Live healthy

We live in an age of technology and office work, which means sitting in front of a computer and working out only our fingers. The lack of physical activity and the stress we face on a daily basis usually leads to unwanted weight. It's better to prevent than to treat the weight gains that can lead to severe heart diseases and an inaesthetic look, which lowers our self esteem. Ageing also has a great impact on the outside and inside of the body, and so, the best way to maintain it, is by providing the right resources of energy. Being healthy is a better way to looking good than buying expensive clothes and putting on a ton of make-up and other cosmetic products.

+ eggs; low fat diary; beans; oatmeal; olive oil; oranges; whole grains; strawberries; cinnamon; tangerines; ginger; grapefruit; bananas; apricots; almonds; watermelon; fish (salmon, tuna); apples; chicken; hot chili peppers; turkey; kiwi; lentils; spinach; olives; dark chocolate.

Also there is a list of things that should never be combined if you want to maintain your body slim and healthy:

- milk should always be drank alone..and preferably it should be skimmed milk;

- meat should never be eaten with bread, diary products, fruits or other fats...but with green vegetables;

- bread with butter;

- pasta with ham and any diary products;

- cheese with bread...in this case the amount of calcium absorbed by the body goes down;

- potatoes with bread...the golden rule of NEVER;

- in fruit salads, sweet fruits should never be combined with sour fruits...that's why I never liked it so much, people usually put banana and pineapple with orange and kiwi;

- no fruits immediately after a meal

It's important to drink between 1.5l and 2.5l of liquids/day...water, green tea and home made juices. They help rebuild cells and clean unwanted elements from your body. Also exercising is a key factor, the best way to keep in shape is of course running, but if there is no time for going to the gym or jogging, a long walk can also be a good option.

Now, traveling thought me that we are different...we have different routines, different national dishes and different eating schedules. We should enjoy the way we are and not try to change just to stick to the rules. The foods mentioned above should not become an ONLY in our diets, but an EXTRA, they can be used as the 4-6 snacks every person should eat/day. It's important not to skip meals, so these food options could also be an "on the go" meal. We should always make time for breakfast, waking up 15 minutes earlier is not such a pain, and try not to eat for dinner the amount of calories that should have been eaten through out the day. Starvation is not the answer, don't forget that humans are like animals, and when the human body is starving it thinks that it will never get food again and starts building resources, fat resources.

Ah yes...reduce alcohol and tobacco and sleep 8 hours/night (not more not less).

My favorite websites with info about ab and glute exercises:

http://www.lose-fat-belly.com/

http://exercise.about.com/od/butthipsthighs/tp/butt.htm

White Party

Spanish celebrities, cameras, a fancy club and lots of white...this was my yesterday night. I and Alex went to a white party in Madrid, close to our home. Some of his friends from Galicia were promoting some alcoholic drinks they are producing and had invitations to this pretty posh party. Of course I didn't know any of the "celebrities" there, most of them being TV celebrities, but it didn't matter because they didn't know me either :P

Galicia

My first exit from Madrid since I arrived was this weekend in Galicia. We left on Friday afternoon, after Alex picked me up from work. It took us almost 2 hours to get out of Madrid, because everybody is leaving on Friday. So, all in all the road took us 6 hours...it was awful.

First stop: Cortegada

Andre's home to be exact…a small Spanish village, where, just like in Romania, everybody knows everybody. The area has a beautiful landscape, it's surrounded by mountains and the houses in the village bear the mark of history. This weekend was the days of Galicia, so the village was wearing celebration clothes. This is a good time for family meetings and partying together. And so it was. On Friday after we arrived, we had dinner with his sisters and then we went out. The club/bar where we went was pretty good and the people wonderful to observe. I stayed mostly with Andre's younger sister...and I spoke Spanish :D...We...or at least I...didn't drink a lot, but we stayed up till 8 in the morning, so the next day I felt completely wasted. It was the day when I had to move to Alex...but only after eating a huge launch with Andre's family. I thought the food would never end...it was delicious, but way too much for me. I had to get back to my senses for my next city...and so I did...for a while.

Next stop: Verin

Verin~Alex's home. Still in Galicia, but this time in a city. The city reminded me a bit of Aarhus, in size and maybe the atmosphere of the Festival. There was a water fight festival and we had our huge water guns, which we forts tried on the streets of Madrid on Thursday evening. I went from leaving with 2 boys to leaving with 5...which definitely raised the fun level of the day. The festival was great and at the end I was completely wet and cold. I had so much fun that for a few hours I forgot about how tired I was. But the evening it all came back...and I didn't manage to stay up later than 4 a.m. I slept for 10 hours...from 4 am till half past 2 pm, with a small break when Alex’s brother came to sleep next to me. On Sunday I was fresh, while the others were zombies...but the road back home killed me...6 hours in the car again...

People definitely love colours in Spain...and so they like to colour their life and make it a tiny rainbow. They enjoy everything they do and when they have fun nothing else matters. I am truly jealous for not being raised with the same spirit, because I love the rhythm life has here...and I have to admit, even the Danes had different festival where people were out on the streets.

Sad news from home, as it was happening when I was in Denmark. Ana had an accident in Greece and she's been in the hospital for a while and she will have to be there a bit longer. These things cannot be predicted and unfortunately they happen. I had a dream of her on Saturday...so the news today really struck me. I hope she's going to be ok.

Choose Madrid

In a few days, my first month in Madrid will end. A month that passed by so fast, that it makes it feel like a week...my days end in a glimpse. As I said before I was actually expecting to feel good here, especially after my Danish experience. Now, my problem is whether I should remain here or not. The pro's for this would be: living in a real European capital, earning enough money to live normally and becoming another person, culturally. The con's would be missing the people at home and constantly thinking about some of them, not being able to work in my field of studies...but on the other hand I am not so convinced about what Romania can offer me, so either way the only thing that would really change would be my social life. I already started looking for a job, so probably if I manage to find something in the next 2 months and nothing tragic happens, I will not go back home for a pretty long time. I am putting my future in the hands of serendipity, again :)

Ah, yes...Alex and Andre have been reading my blog and I have to correct some stuff:

1. Spain is not torn apart by it's political division, I read that in a newspaper...one...and the media here is politically manipulated...so one media source of information and no knowledge about the internal history of Spain is not enough;

2. My neighbors are not Spanish, they are Latin American...so my room doesn't have a Spanish sense and the music they/I listen to is not Spanish;

3. The apartment was not very, very dirty....it was a bit dirty and they were very good at cleaning it...considering that they are boys;

4. The post I deleted was not about my love life in Denmark, Andre!!!!

This weekend we are going to Galicia!!!

The fame

http://www.esi.edu

ESI Berkeley made me famous :)..and the title for my main photo fits me. Pfff it's been such a long time since I've been there, and it's still like a dream...one that I know it happened only because of the pictures I have, because my goldfish memory makes it feel like it never actually happened  The great US of A is still tempting for me, but though this didn't happen before, now the distance makes me feel unsure and makes me shiver at the thought of going and living there alone...but I'm not saying no yet...thank you David for the great photos that will forever make me remember Cali.

40 years of moonwalking

"One small step for men, one giant leap for mankind"...these are the words with which Armstrong conquered the Moon with Apollo 11 on the 21st of July 1969. This happened in a period of a great ideological war between USA and the USSR, and even though USSR send first Gagarin into space, basically winning the space race, USA sent the first man, filmed it and promoted it through a good PR campaign, which left the Russians in the shadow.

40 years after that, mankind continues to be dazzled by the Universe and its wonders. Recently I read an article about the existence of another 361 to 38000 civilizations in our galaxy only. The human imagination is extremely rich and we always wanted to discover these aliens, which in movies are either bad and ugly or good and sweet, they come in peace or to conquer us...Be it either, the sky for us has always been a wonder and it has been used both by religion and pagan rituals. God is somewhere in the sky, Jesus was born under a star, as well as, our life is guided by zodiacal signs reflected by planets or even ancient depiction of drawings showing the existence of some creatures coming from above. This is Scientology's favorite topic, so in case anyone would know anything...it should be them.

A problem in this case would if humans could procreate in space. A smart article says that: "sex in space is human sexual activity in weightless and extreme environments of space. The topic also includes conception and pregnancy in off-Earth environments. The topic has been hotly disputed to clarify its potential impact on human beings in the isolated, confined, and hazardous environment of space. Experts consider humanity's expansion into space crucial to survival, though it was considered taboo for decades of space faring exploration history. As of 2009, with NASA planning long-term missions for lunar settlements with goals to explore and colonize space, the topic has taken its respected place in life sciences. Scientist Stephen Hawking publicly concurred in 2007 that possibly human survival itself will depend on successfully contending with the extreme environments of space. In zero gravity there is no natural convection to carry away body heat and bodily fluids tend to pool around the body. The sweat from sexual activity could pool as floating droplets. Although zero gravity is a boon for saggy body parts, males might notice a "slight decrease" in penis size due to the lower blood pressure that humans experience in microgravity..."

Death row

Today I participated at a conference held in Madrid on the issue of the abolition of the death penalty in Arab States. There were a lot of stuff I had no idea about, so I found it pretty interesting. For example, though I've been studying political and ideological stuff for 4 years, I never new that the Muslim world, just like the Western world developed several schools of thought. Of course, while in the West these school are guided by the idea of power, in the Muslim world they are guided by the idea of religion. Religion was also the issue when talking about the abolition of the death penalty, which is very common in the Arab States. According to one of the schools (Wahabita School in Saudi Arabia) there are six reasons for which a person should be executed by hanging (this is the most common method): apostasy (which basically means leaving the Muslim religion), adultery (which is mostly applied to women, but there are cases when no matter which one of them has committed it, they are both killed because it is considered to have been the responsibility of both, or there are other cases where 4 witness are needed in order to prove it), premeditated murder (the killer could also be forgiven in case the family of the victim accepts to pardon him and get compensation or DIA as it is called in Iraq, which means "blood money"), sedition (this is also one of the most popular reasons for the death sentence especially, of course, because of the ruling regime), spying (a spy always has to be hanged, but is not very clear as it is not mentioned weather the person accused and sentenced could also be a non-Muslim) and the last witchcraft (it refers to the ones that refuse to pray or are atheist). The problem is that other reasons interfere in different countries and usually more innocent people die, for example, there is the Alacula, the family or tribe of the murderer, which is killed together with him because they are considered responsible for his education and actions. I was shocked about all the other stupid, to me, reasons I was hearing, but the scholars were really serious about this issue and they were trying to show how hard it is to make a decision. They are now forced by Human Rights Organizations, from all around the world, to stop this. The problem would be that in Arab countries religious writings (Sharia - the body of Islamic religious law) are used as a source of law, though they don't represent this and can be interpreted in various ways. They are struggling now to build a new, common legislation for all the Arab States, independent from any religious writings and based on the current international law. Their main argument could be that the Koran does not state anything about the death sentence, but on the contrary, talks about forgiveness.

As in the case of China, the media is forbidden to talk about this and so the public opinion doesn't really exist. China is a good example because it also uses the death sentence method and though it has been tried to be abolished, the public opinion surveys showed that they had no idea that this was happening in their country and had no opinion actually on the issue. The only shocking moment for the public opinion in the Arab States was Sadam Hussein's execution...which showed how cruel the procedure is and left people disgusted.

The Vatican had the same problem before 1962, when it had to separate religion from politics. Abolition has been common in European history, but has only been a real trend since the end of the Second World War when human rights became a particular priority. The death penalty has been totally abolished in almost all European countries (46 out of 50). A moratorium on the death penalty is a condition of membership in the Council of Europe and abolition is considered a central value to the European Union. Of all European countries, San Marino and Portugal were the first to abolish and only Belarus still practices capital punishment. Russia maintains the death penalty in law, but currently practices a de facto moratorium, the last execution officially taking place in 1996. Latvia has abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes but retains it for crimes during wartime. Italy was the latest country (March 3, 2009) to ratify the abolishing of the penalty for all crimes.

Since 1990, 85-90% of all judicial executions worldwide have taken place in China, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia; the Congo Democratic Republic.

The whole debate brings me back to the brainwashing I am put to through my studies. In deed the West is more developed that the Rest, but it should look back at the steps it took, and the years that went by before the public opinion and the discourses were changed and not try to rush things and confuse societies that have no idea about what is actually happening and are brain washed by governments.

Cars vs. Dolls

This makes me wonder if it was good that God made Eve from Adam's rib and not his brain. Wanting to play fair...I will be a bit of a misogynist  if that can apply, and state that there are so many things where women should not have stick their nose. The gender race has never been so vigorous as these days and the differences between women around the world never so big. In one corner you find the ones that completely cover themselves, are mutilated and forced into polygamy marriages, sold for money, killed as babies or forced to work to sustain their brothers and in the other the ones that suit it up with short skirts, high heel shoes and branded bags. All these happen just to make certain statements and nothing is natural and the way it’s supposed to be. How many movies show women struggling to climb up the social leader, complain to their friends and talk for hours about random things, shop till they drop, having diet problems and of course talk about how their life partner is incapable of understating them?! I haven't seen till now any movies about men doing that. I have to admit that I actually like this type of movies, and I usually watch them with my friends when I am feeling low and need to see how a women can succeed and rule everything. Even if I know it's just a movie and I watch it for entertainment it makes my hormones go crazy and fill me up with trust. Applying my theory about why and when I watch this type of movies, and thinking about the number of movies released lately by the industry, makes me think about how low women got...they are using a movie to make them feel that they can. I found in the apartment a magazine which talks about the brain differences between men and women, I don't really understand everything, but I will try to because it looks interesting. Another fact I found appealing was about the DNA paternity tests that can be found in USA's supermarkets...just like pregnancy tests...hmmmmm...is this really necessary?! seems so...because they show that out of I don't know how many million tests taken in one year, 25% are negative, one quarter of the men who request this test find out that their partner not only cheated but lied to the extreme...why should it be like this, when we complain all the time about men cheating?!

My "rummys"

I almost finished my first weekend with my new roommates and I think I will have a hell of a good time in Madrid with them. It was absolutely crazy...Yesterday I was at the swimming pool the whole day, and came back at 12 in the night, not expecting them to be home...but they were and a bit tipsy already. I drank with them at home and then we went out in a club...a good club...but I was too busy with our own thing to notice the club. We had some markers from home and we ended up fighting each other in the club and got totally painted. My official nickname in the house is Rummy...because: I come from Rumania and Rum (it could have been any other drink, but this worked with the name)...

Today we cleaned the house because it was very, very dirty and they are pretty good, I was surprised.

Here come the gays!

This Saturday (04.07) I was at my first gay parade. I am open minded and I don't like to judge things by their cover, but I have to admit that I felt myself a bit homophobic. It as a bit yucky to see a lot of guys kissing guys, I think girls kissing girls is much better. The parade in Madrid is one of the biggest in Europe and usually there up to 3 million people participating (crowd included). I have no idea how many were this year, but it sure was a lotttt of people. It was very hot, like every other summer day in Madrid…but this didn't stop anyone from going out on the streets, where they were having water fights or people throwing water on them from balconies.

The parade is full of colour and costumes. Of course the most interesting are the guys...lesbians are a bit boring and normal considering that nowadays all girls wear pants...but the guys were amazing. Not just the drags...who had absolutely fabulous costumes, but also the others. I have a feeling they look so good on purpose to agonies girls...and the main song was "Dragostea din tei"...which I guess is some sort of gay anthem.

I went with Sara and Diego and ended up with Diego and a bunch of Erasmusers I knew from Denmark. We had a few drinks (a bit too many maybe) and the best was the mojito in a 1l plastic glass, of which I had two because it was absolutely delicious. The result was a bad hangover...again...and every time I do this I say I will never do it again...I spent my hangover day with Diego's family by the swimming pool and we developed a nice theory...20s=1 day, 30s=2 or 3 days, 40s=4 days and after 50s you should be crazy to drink that much and not learn your lesson :P