a Venezuela, určite rada s kontrolou cien, kde tu koho k diskusii o prehodnotení obchodných vzťahov týkajúcich sa zemného plynu pozve. Našťastie si môžeme vydýchnuť, Venezuela a Irán ležia ďaleko a naučiť sa, pre niekoho, nový jazyk nikdy nie je na škodu.

We are really living in a global world

2008-11-05T16:56:00.004+01:00

Today I was listening to a chinese television. To be precise it was Phoenix Television h.q. Hong Kong, ifeng.com. Chinese is a big mystery for me, but today on the 4th of November, listening to their news was the easiest. Every fifth word was guess what? OK I make it more simple. Try guess who? :)
You got it? Every fifth word was Obama. Well we all are Obama Nation.

Oh yeah, je tu kríza...

2008-10-19T22:00:00.001+02:00

Máme tu finančnú, ekonomikú, hospodárku, globálnu, hypotekárnu, prekvapivú ake ešte neviem ani akú krízu, je tu už dosť dlho ale je módou o nej písať tak som prispel aj ja. Úprimne, určite to nie je sranda, lebo ja ako bežný človek som úplne na dne. Všetky moje akcie sledovali osud hlavných svetových indexov a prepadli sa do červených čísel, nikto mi nedá dobrú hypotéku a samozrejme lepší úver ako 18% na moje developerské aktivity asi ani nedostanem. Nuž áno ide to dolu vodou. Ešte aj tá ropa lacnie. No kde sme sa to dostali. Analýzi tvrdia, že jej cena ešte môže klesnúť a to som samozrejme myslel tú pre mňa dôležitú celosvetovú cenu ropy, ktorá sa teraz pohybuje okolo 80 alebo 70 dolárov za barel. Skoro som zabudol, benzím zlacnel asi o 50 halierov ale koho by to zaujímalo. Však je kríza, tak treba panikáriť a paniku naďalej šíriť. Škoda je že táto titulka The Economistu je len fiktívna. Príkladom ignorovania paniky bol manažment poisťovne AIG, ktorý bol asi pred dvoma týždňami na golfovom turnaji, či kde, za "záchranné peniaze" americkej vlády. Oni by si takouto titulkou mohol vytapetovať hoci aj svoje kancelárie. Veď o prácu ťažko prídu. Keby ich stade vyhodili, nevedeli by tie kancelárie z dôvodu krízi asi ani naplniť. Možno by sa ich však podarilo naplniť občianskymi združeniami lobujúcimi za návratnosť svojich vkladov a sporení. Tak teda keď už nie v AIG tak aspoň v Londýne došlo aj na personálne kortešačky. Niektoré bankové domy museli prepustiť od 20 do možno 200 ľudí. Určite si v Londýne nájdu prácu ťažšie ako niekde na Ostravsku alebo v Moldave nad Bodvou. Tým pádom možno nebudú chodiť do tej najľepšej spoločnosti ale do tej najlepšej spoločnosti -1. Takže oh f*uck je tu kríza

Matus We Can Believe In

2008-10-16T20:24:00.000+02:00

Matus We Can Believe In
Because I can & from now on I will change myself.
Proste ide o to že som sa dnešným dňom zmenil. Už ma to prestalo baviť.

Môj Moleskine

2008-10-05T17:52:00.005+02:00

Hurá, hurá, hurá a to hned tri krát. Vo štvrtok som si kúpil môj Moleskine. Moleskine = niečo ako predražený trendy zápisník, ale mne je to ukradnuté. A to som si kúpil hneď Moleskine, City Notebook, Praha ak mám byť presný. Som plný očakávania ako budem poodhaľovať skryté "finesy" môjho zápisníka. Pre viac informácií stačí hodiť do googlu, alebo hocičoho iného slovo moleskine

Reading & reading

2008-10-03T19:52:00.003+02:00

Yay already bought Brisingr. Yay already somewhere in the middle of the book around page 400. Good story for the hard rock fans, but in my opinion a little bit too slow going and quite many fillers if I may use this expression. My Brisingr is different from the previous books that I own :(
The previous books were from an American Publisher, this one is from DOUBLEDAY -> GB, but no big deal everything stays the same. And almost forgot, it's a paperback. I start to like paperbacks more that regular hard cover books. Uf that's all going back to read a little bit....

Guess-the-google

2008-09-16T23:30:00.000+02:00

Tak dneska niečo po slovensky. Už je to pár dní, Čo som sa ako obvykle túlal po svete internetu, keď sa mi podarilo natrafiť na jednu z tých zaujímavých stránok. Zaujímavých až na toľko že som si stránku uložil do záložiek, z toho dôvodu že sa na ňu budem veľmi rád vracať. Jej zaujímavosť som si pre dnešok ani neužil a rozmýšľam či si ju ešte užijem keď ma vlastne už ani tak nenadchýňa.
STOP však chodeniu okolo horúcej kaše, píšem o stránke Guess-the-google alebo uhádni google. Keď ste ju už vyskúšali gratulujem, keď nie, krátke sumárum. Všetci niečo hľadáme (jamomentálne lepšie ubytovanie :), googlime, hľadáme na yahoo, hľadáme hudbu, filmy, dáta, burzové správy, obrázky. Práve s obrázkami pracuje daná stránka. Znalý angličtiny už asi tušia o čo ide. Uhádni google, stránka Vám ukáže malú zbierku obrázkov a Vy musíte uhádnuť aký hľadaný výraz sa za obrázkom skrýva. Po malej sérii takýchto hádaniek Vám ukáže Vaše skóre s porovnaním najúspešnejších pokusov.
A len pre zmienku, moje skóre je 166, to je slangovo total shit, ale pozor borci tam majú hodnoty od 300 hore a to nie je Sparta a ešte niečo na záver. Je to naozaj návykové.

учитьця, учитьця, учитьця (you should know who)

2008-08-27T23:28:00.000+02:00

OK OK I agree the heading maybe contains a mistake, but I will correct it right after that I find it ^^ I was learning Russian for three weeks in Estonia, at the Tallinn summer school. I'm already three weeks back from this fantastical event and I still didn't open my books. But today happened something that made me to open them. I was playing, yes you got it right. I was playing, and not something with a deep meaning. I was playing a first person shooter - Team Fortress 2. OK How could he open the russian books when he was playing? You'll ask. How? In a very easy and natural way. I was playing, rather dueling with a player WeZeG@ I enjoyed it, was quite fun, good duel. So I used Steam and added WeZeG@ to my friend list, he accepted it and after leaving the server, I wrote him something like: "it was a good duel, I enjoyed it :)" That's all. The response came quickly, the response came in Russian. Dear WeZeG@ was Russian, he or she, was my reason to open my russian books and try to put some normal sentences together. The conclusion was that I didn't succeed & he accepted speaking the almighty english, but I'm fed up with myself. From tomorrow I'm continuing studying russian.

учитьця, учитьця, учитьця (V.I.Lenin)

Brisingr coming to town

2008-08-26T19:09:00.000+02:00

Hurray, Brisingr is coming. What am I talking about? The third book from Christopher Paolini right after Eragon & Eldest. I just got this marvelous information from a forum and now I need to tell it to everyone. I wouldn't consider myself as a hard fan of the world of Alagaesia, but I red already the two previous books and well... I got quite addicted. If you want more info better check it here on the main page of this fantastic world that can consume you in one piece. What is it about. well I will only reveal that the title is a name of a noble Dragon . All ( or just the few dragons) that appear in this novel series are noble and you can live their fantastic struggle against the evil with them. OK I got carried away a little bit, but really, if yiu like fantasy, adventure, romance and stories where the good fights the evil and it's not so easy to tell who will win, this book will be a good friend in rainy autumn.

2008-08-25T14:05:00.001+02:00

Prvý príspevok na mojom slovenskom blogu, viac čo najbližšie :)