The beach in Dominicana

Imagine being stuck in a Bounty commercial. No slow motion, though, but otherwise its one to one. Perfect beach with white sand and extremely blue ocean. The old fat tourist rate is down to almost zero, the russian and spanish girls in bikinis rate is at a comfortable high up for eye candy.

They serve a Mojito that makes the mojitos I had before feel like drinking rainwater on an early Tuesday morning. The club sandwich contrary to its name is not made of a club but fresh vegetables and meat. By the way following the same logic I never figured why there is no Baklava in a Turkey sandwich, would it have been just too obvious?

Like when you see an Eifel towar and immediately think you could be in:

• Paris
• 
  
• or
• 
  
• Bolivia
• England
• Germany
• Kings Island, Ohio
• China, Shenzen
• Parizh (which is a city in Russia)
• Romania, Slobozia
• Copenhagen, in the zoo
• Fayetteville in North Carolina
• Walt Disney park in Florida
• Paris (which is a city in Texas)
• Tenesse
• Atlanta
• Poland
• Brussels
• Montmartre
• Malaysia
• Austin, Texas
• Greece
• Paris (a city in Michigan)
• Baku, Azerbaijan
• Varna, Bulgaria
• Aktau, Kazakhstan
• Crailsheim, Germany
• or facing the fridge of travel-loving girl with a bad hangover.

ok, maybe not so obvious.

Dominicana is a special place, upon arrival

For a hell lot of reasons, of which I would like to introduce you to the obvious ones.

When you get to the airport you will basically find something that looks like the house of a Robinson Cruse thats on steroids. No walls, no uniforms, no security check. Complete chaos all over the wooden "house", cumplosary picture taking with local folk dressed girls who make a fake smile faster Monica Lewinsky (which is pretty fast even by global standards). Bu the way, could you say she "Billed" the white house? Maybe.. hm.

Anyway, right after you make your way through the hallway, you will see the result of the Dominican "no signs to tell you what to do" policy: an army of confused tourists who are running from wall to wall like kids in a McDonadls birthday party (Ronald is a scary mo... fucker), you finally get to passport check. Some guy kinda looks at your passport, shots a word at you that he thinks may be in whatever your language is (terribly WRONG in my case), no visa check, no stamping no nothing.

A few more steps and you pass the street musicians who are from the local cloning lab because they are all very black and look exactly the same as everyone else here. For later reference I will mark them with serial numbers (Friday1, Friday2, Friday3).

If you still have the willpower to carry on and have not turned a gun against anyone, finally you find the place where your baggage moves around with a speed of 50 km/hour. Its a shame popcorn is not available, because watching 70+ female german tourists do what resembles a 20 meter steeplechase, with a twist, because if they dont reach the desired "Gepäck"in time, they have to start over again. Its one of those feelings when you would love to help, but OH MY GOD THIS IS FUN TO WATCH!

Walking in a winter jacket in 32 degrees has never felt so awkward before.. I put my "good times" smile on as I step out of the airport to meet Kirill, because I know this is going to be a hell lot of fun.

I had a small issue at the airport of ferihegy, Budapest was saying goodbye to me in the shape of a 40 year old check in lady telling me I have 7 kilos overweight and thats going to cost me a little over 150 EUR. Despite my numerous and smarter than smart arguments leading to the point that I think my shape is closer to perfect than hers will ever be.. I had to pay. Much less in the end but still pay. Looks like I DID loose some of that charm.

Anyway.

Its Denes Toth reporting from Minsk, Belarus.
The outside temperature has risen from -16 to +4 degrees and than went back to -7 today since I am here.

Some things that tell you, you are in belarus.

1. At the local ready food place the waitress tosses what you buy into a plastic bag and microwaves it well all together. If you ask her why the bag, you get a 5 minutes lecture about her doing this since microwave owens were invented, and that plastic plates actually melt.

2. your wallet never felt this rich from the 10 rubel paper money that worths 1 forint, thats 0.00337 EUR today.

3. this hangs from the wall said-to-be heating the room:

You press the brown botton and you can never know what blows up where. Definately one of the machines inspiring the character of Darth Vader, and I am not only talking about voice.

4. people send you CV-s where they leave the instructions in the fields for example: "you might want to inculde hobbies you dont really do but sound good" followed by the words: "chess, reading, fintess" - gosh.

5. People drink this (yes, its a giant mushroom in there), and it tastes pretty good, DONT TRY THIS AT HOME
5. KPMG offers you this: "Be happy forever and let us praise the holy globe we have just thrown up together" club, religion or whatever. Under the cover name: consulting. Oh wait, this is global, my bad.

6. If you say hi to working people (eg.: gas station, bank, grocery store), you get a strange look and an "is that all" face back. Lovely.

8. Police are arresting stand owners at the market for raising prices more than 20%, they are sentenced for "speculating with prices, using the opportunity of the crisis" - how is that?

7. There is a canteen where you can have lunch for 4.000 Rubel, less than 2 dollars, while gorcery shopping costs exactly the same as in Hungary. So, there is NO WAY, they are making money, since ONE of the ingredients would cost more. As I found out its state owned, and they get support for keeping the prices low. Sort of a "feeding people" program of the sort.

The food is really nice there. Much better than in a restaurant called Falcon that beats the crap out of any gallery in terms of art displayed, and a carbonara costs about 20 dollars. Here's to balanced pricing!

8. you need govermental licence to start your hown Wi-Fi system. This is a matter of "national security" as I learnt, and you go to jail if you dont have one.

9. A police fine can be 17 dollars if you are not careful.

All in all its time of my life :D

I have some good experience with company parties. At my former employer we used to throw halloween parties, which most of the time I used for one purpose only. Its funny how much better clients take criticism from a shitfaced zombie than they would from a junior guy in their consulting partner agency. I never got to the bottom of that logic... :S

Long story short when I got invited to a company party this weekend, I went glady. I am not sure how wide your universe of company party experiences is, but in mine I had just explored a new solar system. IF a company is a BIG AUDITING GIANT, and you have a feeling that it WILL be a huge party disaster, take my word: run the other directon.
My experience? It WAS a GIANT Friday night fuckup to go there, and I SHOULD have listened to my gut feeling.

When we crossed a signed that said Budapest on it, I should've gotten at least slightly suspicious.. at least because of the straight red line crossing the word diagonally. "Half way there" said the cab driver with that reassuring smile of his. I am not sure if it was comforting because I had some wine working in me, or because I saw him before in the movie "A nightmare on Elm street". We finally get to the outskirts of town for a local ice stadium, and look-at-what-we-have here.

1. Hundreds of people who said "S&P 500 ENERGY INDEX" BEFORE they learned how to say "Mom", "Dad" or "Super size please", so weird people.
2. Cheap and not cold wine lovers paradise bar, with a "we dont believe beer or shots are good for you" policy
3. OK tasting, but long lasting effect food. - I found its secrets out the past two days, thank you Mr.Cook, I hope you and all your friends get some advanced hospitality training in Guantanamo Resorts and Spa.
4. a "we dont have no creativity" section upstairs where people who walk among us as managers during the day, rejoiced in the fun of painting paper boxes in all colors of the rainbow. Whats fun if that isnt? I certainly enjoyed watching and figuring out who would fly what direction if someone was to blow a few granades in strategically fun spots.
   
5. All time top three finisher of the "Most manly and fun sport in the worl" competition - Curling.
   
6. Random dudes probably from under the ground departments.

I set out for some Ice skating. I already began feeling as the gentle wind blew against my face as I was developing speed. I am a really bad skater, so this was some experience for me. Than I began to gain more speed and feel a little more of the wind. Soon the other skaters felt like swooshing lines that I so just happened to pass.. Than, suddenly, one of the lines dropped in front of me on the ice. As a general rule, I would like to advise all of you that no matter what sport you pick, you first learn how to stop doing that sport. This particular line who soon developed the shape of a girl lieing on the floor was in trouble, and I think she knew it. About a hundred kilos of pure friendship was flying towards her with quite some speed, and today, that warm feeling had sharp skates on its legs... BUT before I would run into her, and she would feel like she never felt before, I managed to stop and save her "ran over me" virginity. I did that so effectively that my centre of gravity walked a few steps behind me, and I smacked the ice with my back - all on purpose of course.

Later, after having had a few pointless and astonishingly predictable conversations, a few bad drinks, a crash, food I would rather not call food, I was walking out of company party ice skate paradise with a wide smile on my face.

No channel will show you this sort of comedy these days, I am definately coming back next year :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Fighting hangover with salty sea water was probably the best idea of this season. Now that I think about it, God has probably invented the sea for this very purpose.. bless him for that.

Some people just dont have ideas of their own :D

Dear all,



take my word, and never go drinking alone with media girls (I will say no names here). They are seemingly innocent, but when they rock, you will feel like a local amateur swing musician next to them.

I am saying you should not go alone, so you can take turns and try to keep up.

So, we went out for tequila shots with this girl from media. She went to the bar every 10 minutes (she could not wait for the waiter to come), and came back with a plate of tequila shots. Salt and lemon were unnecessary details for her. She was taking shots with a speed that is nowhere near rivaling the speed of light, and between those plates she would pause for 20 long seconds, look at me with those (seemingly) innocent eyes and asks: so what are you getting?

Trust me, these girls make the Devil look like honeybunny from looney tunes. I am never drinking again :S

I was thinking about ways to comment this, but I think words cant express.