After finishing the Commonwealth Saga, by the same author, I started reading the next series: The Void Trilogy. As in the aforementioned saga, the story does not end in any way at the end of the first book, you have to read all three books to reach the end, which effectively makes this another huge monolithic story, not a series or saga.

Set in an even more technological advanced future, but in the same Commonwealth universe, it depicts the interactions between a powerful pseudo-religious void worshipers, ANA (a quantum artificial intelligence where people download when the are tired of living and the next evolutionary phase of the SI) and its competing factions, the different alien races and the void, which is a dark impregnable sphere in the middle of the galaxy that only some psychic humans seem to penetrate.

The style is the same, the writing as almost flawless as before. I do think that P.F. Hamilton is one of the greatest sci-fi writers I've read, up there with Tolkien and Herbert.

I have seen the movie on TV a while ago, but didn't catch the start, so I never knew what the name was. Finally, someone in a Romanian book club found the translated print here and reminded me of it and told me that it was based on a book. I've decided to read it in its native language, a bit scared that I would understand nothing of it, but the French is pretty easy to understand. Maybe because the author is Belgian :)

The story of Fear and Trembling is about a Belgian girl, born in Japan (just like the author), employed in a big Japanese corporation as a translator. Due to her inability to understand the local customs and the irrational feelings of her employers, she is demoted time after time until she ends up replacing toilet paper in the water closets.

The book itself is not meant as a comedy. The main character sees everything with a stoic detachment, analysing both her feelings and the feelings of others, trying to make sense of a world that she can't seem to fit in. It made me understand more than ever the illusory nature of reality. Both her and the Japanese were occupying the same space and time, were observing the same events, but their realities were completely different. That clash of incongruous realities is the core of this small novel.

A bit too French for my taste, not in the language, but in the endless repetitions of metaphoric interpretations of the same event, that overwording of inner thoughts that makes French writing sound pompous. However, I did enjoy the book, I recommend it to anyone wanting a light and distracting reading.

I wanted it to sound like Fruit of the Loom, for the connoisseurs in gaming :), but failed miserably. This blog post is about the exotic (and shamelessly expensive) fruits one can found in market stores.

The first one is the Lychee fruit. It is small, has a rough skin that has to be removed and a big seed inside. It leaves little else, but the flesh is very tasty, with a taste like that of a grape, but less sour and stingy. No wonder it is called the Chinese grape. I recommend it, at least try it once.

The Mangosteen. Now that's a fruit. Big as a small apple, it has a similar hard skin to remove and a similar taste as the Lychee, with the added advantage that it has more flesh. I would venture to say that this is the most tasty fruit I'd ever tried, even if a little too sweet. There is a funny story here, too. When I was a child I used to keep newspaper bits of the "did you know?" column (back in the days when newspapers has a science and information section). One of them said that the Mango is the king of the fruits, the very best in taste, but hard to transport because it rots easily. I was disappointed when I first tasted mango. It wasn't even tasty. But apparently, the author of the article made a confusion between the Mango and the Mangosteen. 20 years later, the article is vindicated ;)

The Carambola. A yellow star shaped fruit that can be bitten into, has the taste of a Quince fruit and a bit of its texture, but a bit finer. I would prefer it to quince, even if I don't particularly enjoy apple/pear tasting fruits.

The Kiwano, or horned melon. This is an odd fruit. It can be cut in quarters and eaten like a melon, has a greenish yellow color and taste like a combination of cucumber and banana. It is an interesting experience :)

I have tried another fruit, one that looks like a plum shaped (but smaller) orange. And it is :) It is like an orange pill. If it weren't for the price, I would use it to make arranciata. The name is kumquat and it can be hybridised with lime to fruit limequats. There are a lot of citrus fruits in the world, not only the orange, lemon and grapefruit!

For other exotic (for me) fruits, check out Part 2.

I've been to a small village near Sibiu, home of my parents in law, called Sarata. First major trip outside Bucharest by car, we managed to reach Sibiu, Ocna Sibiului, Sighisoara, Basna, Balea Lac, Paltinis and to travel the entire area back and forth.

We have become intimately familiar with dust and washing the car, but it was almost worth it, if it wasn't for the permanent noise (yes, I went there for the silence) and I got people (and their atomic children) shouting, screaming (and that without actually fighting, simply communicating), phones ringing (and I thought it was bad they didn't have a phone) and roosters making all kind of noises (man, I hate that rooster!). On top of everything, I've spent around two nights fighting the excessive warmth and another two fighting an intense case of indigestion.

But you won't be interested in that :) Anyway, let me review some of the touristic impressions I had.

Firstly, Sibiu. Because of the "European capital of culture" thing, Sibiu is now transformed. Not that it's not a city like any other, but it is now completely crowded by cars, parking spaces, tourists, etc.

The same impression I got from Sighisoara, where I was expecting a medieval town with cute little taverns and interesting castles, yet I found a city in reconstruction, filled with cafes and "Authentic Souvenir" shops filled with things of incredibly bad taste.

Ocna Sibiului is a small tourist place with salty and iodised waters. I'd expected a place full of old people coming to treat their illnesses, but I did not expect the level of mismanagement of the place. Imagine a few holes in the ground filled with naturally salty water, but not cleaned, with a few old wooden stairs that looked ready to crumble at every step. We had to pay to enter, the prices inside were huge and in order to find a place to change your clothes you had to find a bush somewhere. I had fun in the water, as I could leisurely fall asleep in a water that seemed to easily sustain people of ... lesser gravitational pull as myself.

Basna seemed nice, but we didn't stay long. An expensive hotel is placed there, with pools and everything, and then there are the mountains right there, ready to be hiked.

Balea Lac, just a short trip, even nicer place than Basna, but really commercialized, souvenirs and stuff. The hotel being just a normal mountain hotel.

Paltinis is just like Balea, but villas and hotels are sprouting there like mushrooms.

Some very nice villages and locations are found by travelling between the major place of tourism. We've found a 702 years old evangelic church in Valea Viilor, a small village near Copsa Mica, with an old woman greeting us with Guten Tag, and then by Buna Ziua, even if we were in Romania. The wife loved the architecture and I loved the cool air. Also a nice place was in Cisnadioara.

What was a little off putting was that we were guiding ourselves by a map made in 2000 and after reaching Valea Viilor, for example, we tried taking a road on the map and a villager said "Oh, that road? It isn't functional for more than 20 years now". Also, getting out from a temperature of 19C in one of 30C was not "cool", either, so we preferred watching the beauty of nature from inside the car. Not having to smell the nature was a plus for me, as well.

Sorry for a lack of pictures, but I don't have a camera :) I will remedy this for sure, but it's not a priority right now.

Am I turning metal? I used to hate songs played by long haired guys barking aimlessly on a heavy and repeating guitar riff. But I really enjoy listening to Sonata Arctica. Maybe because they're Finnish? :) I am developing a taste for Finnish music, apparently.

Anyway, here is a live performance of the song Broken, which I like best so far. I did look for an official video on this song, but drowned in home made crap videos. I did find official videos for other songs, but the band seemed even less charismatic in those, trying to seem really upset and managing to look like a shampoo commercial.



Another song of theirs I like is Replica.

I've accidentally stumbled upon a very interesting video of a science conference about sleep. Called "Sleep, Waking and Arousal" it details a very interesting compendium of information about sleep in humans, mammals, other vertebrates and even fruit flies. I am posting the link here, but what is even more interesting is that it is part of something called the "The University of California Television" that has its own web site with a lot of (presumably) interesting videos.

Sleep, Waking and Arousal
The University of California Television

Here is a song that I found most interesting and I am referring here to the high pitched piano with the distort guitar in the background. The video isn't that exceptional, but watchable. I am trying to imagine a scene of emotional destruction in a movie that would have the particular instrumental part as a soundtrack.



If you want to see the live performance, click here.

This is a funny little story about a bunch of low end kids finding a way of letting everyone build whatever electronic device they want for almost free. The lead character is a broker, getting more and more terrified about how this simple thing destroys markets and the capitalist economy. In the end, he is to be replaced by electronic neural networks that perform flawlessly.

It seems Peter Hamilton has some issues with capitalism as there are always some characters criticising it in his books. However, in this particular story, the ending can be only one, where humans are completely replaced by the low cost electronics. It does not destroy communism, it replaces humanity.

My guess is that this is bound to happen sooner or later. Already software glitches are more frequent than hardware ones. When is someone going to realize that we, humans, have the worst hardware possible, even by biological standards. And we're only getting fatter, slower and less efficient by the day. Would I mind being replaced by a race of star faring robotic human replicas? No way.

I've just finished reading the book and, while it was the usual easy read, it wasn't as much fun as I expected it to be. The two deaths in the book that were announced so dramatically are actually four, but none of the people that have actually mattered in the story. Their deaths are also irrelevant to the plot.

You see, the entire attraction of Harry Potter, for me, was the many possibilities opened by the magical universe in the books. But really, after the first and second book, there was no novelty, only the drama of Voldemort and the condescending moral crap that was always thrown in the face of the curious reader, the kind of reader that goes "what if..." whenever a new spell is described or some principle of magic is explained.

Bottom line: Harry and the kids wonder in fear and confusion the whole book, only to discover that it all was some kind of master plan and to luckily (or randomly) escape death. The passion killer ending chapter, where Harry is a father of three is not that great either.

I will be watching the 5th Potter movie someday soon, but I believe I will do it for the special effects only. Come to think of it, I can hardly remember what happened in book 5 anyway. Just as the books, only the first two films are worth anything.

No comments, just watch.

This Hamilton guy is a serious writer, dude! Just having finished the first volume of this story, Pandora's Star, I was blogging desperately about how the scifi writer manages a huge book, with many characters and with colliding story arches. Now, I have finished the second and last part, Judas Unchained, which I personally think is not so good as the first, but still a damn solid scifi.

I did find myself feeling a bit of pleasure seeing how the author fails to escape cliche in the end of the story and the story lines just become accelerated and the actors predictable. But after writing this humongous book, I guess the inner emotions could not be stilled anymore and the ending had to lose some cohesion.

Bottom line: a very good book, one that shows how stories should be written: with a considerate, serious, prolonged effort to give the tale logic as well as create emotion in the soul of the reader. I would have gone for a different ending, but hey, I don't write anymore, I have no right to complain!

The historical figure most associated with Dracula, the Wallachian prince Vlad Tepes, had this castle, called Poenari, near Curtea de Arges, and the way to get to it is to climb a 1400 steps stair. Apparently, the Step-Master is also a Romanian invention.

But to start from the beginning: my wife was terribly upset by the 40+ Celsius temperatures in Bucharest. That after telling me so many times that she likes it when it's warm. Now 40C... that's warm for you. But no, she really would have liked to exit the city (for the first time in our new Mitsubishi Colt car) and go to the seaside. The sea being that wet big thing where dirty sweaty people go to dive in while other sweaty dirty people are either stealing their money from the wallets on the beach or stealing their money by selling overpriced bottom of the barrel products and services. Oh, and there is sand there.

So I've convinced her to go to the mountains. Me, in my typical optimism, thinking "the mountains" would be a nice little cool resort like Busteni or Sinaia or Predeal, where climbing the mountain is synonymous with walking the mountain. But no, she wanted Poenari, Dracula's bloody castle.

So we've spent 4 hours getting there, the Colt performed admirably and the air conditioning system made my day. Then I was informed that seeing the castle involved the inhuman endeavour of walking The Stairs to Hell. Well, I ride a bike, 1400 steps is like... 100 floors in a bloc of flats. How hard can that be?

After 15 minutes of pure agony while my body was producing my own private sea water version and trying to reach the top by filling the mountain valley and floating me up, we reached the castle. Which is a damn ruin of a castle, with no people getting you water or food or anything. There was one guy, though, who was kind enough to charge us for the privilege to see the castle and had his own private stash of aspirin to counteract the thermal shock of going from a 19C air conditioned car to a 35C stair climb.

Vlad Tepes Dracula has had his revenge and keeps on having it. Somewhere in his grave, the body of this usually negative person must be grinning.

A Perfect Circle has the same lead man as Tool, James Maynard. As far as I see they do really nice lyrics and music. Personally I preferred the cover of John Lennon's song Imagine, but I couldn't find the video for it in all the anime+9/11+Iraq war home made video crap that clogs YouTube.

Check out Judith, which was inspired by the illness of the singer's mother, paralysed in bed, but still praying and thanking Christ. Although if you want to see anything and witness Maynard's weirdness, check out this video of a live TV appearance.

A while ago I was recommending you the female vocalist band theStart. They have released another album, entitled Ciao, Baby. Go to their mySpace page to listen to four of the ten tracks on the album or buy the tracks directly, 1$ each.


It seems to me that the band is moving away from rock and going towards electro-pop, which would suck, but the songs are still nice.

I've first noticed her while she was playing with Sneaker Pimps, making the soundtrack for The Saint (Val Kilmer version). She looked so interesting with her vibrato voice, weird teeth and Asian features. I've even downloaded the whole Sneaker Pimps discografy before I found out that she was with Sneaker Pimps only briefly.

Now I was listening to the remix version of Linkin Park's My December featuring Kelli Ali and I recognized the voice immediately, even if she was singing faintly in the background. So I thought I would share her with you. Below is the video I think makes her look best, even if you can find a lot of videos with her playing live either as herself , either with TigerMouth or with Japanese bands Buck-Tick or Dropz. Also some links to her site and the Wikipedia entry.

SNEAKER PIMPS - 6 UNDERGROUND

[youtube:2eBZqmL8ehg]

Official web site with texts written by Kelli herself
Main Myspace site
Another MySpace site
Wikipedia entry