22nd of November: elections in Romania

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [in Netherlands] Blog]


22nd of November

Romanians had quite a busy day yesterday, on 22nd of November, since they had to vote 3 times:
First, decide the new President.
Second, decide whether to put pressure (or not) on the Parliament to switch from the current 2 chambers organization into an 1 chamber organization.
Third, decide again whether to put pressure (or not) on the Parliament to lower the number of MPs from the current 471 to at most 300.

I am a constant voter. I like voting. I see it as my duty to enforce democracy. So I had to go to the Hague to express my opinion.

I got up a bit too late, i.e. 2 hours later than I planned due to oversleeping and Amsterdam rain.
I missed one train (7 seconds should have I arrived earlier I would have caught the doors open). Well, I entertained myself by making 2 videos and some pictures with trains comig and going from Amsterdam Lelylaan.
Luckily these trians come every half an hour and I eventually arrived at The Hague.

I decided to navigate to the embassy in my classic style: having the map cached in the brain (funny language, right?) due to the reading done the previous night and cross-checking the paper map and Nokia map (on my cell phone) very rarely.

It was an entertaining 55 minutes walk in a completely unknown city. Now, after completing it, the path looked like this: Rijnstraat, Koninginnengracht, Javastraat, Scheveningseweg, Adriaan Goekplaan, and finally the little street not shown on any map on the right of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons building.


View Amsterdam (by Liviu) in a larger map

The Romanian Embassy looked really nice. I liked it. It felt like home.

There was quite a long line of people anxious to vote. Luckily there were a few friends already in line, so I skipped some 10-15 minutes of staying in line. Overall, I waited 50 minutes outside in the blistering cold (ok, I admit to not have been that cold). There were another 2 shorter queues in the embassy corresponding to the 2 voting rooms, so we had to wait another 20 minutes inside the embassy. Yes, voting is a demanding task.

Once we finished we took a picture to celebrate the moment.


23rd of November

Now, on 23rd of November, the outcome of the elections annoys me a little since Mr. Basescu and Mr. Geoana shall compete in the second round to become President of Romania. I generally agree with the results for the reorganization of the Romanian Parliament, although I prefered the 2 chambers style; indeed, a decrease in the number of MPs seemed terribly necessary.



Note: I shall provide a link to the Picassa album at a later time. Yes, there are several albums many people patiently wait for, so bare with me some more time. Thank you for your patience!

First haircut, first post

[Post published by Liviu on Liviu's [in Netherlands] Blog]

I've had on Wednesday my first haircut in the Netherlands, so I decided it was a great time to have my first blog post, too. Hopefully, there shall be other posts before my second haircut.