Monday Morning: October 5th, 2009

I think I fell asleep rather quickly at about 8:30 p.m. Romanian time. Up and wide awake at… let’s see… what does the clock say… 0:11. What? I slept for less than four hours? Okay, back to sleep. This time up at 03:46. Well, that’s just going to have to do. It is Monday morning.

Hmmm; 03:46 minus eight hours is, (Don’t laugh, Fred -- I'm still sleepy), 19:46 in Ohio time or 7:46 p.m. on Sunday night. (Getting use to military time.) Amazing Journey is on tonight, Cold Case, 60 Minutes -- of course, that's AMERICAN T.V. Sunday night here on Romanian TV consists of International CNN, BBC World, EuroNews, Bloomberg, ESPN America (still couldn't find whether or not Auburn won, saw that OSU won, though). Other channels include Reality TV about a couple of British guys hiking in a rain forest and apparently one of them had a boulder crash down on him. He is lying with a boulder on his leg, poking at a really large (at least 12” long) sand crab with a stick. The crab is eating his foot – bloody toes, etc. He cannot feel his foot and wonders how long the crab has been there. He finally kills it. Ewww. Camera breaks to the buddy running out of forest trying to get to the “other side of the river” so he can call for help. I am guessing they are successful because this story is being told in past tense.

ANYWAY, I’m thinking’ I’ll probably dream of giant sand crabs. Back to TV choices: Extreme, Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Discovery World, History, BBC Prime, Hallmark, HBO (Watched Prince Caspian in English with Romanian sub-titles); Cartoon Network, Eurosport, Sport.ro. The next couple dozen channels are Romanian except the last three that are Pay TV with, well; let’s just say “adult content”. I’ll pass.

Most channels are in English with Romanian sub-titles. I find it a bit odd that I would find foreign television channels so interesting. Some of the local channels have really, really silly game shows where the hosts are dressed up in costumes and there seems to be a lot of goofy behavior; on second thought, maybe closer to American TV then I initially thought.

Watching the International CNN, BBC World and EuroNews at times was kind of depressing. Lots of war footage, footage of elections in Greece with protests and celebrations, the death of an opera star who championed the poor. I think the difference was that I did not see a lot of “cutting down” of politicians and government officials. Our American CNN/FOX, etc. seem to always be talking about who did what in Washington and why they are arguing and what is wrong with our President, congress, etc. Lots of criticism.

As I ponder this, I wonder if the government has a hand in what type of information is released. Interesting. If that is true, then the librarians over here have their hands full.

Well, I am going to post this now and then start going over my presentations for the day. I will check in later. Hope my American friends and family get a good night’s sleep and have a blessed Monday!

Oh, just thought of something. Did you know that there is technology out there that allows someone to capture the barcodes of your credit cards, etc. as you walk by them? This was very evident in the airports. There were many passport and credit card holders made out of “steel” that prevented this type of identity theft. Yikes.