It is finally summer in maine. The temperature is lovely, as are the beaches, and the town of brunswick is now full of ice cream stands and florida license plates. Throngs of elderly folk roam through the many quaint villages, often consuming heaps on unhealthy junk food to revitalize themselves. The sight of an elderly couple shovelling down whopperburgers at the local drive-in, Fat Boy’s, while sweating balls inside their ‘79 Cadillac El Dorado is in many ways a wonderful cultural insight into the world that is Maine. In any case, it has been a blast so far, although I do need to take more pictures.

Dave and I have cooked up some good stuff over the last few weeks, and my skills as a cook are gradually improving. Its been a special summer so far in terms of sports – I’m enjoying playing summer league ultimate frisbee in Portland, the couple of games of basketball have been enjoyable and soccer has taken off as well. Euro 2008 has renewed my belief in entertaining soccer, after watching the last two major tournaments being won by Greece and Italy respectively. The Celtics were fantastic – I enjoyed the entire playoffs in general, and I think the NBA has a great future, with many good new young players coming through. Even my fantasy baseball teams are doing well, which is definitely a first for me.

Recommended reading: The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin. Great narrative on the workings of the U.S. Supreme Court

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Hysterical.

And a tribute to Kelsey Read, Cody Desjardins, and Ben Shulman, who’ve been sleeping in or around the same room as I have since Day One@Bowdoin.

Wow, almost forgot that I had a blog. What can I say? School’s hard, dude. Gotta study and all that. In any case, its Spring Break now, just got back from Savannah, GA and beautiful Tybee Island. It was a lot of fun, as always – good friends and warm weather, what else can a man ask for?

The transition to Bowdoin from studying abroad has been surprisingly seamless, mostly because a) I’ve been so busy and b) god, I love Bowdoin. Especially in the light of the all the transition the fam’s been going through, Bowdoin’s like home to me now – too complicated to describe in a blog; if you ever meet me, ask me why. Classes are good (although there’s this new issue which could potentially be unbelievably destructive) and I’m strongly thinking about the African history major. There’s supposed to be a new professor next year, so we’ll see. An unidentified guest has surprised me with her/his presence, which has made me very happy. Thats about it. Oh, and Obama’s speech about race in America – I can’t say whether he’ll make a good President, but man, can he speak!

Happy New Year everybody. Its started off surprisingly well, as I got to spend some quality time with old friends in downtown Toronto. I hadn’t seen most of them for at least a year, so yeah, it was very exciting with great stories all around. Also, Kashif’s pad is really cool – a condo on the 38th floor, right on the harborfront and close to the CN tower, with an absolutely spectacular view of both Lake Ontario and the city. We went down to Nathan Phillips Square for the big countdown, and hit up a pub later on for a round of drinks.

Whitby’s pretty boring as usual – but it is very relaxing. Going out and traveling can be very exciting, but I love the fact that I can come back home somewhere and just lie on the couch, watch movies, read a book, and be served delicious food.  Oh, two movie tips for the new year : No Country for Old Men, and Charlie Wilson’s War. Of course there were other splendid movies from ‘07 (zodiac, death at a funeral, american gangster etc.) but I just saw these two recently, and both were outstanding, especially No Country for Old Men. I think I’m headed out to Maine on the 19th, and I’m absolutely pumped to see everybody back in school, and get back to life at Bowdoin.  Not really looking forward to the academic hell that is waiting for me, though.

New Year’s Resolution : work hard to get just that extra bit of focus and motivation which I’ll need so desperately throughout the year.

Because it is finals week, of course I’m blogging more regularly now. The CIEE program in Budapest has been a great experience so far; the program is generally well run, and the quality of instruction that we enjoy has been of the highest quality. I’m taking History of Hungary, Political Economy of Transition, European Integration and Security, Hungarian Language, and Political Problems of Transition. Here’s my impressions of the gang:

Our history professor, Attila Lengyel, is this really funny professor with a deep passion for Hungarian history and culture. He accompanied us to Transylvania, and was a blast the entire time. He really is a typical Hungarian – proud, jovial, slightly chauvinist and a great story-teller. Gave a really really hard mid-term though – half the class failed.

Professor Bank L. Boros, who teaches the Security and the Political Transition class, is a very smart guy, and reminds me of Shelley Deane (powerpoints, hard realist approach to IR, no-nonsense style of teaching). He’s given me good grades so far, so I shouldn’t complain, and I genuinely like (and even understand) his classes, but I think he’s somewhat of a far-rightist and a soccer hooligan; he was the president (or maybe secretary) of Ferencvaros FCs supporter’s union in the past, and recently threatened the president of the club with a court challenge, because the latter was trying to enforce some UEFA rules on language and behavior inside the stadium. He also once ran for political office for the now-irrelevant SmallHolder’s Party, and openly supports the conservative Fidesz Party. Keeping aside his politics, he’s genuinely a good professor.

Our Hungarian language professors, Orsi and Maria Gedeon, rock. They’re both very good at making an unbelievably difficult subject easier for us, and work hard to make sure we learn practical words we can use in everyday life. But they’re fighting a losing battle anyway; most of us use maybe seven different phrases to get by in Budapest. It’s a hard language man, what can you do….

Professor Tamas Reti, he’s the Econ professor. I hated him initially, he’s an elderly gentleman who speaks slowly and teaches rather boring material. He gives challenging exams, and actually criticizes us for not doing well. But the fact is, of all the professors here, Prof. Reti I think has the greatest knowledge, the most insightful experiences under Communism, and I learnt so much from him about Hungarian society and economy just by talking to him outside class. He possesses a subtle mind (NOT a hungarian virtue) and has the ability to really delve into the root of a problem and see things which are not appreciated by the common man. He also has a the gift of foresight (again, not another Hungarian virtue) and is also a very courteous and respectful gentleman. It has been a great privilege to learn under him, although I’m pretty sure I bombed the final.

From what I’ve heard of the other professors, Professor Tamas Magyarics is supposed to very good, more similar to Prof. Reti than the others. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to take a class with him. I’ll leave my observations on Elizabeth and Kata for a later date.

Less than a week to go as of now, and finals start tomorrow. I actually have three tomorrow, so I don’t know why I’m not cramming right now, but again, it comes down to the old mantra “pass-fail, pass-fail, pass-fail…” And I should be able to pass, so it is even harder for me to get motivated to cram. The workload’s been heavy this semester, with five classes, and papers and finals for all of them. I’ve managed it well so far, learnt a fair bit about this part of the world, and have some ideas about maybe even an independent study on Central Eastern Europe.

Its a shame that we’re having to spend our last days in this glorious city having to prepare for finals – I really wanted to have some down time, and say goodbye properly to Budapest. But hey, maybe I’ll come back again. Also, it promises to be a rough semester at Bowdoin next spring, especially with all the consideration that I have to give to my studies, future planning etc. etc. Also, my roommates are hell bent on killing my dream of living in the Tower senior year by suggesting that we live in those dilapidated Pine St. or Harpswell Apartments. I’ll rant and rave, but chances are that they’ll finally get their way with this. Ah well…hear the tower sucks anyway.

Should be posting a lot more during the Christmas season, seeing that there is literally nothing else to do in Whtiby, ON. For now, its the history of Hungary, and basically how the nation still hasn’t gotten over the treaty of Trianon, written in 1920 – I bore myself just talking about this. And also, GO PATS!!

Life in 20 Hegedus Gyula ut. has become a tragic countdown. I cannot get it out of my mind that I’m leaving Budapest in 12 days, and it has become very difficult to focus on my daily tasks because really all I want to do is roam in the city for hours without purpose and act like Garfield basically. Instead, I’m stuck with Finals week. Pass-fail, pass-fail, pass-fail ……

Visited Prague this weekend, and it is as good as advertised. Sure the tourist hordes have taken over the entire city, but honestly, they are there for a reason. NYT Travel put it beautifully when it said that the next Prague is Prague. No other city in the world, I’m sure, can provide such an enticing mixture of astounding architecture (both in quality and quantity), cheep beer, great pubs and competitive hostels. The public transport is fast and efficient, similar to that of Budapest’s, and it seemed like a very tourist friendly place. Special note: Budapest is much more expensive than Prague. Many people think otherwise, but it is just not true. Also more people speak English, which is not a problem for me in Budapest at all because of my oh-so fantastic command of Hungarian.

The Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, and the Old Town Square were definitely some of the highlights of the city. The beer, of course, is amazing, my personal favorites being Pilsner Urquell and Staroprammen. Also, I had an amazing vegetarian meal at this restaurant/club called Radost, which I’d strongly recommend to anybody going to Prague. Visited all the sites with Andrew, a fantastic traveller, and his brother, Graham, showed us some really cool pubs. Hung out with Dustin and Adrienne on the second day, and it was Adrienne’s birthday too, so we had a nice relaxing time.

While we were in Prague, my roommate Chris ran into some serious trouble here in Budapest. He got really trashed at a club, got into a cab, but was kidnapped, handcuffed and severely beaten up by a bunch of men who wanted to rob him. Luckily he didn’t have any money on him, and they called the police, who dragged him to a station, made him sign a bunch of papers and literally threw him into a cab and sent him home. He’s lucky to be alive and only has some minor bruises. Welcome to Eastern Europe.

On a happier note, my 21st birthday was an excellent celebration. Of course, we went out to Morrison’s 2 for possibly the last Morrison’s Monday, but nearly everyone showed up, including Andrew’s brother and Claire and her friend Dan, even though they had a ton of work. I went up and performed Summer Lovin’ twice as well as Africa at the karaoke room, and even though I’m pretty sure I belched out utter nonsense, it was still a fantastic time.

Okay, I really have to finish Attila’s 10 page  paper. Cannot believe I’m actually working.

I’ve been in touch with friends and family back in Bangladesh over the last couple of days, and I genuinely believe that even I had underestimated the loss caused by Sidr. Over 3,000 have been confirmed dead, but this number is expected to rise to over 10,000. Over a million – yes, a million- families have been affected, and hundreds of thousands of livestock and thousands of acres of farmland have been destroyed. It has termed a ‘national calamity’ and rightly so – we are looking at an entire country brought to its knees. I talked to someone yesterday who was travelling in the affected areas, and he told me of entire villages which have disappeared, and the former residents just sitting around in despair on the open ground. I honestly also believe that the government is doing its very best, but it really does have limited capabilities in terms of the speed and comprehensiveness of the aid that it can provide. I think this is not the time for finger pointing, and for once, everyone should get behind the government and other aid agencies and try to help out all those in need. Coastal Bangladesh can be unbelievably difficult to get navigate and of course, it does not help matters that it is one of the most densely populated areas in the entire world. There has already been severe flooding earlier this year, and it is just absolutely terrible terrible luck that Sidr happened to swing by as well. To anyone reading the blog, I strongly urge you to just take a minute and donate whatever little amount you can to help the victims (just to show how far your money will go – a dollar can buy 3 bottles of mineral water easily, or a loaf of bread and eggs). It will help somebody immensely.

Here are the links of some relief agencies I know are doing good work over there:

UNICEF: http://www.unicefusa.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=duLRI8O0H&b=39306&ct=4643317

International Federation of the Red Cross: http://donate.ifrc.org

Save the Children: www.savethechildren.org

Thank you very much.

Bangladesh was rocked yesterday by the Cyclone Sidr, which ripped through the southern part of the country and possibly killed over a thousand people. It has been described as one of the most vicious ones ever, riding wailing winds of up 240 km/hr along with tidal surges. The death toll is expected to rise above one thousand, maybe much more, and it would be extremely difficult to describe the suffering of victims and the sheer scale of the loss that has been inflicted upon them. At this time of great human tragedy, my thoughts also go out to my beloved Sundarbans, which bore the brunt of the cyclone, and the countless trees and animals which have been affected by this catastrophe. I know that the country has barely enough resources to deal with the people, and the animals will almost certainly be ignored, and this only serves to deepen my sorrow right now. The national grid failed, the entire country suffered from a blanket blackout, and many places still have no electricity. All communication lines and supply facilities have been severely damaged, and it will take weeks just to even calculate the damage to all property.

Through all this, one cannot help but be impressed at the resilience of all those individuals to whom natural disasters are an inseparable part of life. Many Bangladeshis, especially in the southern part of the country, live on low-lying areas and suffer from severe floods every year. In many ways, it is a remarkable fact that “only” over a thousand people have died – a similar cyclone in the early 90s killed 150,000 people, and the one in 1970 directly caused the deaths of over 500,000 individuals. People are better prepared now, the warning systems are rudimentary but efficient, and by far and large, people know what to do when a storm is brewing. I’m absolutely certain that many of them will be back at work within two weeks. They cannot afford not to work; it is necessary that the tears are wiped away as soon as possible, for daily survival remains the ultimate challenge, regardless of a cyclone. Those who fail to get on their feet quickly might never be able to do so. And maybe for the millionth time in my life, I’m yet again deeply thankful for my family, friends and the life that I continue to enjoy, and can only hope and pray for all those affected by Sidr.

Jacque and Tucker, thank you very much – I truly appreciate your messages and your concern.

Midterms are over, the results are in, and I’m not on a plane out of Budapest – I can breathe easy until the semester’s over. I haven’t been travelling much, mostly due to visas, and because of travel warnings. As terrible as it is, racism and anti-semitism are alive in central eastern europe. Not so openly here in Budapest, but it is definitely a concern in some other places. It is something I considered when I cancelled trips to the Ukraine and Serbia earlier this month. I really want to go to Istanbul, but really don’t want to do it alone. I’m pretty sure that Bratislava and Prague are on though, and very excited about those.

I’ve recently also been devastated by the news that my roommate Vin is leaving the program. He’s an incredibly funny kid, and I’ll really miss him. Aurora and Crosby swung by last weekend, which was fun, and I had to register for classes for the spring, which made me realize that this semester’s almost over. Wow.