Almost 4 years, 1426 days, 19271 visits, 100 posts and 202 comments later I must say that I’ve changed a bit since this journey began, well who wouldn’t? I’m all grown up now (sad / smiley face). These 4 years have been a hell of a ride … I’ve had my share of good and bad, made new friends and became disconnected from others, I’ve traveled, I’ve teached, I’ve messed up, I’ve inspired, I’ve learned new  things, I’ve made some people happy and I’ve also made some people sad. This is all part of this thing called life.

Would I change anything? No. I am who I am now because the choices I made till now and this will also define me in the future. I like being me :)
Really! I have my good’s and bad’s, but so does everybody else!

What’s next? I don’t know. I’m trying real hard to achieve something of value. As most of us are. I’m just following my dream and see where it will take me.

As I’ve been going  trough my past posts, I selected some of them.

• Chasing your dreams – Starting my own company.
• Crazy friends – My friends. People I really care about.
• Diversity – Understanding it.
• City of two continents – Istanbul.
• City of romance – Venice.
• Duesseldorf – Germany.
• Returning to Austria – Salzburg. Flying over the Alps.
• City of Rome – Grandiose Rome.
• Becoming an Alumnus - The end of my AIESEC experience.
• Fears – About fears. Fear of life.
• Fragility of Life – Pain in huge amounts.
• Thoughts around a Wish – Inspiration from where you least expect it.
• My Super NPS – Some of my best times in AIESEC.
• Time of my life – Some of my best times outside of AIESEC.
• Thoughts racing eachother – The end of the greatest experience of my life so far.
• The journey – My very first entry.

I see them now as moments, frozen in time, and the feelings are overwhelming. Why do we spend so much of our time looking forward and so little looking back? I noticed that I too got dragged in this strong current … always rushing forward, always in a hurry, always lacking the time for myself, for those around me. We’re all rushing to what? At the end of this road, this voyage there is only one constant … death. I remembered today a poem by Octavian Paler I read a while ago called “We have time”. Maybe we should slow down a bit from time to time, find time for ourselves, for those close to us.

I’ve enjoyed the ride  so far … I can’t wait so see what’s next.
The Lion.

If some of you fail to understand the huge significance of this moment let me make it clear for you: The space race has entered the private sector. The cost of sending a 1kg into space is $22.000 at today’s costs. Basically, to send an object into space costs almost the same amount in gold. This company with limited resources, has succeeded in putting a vehicle on a precise orbit around earth and plans to slice this price in half … manned missions will follow.

It’s started :).

The Lion.

I must say they did everything right in the way they handled me … a month in advance notice, numerous reminders and documents explaining the agenda, objectives, transportation, etc. I’m usually very hard to please regarding these things. Well believe me I could not say a bad word, not one, regarding the whole process from start to end. I quite honestly have never been better handled since I’ve became an Alumnus. It reminded me of an older similar experience.

I’ve had two things to prepare, a “Video’s in presentations” learning circle and a “Presentation skills” training. I knew I had to prepare these trainings as people from Dale Carnegie, real good trainers would be delivering there and I felt I had to live up to the expectations. It felt really good doing research and preparing my trainings, the Power Point actually Keynote presentation. It was reminding me of the old times :), nights spent preparing, the joy of delivering, the satisfaction of doing a good job.

Once arrived in Satic, after a bumpy road via Pitesti, I was put aback of the huge expectations build by Nico and the other NTT members regarding the external trainers. It was a bit like: “Say hello to the training gurus … the externals!”. Trust me it takes a lot to shake my self confidence, and this almost made it. Fortunately I had the evening learning circle prepared and my training was scheduled for the next day. I’ve made a point of getting to know these guys (in my own special way of course). I’ve managed to get the idea of what my target audience was by observing them at the sessions and evening plenary. I say it again but it is AMAZING how AIESEC manages to bring so many good, young people in one place.

Meeting Andrei from Dale Carnegie was like going back in time. I’ve last seen him when he left AIESEC 2 years ago and he was unchanged. He’s been a great guy back then, helping me out a lot when I most needed it.

The evening learning circle was a blast … didn’t knew that people were not so into integrating videos in their presentations. Videos can be a very powerful way to get your own message trough. I’ve been doing this for 3-4 years an have a somewhat big collection that helped me a lot that evening.

The morning training went out great with a minor glitch at the end. Foreseeable tough. I will listen to my inner voice … you should do that too. Whenever you feel something is not right … well then act up on it! Don’t expect it to work out fine. I won’t :). I’ve managed to perform up to standards (mine at least), by being really passionate and getting into the right mood. I felt really good (sorry for repeating myself), to be a trainer again, to be in the middle of all those bright people. It is one the things I loved most in AIESEC. You can download the presentation here.

Getting to meet Dani again was another good reason for me being there. We did some catching up and he also came up with an original roll call we performed which helped a bit to lower our semi-gods statute there.

Overall it was an incredible experience just as in old times. I enjoyed it a lot. I love teaching young people, I like watching them grow, it is in my blood. This will most probably make me do a 180 degrees turn somewhere in the future.

Hopefully you reached this line. It’s a rather long post :)
The Lion.

I’m trying to keep up but I’m in an extremely busy period … so bare with me.

Not so long ago I’ve been invited to a friend’s birthday (Daniel). I figured it will be a dull Sunday afternoon and therefore I managed to arrive late :). His father has built a house and an artificial lake with all kinds of fishes lurking inside a few km of Sibiu right near the E81 European road. If you don’t know what to look for you can easily drive by and never notice it. The lake is behind an earth wall protecting it from the constant noise just a hundred meters away.

When I made the first 20m off the main road I was getting mixed feelings about the place … i wasn’t going to stick around for long … what could I possibly do here in the middle of nowhere? After just 50 more meters my perspective changed when taking a steep left turn, the an incredible view unveiled itself in front of me. As you can see from the pictures bellow, the place is amazing, just like a small corner of paradise, in the most unlikely place a hundred meters of a busy road. After that last step, no noise was getting trough … peace of mind, quiet.

Daniel and my few other colleagues from work were waiting form me with the table set and after a session of “all you can eat” we moved on to swimming, boat riding, fishing and other entertaining activities. I for one wanted to swim … and I did … 3 hours long with a brief fishing pause. This day alone was enough to recharge my batteries. I don’t believe I had that much fun for ages. The pictures bellow are speaking for themselves:

Over and out,
The Lion.

Something’s changed. And this time I don’t mean something deep, but straightforward … I look differently :). Why is that? Well there’s a story behind it:

One day as I was sitting at my desk I received a call from a friend of mine, who happens to be a hair stylist. He needed someone (I don’t know why that someone has to be always me!) to work on for a show and the deadline was 5 days away. And I found myself saying “Yes” for no obvious reasons … Didn’t knew what I was putting myself into. The process was the most interesting experience tough. I never knew how much work goes into such a thing, didn’t know how difficult it is to get the color you want, the glow, that you need some math, some color knowledge and some drawing skills to pull this out. The end result you see bellow took about 7 hours.

I didn’t like it at first … then I decided not to give a f*ck of what people think, and instead of getting back to “normal” (something that I was constantly reminded of, every day, by the people around me), I got one step further and changed my hair again. I don’t want to be “normal”, regular, fit a standard or be whatever this society want’s me to be. I want and will be myself, regardless of anyone may think, I am. I want to do crazy and unexpected stuff, if this makes me feel alive, if this makes me happy.

Now, about the show (live in Bucharest) was the fun part, we all got to be models for a day, feel the rush of the preparations of choosing of clothing of, the anxiety of waiting, the excitement of being on stage. For the first time in years, since I left AIESEC, I felt so alive again, I experienced diversity in my own country. Perhaps not cultural diversity but diversity in ideals, diversity in passion and diversity in expression.

When it all ended I ended up in seeing more more than what’s above the surface and show more respect for other people’s work and skills (I may or may not fully understand). It’s not that easy doing what these people do, not that easy being a model either … I guess it’s hard to cope with this different kind of experience till you go trough it yourself.

From the whole experience, one thing stands out: I was with these guys for several hours now, talking, laughing … one of them is just finishing the 12^th grade (high school). I asked him what he’s going to do next. He answered bluntly that this was what he wants to do, this was what he always wanted to do. I can do anything but admire his passion and the dedication … we kinda loose this gradually as we grow old.

We’re educated to label people by their abilities, their interests, their education, their hobbies and their jobs. Maybe we should stop and take a look at ourselves. Everyone has something he’s good at, everyone has something they can do best. And that is one of the few things that matter.

Over and out,
The Lion.

Last months were hectic, been having my up’s and down’s and most of all lots of work. But now I’m here … just where I longed for some time now to be. I now own my own company. And it feels good. Very good.

I remember being very frustrated somewhere in Autumn last year. I was finally getting somewhere when the whole thing collapsed and I had to start over again. The most difficult thing was to find someone I could trust, I could really rely on … but every now and then help comes from where you don’t expect. I ended up with someone I coached a few years ago during my last AIESEC EB experience. He’s one of the most patient people I know (I do believe I’m challenging his limits sometimes :)) and the whole experience brought us a little closer. It’s cool to talk together about next steps, work together till late in the night and feel excited and happy like little kids about every small step forward. It’s a new start and it’s just like I imagined it to be.

I’ve posted below a video from the Apple “Think Different Campaign“. The campaign was a turning point for Apple, it took only 60 seconds to reestablish Apple’s counter-culture image that it had lost during the 90s. Think different, don’t stop dreaming, don’t stop chasing your dreams.

The Lion.

I went to extreme lengths to get pictures featuring them in some of their craziest moments …

Thank you guys, you’re one of the reasons I am what I am today.
Sorry for the ones I couldn’t find a picture, I’ll regularly update this post :)

The Lion.

Today I want to talk about diversity. In the last 6 years I had the chance to experience it first hand. A trend that I’ve been noticing lately happening around me, is that people take diversity for granted or do not really understand it. For many people diversity lies in the color of the skin, speech, culture or in names of exotic countries they’ve never heard of.

There’s more in embracing diversity than accepting one’s skin color, culture or speech. It’s also about being open to different ideas and ways of thinking. I believe diversity lies in thought, in the way people come up with their ideas, in the way they express themselves, in accepting the fact that no two people are alike.

Sadly, people fear what they can’t understand and most people fear diversity. I see this everywhere around me, people labeling one another, labeling countries and cultures, labeling ways of thought, rejecting unconventional thinking, fearing the unknown instead of embracing it. To emphasize this, below is a video that I strongly relate to this post.

I think that “The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Over and out,
The Lion.

I never missed an LTS but this year it was really close. I’m glad I didn’t. It took some skill to convince my brother to drive 200km :). The drive there was nerve wreaking because of the poor quality of the road, tight turns and icy road. We arrived in the evening right in time for the Alumni session. I don’t think we’ve been so many ever. We talked from the heart about old times about the beginnings, challenges and advice. We definitely did our magic there. Afterwards all of us went to find a suitable place to try out the beautiful layer of snow that had just fallen down that evening and spent 3 good hours, riding downhill on plastic bags, banners or whatever we could get :).

The second day we jumped in the car and went to see the only surviving glacier in Romania at a cave called Sc?ri?oara. After a nasty 4km ride we had to go on by foot. On the way we stopped now and then to make photos. In the end it was all worth it.

The cave was amazing and started with a 200m vertical drop. Once inside the time stopped. The glacier formed weird people like shapes and the temperature never varies more than 2 degrees (+-1 C). We made some pictures capturing a small fraction of this majestic cave. For me it was a new and mind blowing experience. It was my first time in a cave. It reminded me of the adventurous stories I’ve read as a young boy: Tom Sawyer, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Ciresarii.

It’s been a while since I felt that excited. On the way back I managed to catch up with Razvan and after a while failed miserably trying to sing something together :).

Once we reached the car and headed back to the village, we stopped at a nice cheap “restaurant” where we had some vine a real good meal. It felt really good being with them there, chatting about nothing important and laughing our heads off. These are the moments that stay with you for a long time.

Thank you guys,
The Lion.

On my old site I hosted some drawings made by two friends of mine in the chemistry or physics classes in highschool. They bring back a lot of memories.

Because I was planning for a long time to take the old site down, I decided to make them available on DeviantArt, one of the largest artist communities on the web. It’s sad that none of them are drawing anymore. We were so young back then, dreaming big, like only kids do. After highshool our lives took different turns. I haven’t seen one of them for 6 years.

Yeah, I know, this is life. This doesn’t mean I’m supposed to like it.

Anyway, you can find all the drawings and any other Deviations I’ll upload from time to time on here. You might also want to check Robert or Gabi’s Deviations.

Over and out,
The Lion.