Driving in Bucharest ..

Although I have been driving for 10 years I never was a fan of urban driving. Driving in Bucharest is in my opinion the worst case of urban driving. With average speeds of 11 km/h it is in my opinion a waste of energy , fuel and time (and mental sanity ).
Still every morning when I go to work and every evening I return home I go past hundreds of mostly stopped cars that struggle to get somewhere. They accelerate to high rpm 20 m before the traffic lights only to hit the brakes violently at the lights. No car was designed to run like this whatever manufacturer it was.
People seem to have lost their minds in this city. I have seen plenty of 200 H.P. cars ans SUVs blocked in traffic. I have heard of people actually fighting in traffic or for a parking spot. This is insane.
Still on the bike paths I can only find myself and maybe 10 other cyclists during my commute. My commute takes about 35 minutes for 9km (about 6 miles) and I do listen to my MP3 player. I have heard of people needing 2h for the 9 km in question.
Is it all about social status ? I guess it is . Whenever I get to work during breakes all I hear is cars , cars and more cars. I have been a reader of car magazines (http://www.auto-motor-si-sport.ro/) for 10 years and I know more about cars than most people .
Still the hype around cars is huge and beginning to upset me. Do people really imagine they can truly use a 242 H.P. Audi A6 on the streets of a crowded capital at rush hour ? Sure you can hit it on the highway at 120 Mph or on other national roads but in the city this is insane. Nonetheless I thought so too when I was younger .. and less mature.


Well it is their money after all and I really could not care less except that they will be polluting my air , destroying my health in a city that is already polluted.
Here are my incity vehicles (the one in the background is my wife's but I use it in Bucharest , the other is my touring machine (about 2500 km and several metric centuries on it) that I use in my hometown.


















Do people really think a man is worth less if he is not driving all the time ? Do people really need to carry a briefcase and themselves (for a total of 80 kgs ) using a 1200 kg car ?
I stand by these guys when it comes to cars and they do make sense to me.

PS: I wonder what would have happened if it weren't for the economic downturn ?

Getting stuck ...

This is probably a defining moment. After only 2 weeks of dieting I have lost about 7 kg (that's 15.4 pounds in US measurements). However I am obsessive about my weight now. I need to be at 75 kg(150-155 pounds) and now I am at 107 kg(235.4) pounds). I have been stuck here for almost 2 days (I know this is not significant but I am still bothered).
I am aware that a diet takes time and is more about the lifetime change than anything else but I can't wait to get these 30 kg off. And what bothers me is that I've been in this fight for like 23 of my 28 years (before that I wasn't aware of this issue) and never won for more then a few months (that was in 1998 when I managed to get to 80 kg after running for about the whole year).
As a note giving up Cola though very difficult changed a lot. Most of the weight loss process was caused by this thing.

Living as an obese person is not what I want so before thinking about huge goals like having my own company , promotions , buying a house , invest in the stock markets .. I feel like getting control over my body is more important.


The life as a programmer does not help . You are sitting on a chair coding all day drinking Coca-Cola or Pepsi.
Without bike commuting I don't know if I would still be alive. My worst ever weight (in 2004) was 135 kg (297 pounds) and diabetes and/or heart problems would have ended my life soon (10 years top) if I had not started to bike commute.
So far I always had more important things to do and gave up trying to loose weight but from now on this is the to priority.
My target is getting to 100kg(220 pounds) by the end of the year and to 75 kg by the end of next year NO MATTER WHAT.
These guys in US are very inspiring so I am trying to read their idea's carrefully.
This post seems to draw the picture for programmers and fitness. This being said Jeff Atwood has no idea how it feels to be fat and most of the interesting points can be found in the comments. Joel Spolsky looks slightly more chubby though.