Searching for Utopia

I’m taking day off to promote the book of this summer—if you’re a geek that is: Windows Developer Power Tools by James Avery and Jim Holmes. The best bit of the book is on Chapter 16. Here is an excerpt:

Dotnet IL Editor (DILE), written by Zsolt Petrény, is an open-source application which gives developers great power to disassemble and debug .NET assemblies. Assemblies can be debugged even when the source code or debugging symbol (.pdb) files aren’t available. DILE’s main purpose is to serve as a Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) development environment by enabling users to disassemble existing assemblies, develop new ones, and debug them without using any other tools…

Enough said. Congrats to the hubby! The book is due to publish October 2006. Click here to order. For more information on the content, ask the guru here.

Nothing is better than having a supermodel doing a commercial for McDonald’s. I’m sure Heidi Klum loves her french fry. One piece won’t kill, right? *sarcastic mode turned on*

Nicole Kidman and 84 other Hollywood A-listers have taken out a powerfully-worded full page advertisement in Los Angeles Times newspaper:

“We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” the ad reads.

“If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.

“We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs.”

That poor lass, I thought she was smarter than that. Certainly she needs to pay a visit to Budapest before September 20. Our lovely city is hosting an exhibition on Israeli conduct in an independent country called Lebanon. She may have her reasons to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but she must not forget that it takes two to tango.

“During 33 day of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, Israel killed 1300 civilians, wounded 4000 and displaced about a million person when destroying their houses,” Lebanese national Agency quoted Lebanon’s ambassador to Budapest Hussein al-Mosawi as saying.

War is bad, people—especially for those who are fighting in it. So why does it keep on happening?

Being a Hungarian-Indonesian couple like Zsolt and I, last week had been a series of celebrations. As Indonesia celebrated her 61th Indepence Day on August 17, Hungary had the St. Stephen’s Day on the three following days.

The Indonesian Embassy in Budapest organized a trip to Lake Balaton—which we unfortunately missed—and several other events. I cannot help but miss the palm climbing race which we always had in each village in Indonesia. The concept is very simple. They put various prizes on top of the tree and smear the surface of the wood with oil to make it slippery. Anyone could try to take the prizes. As easy as that; it takes a good coordination among friends to reach the top of the tree. See how they had to climb on their friends. Of course the prizes would have to be shared among them.

And here is a solo player who doesn’t like the idea of sharing. So here he goes to get the whole prizes for himself. Good luck to him!

Click here for more pictures of the panjat pinang.

Sunday morning in Budapest, people were ready for the feast and merriment. The celebration was centered at the Parliament as always—which is only a few tens of meters away from our place. Everything was well in the afternoon. I even managed to take this picture of the Red Bull Air Race World Series 2006.

At 9 PM CET, the fireworks were launch. We were just chilling at home—don’t bother to mention it, I know it sounded silly. Suddenly Zsolt asked me, “Are you cooking? I think the water is boling.”

“No, I have finished cooking,” I said.

“Oh, then maybe it’s just raining outside.”

I opened the curtain and was shocked with what I saw. The huge tree in front of our window was almost blown by the wind. People were running from the Danube as rain water had been flooding the street.”We’re having a big storm!” I told him.

We still had no clue of how serious it was until he turned the TV on. It said that more than a million people were gathering around the parliament and they all ran for their lives. Trees fell, cars were damaged, several ships crashed, three people died and hundreds were injured. The night was closed with a blackout.

For more pictures, click here.

• Apart from the killer heat we had been having until last week, summer still has its best bits in Hungary. My apology for posting this too late, but we have a new Miss Balaton who will run for the next Miss Universe—or not? The lass has been known as the Britney Spears lookalike; that is the overly tanned beauty on the below picture.

Hate it or like it, you decide. The show itself was probably nothing more than gratuitous nudity and cellulite galore, if I had to be mean. Click here to check the pictures. They may not be safe for office viewing though.

Do correct me if I am wrong, but Miss Balaton Linda Zimány has apparently been on the cover of Playboy and FHM; seeing from her portfolio here. Hm, considering that most beauty pageants emphasize the idea of beauty with a brain, does it mean we have a smart and classy Playboy bunny here? I say give it a shot, Brit—um, Linda!

• Europe’s largest pop festival—Sziget Festival that is—attracted more than 50,000 visitors. Besides the long list of international performers such as Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand, Radiohead, Placebo and Jovanotti, a world record has been broken:

Nearly 1700 volunteers joined the commemorative world record attempt of CowParade Budapest.
Minutes after 7 PM 12 August, Saturday almost 1700 volunteers gathered to form the largest cow mosaic in the world as a commemoration to one of the greatest painter of the 20th century, Tamas Lossonczy.
The record attempt was organized by the team behind CowParade Budapest, a remarkably positive and colourful public art event to celebrate the 102nd birthday of Tamas Lossonczy, doyen of Hungarian painting. The Master is amongst the artists participating in CowParade, but with a remarkable story.
The mosaic was put together on a 1700 sqm territory just across the Main Stage of Sziget Festival. Despite the rain the organizers were only a few dozen people short of the required 1700 volunteers, but even this way the image was clearly visible from high up.

The kids sure had some fun; while us, self confessed hobbits enjoyed to sleep our short silent nights away in our little burrow. Honestly, Budapest was different without the noise they caused as they made their way back home from clubbing. We definitely want more Sziget Festival!