Owlspotting

On Wednesday, Starbucks opened its first store in Romania. Regardless of whether you view the Seattle chain as the incarnation of evil or as a savior of the coffee-hungry world, this is big news for Romania, where coffee culture is still largely domestic. The arrival of Starbucks signals that the coffee wars of Eastern and […]

My name is Cristian and I like my world organized. My tendency to plan, structure and organize stuff has been mocked by many. It lost me numerous romantic opportunities (how does one plan a one-night stand?!). While it got me jobs and assignments, it also probably made a lot of workmates insane. Someone once told […]

If you don’t speak Romanian, please consider the ridiculous question I will pose next not as a dismissal of your worthiness, but as genuine solicitation of your opinion. The truth is that I’ve always had a problem dissociating an online space from the purpose it was created for. When owlspotting started, it was meant as […]

I returned home to Romania three weeks ago today and I would be lying if I said I’ve fallen into place. It more or less looks like everything is falling around me (the government and president in tow). I didn’t expect clarity of purpose or vision when I stepped of the plane, but I did […]

Boston is slushy tonight. Snow, sleet and rain tore through the city earlier, turning it into the perfect humid wonderland for all couples graciously saving the economy tonight. But I’m not bitter—slush can be quite inspiring. As I trudged home through puddles up to my ankles, my mind was busy playing the chorus of Dear […]

At number five in his Zurau aphorisms, Franz Kafka puts offers this though: From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached. For all I know, Kafka could have been talking about one’s whole life and that melancholy moment when you realize that the path […]

(Disclaimer: The whole point of the story below is to promote this article I just did on the prevalence of personal stories in a series of media projects, ranging from blogs to magazines to stage shows.) My life changed in the summer of 1996. This was the summer when the first copyright law was introduced […]

The Romanian newspaper “Cotidianul” published an article today about what it called “Journalism 2.0,” a clever play on the Web 2.0 idea. The premise of the piece is that traditional media and citizen media are about to enter into an all out turf-war. The author, Cosmin Popan, says it’s a conflict between “media with a […]

An American friend I met recently in Boston told me a story last night about a trip she took to Romania in 2004. Like other trips you might have heard of from foreigners, this one involved stops in Bucharest, Sinaia and Sighisoara. But the best part came when she checked into a Poiana Brasov hotel […]

Whenever prompted on what language I like writing in, I set off on a long rant on how torn I am between Romanian and English and how I’m always under the impression that I have to pick one over the other and blah blah blah. Typical self-indulgent stuff meant to get women teary eyed. While […]