Intro to Budapest

It has been almost three weeks. I apologize for having guanned for so long. Since it is already past midnight, I think I'm only gonna write about my first few days here in Budapest. To tell you the truth, nothing noteworthy actually happened. You can skip this post if you want. It only contains one significant statement anyway.

Hungary is a nice place. You should Wiki it. They just got the EU presidency this year. I don't think many Hungarians are actually aware of it. At least the person who picked me up from the airport wasn't aware of it. He was more concerned about wars and oppression in Pakistan. Specifically he asked why some women in Pakistan were forcibly veiled. I had to evade the question. The issue is so complex, it reminds me of A Few Good Men. "You want answers..."

Before reaching my apartment, I was informed about three essential facts about Hungary and Budapest. Here they are, in the words of my escort:

1. "The drinking age in Hungary is 18. Hungarians love to drink. You should try some good wine here."
   
2. "You will soon find out that Hungarian girls are very beautiful/good-looking."
3. "Your apartment is located in Pest, in District V. It is one of the best areas of the city. Everything is only a few minutes walk away."

Well, as you might've guessed, I was only interested in one of these three facts...

(Quick note: I read somewhere that streets in Budapest look a lot like streets in Amsterdam. I find myself very interested in verifying this claim. Somewhere down the road, I will hopefully find out.)

The guy was right, almost everything in Budapest is quite within walking distance. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. Since I didn't know any Hungarian, I was too scared to buy a metro pass for the first week. I also happen to love wandering aimlessly, so it was no surprise that the very first thing I did after unpacking was familiarizing myself with the streets of Pest. By the fourth day, I think I had easily covered 20 miles or so, without getting lost. Not bad in comparison to Cornell, where I got lost on the very first day of orientation!

Okay, I am deliberately skipping a lot of interesting stuff because I want to talk about it in my next post. For now, these soporific statements will have to suffice. And no, it's not 1.

Its fixed

Apparently we didn't even need the temp. So as I mentioned in my last post, we were thinking of getting the problem fixed. But tinkering is always good, and I thought I might try my hand before we try to find a solution professionally. End result being that I fixed it by myself quite easily after a couple of hours. Even though customer support told me it was to fix it/replace it without a large payment. The big evil corporation? Redmond I say.

On the plus side, we are back to guanning again. Last night. I guess I should tell the other guanners who have yet to hear about it.

Also on the world and (maybe local?) scale, dictators/autocrats/presidents are stepping down. Rebellions all around.

And a guanner project team is apparently getting persecuted for reasons beyond their understanding. Sounds like a conspiracy. But there is proof too. Hypothetically. Saucy little scandal. Hypothetically of course.

And then Facebook. Randomly stumbled on an aspect of its coding. Apparently it keeps track of a lot of information.

Theoretically, a couple of friends were searching and adding a person on Facebook. So there was a Facebook search for the person at about the same time. So you know that Facebook design change which puts a lot of album/pictures on the top right hand corner. One of them noticed it was suggesting the other's albums. Apparently it was doing the same for the other person too. So a quick test with random names repeated a couple of times showed that this logic held. For non-friends ofcourse. Not really important. Potentially what a social network is supposed to do. Still something to think about.

Its been a while.

So its been a while. Things have changed. Someone might even be in Europe, I mean you never know. And our main avenue of guanning might have also broken down over the past year.

As usual we did what everyone else does - we hired a temp. But they have a habit of running away with something else, sometimes literally more trouble than they are worth. Ironically thats what allowed me to come up with an update. So things might be a bit more regular here.

I mean we are going to go public soon, another couple of months and most of us will sell out and go our own guanning ways. Until then a few pictures, a couple of updates from us and maybe one from Europe. Oh and we are seriously looking into a potential solution to our guanning problem and before you misunderstand - the problem isn't the guanning, its more the lack thereof.

Don't you hate red rings? Oh and it was warm today. Was. Frigid now though. Can't wait till April.