Trychydts in English

My first “real” post in 2009 is about an actor and humorist, András Kern. (I am definitely not going to use the English versions of the names, or, at least, not primarily. András is ‘Andrew’, however.)

When I was young, he was a huge favorite of mine. Strange thing, because, looking back, I hardly understood half of his performances. As a kid, I simply did not know enough about the world to get those hidden implications about the absurdit of the Socialist era. He still seemed a genius to me, and I am still convinced that back then, he really was one.

Nowdays he seems to be disappeared — of course, he still acts and directs, he is in our most popular and most deeply, inherently vulgar, and cheaply disgusting semi-political talk show, “Weekly Seven”. Last afternoon, when I was at Mum’s, I laid my hand on some casette tapes — these contained two music albums of his, too. I listened to them at home, I enjoyed them very much — and I thought I understood what happened to him. He was not a genius in general: he was a genius of the last era.

Don’t get me wrong — most probably, he was not compromised more than most of us. He was just the best at reacting to that paticular lifestyle; he could make the most fun about that paticular way of living. Most of us know very little about the reality of Western Europe and America. He understood that and distorted this image even more so the rest of us could see how limited our point of view was. He could show it with an extremely sharp irony that here everything was cheap but few things had real quality. If you wanted to get something done than you were better find a workaround because the official ways were very likely impossible. Then again, few rules were really rules most are just formalities which can be overriden if you had the proper contacts or the proper cheek.

This was what he was best at, and these times are over. Concerning our overall ethical standards, of course, we have still plenty of terra incognita to be conquered but Hungary still become a part of the globalising world. Competition became a part of our life and that was something for an actor graduating in 1970 was probably very hard to understand. After 1989, he was best in the roles which was about people living in that old Hungary falling apart.

Let’s take his performance in Sztracsatella (Stracciatella), for example — this was a really remarkable experience for me.

I could write a small essay just about the title. It refers to Stracciatella (chockolate chips) ice-cream — but in a very Hungarian way. Of course, we had ice cream under the old era, too. Chocolate, lemon, vanilla, and punch (the pink one), most of the time. Maybe strawberry or some other fruit. Stracciatella and the like came with the capitalism; it was nothing special, still, it was new, it was exotic. In the film, it is a real symbol of the ‘modern’ (post-1989) urban lifestyle — it’s a huge bit of exaggeration compared to real life, but a fairly good approximation. The movie was packed with advertisements — firms still had a long way to learn about hidden messages — back then, shouting the name of a certain product on the center of the canvas seemed sophisticated enough. It is about a respected but not very talented conductor with a family falling apart and with a new love he is too much a coward to keep. He still has nothing to feat, because he has his job, so he has a place in the system, and it would be too tiresome to get rid of him.

Kern of course, felt really at home in this movie. Since then, the audience stated to demand less obviously Hungarian films; Kern, however, seemed to have lost his flexibility. Adapting to new times is too much for him.

Of course, this transition is less obvious is theaters; and certainly, when last year we saw him in Play it again, Sam!, we did enjoy ourselves. However, I do not expect him to turn up in some really modern drama, or in a really modern-approach adaptation.

I put in the album Kern, and I feel really nostalgic. This man was, indeed a genius. Too bad he lost track of time — on the other hand, maybe this was the price he had to pay for being a genius of his own time.

“Although I am certainly pleased with my upper-level exam” — I said to Mum on this sleepy Saturday afternoon — “I still feel that my English can be improved.”

“Well, I think English is simply too complex and sophisticated for anyone to learn  it perfectly.”

“I suppose you are right” — I said, flipping lazily an Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. I just checked the meaning of the word “gouge”; now I wanted to make sure that I also know correctly what’s an otter is. Maybe I should write on my English-language blog.

However, I also decided that I will not waste too much words on my daily routine. First, it’s not inspiring enough; and second, I am already doing it in Hungarian. So, if you are not already fluent in Hungarian, you’s better soon be, or else you will never know what my colleague is like at the National Office for Research and Technology. I will write about the Hungarian lifestyle and the Hungarian mind. Every once in a while I have the pleasant opportunity to entertain America guests and I always feel that our way of living is far beyond their comprehension.However, when we start explaining things with Mum, I always find it really funny. We may not be one of the greatest nations, but at least we are thoroughly ridiculous.

So this is blog is going to be a small guide about the real, present-day Hungary. If anyone reads this, please contact me for your free pizza.

After an unexpectedly hard job interview, I got new possibilites again. I am once again an emplyee of a Government office; they want my communication and writing skills, and my previous professional experience. The interviewer, a somehow crisp but still kind woman, the vice president had bombarded me with questions for more the 45 minutes. Fortunately I had answers readied for every one of them. I felt I could also prove my commitment to the public sphere fairly convincingly; I suspect it also meant a lot. It must have, because four they later my phone rang: I got the job.

I immediately stopped testing Thief III. I must have taken care of finally getting my diploma for the university. Fortunately I had done the necessary paperwork more than a month before, so they had it all ready, I really just had to pick it up. I also had to get a fresh statement from my pension account — fortunately, it went really smoothly and professionally. Originally they said that they would only need me on Monday; however, an emergency situation arrived, so I checked in yesterday. The colleagues seems nice, my room is bright and comfy (I have to share it with two classic gentlemen), and the neighborhood is reassuringly familiar. I had lunch at the very same canteen as I worked at the university. I solved my very first tasks fairly easy, so I have to say I am quite satisfied with myself.

When I was about 16, I always thought that adulthood starts when someone turns 22 or 23. When I did turn 23, I did not really feel any different. I worked with university students, I was at the beginning of my philosophy studies. I felt myself somewhere between child- and adulthood. I started to think that maybe my 30th birthday will be the big turning point.

Well, it was. I already had my first “serious” job, now I am currently looking for an other one, I have a fiancée, who also has a job. My sister has a baby, and I am an uncle. One of my friends just got married. And, at my birthday party at one of my favorite bars in town, I did feel that I evolved into somebody else.

The bar itself is really a great place. If you want to play pool in the city, it’s one of the best places. It has real quality tables, very good service, a non-smoking room, and pretty delicious sandwiches to eat. I held several parties here in the past, and it really excelled today, too. We had a lot of fun, and, after the main event, some of us stayed to play a few rounds of foosball. This was the first time in my life I could test my mettle in this game — well, at least our team with V. didn’t lose as spectacularly as it could.

Planning huge suprises is fun. If you do not have a fixed date — e.g. a birthday — then you can even skip the stress with it. You have plenty of time to wait for the right time, if something gets in the way, you can let it go. You can, because the “target” doesn’t have a clue — after all, that is the essence of surprise. So I waited after my last salary arrived from the ministry, waited for a nice morning when I was in my shopping mood. I visited my favorite jewelry shop, and I bought a nice, silver ring with turquoise  opals  (since turquoise is V.’s favorite color). I bought chicken wings, fried them with chilli and tabasco, made a nice salad, cleaned the flat — I even had time to have a shower. And when she arrived home, she still thought I was just being nice.

I was really lucky, because I really had an opportune moment for the actual engagement. She looked at me and asked: what are you thinking about? This time I could come up with a really unique answer. We had chamagne and fun after dinner. And now I have a fiancée.

I love being so old.

When I looked out of the kitchen window while preparing the Easter ham, I saw it was snowing. It would be a huge exaggeration to say that I was more than moderately surprised. It was only last week I wrote Leah that in Hungary March is ultra-crazy: bright sunshine in the morning, heavy rain or snowfall in the afternoon or vica versa. Today too, when I went shopping, I had to wear a sweater only. And an umbrella, since instead of snowing, it was raining.

The ham turned out to be really delicious — we cooked eggs with them as usual to give them a smoky flavour. My family has been having cooked ham and boiled eggs for supper on every Saturday for more than twenty years. On Easter Mondays I used to visit my female relatives and and friends, and sprinkle them with perfume for some eggs and occasionally for some cash. A really stupid custom, and to make it even worse, you have to tell some stupid poems before the sprinkling.

Well, I am going to do some hovering, because we have parents coming for dinner, and we want to flat to be really spick and span.

Although I’ve been being an uncle for several weeks, I did not have the opportunity to go to Eger to visit my sister. Last weekend we payed a short visit with Mum. Of course, Sebestyén was absolutely cute. I am always surprised that for a two-month-old boy, how much he looks like his father. He was sleeping outside when we arrived.

Then he woke up, he was fed and then Mum could play with him for a while. They all encouraged me to hold him, but I did not dare. He was the smallest human being I have ever seen, and he seemed so vulnerable — I was terrified of accidentally dropping him. They asked me what will happen to my child. Well, I definitely hope that some child-holding mechanism or gene will be activated in me till then.

This was also the first time I saw my sister’s apartment in Eger. It is really cozy, although I felt that when choosing the wall’s colors and the lightning, athmosphere was much important then to actually be able to see. The boy’s room, however, was quite bright and friendly — I especially liked the toy crabs on the wall.

We ate the pastrys my sister’s husband baked for us in the meantime. It was a Hungarian pastry which was made by my Mum’s grandmother’s sister especially often. She could do it the best, although Robi’s was also excellent.

We had quite enough of the photo course. We were able to learn a lot, and the teachers were fairly good professional photographers. Their course-keeping skills, however, got worse and worse each weekend. There was a small group of students, spoiled bullies who always felt themselves above the tasks given by the teacher. They always tried to force the group to do what they wanted — the real problem was that they frequently succeeded. This weekend we couldn’t make any progress, because they kept dragging the course to their bidding. We left in the lunchbreak never to return.

We decided to do something useful instead; so we visited the neighborhood of the house I grew up in, and took some photos of some good-looking scenes.

I have serious orientation problems, and I always had. I have a hard time finding my way at places I do not know well enough. My parents were annoyed of this, and did some serious — and, sorrily, completely futile — efforts to improve this situation. We went to the top of the hill we lived at quite frequently — soon it became my task to lead the family there. I got lost and frustrated fairly often — until I found a street with lot of stairs going straight up.

At the top of the hill is a small forest. There is a really scenic view, some really nice-looking glades, and a strange monument erected for the leader of the Hungarian Jacobine Club, Ignác Martinovics. I loved to play here when I was a child. I imagined this place to be a secret fortress among huge, snow-covered mountains, where warriors fight each other with stone axes. (I even made my own stone axe each time we went up there.) Now I saw it is still a popular place among young children. However, when it was time for them to have lunch, we were able to shoot some photos with V.

Then we had to hurry to Mum’s since she waited us with some superb lunch. So, in spite of the terrible and irritated morning at the photo course, we managed to have a really nice day at the end.

Very little room (and time) for creativity, and a lot of useful bits of information — that was the balance of today’s photo course.

This day was about the light modifiers — reflectors, grids, umbreallas, softboxes and dishes. We had to make photos on the entire scene, and two closer ones on the models to be able to study the effects of the modifiers. Since we were insturcted to concentrate on the task and not to stop fiddling with the composition, the pictures, as photographs, are really worthless. Except the last one — this time I could not resist giving some instructions to the model. She said it was the best photo of her taken this day. I took it as a compliment, because some guys at the studio simply ignored the teacher’s instructions about fast and effective work. They acted as if they tried to shoot the title page of the Vogue instead.

Unfortunately, we simply could not bear to stay for the last two hours of the course. These “Vogue” boys and girls insisted on acting like idiots, and since the last part of the course was meant to be a kind of treat, we left and treated ourselves elsewhere instead.

Yesterday I could have had breakfast at a conference. Not just scones or small sandwiches (the usual conference food), but scrambled eggs and bacon, sausages or fresh crescent rolls with butter and jam. I could eat them at a decent table, covered with immaculate, white tablecloth. Too bad I had breakfast at the metro station — as I work from 8 in the morning, I got used to it. So I only had a cup of tea, and some fresh orange juice later.

Truth to be told, I seriously doubt that serving such a large breakfast increases the effectiveness of a conference. On the contrary: sometimes it seemed to me that the participants were more interested in the food than in the topics discussed. However, I, who is still not a burned-out professional, but someone who has still much to learn, really enjoyed that less people felt it necessary to ask stupid questions or make even more stupid comments than usual.

It was the first real (serveral page long) test for my new Stabilo ’s move pen I got from V. a few weeks ago. (This was the very first thing I wanted to get because of an ad I saw on the street.) Since I make most of my notes on my laptop, I rarely write by hand, but I am still much into well-designed pens. And I just can’t stop loving this one.