David Ogilvy & the Rolls-Royce headline

In his book, Confessions of An Advertising Man, Ogilvy shares that one of his best headlines was written for a Rolls-Royce print ad:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

I was reading this part while being in the metro, on my way home, and I couldn’t help myself starting laughing when I saw the next part:

“When the chief engineer at the Rolls-Royce factory read this, he shook his head sadly and said. “It’s time we did something about that damned clock!””

Books & libraries in Vienna

For those who didn’t lose their habit of wondering through the library’s book shelves, that still enjoy discovering on their own, browsing through random books; and don’t limit themselves to the “Search” and “Add to cart” buttons from Amazon ..

For those from Vienna that are in a search for a library with English books

I offer you 2 tips:

• The British Bookshop from Weihburggasse 24 : big diversity of books, from belletristic to specialty books, welcoming staff + the nice thing is that, if you don’t find there the book you are searching for, you can always order it from their deposit.
• And there is also Thalia, another cool library, that has a section dedicated to English books. You can also go there and have a coffee or a tea, chose a book from the shelf and let the time pass by ..

Skiing in Austria (Semmering – Stuhleck)

Because I’ve promised myself to try something totally new to me, at least once in 2 weeks and because it was just a pity to miss all the snow that felt all week long, we made all the necessary arrangements and Saturday morning, we took off to the snowy mountains, in the Stuhleck resort (Semmering ski region), not more than 100km away from Vienna. There would have been the option for Hochkar as well, but this is situated at about 170km away from the city which meant: double distance to the destination + waking up in the middle of the night, at 5 am. So, no way Jose. But who knows? Maybe some other time..

picture from stuhleck.com

For reservations + transportation, things are really simple. We did it in the following way: reservations here – 1 day travel pack (Bus zum Schnee – Tagesfahrten) – bus transportation both ways, ski card included. Leaving from Erdberg Straße 200a (metro station U3) (Vienna International Bus Terminal) at 8 am, coming back from the ski resort at 6 pm the latest (leaving the ski resort at 4:30 pm). Team members: Dani, amateur skier, but striving to go pro’ (just wait and see!), Dorin (always going for the hardcore stuff out there) plus 3 more AIESEC trainees from Vienna.

Cool. So we’re there. Next step: renting skiing equipment. There are 2 renting centers, at the base of the slope. I warn you that it will take a while. Being quite crowded (it was 9am !?), until I asked for a pair of skiing shoes, until I changed them (the 45s were too small ), until I paid and let my ID card – guaranty, it took more or less 1 hour. Ah, and, not to forget, they also have storeroom + lockers in case you don’t want to carry all your shoes & clothes all the way to the top of the mountain. A list with the renting prices you can find up here. I paid for skies shoes+skies+sticks/1day=28.50€ .

And now this is the part where we get to the fun. Let’s not call it skiing (it’s too flattering), trying to ski. Great experience! It takes a while until you get used to the feeling of having your ankles really stiffy & starting to rely more on your balance and the force of you knees. I can’t really remember how many times I felt down. What really matter is to find a easy portion of slope and try practicing there, until you gain confidence on your own legs. Dorin was so happy, he was on the point of levitating. He was in his personal playground. The people around me were simply vibrating of joy, being such a nice weather and great snow. It totally worth it! Sun, adrenalin, fresh cool air, mountains all around. I think I will try this, at least once more.

great pictures, as always, from Dorin [slideshow]

I finish here, with a line à la Mastercard: “Ski card for one day: 25Euro. Renting equipment: 28Euro. The taste of a fresh cold Almdudler, enjoying the view, at 1300m height: PRICELESS!”

quicklinks: Stuhleck webcams, Stuhleck – map, panoramic view

dear to my soul #3

When you have a dream and you truly believe in it, to get support, you need to have everybody convinced of it’s validity  and to show you are acting responsibly.

“Being bold. That is what I cherish the most. The courage of acting and accomplishing things. Because this gives you the power of letting your mind fly freely”  (Alex Găvan)

Cariere magazine, 12 nov 2009 Edition

dear to my soul #2

“First you experiment life, later she’ll make experiments on you ..”

“Being young is insane. Later, you’re still insane, but no longer young”

Blue Mondays, Arnon Grunberg

dear to my soul #1

“Well, I look at myself as a beginning of an exploration.

That’s the reason we’re exploring . You don’t know what you’ll run into in an exploration..How the sky looks like, how the stars look like.. Do they still twinkle or they are steady light when you get outside the atmosphere?”

The Karminsky Experience – Exploration

The Fun Theory – Recycling Slot Machine

This is one of the 5 concepts I subscribed in The Fun Theory challenge, organized by Volkswagen. From all the 5 concepts, I’ve decided to go further only with this one : I think it has the biggest potential + big chances of applicability in everyday life. Because this is what this competition is all about: suggesting concepts that, applied, would generate fun and contribute in changing people’s behavior for better.

To read the description of the concept/to vote, you can find the concept here. The voting period lasts until 15th of January – further on, the jury will choose the winning concept from the top 10 most voted concepts. Will keep you posted!

Vienesse waltz in the rythm of Silvester firecrackers

What was happening on the streets of Vienna, was so real, you had the feeling you’re part of a movie. Do you remember the scene from Gladiator when Maximus is ordering his army “On my signal unleash hell”?. Well, something very close, only that it was the urban version . So many firecrackers, fireworks and pure madness, all gathered in a single place, I have never witnessed in whole my life. Freakin’ awsome! And all these were launched by the tourists and the locals; the ones organized by the City Hall were launched from Praterstern, where we couldn’t make it in time, the metro from the city center being stopped/blocked because of the huge crowd.

I managed to capture 2 minutes of Vienna’s beautiful skies between the years, in Heldenplatz, near Neue Hofburg. Happy New Year!

Why planes crash?

I was reading in Outliers - besides other nice subjects – 4 interesting things about plane crashes:

- in a typical plane crash, the weather is poor. Not very bad, but sufficient enough, so that the pilots are more stressed than usual

- in a tremendous number of cases, the flight is behind schedule so the pilots are in a hurry

- in 52% of the cases, the pilot is awake for 12 hours or more – this means he’s tired and can’t think sharply

- in 44% of the cases, the pilot and copilot have never flown together before, so they are not very comfortable one with each other.

Well, this doesn’t mean that if outside is starting to rain and the flight has a 10 minutes delay, things are about to get nasty. Or if the two pilots aren’t Facebook friends, they’re gonna crash this thing in the first cliff. Each of this factor, taken isolated, has almost 0 effect. But when all these factors come up simultaneously + human errors than can occur – all these can cause a chain reaction which can lead to a not very happy scenario. Theoretically.

I should chill and stop talking nonsense, taking into account that I have 4 flights in the next month, but I found really captivating the way Malcolm Gladwell was analyzing this thing. I warmly recommend you The Tipping Point and Outliers. Next year, I plan to read his latest 2 books: Blink and What the dog saw.

Time is the enemy

I can’t stop wondering at how fast time can fly by, how much it changes us, the things and people around us. Before I couldn’t care less to be honest but from a while I’m starting to look back in the past and compare “then” with “now”. And because this is an article about old friends…

I have one friend Dan – one of the craziest dudes I ever know. When I first met him – after one week – I had the feeling that I knew him for .. forever. He had a joke prepared for every line I said and he was an irremediable non-conformist kind of guy. I always made fun of him “Dude, you’re crazy! What are we gonna do with you J”. This was 1 year and a half ago when we used to work in the same place. After I started my Masters we didn’t see eachother anymore, from time to time I would spot him on messenger and we would talk for couple of minutes. Last week, early in the morning, I saw him online, buzzed him and asked him how he’s doing, what’s up with him. My reaction after his answer: priceless – now he’s working in the army.

Vlad, a very good friend from my childhood, I know him for more than 10 years, when we were spending our holidays at the country side, at our grandparents. I still had the same old impression printed in my mind: Vlad, the small and fluffy one, with his red cheeks and always causing trouble. We met this fall, by mistake, when visiting our grandparents: he’s almost bigger than me, got taller, currently he’s practicing professional boxing in Bucharest.

What else can I say?