For The Good Times

Easter in Norfolk

2007-04-15T11:10:00.000+02:00

"So long as I am here, I might as well do some travelling and get my butt out of London for a change!" I thought to myself as my fingers rapidly tapped on the keyboard filling out the Host Programme application form. A week later, I got an email from the Host administrator saying I am to spend the Easter weekend in East Harling, Norfolk. "Perfect!" I thought, as I wanted to experience something totally different to London. And, truth be told, London is not really the best place to experience a typical British environment. Even though it is the capital of the UK, a large number of the population is international, which kind of neutralizes the British influences. Anyway, as I said, I was very excited to get to Norfolk and experience life in the countryside and yes, it was everything I thought it would be - picturesque, peaceful, relaxing and inspiring. I got to see lots of live country animals, such as cows, horses and sheep and the countryside abounds in weeping willows, which are my favorite trees. And at night, when you go to sleep, everything is so still and peaceful, and the only things you hear occasionally are muntjacks making strange noises in the fields around the house. But if you're a fast sleeper, like me, you don't even notice them. :-) It was definitely totally different to my place in London where police cars, ambulances and fire trucks go by every couple of minutes in full speed with the sirens to the maximum... Hahhahaaaa!

Oh, and another thing, I got to meet the Easter bunny! Yeeeeeeeeey! So whoever said that Easter bunny doesn't exist - was wrong!!! ;-)))

Anyway, pics are available for all of you who are interested at http://picasaweb.google.com/palachinka

so please, knock yourselves out! ;-)

To my hosts, Patrick and Jill, thank you very very much for inviting me to your home and helping me have so much fun! You will have to come to Croatia some time so that I can return the favor! :-)

RSVP event

2007-04-15T11:03:00.000+02:00

On 28 March, instead of having our usual Events Marketing class, the whole class went to the RSVP event which was taking place at the Business and Design Centre in Islington.

This event is one of the largest events for the events industry, where a large number of event management companies, venue providers and other companies providing supporting services gather together to show themselves and do business. We had been given a set of questions by our professor which we had to analyze during our visit to the event site which we will disuss after our Easter break (yep, we have 2 weeks off for Easter! Yeeeeeeey!). I will not go into details here of what was going on, as you can see it all at

http://picasaweb.google.com/palachinka.

Enjoy! ;-)

3D movies - fake it and make it :)

2007-03-30T22:08:00.000+02:00

Today I had the opportunity to attend a presentation of the new type of digital media used in marketing – 3D movies – and it was totally mindblowing! The presentation lasted for about 40 minutes and we got to see how all these elaborate pieces of imagery created out of virtually „thin air“.

To see some of the videos we've seen during the presentation, just go to http://www.eyeliner3d.com/musion_eyeliner_showreels.html, but trust me, seeing it in 3D floating huge in the air in front of you is waaaaaay better than anything I have ever experienced before. Not to mention it gave me some very cool ideas for upcoming projects... Hihihiihhihiiiiii!

I so love it! :-D

Barn dancing in Amersham :-D

2007-03-30T22:02:00.000+02:00

Weeell, last weekend I finally got my first opportunity to experience life in the British countryside and it was quite eventful... :-D

I had applied for this project called the International Students Weekend in Amersham where, together with another 32 students from 18 different countries, I was placed with a host family for the weekend and participated in an old Amersham tradition – barn dancing. Me and Elham, an Iranian girl on an English language course at one of London's colleges, were hosted by the chairman of the organizing committee of the project, so we got to help out with the final preparations of the hall where the barn dance was taking place. This, of course, was very interesting for me, as – naturally – the barn dance is a sort of an event, so I got to see how it was done.

The Amersham barn dancing developed from the Scottish dancing tradition and is a predecessor of the American line dancing, which is very popular in the American West. It was quite different from anything I had ever experienced before and it was great fun – especially since the explanation of the dances took about 10 minutes, whereas the actual dancing took about 2-3 minutes all in all. LOL! :-D

The thing is that all the dances are performed in formations of 4 or 8 dancers who perform the moves according to the instructions from the Masters of the ceremony – in this case a couple who are leading the event. It was particularly funny seeing people messing up the steps and the moves and going in the opposite direction from the one they should be following, and although this caused quite a confusion, somehow it didn't matter – everyone – and I mean EVERYONE was having an amazing time!

Other than dancing, of course, we went out and did some sightseeing of the Old Amersham and we also went to a methodist service on Sunday morning, which was a great experience to contrast to the regular catholic services I am so used to attending (not that I have attended any in the last couple of years, but still...). For all interested, pics are in my online album and you can find it at http://picasaweb.google.com/palachinka/BarnDancingInAmershamMarch24252007.

So I want to thank again Eileen and Jerry – my hosts for the weekend – your kindness and hospitality are greatly appreciated and I hope someday to be able to return the favor. A big thank you also goes to reverend Fiona Weaver, the chaplain at my University, who was organizing the trip for the London Met students – without your effort we would not have had the opportunity to have such a great time! :-D

So there...

Punctuality :)

2007-03-15T13:28:00.000+01:00

I really do love this country! I believe I sad that a couple of times already, but yep, here it is again... :-)

As most people who know me will tell you, I am quite a punctual person and I am always slightly annoyed when I have to wait, but living here is like heaven: everyone, and I mean literally EVERYONE is on time! It's unbelievable! And not only are they on time, but whatever it is that is being done is done so efficiently that the whole process is over in matter of minutes. Now, to someone who was used to all the classes starting with at least 15 minutes deferral (popularly known as the "academic quarter") and then taking ages to finish, I was very pleased to learn that people are completely oblivious to the concept here. And most of the classes finish ahead of schedule because everything that needed to be covered was covered efficiently. :-))) Just to give you a random example: I had some financial issues to take care of with the administrators in the university's finance departments. I went there without an appointment, met with 4 different people and the matter was settled in 10 minutes.

Long live efficiency! :-D

'Absolutely Fabulous' London! :-D

2007-02-16T18:26:00.000+01:00

I thought it would be something like this, but it's still quite strange when things actually ARE as you imagined they would be...

I've always loved British TV series such as 2,4 children, Black Adder and Absolutely Fabulous, particularly because of the typical British words and the British accent the characters were using. Well now it's literally all around me... And I love it! :-)

It's all "fantastic", "marvellous", "fab" and my current personal favorite "brilliant". My high-school favorite "lovely" is mostly favored by older generations, but you still get to hear it 10 million times a day...

I so love it! :-D

Photos... Yeeeeeey! :-D

2007-02-16T18:10:00.000+01:00

Ah, yes, all this madness over the laptop made me forget a very important thingy... :-)

I've been posting some photos in my web photo album and you can check them out at

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/palachinka

I have sorted it into albums acording to the topics they cover, so just click on what interests you to check it out. There'll be more photos to come, for sure, it's just that the weather is so lousy here these days that I have no motivation to take pics, they only end up being gray... :-S

Hugs to all!

Ivna

I REALLY HATE TECH STUFF RIGHT ABOUT NOW!!! :-@

2007-02-16T17:52:00.000+01:00

As much as I looooooove technology and all the benefits it brings, right now I really, really, rrrrreeeeaaaaallllyyyyyyy HATE IT with a very great intensity!

My laptop broke down as soon as I got to London which, btw, is over 2 weeks ago and I am still not able to use it properly. I managed to get the Windows installed again, but now my audio driver doesn't work even if I keep downloading the driver from the manufacturer's support site and God knows what else isn't working (as you can imagine I am no IT connoisseur)...

And here goes a nice funny little story... again: I took my darling Streebor (who I know is in great pain for feeling like a cripple not being able to all the things he was able to do just a couple of weeks ago) to a laptop repair shop in the London's City that I found over the internet. And the guy checks it, out messes around with the keyboard, tries to reinstall the driver and ends up telling me that the sound driver won't work because it is not supported by Windows XP with Service Pack 2, but that I need to install Windows 2004 (not to mention I HAD Windows XP 2002 with Service Pack 2 installed before and everything worked perfectly...). So I leave the shop all happy that at least finally I know WHAT the bloody problem is, so I ask my friend Mohs if he could find me somewhere the Windows 2004 installation software. I will leave out the bit where I spent the whole day walking in central London in the rain with no umbrella trying to find a computer software selling store, only to find out in the evening from my friend Meysi that there used to be only 1 shop in the whole of central London selling software, but - guess what - they closed it down some time ago!!!

So anyway, Mohs calls me up a day later telling me that Windows 2004 DOES NOT EVEN EXIST!!!

So you tell me - who's nuts over here??? :-S

Little Ivna and the City... Again... :)

2007-02-10T13:47:00.000+01:00

Weeeeeeel, here I am again. My last post was about my trip to London back in November. And guess what... All my next posts for a while will also be about my trip to London. Yep, that's right, I decided to do my Master's in Events Marketing Management and for the next year or so I will be located in London... Yeeeeeeeeeeeey me! :-D

Anyway, I came to London at the end of January and have been settling in for the past two weeks, changing houses, cleaning, enroling with my course at the university, cleaning, having tons of introductory lectures covering both the university's services and facilities as well as covering the specifics of my course, cleaning, going out and - you guessed it - cleaning some more. LOL! :-))

I am currently living in the students' Hall of Residence called The Arcade. The building has self-contained flats with 4-6 people living in them. I am lucky to be in a flat with only 3 more people, all girls, so it's really not that bad. Though it did require a lot of cleaning to bring it into a state fit for people to live in. :-D The building is said to be a former prison, or - to be more politically correct :-P - women's correctional facility. None of the corridors in the building have windows so they get to be pretty stuffy all the time so all the tenants overcompensate for it by having windows in their rooms and kitchens open most of the time. Haha! Also, in the vicinity of the building are a) a police station and b) a hospital so police cars and ambulances with rotation lights and sirens are passing by our windows literally every minute (hey, this is a big city, with a big crime rate) so it gets pretty noisy. And it doesn't stop at night either... But it's ok! :-)

I have been having some trouble sleeping lately, seems like the excitement of moving to London that has eluded me the first week I was here finally kicked in - haha! - so my sleeping itinerary has moved from normal to the 6am-10am shift. :-S About two nights ago I finally managed to fall asleep at a normal hour (that being around 1am) when at 3.30am we were all woken up by a fire alarm, so all 500 people living in the hall had to go down the fire escape staircase and freeze for half an hour in the car park in front of the building until the Fire Brigade arrived to check the
building and switch off the alarm. Needless to say, the alarm was on during all that time, I really
wonder what the neighbours were thinking. Thinking of it now it really makes me laugh my ass off - people were being very creative at keeping themselves (and others) warm :-P, but - trust me - at the time there was really nothing funny about it. :-) Of course, the official explanation was that some people were smoking in one of the rooms and that triggered the fire alarm, but the fire alarm can't really be that sensitive, can it? As for myself, this was the first fire scare that I experienced in my life (at least as far back as I can remember) so was quite a strange experience.

The university I am studying at is the London Metropolitan University and has two campuses: one in the City (London's main business area) and one in the area of Holloway Road in north-east London, which is called the North campus and is where I am studying. It is the no. 1 choice university of international students in the UK and has approximately 36,000 students, out of which some 7,000 are international students. It is also one of the best universities in the UK in terms of sports achievements of its students in different inter-university competitions in many sports, headed by male and female tennis and female hockey. So far I am quite happy with the way students are treated and with the facilities they offer - there are 10 libraries available to students, a completely new IT centre with 280 computers and a Learning Centre that is open 12 hours a day on weekdays and 5-6 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Not to mention the Students' Services department that is always available and happy to help you with any problems you might have, including helping you resolve visa issues or find a part-time job as a student, and the unavoidable Students' Union and the clubs and societies it supports.
I'm guessing it should be a pretty fun filled year ahead of me. :-D :-D :-D

We were supposed to go on a boat trip to Greenwich today, but since it had been snowing two days ago and since then all we're having is rain, me and most of my new friends decided this morning it was way better to just stay in bed and lay around the house some more... Hahahah! Talk about a proactive attitude! :-) But there is time for that! :-)

Well, am off now, got to make some lunch and will be going out in the afternoon after all. If nothing else will just take a walk in the Covent Garden - so far it is my favorite part of London. But I'm sure there will be others as well as I continue discovering London.

See you all here again soon! And I will be posting some pics as well, as soon as I make some. Hahahaha! ;-)

London here I come! :)

2006-12-03T15:59:00.000+01:00

Hey you guys!

It's been quite a while since I posted anything here, so I thought it was about time to do so. :) A lot has happened over the last month and a lot more things are about to happen, so here are some updates. As I wrote in my previous post, after I quit my job, I was considering doing some travelling so I finally decided to go to London to check with the universities there for my Master's degree and then to visit one of my very good friends, a crazy girl from Greece who is now doing an internship in Amsterdam.

Soooooooooooo, London... As some of you already know, ever since I was a child I've always had a fascination with London and I still consider it my favorite city in the whole wide world. ;) I have had the good luck of one of my international friends offering me a place to stay, so Harmandeep, I know I already said this, but I am really very grateful for your hospitality and I am looking forward to returning the favor when you finally decide to come a visit me in Croatia! ;) But anyway, I've been to London back in 1994 when my father was working in the UK and ever since then I've always been saying that I'm going to go back there one day and stay a little bit longer. So this time I stayed a full week and in February (hopefully) I will be moving there for a year to do my master's course in Events Marketing Management at the London Metropolitan University. Yes, you read right, I sent my application and all the rest of the documentation so now I am waiting for a decision by the University, which, after my interview with the course leader at the beginning of November, should hopefully be a positive one (but still keep your fingers crossed, just in case :)).

Anyway, back to my trip.

Day 1 - Get to know London

I got on the plane on Oct 31st and in only 2 and a half short hours I was in London. As my friend Harmandeep is a working dude, I had to wait for him to get off work around 6.30 to come pick me up. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to explore the city on my own, so the first thing I did after landing is to take the Heathrow Express train to Paddington, one of the railway stations in central London and leave my luggage there. Next stop was, of course, Leicester square, which I had still remembered so vividly from my visit to London twelve years ago. I couldn't believe how well my memory served me on some specific things. So after getting off the tube at Piccadilly and strolling to Leicester square, I decided to go down to Trafalgar to fulfill the first goal of my trip: see an impressionist exhibition at London's National Gallery. Personally, impressionist painting is one of my favorite directions in art and I jumped at the opportunity to take the audio tour through the exhibition. It is definitely the best possible way for a person to make the most of their visit to a museum or gallery. I mean, what's the point of looking at dozens of paintings and not actually learning anything about them. Don't get me wrong, I am not a „museum“ person generally, but every once in a while I get this craving for some cultural education and this time it managed to fit perfectly with my personal taste. It was definitely the best 4 hours of my trip (together with the 4 hours I spent in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, but you will read about it in my next post).

Day 2 – Academic involvement

Day 2 was reserved for meeting the professors at the London Met. Since I was interested in 2 postgraduate courses, I had arranged to meet the course leaders in person in order to discuss the possibility of my enrolment in February. Now, you might be interested to know that London Metropolitan University was formed by merging two universities some 5-10 years ago so it is a bit specific in the sense that it has 2 campuses. Of course, the two courses I was interested in are taught in two different campuses, which made my meetings a little stressful (mainly because of not knowing the exact distance and travel time requirements between the two), but still I managed not to get lost and not to be late for either of the meetings. Yeeeeeeey Ivna! :-P The course leaders are very cool people with a great approach to students and I must say I really enjoyed meeting people who are teaching at the university in order to shape the minds and opinions of talented young people, as opposed to them being there just for their reputation and/or salary (as is usually the case here in Croatia).

Day 3 – Shopping!

Oh yes! You didn't think a fashion aficionada like myself would actually go to London and not do any shopping, now did you? :) Of course not! Well, my day started by visiting the Brick Lane market in East London, near Whitechapel. I had a blast exploring all the oriental and asian stores with clothes, jewelry, spices and whatnot. It was a very vibrant and dynamic place, though sometimes I felt very strange as most of the people around me were non-whites and I was a blonde chick strolling around alone so most of their eyes were glued to me. Some of them started saying hello to me in the street and it was quite amusing, I am not used to being the centre of attention, but it was a very interesting experience. :) Next stop after Brick Lane market – Oxford street. Oh yes, yes! I love oriental stuff, but I also enjoy strolling on the highstreet checking out the latest fashion trends which will appear in Croatia sometime during next 2-3 years (yes, we are unfortunately still very far behind with a lot of things, fashion included...). Needless to say my mind was totally blown away. Just walking in Oxford street makes you feel so small, almost antlike. And when you see the crowd of people going your was, it makes you run into the first store you see. But things inside are quite the same – a sea of people, looooong lines at the cash desks, but also much friendlier staff than I would have expected. Anyway, in the shops on Oxford street and later down in Covent Garden I left a considerable amount of money, but with it I got even more considerable additions to my apparel. Am definitely starting to save money to spend on London's (in)famous sales coming up in the next year. Hi hi!

Day 4 – More academic involvement

On day 4 I went to the London College of Fashion (where else would it be located but near Oxford street... Doooooo-oooooh!) to go and discuss some postgraduate courses in fashion marketing I was also interested in. The staff was again very friendly and helpful, but I don't think I'll be going down that road right now (mainly because I lack serious experience in fashion marketing, management and events). Anyway, was good to see all applicants get the same consideration by the school.

Day 5 and 6 - Leisure time

Saturday and Sunday were spent in sightseeing around London. On Saturday Harman joined me so I even managed to have some pics of me taken (you know how I hate having my pic taken, but going to London and not having any pics of myself there – I would be very, very stupid to insist on such a thing, don't you think? :)) So on Saturday, Harman and I had lunch in a British pub down on Whitehall and we had a BBQ chicken melt with the bbq sauce. A very interesting, but also very strange taste this bbq sauce has... Hmmmmm!

On Sunday there was a big rugby game on TV, so I was wandering around town by myself. I was trying to find the Saatchi gallery of modern art in order to get something my cousin asked me to get, but it turned out that the gallery is moving to another location and will not be open before May 2007. Tough luck! So then I went to the Florence Nightingale museum and learned a little bit about the history in the 19th century and then I took a boat ride on the Thames. It was amazing to see some of the major sights in London from a totally different perspective, and it was freezing cold and cloudy, but still it was an experience I definitely want to re-live again.

Day 7 - Bye bye

Monday – woke up, said goodbye to Harman (he was leaving for work, but his room mates were at home in the morning so I didn't have to leave as early as him), took a shower, packed the rest of my stuff in the bag and headed to the airport. Unlike when I got to London, this time I took the tube to Heathrow and it took me about an hour and a half to get there. I passed the check point and entered a dazzling world of airport duty-free shopping. Man, I'm telling you, it would be worth travelling to London just for the weekend just so you can do shopping at the airport... Hi hi! Just kidding, but yes, the airport shops are quite full with almost anything you could possibly want or need.

The plane took off at 3.45 and at 6.15pm I was in Amsterdam! :)

Travelling again, at looooooong last! :)

2006-10-10T19:01:00.000+02:00

Hey y'all!

Well, it's been a loooong time since I wrote here last...

I am currently planning to travel a little bit in the first half of November - I will be visiting my friend Harmandeep in London from the 1st Nov and sometime around 6th Nov will be moving on to Amsterdam to visit one of my very good friends, a crazy Greek chick by the name of Evi, who is currently there doing her internship with ABN Amro.

Actually, this trip evolved from the fact that I had been talking to my parents and we came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea for me to finish a Master's course somewhere abroad. So as my dad got his postgraduate diploma at the London Metropolitan University, I looked around a bit and realized there are some courses there that interest me as well. So, to cut the long story short, I rolled the dice, booked my tickets and decided to go off and see the world a bit. :))

If any of you, my friends, happen to be in London or Amsterdam sometime in the first half of November, I would be more than happy to see you again. Just let me know, ok? Email, MSN, mobile, or just a comment here on my blog will be just fine! ;)

Yep, will be fun, I can already smell it!!! :-P

Monkey business :-P

2006-06-24T13:58:00.000+02:00

Well, I logged into my MSN account for a couple of minutes just to check my emails and I found a link to a blog of my friend Shashaank. On his blog there was a very cute virtual pet hamster so, being a person who is very into experiencing new things, I went and got myself not just one, but two pets! Ha! :)

The first one is a dog I called Zhemitschka (which in Croatian means something like a bagel) and the other one is called Bananko (quite understandable, since it is a monkey... Hihihihi!). I already had a dog, and I would like to have a monkey some day, so this is my way of trying to keep myself happy, until I'm able to get one or the other in flesh and blood. :))

So, if you want to play with my pets, just click on the pic and see what happens! ;)

Shashaank, dude, thank you for this cool link and keep in touch, okay? :)

P.S. Yes, my nickname is Palachinka! It was given to me by one of my best friends. It's nuts, but still - there it is... ;)

The truth that needs to be said

2006-06-22T23:03:00.000+02:00

I was just watching the Croatia vs. Australia match of the World Cup in Germany and I cannot believe the level of denial people can maintain just so they can avoid facing the truth! I mean, really!!!

We have had 3 games so far, 3 games where we managed to score 2 goals only in the last one and the only thing I've been hearing from everyone since the World Cup started is "We're good, we're good, we're just not lucky enough to get the ball to go into the opponent's goal!" What?!? Are you people for real?!? Of course the ball is not going to go into the opponent's goal all by itself!!! It generally needs a little help from the players of your team!!! Or have I been mistaught since I was a kid to believe that things don't happen all by themselves, but because you (or someone else, for that matter) make them happen??? And now everyone is shocked and confused and not believing that Croatia is not moving into the second round of the World Cup.

And what is this with everyone believing the Croatian team is absolutely the best team in the world, just that we're not getting a fair break?!?! It's like our team has a God-given right to be in the final of the World Cup every time. Okay, so we won 3rd place in the World Cup in France back in 1998, but HELLOOOOOO *DING*DING*DING*DING* - that was 8 (EIGHT) years ago!!! And since then we have changed like a dozen different national teams and players...

There is one more thing I noticed as symptomatic about my nation in general (apart from the fact that absolutely everyone is a football fan) and that is that every time the Croatian team loses (or sometimes even when it comes to local teams losing to one another in a national championship) this is the list of explanations that are offered as the "official" evaluation of the game by the relevant competent people:
1. The team played a good game, but we just didn't get lucky today
2. The other team was too aggressive/fast for us and/or had 70% possession of the ball during the game (notice how it is not stated that OUR team WASN'T aggressive/fast enough and/or DIDN'T have the possession of the ball for the equal amount of time during the game)
3. This and that player of the team was badly injured and still hasn't recovered

and my all-time personal favorite:

4. The referees were biased against our team and made some shady judgement calls

Now I ask you this: do you think that we (or anyone else in the same situation, for that matter) will ever be able to move ahead and actually become world champions, or whatever else, if we are not able to look our team and ourselves in the eye and speak the truth - we were just not good enough for this World Cup!!! It's not a tragedy, it's not the end of the world - it's our wake-up call which we shouldn't be ignoring, but rather hear it and start really working on the things we need to fix.

I might come off as unpatriotic and harsh, maybe even mean, but I think I've just managed to keep a shred of realism in all this football frenzy everyone is experiencing the last few weeks. Well, whatever you may think of me, or my opinion, the facts still stay the same: there is no master plan for Croatia not to enter the second round of the World Cup... The Croatian team WASN'T GOOD enough, they DIDN'T SCORE enough goals, they DIDN'T WIN and they will now be COMING HOME instead of preparing for the next game of the World Cup. That's it! It is high time we started learning from our mistakes instead of trying to sweep them under the carpet like they haven't happened or were not our fault and pretend we are still the greatest team ever, when things just aren't so... There is just one thing we can all do to make things get better: face the situation, deal with it and move on!!!

That's it! Fin! Ende!

THE END!!!

Baby boom never stops! :))

2006-06-22T12:28:00.001+02:00

Oooooooooo!

In the last 5 months we got two additions to our family in the shape of 2 perfect little baby boys! Two of my cousins got babies, but since my family is very close, I call them my nephews. The first one was born in February (this one I will call Baby 1) and the other one was born this morning (this one will be Baby 2). :)

It is amazing how quickly babies grow and change. Baby 1, when he was born, was very very tiny and totally purple and I used to call him "Stapic", which in Croatian means little stick. Now, a couple of months later, he gained some weight (as, I suppose, all babies do) and now I call him "Buhtlica", which in Croatian is something like a donut stuffed with jam or chocolate or something. :) Anyway, as I already told his mother, who is my cousin, I think that this baby will be very very spoilt. I don't mean it in a bad sense, it's just that he is the first offspring in our generation of the family and everyone in the family is very focused on him, always going to see him and bringing presents and stuff. :)

Don't you think it's nuts how people totally lose their mind when there are babies involved? It's like they have this version of Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde inside them (not that drastic and evil of course, it's just a metaphor for the two completely different sides of their personality) - one minute they are a completely normal person and as soon as a baby comes into the picture they go nuts: start making faces and talking in this unrecognizable language, googooing and booing all the time... I really don't know why it is. Do they think that if they talk like that the baby will understand them better? And of course, then the baby starts smiling (or, even better, laughing) and the people think it's because the baby understood what they were trying to say, when, in fact, the baby just sees this ridiculous grown-up acting like a fool and of course his first reaction is to laugh his ass off... :))

Well, for myself, I have to admit that since Baby 1 was born, no matter how hard I try to control myself, the mentioned Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde effect happens every now and then. :-P But the kid seems to like it quite a bit, so I don't really mind looking like a fool anymore. LOL! Not too often, of course, but still... :-P

Baby 2 was just born this morning, so there is not really much to say about him. Hopefully in time, there will be stories to tell about him too... I'm sure there will... :)

Till then... Farewell!

LOL!

:)

My personal DNA :)

2006-06-18T18:49:00.000+02:00

Thanks to my dear old friend Askoura, I found this cool site giving you the evaluation of your personality. So here are my results, you can check them out and see how much they really reflect me. :) Just come over a color rectangle and you'll see how I scored on different areas.

(Thanks Askoura for this very cool link! ;) P.S. We should talk, man, SOON!!!)

Advocating Inventor

Plus, you can check out my personality chart here:

My Personal DNA

If you want to take the test too, just click here:

http://www.personaldna.com/tests.php

And, of course, don't forget to let me know what your results are... ;)

Accentuate the Positive! :)

2006-06-18T15:57:00.000+02:00

It's nuts, I know... As much as I try to keep this blog updated, still months manage to go by and I leave no posts. I could promise you that I will do it more often, but the truth is I don't know when I will have the time to write next, so I suppose you will all just have to manage reading about me and the things that happen to me with no clear timeline. But look at it this way - at least every now and then you will get a nice surprise on these pages... ;) LOL!

Well anyway, a lot of changes are happening to me lately. I started work - my very first job in a very cool marketing agency, I am taking my driving license course (was definitely about time I did it :-P), I'm also doing an international certification computer course and I am contemplating starting a postgraduate course in September. It may seem like a heavy schedule and it really is quite demanding, but, at the same time, it leaves me with a very good feeling of doing something constructive with my life. Ever since I was a kid I was never very good at balancing things in my life - I would do 10 million things at once, jumping from one to the other as my interests changed (and boy, did they change fast and drastically!).

It is only in the last year and a half or so that I have managed to learn how to actually create structure and balance in my life and still I find it to be quite a complex activity. You see, in my mind there is constant chaos. Don't get me wrong, I'm not nuts or losing my mind or anything like that ;), it's just that I tend to think of (and do) several completely different things at the same time and without good planning and keeping an overview of everything that I think and do I easily get completely lost and confused - to the point where I develop a very strong headache and let everything go for a while. And today, when I have become a young professional person, there is not very much room for chaos or mistakes. It's quite stressful, but it also gives you a good feeling of control over one's life. One of my friends would now start laughing at me and say that "Life is to be lived like jazz!!!" and yes, I do agree with it - at least in part, but, also, you can not always just go with the flow and take things as they come... sometimes you do need to make things happen yourself. And isn't jazz actually the product of musicians taking initiative and making things happen themselves? I think it is... :)

So, not to go into this huge discussion about jazz as a metaphor for life :-P, the thing I wanted to say (or better to say - write) is that no matter what things happen to me in life, I am looking forward to seeing just how far I can go and how "jazzy" I can make my life be. And if I fall flat on my face - who cares... at least I will know what NOT to do or how not to do it next time around...

And yes, I DO like jazz, too! :)

Football Fever

2006-06-18T15:27:00.000+02:00

Is it just me or has everyone gone crazy with football fever lately?!?

Even I get this tingly feeling in my skin every time I hear our national anthem played at the beginning of the matches when the Croatian team is playing, and I haven't been following football much since 1998 when our national team won 3rd place in France. Don't you think it's quite nuts that this whole month people will drop everything they're doing and focus only on pouring their heart and soul into supporting their team - be it on the stadiums in Germany, or back home in front of the TVs? And all the things that were important till now, all of a sudden fade away into complete oblivion for the duration of the Cup...

Okay, I know it's the World Cup and all and I can understand how it triggers patriotic feelings in everyone and makes football turn from "the most important unimportant thing in the world" to the "absolutely most important thing in the universe", but I think that people are too quick to ignore all the other things that were important till now... Lately all the headlines in the press and on TV are all about football, all the other news have become secondary, not to say irrelevant. Well, it's nice to feel passionate about football, your team and the Cup, but I really do think people should try and keep their perspective more down-to-earth and focused on the really important things in life.

So - to all you football fans out there - the next time you're watching that "most important game ever" stop for a couple of seconds and think about all those people who are not able to share your passion because, for some reason or another, they have more important things to worry about at that particular moment. And if you happen to run into such a person, do not ditch them just because at that particular time they are unable to share your enthusiasm and euphoria about the World Cup, or something else for that matter.

If you ask me, a little more compassion and empathy would make this world a much better place to live in. So why not at least try and do your part to make it happen? :)

Gone With The Wind

2006-06-18T14:34:00.000+02:00

I found recently that the movies that are made today are total crap - no story, lousy acting and even worse directing... This is why I am turning to the great old movies that have that "something" about them - I find them to be very good food for my movie-hungry soul craving a good movie with a strong moral every now and then.

I watched this famous movie called Gone With The Wind for the twentieth time a couple of days ago. For those of you who don't have a clue as to what the hell I'm talking about - it is a very cool american movie made in 1939 when Hollywood and its stars were starting their golden age. The movie lasts for nearly 4 hours and it's a real saga about two southern families going through the American civil war back in 1860s.

Now, I suppose many of you would roll your eyes at the very idea of seeing something so old and so long time and time again, but there is just something about that movie that creates this warm, fuzzy feeling around my heart. I don't know if it's the great visuals of the movie or the chemistry between the two main characters - Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, or the whole timelessness of the nature of their relationship, but the truth is that their story, taken out of the context of the movie, could easily be transferred to any place on Earth and to any time and age. Essentially (not to go into details about the story now), the moral of the movie is that people can be very, very blind in desiring one thing they are fixating on and actually relizing that the thing (or person, for that matter) that they desire most has been right in front of them the whole time... The story is really very applicable even in today's world, especially when we are all focused on our careers and making more and more money and we keep forgetting that the good things in life are not money and the material things we own, but the people we know and care about and that care about us. So, every time I feel my life is spinning out of control, with all the stuff I have to do (workwise or otherwise), I watch this movie (or parts of it) and I remind myself what the true values in life are...

So if you ever get the chance, I strongly recommend you to see the movie. You might find it old, outdated and corny, but you will not be able to deny the fact that the two main characters could be anyone of us at any time in our lives. Enjoy it and let me know how you like it! :)

Bachelor!!!! :-D

2005-12-10T22:36:00.000+01:00

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It's finally OVER!!! All the pain and suffering and the agony of having to cram 300-page book into your brain for an exam in a subject so stupid and outdated that it was old when your grandparents were babies - it's all over!!!! :-D

On Friday, December 9, 2005 at 1:45pm, I officially became a Bachelor of Economics, or as we like to call it here - dipl. oec... Hahahahahahahaaaaaaaa! :-P And it only took 2 hours and 45 minutes of excruciating mental sufferring waiting for the professor to finish his meeting regarding a project he is currently working on. But it was worth it! ;-)

In the meantime, I am off to Sisak next week, working as Project Manager of the Croatian National Conference 22, which is the largest legislative conference hosted by AIESEC in Croatia. There'll be plenty of time for celebration. I am really looking forward to going home for the holidays and not hearing the questions: "When are you going to pass your exams?" or "When are you going to graduate?" or (my absolute "favorite") "Time is running out!!!"... :-P

Anyway, that's all the reporting I have for now. I'll write back soon! :-)

I.

I passed!!!

2005-10-28T11:24:00.000+02:00

Well, I am very proud to announce I have passed my last university exam and will be graduating very, veryyyyyyy soon! :-D I am currently finishing my thesis and should have to defend it in front of a board of professors sometime in mid November... Keep your fingers crossed! ;-) I know my parents are now feeling like a great stone has been lifted from their chest and, frankly, so do I... Although they might think I don't care much about it, it has really been bugging me as to when I will finally be over with my first level academic education. This, of course, is not to say I am not going forward with my education... Hehehe! :-)

Anyway, next steps: go on a traineeship, find a cool postgraduate course, then get a job. Stay tuned to see how it goes... :-D

Yours, soon to be Bachelor,

Ivna

Baby Birthdays

2005-08-26T18:29:00.000+02:00

This weekend I had the privilege of attending the first birthday of my friend's little girl. Well, it's not really MY friend, it's a friend of my cousin, but we used to spend some summers together when we were kids, so let's say we know each other...

So anyway, I came for a visit to my cousin's place and unexpectedly ended up celebrating 1st birthday of little Ivona. I started thinking about when was the last time I attended a kid's birthday, any kid's, and I couldn't remember...

It's so weird, when I was a kid, attending primary school and high school, I used to love kids, I was babysitting for our neighbour and was tutoring some kids in English; I was even planning to have a huge family when I grow up and get married - minimum 4 kids... Today things have changed - it's like my patience for kids is becoming less and less with every year that goes by. There were 7 or 8 other kids on that birthday party, different ages, and when they started running around the yard and screaming I felt like screaming myself and making them all shut up. I've really learned to admire people who have families, especially large ones, I mean, it takes a huge amount of energy to deal with kids 24/7. I don't know if these kids today are indeed more vivacious than we were when I was a kid, or I just don't remember how things were back then? Hm... And to think, in my family more and more cousins from my line are having kids, it's like a regular family baby-boom. Not to mention some of my friends who went to primary school or high school with me are also married and on the way of or already having kids... In a year or two, we will be having a couple of kids' birthdays in my family as well and then - there's no escaping it...

It's a strange concept to grasp, I can't picture myself having a husband and a baby now, or even in the near future... Maybe I am just turning into one of those heavy feminist career women who love their independence, as it allows them to do as they please without having to justify their actions to anybody... As appealing as it sounds, maybe being so independent also isn't a very good option. As a great friend of mine was trying to reason with me a month or so ago - everybody needs someone in their life to share good and bad times with, joys and sorrows, and, as he so victoriously put it - sex. I was arguing that in life you can only rely on yourself to get what you need/want, but lately some of the stuff he said is making more and more sense... I think I need to think about the facts of life some more and see what it is exactly I want out of my life.

Well anyway, when I find out what I really want from my life, I'm sure things will fall into place themselves. If not - I'll just have to work a bit harder.

Wackos in action - Episode 1

2005-08-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

One warm July evening the wackos and me went down to Omis, which is a small town about 45 minutes drive from Split, hoping one of the clubs there would be working and we'd actually get to spend some time with OTHER people DANCING, but, of course, NOOOOOOOO! That was not to be...

As we were coming back, there was a traffic accident on the road which we'd taken – two cars driving in opposite directions had colided – so the road was completely blocked. We got out of the car to see what's going on. Fortunately no one was killed, which was quite amazing since both cars were completely smashed, small pieces of both windshields were scattered all over the road, one car broke the safety fence on the side of the road towards the sea and the back part of that car behind the two back wheels was completely gone! As you can imagine, there were tons of people around, bewildered, and the police and the ambulance were swamped with work. Then my dear wackos and I decided to take the small country roads in the mountain to get back to Split, since the only official road leading there along the coast was blocked.

It was when Ana reversed the car, started in the opposite direction and turned left into the mountain that we realized 4 other cars, including a van, were following our lead – obviously convinced we would take them back to Split. There would generally be no problems with the situation, except the fact that we had no damn idea which road we need to take in order to get back to Split and not to mention that the road in the mountain wasn't really a road – more like a moutain trail wide enough for a car to pass... So there we were driving along the mountain trail which was only going up and in the opposite direction from Split. This fact was a little worrying, but we thought, what the hell, let's explore a bit, it's not like we do it every day. Luckily, although it was already around 2am, the moon was shining bright and the mountain road was pretty well lit. And you would not believe the view from the mountain! Being at the altitude of about 1000 metres above the sea level, we could see all the islands in that part of the Adriatic like they were laid on the palms of our hands. It was amazing!

But to get back to the story, after about half an hour of driving up the mountain in the middle of nowhere, we came to a house which marked the end of the trail. A small path was leading from the house into the olive fields. As we managed to turn the car around, we came face to face with the other cars and everyone was pretty pissed at the fact they now had to turn their cars around, especially the driver of the van. LOL! I know it's not very nice, but suddenly the ludicrousness of the situation hit us and we started laughing our asses off in the car like lunatics. Fortunately for us, due to the mountain trail being very narrow, the people in other cars couldn't get out and express their own personal frustrations on us.

Coming back down the same trail, we came to a small church at the entrance to an old town which is now deserted and quite spooky in the middle of the night – all the houses have no windows or doors, everything is empty, quite like a ghost city. The fact that the mountain trail was now going downwards was quite comforting, especially combined with the fact that it was leading west, in the direction of Split. Now we could relax a little bit, but not for long, because in split second the slope of the road became very steep and the turns on the road were 180 degrees – with no security fence at the side of the road... On the mountain, at the altitude of 800 or 900 metres above sea level at 2am with the mountain going steeply down to the sea and with no security fence on the side of the road, trust me, it was really no fun sitting next to the driver, hoping and praying her brakes are in order and they won't break down... Needless to say, we were all holding our breaths until we finally came down to the main road and continued our way back to Split. After all the excitement that night we all fell asleep like babies and got a good night's rest. But this definitely was one of the most freaky experiences of my life. Too bad I don't have any photos to corroborate the story, but at the time we were kinda too busy holding our breaths and trying to think of how to get back home in one piece...

Meet the wackos... :)))

2005-08-26T17:41:00.000+02:00

Well, my days on the island were short and sweet, but that doesn't mean one can't find stuff to do on the mainland as well... :-P

This is how the story goes...

Me and my great friends Sany and Olga (whom we like to call Ogla, just for fun ) met exactly 10 years ago, in Spetember, on the first day we entered high school. We kinda hooked up and now we still keep in touch, even 6 years after we have gone our separate ways to University – Ogla and me are studying in Zagreb and Sany stayed in Split. Obviously, she needed to find new people to hang out with at the uni, and that's where Ana comes into the picture. We are all pretty much at the same level of wackoism, so there was no problem with us hooking up and creating our own fun.

So again the summer came, me and Ogla went back home to get some proper rest before the exam period starts again in September and that's when the fun began... Hehehe... You know, one good thing about wacko people is that they're never bored – even when the place they're at has virtually 0 fun stuff and accessories.

Well, since Ana and Ogla have cars available every now and then, there was no problem for us to go even to places outside Split in search of proper fun. Any kind of organized fun was really difficult to find, which is really, really strange (if not laughable) in a place which is a well known touristic spot with over 380,000 tourists spending their vacation there, but still... I guess that's just how things are in this country... So anyway, most of our evening fun was either going to this small place on the beach with live music, having a couple of cocktails and enjoying the music OOOOOOOR taking the car and driving around with stereo turned way up loud and windows brought down in manner of a convertible car. Otherwise, we would just go to one of our appartments and act like complete lunatics (for me, in a controlled environment, everyone is entitled to act as complete madmen, if they so choose).

This is just a short intro to the wackos. On my blog in the future you will find some of the stuff that's been going on with us. And trust me, you will not believe some of the stuff that happens to us...

Hotttttt, looooong summer... :-P

2005-08-26T17:14:00.000+02:00

Well, it's been a while since I wrote last.... My friends have started to complain that there's nothing new in my life... So anyway, read on and you'll find out what's been going on...

I managed to pass 2 rather difficult and demanding exams within a week so now there's only 1 left plus my graduation thesis till I graduate. Now is the time for me to decide what exactly I want to do with my life and I must admit this is the hardest decision I have had to make ever – I mean, the rest of my life will depend on this decision – all the decisions I make later on in life regarding my career will be influenced by the decision I make now... It's a very, very funny feeling... And a bit scary as well... Hmph....

Looking on the brighter and lighter side of life, I have been spending some time in my grandfather's beach house in Bol on Brac, an island right opposite my home town Split, on the Adriatic coast. I cannot believe how things have changed... It has transformed from a small island village with only a couple dozen tourists (when I was 6 or 7 years old) to an «elitist» leasure destination crawling with tourists from all over the world... It's now bordering with becoming a mass tourism destination, which is definitely not the path it should take in the future (my humble opinion)... But well, as the good old Stones say: "You can't always get what you want", so I guess I'll just have to go with the flow...

I don't really care anyway; as long as the beach is still intact and there are cool cocktail bars where you can lie back and sip your cup of coffee – I'm happy! Of course, the company also influences your percepton of reality, right? This is why I am very, very, VERY glad a person who is very dear to me has decided to spend some days with me there. Sebi, baby, thank you for brightening up my summer! We had fun, didn't we? ;)) And I loooooove the photos! :-P

Now I'm back in Zagreb, studying for my last exam... I have just enough energy to pass it on 5th September and to finish up with my thesis by end of September. Keep your fingers crossed and hope you will see a huge post here saying I have graduated in the near future. :-D

Me... again on Blogger... :-P

2005-08-26T17:08:00.000+02:00

Well! Here I am again after a long pause... I really intend to get this going now, I promise! :-P

Anyway, I have been using MSN space as some kind of a blog and I quite like it, but it seems it's a bit moody lately, so I'd better switch to something that actually works! LOL! :-D I'll be moving the stuff from my MSN space here, so don't worry, you won't be left out as to what's been going on lately! ;)

So guys, here we go... Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

:)))

My first time ever...

2004-12-27T13:22:00.000+01:00

...to write a blog! :-P

I've been told by people that this is a really cool thingy, so I thought I'd check it out and see how it goes... I've never been much of a person who writes posts in her diary every single day, but now I see I am starting to forget even the things that were once really important to me, and I don't like losing so many memories... What is a person without memories? A mere shell with no feelings, no sense of self or others, no life... Memories are what keeps you going through life and brings a smile to your face every single time...

Well, here's to memories and keeping them alive. I want never to forget the memories I have and never to stop creating new ones! And I wish the same for all of you reading my post!