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The liveblog experiment begins for the first time on What-What dot com, and it starts with a doozy: a double-whammy of Christmas, in two countries, with two families, massive meals, double the presents and hopefully, more than double the love. Awww.
Your host, the Def Selector.
We begin around 1:30pm, Hungary time, for the first meal with the family. Click the “more” tab and keep refreshing as I will try to update every 30 minutes or so. With pictures! Entries are from newest to oldest, so start at the bottom and work your way up.
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Did I ever tell you the story of how my bike got stolen? I don’t think so. Well, here’s my bike, chilling out at the bottom of the stairwell in our apartment building. It’s awesome. Well, maybe not that awesome . . .
It’s a Puch, and once it was yellow, with electric blue mud guards. That was before it was stolen. I bought it from a bike messenger at the old, and now demolished, West Balkan for about $90 (diesel lock included), which is still on the expensive side for a used bike in these parts. It had a bent back fork from when he got hit by a car and was pretty banged up in terms of paint and handlebar tape, but it was light and still worked fine and had some “history”, so I took it. While the brand name is Puch, the previous owner had added an “i” to the end, making it “Puchi”. My bike has a name, and that name is the same as Garfield’s teddy bear (different spelling).
I began to think it was a bad luck bike when I got hit by a car too – sideswiped by an idiot making an illegal turn and not even having the gall to signal. I was ok, and Puchi made it through fine, though I was more than shaken up. This was all in the summer of 2006.
While usually we would bring our bikes into the stairwell of our apartment and lock them there, which is out of sight from the street and relatively safe, we occasionally got lazy and left them locked to the lamp post outside. I was confident that my 2cm-thick cable lock would be enough of a deterrent.
I was wrong. I walked out one morning, a bit late and needing to jump on the yellow streak that Puchi was in order to get to work fast, and was shocked and appalled that it had disappeared without a trace. I was crushed. We tried reporting it to the police, with little confidence that they’d do much of anything about it, and listed it on a stolen bike forum. This is the description I wrote:
The bike is an old, bananna yellow Puch, 10-speed, with electric blue mud guards, narrow street tires, an old and cracked black seat, with half handlebars (I don’t know how to explain these) and a Shimano gearshifter. The bike looks old and beat-up, with many scratches and marks all over the frame. The Puch logo has been modified to say “Puchi”, and the same thing is engraved on the vertical seat support strut. There is also a bit of hose or tire attached to the top horizontal support, held in place with plastic ties. The right rear wheel strut is bent inwards slightly from a car accident by the previous owner, who is a bike messenger named Tonja. He also did all the other modifications.
About a week later I was getting pretty sure it was gone for good. We had called several shops to see if it had turned up anywhere, and even gone to an awesome flea market to look for parts. I kind of felt like that part in one of the Star Wars flicks when they find C3-PO all blasted apart, except I didn’t find Puchi.
Then my co-worker Anna’s bike got stolen. She had left it locked up in the courtyard at the office over the weekend (exactly where E’s bike would get stolen, many months later, in broad daylight, which is another story), which is easily accessible and less-savory types are known to come and go as they please. We commiserated.
A few days later, Anna went to the bike shop just a few doors down from the office to look for a new bike. I had been there a couple times to get miscellaneous repairs done on Puchi, and Anna had accompanied me there to ask about where to look for stolen bikes the day after mine disappeared. This time when she arrived, it was there being repaired, and the repair guy recognized it, despite the fact that the mud guards were gone and it had been hastily spray-painted black. The thieves must have screwed up the brakes while tearing off the guards. She called me, I went down, and sure enough it was Puchi, looked abused. A few minutes later the chump who brought it in returned, saying that he had paid 3,000 forints (about $14) for it, which I was hesitant to reimburse but I felt was a small price to pay for such amazing luck.
I was mad as hell that I got my bike stolen and desecrated, only to be sold for a mere 3,000 forints, but I was amazed and happy that things had taken such a fantastic turn. My coworker’s bad luck was my own fortune – if she had not gone to the bike shop during those few minutes in which it was there being repaired, it would have ridden off under the chump’s ass never to be seen again.
I still ride to work every day, but this time it’s on Puchi II.
Halloween RULES.
Photo gallery HERE. Post coming soon.
I recently attended the above mentioned event, hosted here in Budapest for the first time in 25 years, and was happily dumbfounded by the impressive array of skills on display. The strongest contending teams were from the U.S., Japan, and of course Hungary, but more than a dozen countries were represented, some by only one competitor.
The winner of the 3x3x3 “classic” cube was Yu Nakajima of Japan, with an average (of five attempts) in the final of 12.46 seconds. American Andrew Kang finished second (13.05) and fellow nihonjin Mitsuki Gunji finished third (13.05). World records: Hungarian Mátyás Kuti 5×5 1:45.07 (average), 3×3 multiple blindfolded 15 cubes in 46:17, 4×4 blindfolded 6:12.32 (not to mention placing in the top three in almost every other category), Ryan Patricio 3×3 one-handed 21.13 (average), Lukasz Cialon 2×2 3.91 (average), Erik Akkersdijk Megaminx 1:17.46 (single) 1:19.16 (average).
Perhaps the most mind-boggling feat (though not witnessed by me) was the solving of a 5x5x5 cube blindfolded(!!) by an 11-year-old kid from India named Bernett Orlando, who was the only competitor to finish, at a time of 55:39. Just imagine trying to solve something exponentially more complex than the original cube, entirely without looking at it, puzzling in the dark for nearly an hour. Hats off Bernett! Also incredible was Kuti’s solving of 15 consecutive cubes blindfolded, setting a new world record.
The seclusive Ernő Rubik was in attendance for the anniversary event, and presented several awards. He looks a little like Mr. Spock.
Although I’m sure the tension was pretty high among the (mostly boys) there to compete, the actual competition is a bit anti-climactic, as most categories have several rounds and are based on an average of times. In the audience sat supporters and teammates, often fiddling with their own weird puzzles, or timing themselves with a friend. The coolest thing I saw was at the after party (they hit the Coca Cola pretty hard, those boys), where members of different teams were pairing off and competing informally among themselves, with one person solving the cube with their eyes closed (without looking at it first, which is how it works in the official competition) and the other telling them how to solve it. With spider-like fingers dancing, you can see the gears turning very quickly in their young minds.
Here’s a video (unfortunately in Hungarian) with a good picture of what went down. Peep the “Cubinator” robot at the end – you give it a messed up cube to solve and it even talks trash while solving it! Its “face” looks a bit like my favorite rapper, MF DOOM.
Only about a month late on this, but HERE is the photo gallery from my one day at Sziget Festival 2007. It was hot, dusty, filled with drunken hippies and corporate sponsorship, plagued by sound problems and we were ‘on the job’. I think I’m too old for this.
In a recent article, we had to write about the city of Miskolc. From their official unofficial website, here are some reasons to go (since deleted!):
Just in time for the next edition of the Budapest Bardroom, here is the soon-to-be-infamous theory of local art-historian and long-term expat Dzseff: that the cookie monster is really a . . . . just, kidding, you’ll have to watch the video to find out!
Here’s a link to a text version of the presentation, with footnotes, sources, and more information. Stay tuned for part two, being revealed tomorrow at the Bardroom, and hopefully online soon for the world to see and be shocked!
