Slovak Readers: Become A No Citizen?

Recent Slovak law against dual citizenship has introduced fines and a loss of Slovak citizenship in case you voluntarily throw yourself to the wolves (state bureaucrats) telling them about your other citizenship.

So, I had this idea: what if you pretended to gain a foreign citizenship and would allow Slovak bureaucrats to void your Slovak citizenship? I am not sure if there are any particular processes in force to check, if your foreign citizenship really exists. If not, it would be pretty easy to loose the citizenship of Slovakia and become a stateless person.

You would then be able to apply for the stateless’ person travel document as Mike Gogulski did.

If you wanted to give up the Slovak citizenship in 2004, you would pay about 670 EUR (20000 SKK). I haven’t been able to locate the newer information.

What do you think? Would it be possible to give up the Slovak citizenship without bureaucrats actually checking if you had a valid foreign citizenship? Does the new Slovak law allow for that?

July 16, 2010 at 01:00 :: Filed under Musings :: [*] :: 7 Comments ::

Brief Review Of Pohoda 2010 Festival

I’ve been a regular visitor to Pohoda Festival near Trencin, Slovakia since its first year at the military airport near Trencin in 2004. It was a quite small festival at that time and Michal Kascak, the founder of Pohoda Festival and his team were testing the new place. I remember problems with too much sun (no trees at the airport), toilets and drinking water. Of course, there wasn’t any proper food except the junk food, Slovak-style: grilled pork meat or hot dogs.

Every next year of Pohoda Festival used to get better and better in terms of organization, system or technical details such as WC and drinking water availability. I don’t have to say that music and atmosphere was excellent. Any year. Every year.

How was the Pohoda Festival in July 2010?

Although, I have waited and bought the tickets at the last moment due to the too much rock and indie-like line-up, Pohoda 2010 was nice place to be  during last weekend. I enjoyed Ian Brown, Leftfield, Belleruche, Mnaga a Zdorp, Collegium Musicum, José Gonález  or Orchestra Baobab (in no particular order) and some others, too. The atmosphere was good as always, people were having fun, weather was nice (too nice, though – too hot).

Music? Good, but more genres used to be included, not this narrowly selected mostly rock(pop) and indie bands (what about more electro – trip-hop, ambient, d’n'b, hip-hop or ska, jazz and world music)? Some closed stages need real improvements in ventilation, though (“Dobra Krajina” / former “Mirror Hall”, anyone?).

Hygiene? Poor. Where once stood cars with water tanks by the mobile toilets (known better as Toi-Toi(s)), there was nothing this year. It was pretty hard to find a flowing water or drinking water stands. Mobile toilets were a total mess. Cleaned only few times a day, it was a scene from disgusting horror movie to enter the 50 degrees saunas with ubiquitous stink of human feces. Toilet paper was hard to find. If you were adventurous, you could walk through the area to find few proper water closets with long queues. I remember clean Toi-Tois from first years at the airport always smelling with traces of refreshing odour. 30.000 people, extremely hot weather and lack of cleaning service seem hard to cope with for Mr. Kascak’s team. To pity of Pohoda Festival visitors.

Food? The assortment of different meals is getting wider and wider every year, although it’s still hard to find proper and healthy food (except for the few stands run by either the not-for-profit organizations or alternative providers such as the tea-rooms). A truly modern festival should definitely provide lots of vegetables, fruits and light vegetarian meals, soups or salads. Big fat chance next year, you say? Alas, I have to agree. Good conservative guys seem to love lots of heavy, fat meat, fries and sausages with mustard. To each according to his need, ain’t it?

Abstract? On-time organization, great atmosphere, some good music (highly subjective, right?)  and hard-to-find shadow and poor hygiene. Not that much to ask for in terms of improvements. Thanks goes to the organizers of Pohoda Festival 2010.

July 12, 2010 at 23:21 :: Filed under Musings :: [*] :: 9 Comments ::

Deutsche Telekom Corruption in Slovakia?

Deutsche Telekom signed the United Nations Global Compact as a founding member and as one of the first ICT companies. We acknowledged [...] and made a commitment to respect human rights, maintain appropriate working standards and take an active role in environmental protection and fighting corruption.

From Deutsche Telekom: Showing Initiative (Voluntary Commitments)

Deutsche Telekom logo - Slovak Telekom logoImagine you are a citizen living under modern liberal democracy of western type. Imagine there are two days to national election. Imagine that a de facto telecommunication monopoly closes a deal with the governmental authorities to supply an internet connection to all public schools in the country for 38 millions Euros. Moreover, price for the internet connection is up to twice as high as in the former deal, despite the fact that internet connection costs have plummeted over the last few years. This has to be a joke, right?

Wrong. Slovak Telekom (T-Com), a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, have done just right that. Two days before election took place, Slovak Telekom (owned by Deutsche Telekom) signed the deal with the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic. What does that say about the corporate culture and corporate responsibility of Deutsche Telekom? What does that say about the managers at Slovak Telekom? Is that how Deutsche Telekom does business in Germany and trains Slovak Telekom’s managers to follow their lead?

Employees of the Deutsche Telekom Group must refrain from any kind of corrupt behavior. In particular, they are forbidden to illegally influence decision makers in companies, authorities or public institutions by offering, promising or granting advantages. Equally, they are forbidden to demand or accept such advantages from third parties, or to have a third party promise such advantages in the course of business.

From Slovak Telekom: Our Code of Conduct (PDF)

Deutsche Telekom Investor Relations

I am sure that Deutsche Telekom values their investor relations. I am sure Deutsche Telekom is a responsible company doing transparent business, opposite to the recent corruption scandal at another German company – Siemens, where the Siemens concern was fined by the US authorities $800 millions. Siemens also agreed to pay fines of 395 millions Euros to settle the case in Germany. I am confident that any sane investor will evaluate how Deutsche Telekom is conducting business in the post-communist countries such as Slovakia, where its subsidiary Slovak Telekom closes highly dubious (and overpriced) deal two days before national election. This non-transparent decision of Slovak Telekom’s management could affect Deutsche Telekom investor relations.

Will Deutsche Telekom take a firm step and agree to cancel the fishy deal and submit a new contract in the new transparent tender? Or will Deutsche Telekom hurt their investor relations by not taking any steps to clear up the doubts regarding possible corruption? I am not sure. What I am sure of, though, is the fact that some people will stumble upon this Deutsche Telekom Corruption in Slovakia? blog post and think twice how the company does their business.

July 7, 2010 at 02:39 :: Filed under Politics, Rants :: [*] :: 2 Comments ::

Music Wiki & Video Games Wiki

What Last.fm is to music, MobyGames is to video games.

If you are looking for specific information about a song, go to Last.fm. If you need to know specs or what operating system a game runs on, visit MobyGames. Easy. Great complementary sources to their well-know brother – Wikipedia.

July 6, 2010 at 01:02 :: Filed under Internet :: [*] :: No Comments ::

Noir Adventure Game Idea

Pure black and white adventure – noir style – white background, locomotive (that futuristic huge train engine from the 20th centruy fifties with the large front light at the top). Black figure of an agent below it.

Agent is the game’s main character. Agent boards a train, railway station disappears and train starts to speed through the country. It’s slowly getting dark.

The whole game will take place in a train.

Comics style noir graphics, strong contrasts, large white or black areas, possibly some combinations to create a structure.

Train could stop at a station from time to time, more game forming options appear – somebody can get off or go missing from the train or some object can go missing, somebody new comes to play, train staff changes.

Time progress:

Always after some events take place, important talk, finding an important object for advancing time (Cruise for a Corpse style)

Characters:

  • Agent
  • Train driver, boy working on a tender
  • Ticket inspector
  • Bartender
  • Young woman A
  • Old woman B
  • Older gentleman A
  • Young man B
  • Child
  • other characters

Scenery:

Old train, 30’s style interior, secession possibly, old train cabin, old dining car, old railway post office car

Scene:

  • Murder (noir cliché)
  • People isolated on a train they can not leave. Nobody from the outside can impact the game similarly to how no one from the inside can escape (it would be deadly to jump in that speed, anyway)

Soundtrack:

  • Music: dark, slow, possibly strings music; Merrier music in the dining car, some swing
  • Sounds: Railroad crossing bells ringing from time to time, train whistle or train horn, ambient sounds of the train running on tracks, sounds of landscape passing by

View:

Either traditional 2D point’n'click or first-person 3D, ideally a combination of both – 2D movement in the train, some scenes in 3D (rooms with objects etc.)

June 30, 2010 at 22:04 :: Filed under Musings :: [*] :: No Comments ::

My Favourite Online Comics & Strips

Questionable Content

Questionable Content

I have always been a big fan of serious comics and graphic novels. Spending my time in US, John Porcellino’s Perfect Example had caught my interest and from there on I had loved to browse San Francisco Public Library’s comics section. I used to borrow everything they had often hitting the top number of books you could take out.

Later, many comics authors started to publish on the internet and I randomly visited their sites. I encountered Slow Wave strip based on the dreams of the website’s visitors.

I have been a fan of geeky comics at XKCD for a long time. 0×2121 is somewhat similar to XKCD, although the author stopped publishing it in 2009.

Among my recent discoveries are the following comic strips:

  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) drawn by Zach Weiner, who draws based on his experiences, current political situation or just some science facts. Often  sarcastic and ironic, Zach has published over 1800 strips, so you have a large archive to read through. Published daily.
  • Questionable Content – I fell in love with this comics featuring few young people living their lives, studying and working, solving their relationship problems etc. Again, over 1600 strips published and drawing style changes thoroughly from the beginning (very rough) to the last strips published. Published daily on weekdays by Jeph Jacques.
  • Oglaf!

    Oglaf!

    Oglaf! – Often dirty (and sometimes NSFW) – will throw a warning at you first time visiting, so you know it’s not safe for work. Porn-inspired, author wanted to do a porn comics and ended with clever and funny strips portraying bizarre lands and people during Middle Ages. Not that many strips, so far, so it’s easy to read through all of them. Recommended.

Of course, there are plenty of other strips online, but sometimes the drawing styles turns me away, sometimes it’s the ideas or comics being not-funny-at-all and other times it’s just that I haven’t discovered it all, yet.

Do you have your favourite comics you can recommend?

June 4, 2010 at 17:19 :: Filed under Internet, Musings :: [*] :: 6 Comments ::

Reporting My Front Bike Wheel Stolen

I use a bike a lot, mostly as a convenient and very fast way of transportation in Bratislava. My bike is few years old and I was very incovenient leaving it in the public spaces, even when secured with a sturdy U-lock. But after few years I got acquainted with leaving it securely locked without any fear of getting it stolen.

Therefore, I was surprised tonight leaving a cafe in the centre to find my bike fallen on the ground. At first I had thought that it just fell down, but coming closer I found my front wheel missing. It uses a quick-release front wheel mechanism, so it’s quite easy to get it undone and run.

Front bike wheel missing, not my bike on the picture

Front bike wheel missing, not my bike on the picture (no snow here either) - source: http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/photos/2007/03/snow_bike_missing-wheel_01.jpg

I unlocked rest of the bike (untouched) and was slowly pulling it away, when I got an idea to call the city police. The guy on the 159 emergency line was very helpful and although he couldn’t give me any details regarding the police cameras nearby (maybe the thief got filmed by the cameras?), he told me to go and report it to the state police. Anyway, I wasn’t very convinced if that makes any sense as we know this is a small theft. He persisted and I thanked him, but went to the tram stop to catch a tram and transport rest of the bike body home. But right then, a state police car slowed down by and an officer asked about my front wheel. I told him it got stolen, so he told me to go and report it to the nearest non-stop police station, which was about 700 metres far away. I asked him to help me to transport the bike there as its weight and front wheel missing made it very inconvenient to move it anywhere. He told me that his trunk was occupied, so I told him they were readily transporting criminals, but not helping their victims. But surely, it was another convincing moment and so I resorted to go and report the theft at last.

After some time I arrived at the police station, where an officer asked me what was wrong and quickly prepared documents required to be filled. I reported the facts (the bike was locked to the door grate with an U-lock etc.) and we did some small-talk as he was writing down the report. Then I signed the necessary documents requesting to be notified about the results of investigation and left with the bike hoping to catch the last tram.

Unfortunately, I missed the last tram byt some two minutes and thinking about how difficult it would be to find a larger taxi, I just started to pull bike thinking about how long it takes to get home like this. After a short while another police car pulled over and officer asked me where I was taking the bike. I told him that my front wheel was stolen and I was going home. He asked me to see my papers and now I was a suspected thief stealing the bike body. His partner told him to check a copy of my report and I quickly gave it to him. Everything was OK after few seconds and they started to joke about making the bike stationary. Seeing their large Volkswagen Touareg I asked them if they would be so nice as to help me to transport my bike body home. They opened their trunk, lowered the back seats, we fit it in and this is how I got transported home.

My overall experience with the Slovak police have been satisfying – they were helpful (except the less helpful officers in the first car), polite and even helped me to transport the bike body home. Thank goes to the report officer and the officers in XXXXXX car (update: license plate ID removed as I am not sure how stupid bureaucracy rules work and if they were allowed to help – completely absurd, I know).

PS: I forgot to report my speedometer sensor mounted to the front wheel missing as well, but 120 EUR reported value should get it covered (at least on the paper).

PPS: Google offers lots of tips on how to lock a bike. I should buy another U-lock to secure the front wheel (or at least don’t forget to secure it with a standard lame lock).

May 18, 2010 at 23:12 :: Filed under Rants :: [*] :: 5 Comments ::

Bratislava Closes the Old Bridge

Bratislava Old Bridge

Bratislava Old Bridge, source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stary_most.jpg

City of Bratislava have decided to close the Old Bridge for the public transport starting from Friday’s night (May 15, 2010), leaving open just a narrow corridor for pedestrians. City had closed the Old bridge for individual car transportation in December 2008. Public transportation has been allowed to use the bridge, though. Apparently, the City now says the bridge is dangerous as there have been some issues with the bridge road.

This unfortunate decision will literally cut the citizens of Bratislava-Petrzalka district (one third of Bratislava) from the city centre. New bridge and Apollo bridge will be the only way to reach the city centre, although none of them really is accessible by foot for anyone living in Petrzalka as both are very far from the apartment blocks. Moreover, both are separated by another unlucky barrier – the city highway – leaving them quite unreachable on foot. The Old Bridge, in comparison, was both quite close to the apartment blocks as well as close to Sad of Janko Kral, the Bratislava’s main park and not far from the Aupark Shopping Mall.

This change will also affect most of the cyclists crossing Danube river. Again, Apollo bridge and New bridge could be used as alternatives, although both are quite far from the city centre (New bridge is basically the border of the city centre and the cyclists don’t have good options to reach it from within Petrzalka district). Public transportation will be strongly impacted, making the main change point – Safarikovo square – cut from most of the lines (including buses no. 50 and no. 78). Not a good example of how the public transportation should be managed, right? Lousy management of Bratislava’s Public Transport company is to be blamed.

Although, state of the Old Bridge was well-known to be far from working, City of Bratislava headed by mayor Andrej Durkovsky have left it to deteriorate during the past years, not investing enough to stabilize it. The reconstruction is planned, although it might take up to five years in optimistic scenario.

May 13, 2010 at 23:24 :: Filed under Rants :: [*] :: No Comments ::

Old-school Slovak rap (hip-hop)

Yesterday, I was browsing YouTube and found some good Slovak old-school hip-hop tracks from the 1990’s. Nathan Lively inspired me to create a list of old-school Slovak hip-hop tracks. These rap tracks were released either under Zvuky ulice (Sounds of street) compilation or as the separate CDs by each band (Trosky, for example).

The tracks listed below feature strong beats (background instrumentals) and better rap (I have tried to pick those with better rhymes and lyrics). However, all tracks are about true lives the rappers had been living. Compare that to the most of current rap about bling that doesn’t have any descriptive value and doesn’t say anything about the world rappers live in.

Bratislava’s rap scene used to include lots of interesting projects and tracks as well, so possibly I will compile a list #2 sometime.

May 10, 2010 at 14:23 :: Filed under Musings :: [*] :: 2 Comments ::

First Critical Mass in Bratislava

The very first Critical Mass in Bratislava took place on April 30, 2010 in Friday’s Bratislava streets. Although, there were some bicycle crowd’s rides before, this was the first official Critical Mass taking place in Bratislava.

We rode something more than 12 kilometres in rather free streets (most of the commuters had already left the city and evening’s traffic was light) from the centre of Bratislava to Strkovec lake in Ruzinov district and back. About 150 people attended and supported the first Critical Mass in Bratislava.

Although, there was some disagreement about how cyclists should ride, most of the people kept it civilized and rode either one after another or in smaller groups taking just one lane and allowing cars to pass in the left lane. No corking was used and although Slovak law requires cyclists to ride one after another, many participants chose to ride in groups beside each other. The Critical Mass did not attract any interest or blocking from the police force, though.

Thank you goes to the organizer and hope to see more people on next ride – May 28, 2010 at 6 pm at Namestie slobody in Bratislava.

May 1, 2010 at 22:24 :: Filed under Musings :: [*] :: No Comments ::

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