Cav's Place

Although they claim they initially wanted to wait until 2014 before making a decision, Nightwish made the expected announcement today, revealing that Floor Jansen will stay with the band. Considering how well she seems to fit, how much she seems to want to be there, and the amount of love and support she received from the fans, it would have been quite a shock if either party would have chosen otherwise. Not that it’d have been entirely impossible, of course, but I’m sure that both sides would have had much to lose if they’d have gone their separate ways after the end of this year’s festival season, back in August, as the original plan seemed to indicate.
On the other hand, the other part of the announcement, stating that Troy Donockley is also becoming a permanent member of Nightwish, hardly even deserves a mention. Sure, he wasn’t officially listed as a permanent band member so far, but for all practical purposes he had been one for years and was seen as such by many fans. As a result, while any other decision regarding him would have had no more than a small fraction of the negative impact not keeping Floor would have had, it’d have likely been even more surprising.

I’m sure there will be speculation regarding the reason why this announcement was made today, but I’m just happy everything is settled for the moment. How long it’ll last, I don’t know and don’t care that much just now. I just know that a Nightwish with Floor is a band I’d sure like to attend a concert of, and I don’t go to concerts, so if they’ll come here during their next tour, whenever that will be, it may be a first. If you haven’t already, just have a look at her singing Ghost Love Score to see why.

Since they recently turned five years old, GOG.com have been giving away games since last week, and I won two $9.99 ones. Both wins were direct, for being among the first 40 to send the correct answers, with the correct title, for the word search one and then for being among the first 20 to send the correct answers, with the correct title and in the correct format, for the quiz. And I’m not sure if they made any of the draws yet, seeing as at the start of the week they were saying they hadn’t made any for last week’s contests, so there may still be some chances to grab something else from my wishlist. After all, since they still won’t offer any payment methods I can use to actually purchase anything, this is the only way I have to do that.
Either way, the games I picked were Age of Wonders II: The Wizard’s Throne and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, since I remembered playing the first Age of Wonders way back and the series was also recommended to me when I asked for suggestions of games I may actually enjoy and not be too frustrated by on the MobyGames forum, not long ago. I even installed and started Wizard’s Throne yesterday and mean to see how much I can stick to it, seeing as Shadow Magic is seen as being better than it in every aspect and therefore I’m quite sure I’ll never be able to get myself back to it if I’ll also try that before I’m done with this.
Then again, so far I just keep losing, and I’m only at the first scenario of the campaign, so I’m not sure how long this will last. If I’ll want a break, I still have that little thing called Blades of Heaven which I started at some point, plus of course The Witcher, which I also picked from GOG.com, along with its sequel, when I won two games without a price limit at the end of 2012, but then very suddenly gave up on at some point in chapter two and can’t get myself to get back to since, being too afraid I’ll mess something up. In that situation of being installed and started but very suddenly given up on, there’s also Divinity II, but that’s fourth on the list at the moment and I find it unlikely that I’ll even try to get back to it before making very serious attempts with all of the other three.

On a related note, seeing as I still linked to the games’ pages on that site, you might have noticed that MobyGames was destroyed by being redesigned. That piece of shit being forced down our throats without warning destroyed the community, and the way the founders and the owners chose to deal with the consequences, while entirely expected, made it even worse, so the site is basically dead now. I mean, even if a few would still want to contribute despite the concept behind the new design and the way we are being treated, there are so many major bugs that it can be impossible to do so, and the risks of losing your work make it unwise to try even when it is possible.
That said, it might have been better if my ban wouldn’t have been lifted, because I’m not going to submit things anymore under these circumstances anyway… Unfortunately, that also means I probably won’t be writing reviews for any game I’ll somehow manage to finish anymore either, since I was doing so for those that had too few on that site, but finishing a game is a very distant prospect at the moment, so we’ll see…

The part about sleep has to do with the fact that this week’s Formula 1 race is in Korea and therefore in the morning for me, so I woke up at 7:45 AM today for the qualifying and will need to wake up at 8:45 AM tomorrow for the race itself. Before these protests started, that wouldn’t have been a problem because I could just get a couple of hours of sleep in the morning and then get back to bed later, but tomorrow I’ll have to leave no later than 3:30 PM and will need to prepare first as well, so I’ll be marching and protesting for the rest on the day on something between two and a half and, at the very most, five hours of sleep, depending on exactly when I’ll fall asleep in the morning and whether or not I’ll manage to nap for a while after the race is over as well. Worse, this will come after only getting some four hours of sleep today, since waking up so early meant I got at the very most two hours in the morning and then I only crawled back in bed close to 3 PM, finding myself awake again at 5 PM and being unable to get back to sleep after that point.

At least I won’t be worrying about the antivirus anymore, since I found myself needing to stick to BitDefender after all. I did finally manage to persuade myself to send an e-mail to ask for some more information about Kaspersky at the start of the week, but the reply I got from the Romanian branch only asked for a phone number so they can call me and offer the answers on the phone. I got nothing else back after I said that’s not happening and I seriously wonder why would it even be desirable, not to mention necessary, so I assumed that not being too shy to talk to their employees directly is one of the requirements for using their software and took that option off the table at a time when I couldn’t afford to keep looking anymore, the BitDefender license I had having expired today. Now this most probably can’t be a solution all the way to the end of 2014, when the new license will actually expire, seeing as it covers 15 months, but it at least offers me more time.

Otherwise, the writing is going poorly and this time, without attending any protests or related events since Sunday, I don’t even have that excuse for it anymore, but it was going very poorly before as well, and usually has been, so that definitely comes as no surprise. The one good thing is that it’s at least easy to figure out what to post here, covering the protests like I am, and I find doing this to be noticeably less difficult than making myself write serious non-personal posts was before, so you should expect another post covering days 31 to 40 next week, though I’ll have very little to say about the first half of this period.

Since some notable events did take place during four of the five days covered by this post, I’ll return to the original format of having a separate section for each day, even if this will make for a particularly disappointing entry for Monday. I should also mention that I was in the fountain area on Thursday, which makes it the only day other than Sunday that I have firsthand information about, seeing as for the first time since the start of the protests I stayed home on a Saturday as well.

Day 26: A brief “play” was scheduled from 8 PM, with the “actors” chosen from those who expressed interest. It was also said that, being so brief, it can easily be repeated if more people want to take part, but that didn’t happen and, as far as I’m concerned, for good reason, seeing as the scene was completely pointless and quite a waste of time and resources for those who did seem to actually go through some trouble to set it all up. The only thing that somewhat saved the “show” was a speech by a guy who said he had only heard of the event the day before and, wishing to add something to it, decided to pretend to be the Prime Minister, supposedly having come to address the protesters, while the other actors, still wearing the masks with the faces of the other politicians, were to laugh when he gave a signal. There wasn’t much to this either, but I definitely appreciated the effort.
Just over 100 people attended those moments, if you include those who participated as well, and some started clearing out soon after the speech ended, when the rest split in small groups and started chatting with each other, the few feeble attempts to actually protest dying away almost immediately. The one larger group that did form, which included some of the more involved activists who were present at the time, did discuss some more important matters, but they also scattered when two television crews showed up, not wishing to be taken as “leaders”. Other than some people giving some interviews, nothing notable happened between that point and 9:40 PM, when I left, leaving behind less than 40 people. When I checked the webcam at 11 PM, about half that number were still there, but they cleared out by 11:30 PM.
Otherwise, Thursday was also the day set aside by the Special Commission formed to analyze the issue to discuss with the representatives of the protesters, so it was a day when they should have been staring at an empty conference room, seeing as we do not recognize that Commission and will not deal with it. However, after a site was set up where anyone could ask to be included in these discussions, 15 of those who did so did show up and the politicians keep saying that they were our representatives. Obviously, though at least one was actually involved in the protests, they were nothing of the sort, so the need to clearly and strongly reject this message was an important topic discussed in that larger group I mentioned above.

Day 27: While those involved in the action groups met that evening to receive and start spreading the fliers some of them managed to have printed during the week, the “official” event, which started at 9 PM and was only announced around 7 PM, took place in a club situated close to University Square and consisted of an evening of musical improvisation on themes related to the protest. Obviously, that only served to split the already few people even more, no more than 30 showing up around the fountain on an evening when a television station had a show on these issues and broadcasted live from the area. Those people cleared quickly after 11 PM, when the camera was turned off.
I have no clue what that confusion was all about, whether it was intentional or not, but the result was that three known activists, who are all at the forefront of the campaign against fracking and were obviously there specifically for this purpose, spoke on that show from the fountain area and were repeatedly presented by the moderator as the leaders of the protesters, only one of them mentioning once that he’s no more than his own leader. In addition, their speeches naturally focused on the fracking issue while the few protesters who were behind them weakly chanted for Rosia Montana, this seeming to be the only way to remind them to at least mention the main reason this entire movement was started.

Day 28: With the fliers arriving so late, the plan for Saturday was meant to increase the action groups’ impact and efficiency, so the original idea was to meet at Unirii metro station at 3 PM and ride the metro, spreading awareness to the other passengers before meeting back at Unirii at 6 PM. However, the final decision, made shortly after those who wished to take part in the effort met, was to split into five groups, four riding the metro on three different routes and one remaining at Unirii, and meet back there at 6:45 PM instead. While I don’t actually know whether this is true, I imagine that time was picked so they’ll be able to be at the fountain at 7 PM and start the day’s protest there as well.
The reports pretty much died out after that point, so I don’t know exactly what happened later, but the webcam only showed a few people start to arive around the fountain around 7:20 PM, I counted less than 20 at 8 PM and some of them had already left by 8:30 PM. That didn’t mean that the area cleared soon after that point, however, as ten or so people, a few who arrived later replacing some of those who were leaving, stuck around probably some two hours longer. After noticing there was no reason to go there myself, I started doing something else that evening, so I didn’t check the webcam regularly to have a more exact time than that.

Day 29: This time around, people were told to start gathering outside the Titan metro station from 4 PM, the march only ending at University Square, and once again there were no special events or guests. Worse, at least in my opinion, there were many messages asking those who are unable to be there by the time we’ll start marching, which was shortly after 6 PM, to either join us on the way or at least gather at University Square from 8 PM and wait for us to arrive. As a result, many feared we’ll be very few at the start, and possibly during the march as well, and indeed we numbered only in the hundreds until very close to 6 PM, but at the start of the march, when the people who had been taking shelter from the rain in the surrounding area joined as well, we were relieved to see we were well over 1000, possibly close to 2000.
The numbers were obviously far lower than before, but more did join, both on the way and at the end, and overall we were happy with what we got, considering the weather. Initial estimates from the mainstream media regarding the number of people in the Square ranged between 2000 and 6000, while some enthusiastic ones from protesters put us at over 10000 towards the end the march, even up to 20000 once, though the group that made that claim quickly went back on it, admitting they were too enthusiastic. By Monday, though I saw one independent reporter firmly insist on at least 10000 and one known protester even claim 15000, most people, including those who manage the, shall we say, official Facebook account, seemed to agree that we were between 4000 and 6000 at the peak, so the estimate of around 5000 that I made after arriving in the Square seems just about right and I’m sticking to it. Admittedly, needing to protect the camera meant that I took fewer pictures this time around and didn’t wait for the entire column to walk past in order to try to estimate the number of people marching, but it seems safe to assume that the peak was in the Square and not earlier.
The march itself lasted for just over two and a half hours, though that doesn’t mean the route was much shorter than any except the previous one, which was clearly the longest, but that the rain thankfully made people walk somewhat faster. Unfortunately, it also reduced the amount of support we could receive, as there weren’t many people outside, but a fair number were looking out the window as we walked past and some of them cheered or waved flags. Since our numbers grew by at least 3000 over the course of the march, it’s obvious that some joined as well, but I noticed some groups that seemed to have independently decided to gather in certain spots along the planned route and only march with us from that point forward, meaning that the number of people who simply decided to come outside and brave the weather after seeing us walk past was understandably very low.
Once we arrived at University Square, around 8:40 PM, some tried to continue marching, probably towards the Government, but a line of gendarmes stopped us just past the fountain area and slowly but steadily closed in from all sides, gently pressing people to gather in one place in order to clear parts of the road as the numbers started dropping. We didn’t all clear so quickly, however, so after the better known activists managed to bring some sort of order to the crowd, the large banners were gathered in a large semicircle, a group of Barlad also joined us and there was more protesting despite the fact that we were all soaked and shivering. When I left, at 9:50 PM, the numbers had dropped well into the hundreds and some of the known faces were making their way out as well, but the last people apparently only left around 11 PM.
Back to the march, the chants were still getting mixed and the worst problem was probably the noise, which often drowned out what was actually being said, the repeated attempts to make all the people with vuvuzelas, whistles or other similar instruments stop using them while others try to chant falling on deaf ears. However, the smaller numbers meant that everything did appear somewhat more organized, and that, the rain and the better speed seemed to largely prevent the group from scattering, though in plenty of places many were more concerned with trying to step in as few puddles as possible than with anything else.
As far as incidents go, I haven’t seen or heard of any. The gendarmes were far more noticeable, their numbers appearing far greater due to ours being so much lower than before, but if they imposed any additional rules they did so gently and the protesters agreed. There might have been some tension in the Square, when they stopped us from continuing and then kept closing in, but everything was solved by talking and the few who were tempted to sit down and resist seemed to be allowed to do so until the rain and the fact that they quickly found themselves alone in front of the line made them pull back to the group on their own.
All in all, I feared far worse than this and I was hardly the only one, so I’m happy with how it turned out. The protests continued in dozens of cities, both across the country and abroad, and in Bucharest, on a chilly day, at the end of a week during which very little happened, after a Saturday with basically no actual protest, some 5000 people still came out to march and spend up to seven hours in the pouring rain for a cause. Sure, that’s far less than the 20000 we saw the week before or the 25000 the week before that, and the area clearing at 11 PM isn’t the same thing as having some people stick around until 2 AM, but under these circumstances and considering how difficult it usually is to make Romanians give a damn, it’s still nothing short of amazing.

Day 30: As I was saying at the start of this post, this will be a particularly disappointing entry, since I have nothing to report as far as visible actions go. The rain that started on Sunday continued throughout the day and nobody attempted anything outside; haven’t even heard of meetings anywhere. However, this time was definitely not wasted, as the action groups started discussing what to do next and others were obviously busy planning this Sunday’s march, seeing as today’s posts reveal a somewhat different approach. Yet today is day 31, so this is a topic for the next post.
There is something to be said regarding the events on the political scene, however, namely that we saw even more desperate tactics being used. The battle between the President and the Prime Minister continued as well, but quite frankly I don’t care about that anymore, so what I do want to mention here is that the Special Commission heard from members of the Government and representatives of the intelligence agencies that day, being told that the mining project must be carried out regardless of what happens with the law, because otherwise the company will sue for damages and win, and that foreign interest groups, as well as “eco-anarchists”, have a significant presence among the protesters and have been making sustained efforts to take over the movement since the beginning, the matter supposedly being one of national security. Unsurprisingly, no evidence has been presented to support any of these claims.

Overall, the week didn’t look good, but the march did, despite the significantly lower numbers. We proved that we can do it and that we will do it. These 5000 or so people who showed up regardless of the conditions proved that it takes more than a series of desperate tactics employed by politicians, a dreadful campaign against us by the most watched news television station and some other mainstream media channels, a rainy day and the exhaustion accumulated over a month of protesting to stop us from returning in the thousands. And that, in itself, is basically unheard of when it comes to honest protests taking place in Romania since 1990, so without including those organized by political parties or the unions associated with them, where people are brought with buses, given free food, drinks, concerts, or perhaps even paid directly, and told exactly what to say. To quote Alexandru Alexe, we have already won.

Since few people still showed up around the fountain Monday to Friday, I wasn’t one of them and the media, be it independent or mainstream, had little to nothing to say about those days as well, I’ll cover days 16 to 20 very briefly, starting with the fact that perhaps slightly over 100 people showed up Monday evening, only a few of them, with all of one banner and two flags, still being there by midnight. Similar numbers were initially seen on Tuesday as well, but eventually around 200, including 50 or so dancers, gathered for the tango flash mob scheduled for 11 PM before starting to clear around midnight, only a few still standing around at 12:30 AM. That was the high point of these five days, however, seeing as Wednesday’s action group meeting saw all of four people attend and there were maybe 70 around the fountain at 9 PM, the numbers starting to slowly but steadily drop after that and the area clearing much earlier than before. Worse, there was nobody there at 8 PM on Thursday, some 40 people eventually gathering later and seeming somewhat more determined to actually protest, though the area once again cleared early. In the end, many of the better known activists, who had also taken a break over the previous few days, tried to gently restart the protests by organizing a discussion on matters of patrimony on Friday, but the 50 or so who attended it and the few others who stood nearby and tried to protest meant that the numbers were similar to those seen on Wednesday, perhaps in part because another group tried, and failed, to gather enough people to start an Occupy-style protest in Izvor park that same night.
As for the political scene, the same politician who was on the receiving end of chants against his party when he was noticed among the protesters at the end of the previous Sunday’s march made the news on Tuesday by entering the Parliament despite not being a member and making a scene, likely as another desperate attempt to present himself as a representative of the protesters, who once again chanted against him that evening as a result. However, the truly notable development also took place on Tuesday, and by this I’m referring to the fact that the Parliament approved the creation of a Special Commission meant to analyze the issue, after supposedly reviewing the available information and discussing with representatives of both sides. The protesters and the NGOs involved in the effort to stop the project, starting with Alburnus Maior, have however announced that they will not attend any such meetings, as they do not recognize the Commission, which is merely another attempt to stall. In addition, the Commission’s request for “leaders” of the protesters obviously generated a negative reaction and resulted in an announcement stating that no person who will attend and no NGO that will be represented when such consultations will take place will be recognized as taking part in the movement, the only communication between us and the members of the Commission being to submit the documentation against the project that is already available, and at most to once again state our list of demands in case they can’t read it themselves.

Day 21: Starting with ongoing protests against the law that will once again allow the killing of stray dogs if they’re not adopted within 14 days and with over 5000 cyclists marching across the city, the day continued with a human chain around the Parliament and a march back to University Square. Many cyclists returned to the Parliament building after reaching the end of the planned route for their march, to join the other protesters who were there mainly for the Rosia Montana issue in forming the human chain, so there were at least 5000 people in that location as well.
The wall that surrounds the Parliament building is three kilometers long, so forming a chain all around it was a challenge and it’s a good thing that one of the better known activists called people to start forming it at 6:30 PM even though the original plan was for everyone to gather at that time but only start forming the chain at 7 PM, very optimistically assuming that it’ll be completely formed in no more than 30 minutes. In the end, it was over an hour before things had mostly settled, those who were walking around only saying that the chain was basically formed, though still rather uneven, at 7:40 PM and finally announcing that it had mostly evened out as well some ten minutes later.
At 8 PM, the message was passed around that we should gather in Constitution Square, which is in front of the Parliament building, where we protested a little longer before the decision was made to start marching to University Square, the gendarmes once again being very accommodating and allowing us to do so. However, once we reached our destination and the cyclists started circling around the intersection itself while the rest of us occupied the piece of road between the fountain and the Theater, the negotiators asked those they perceive as leaders first to ask the participants to free the intersection and eventually, after 9:30 PM, as numbers sharply dropped, to free the road completely, which was a request that the remaining protesters readily complied with, though a few, including some of the better known ones, expressed their anger at needing to do so. The evening eventually ended with at most a few hundred people protesting in the fountain area for a while longer before they also went home quite early, obviously to prepare for the long day that was to come.

Day 22 (another video, mostly focused on interviews, with English subtitles available): Once again, nothing organized earlier, so people started gathering in the fountain area from 5 PM before eventually taking to the street at 7 PM. Unlike last time, there were no notable guests or speeches over those two hours, and it can in fact be said that not much happened before we started moving.
As far as numbers go, we were unfortunately fewer than before, initial estimates ranging between 10000 and 30000. That range had generally narrowed to between 15000 and 22000 by Monday, before most sources agreed on values around 20000 by Tuesday. Some media sources, including some independent reporters, continue to list values around 15000 while some protesters insist on at least 25000, but 20000 does seem to be a fair estimate if I’m to compare to the numbers seen the week before and assume that the estimate of 25000 was correct back then, and I’m saying this after waiting for the entire column to walk past at one point, not to mention once again walking back and forth to take some more pictures.
The march itself lasted for a good four hours for the first groups, so those who still wanted to catch the metro to get back home, myself included, had to pretty much sprint to make it to the station in time, as the head of the column barely made it to University Square a few minutes before 11 PM, those at the back probably being as much as 30 minutes behind, since the road was narrower and the group tended to be less compact. We still received significant support from people in their cars or apartments, and many joined us along the way, seeing as the numbers were significantly lower when we started marching, but this time around I also noticed some people who were bothered by the fact that we keep blocking the city with these protests, a few expressing this discontent quite loudly. This will need to be taken into account in the future if we don’t want to turn the silent majority against us.
Once the march itself was over, people started leaving more quickly than before, and I’m not only referring to that first group that ran to catch the metro, so the numbers dropped even into the hundreds at a time when one and two weeks before there were still several thousand people blocking the street. Those who didn’t leave so quickly wrote with chalk on the pavement and lit candles, but even the candles were far too few when you take into account the fact that people had actually been asked to bring them. Eventually, only a handful of people were left around 1 AM, though those, and perhaps even a few others who returned after hearing of the incident, ended up staying until around 2 AM after the police roughly grabbed a cyclist, threw him into one of their cars and hit him.
That was one notable incident, which resulted in a fair amount of anger being directed at the gendarmes and police even though they tried to defend themselves by saying that the cyclist was not one of the protesters. However, I can’t say I heard of any other problems, and in fact the number of gendarmes that walked alongside the protesters during the march seemed lower than before. On the other hand, there were more of them in front of the column, attempting to make sure that what happened during the previous marches, when thousands of people who insisted on walking faster than the rest scattered in small groups over a large area, won’t happen again.
That helped us as well, of course, since we’re trying to keep everyone together as well. In fact, for the first time, there were a few volunteers trying to do just that and these two elements, along with the fact that the known activists seemed to communicate better with each other, did result in a march that seemed just slightly more orderly than the previous ones. There were still plenty of people in front of the banners and chants were still getting mixed even at the head of the column, but it was somewhat better than before in spite of the increasingly numerous and vocal crowd that rejects any sort of organization, focus or the reasonable attitude that got us this far, shouting from the proverbial rooftops that all those who try to keep things together must have a hidden agenda and need to be pushed away. The sad part about this crowd is that I actually doubt that more than a few, if any, of them are infiltrated to break us apart, so we’re just talking about people being stupid and that’ll probably make them even harder to deal with.
This crowd will definitely be a threat, but it’d probably be a lesser one if the numbers would keep growing. Unfortunately, this fourth major march not only came after a week during which the protests had all but died out, but also marked a drop in the number of participants compared to the previous one, and that’s definitely a major reason for concern. Of course, it can be said that it came right after an exhausting Saturday, particularly for the cyclists, and the very long planned route might have scared some away, but those are hardly the only reasons and we need to work hard to make sure we won’t lose momentum even more. Thankfully, I see that some 10000 people once again marched in Cluj, so they’re holding strong, as are other smaller cities, some of which saw well over 10% of the population taking to the streets, but Bucharest is where the decisions are made, so this is where the pressure needs to at least stay at the same level, and preferably continue to increase, not decrease!

After the march, I once again took a break and nearly everyone else did the same, so I’ll once again quickly go through a few days, starting with the fact that only 30 or 40 people were around the fountain on Monday and even those left early. Tuesday also saw only some 30 people, though they seemed somewhat more determined and they cleared slightly less early, around 11:30 PM. The numbers were pretty much identical on Wednesday as well, but the protest against killing stray dogs taking place across the road meant that television crews and a significant number of gendarmes were once again present. Due to the fact that the law allowing stray dogs to be killed was approved by the Constitutional Court and promulgated by the President that day, the protesters against killing stray dogs actually tried to block the road that evening, after they had already blocked it elsewhere during the day, but the gendarmes roughly took them away, obviously also because there were barely 200 of them, if even that.
Elsewhere, Monday’s main event was in fact a press conference organized by the Order of Architects, along with a few NGOs that focus on matters of patrimony, showing yet again just why the Government’s position when it comes to the mining project’s effects is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. On the other hand, Tuesday saw two meetings, or at least two that I know of, between some members of the Parliament elected in Bucharest and their constituents, though all I can say about one of them is that the Minister of Culture, who was actually elected here and should have attended it, didn’t show up, but the meeting itself did take place in the original location and not in the Parliament building, where it was supposed to be moved in an obvious attempt to make it appear to be a formal discussion with representatives of the protesters. The other one I saw a more detailed report about, however, and it seems to have gone rather well, in the sense that the people speaking against the project did their homework thoroughly. Still, while all of the politicians present stated that they’ll vote against the law, they desperately tried to separate it from the project itself and slowly moved themselves towards a more balanced position regarding the bigger issue over the course of the talks, despite being repeatedly stumped by the arguments brought forward against such a stance.

As something of a conclusion, one has to admit that the movement is definitely losing some momentum in Bucharest, but it actually seems to increase in strength elsewhere. However, as I said above as well, the one does not necessarily make up for the other, seeing as here is where the decisions are made, so we need to work well together and find methods to keep people engaged in ways that will increase the pressure on politicians without exhausting the protesters even further. In addition, we need to see what the best way to deal with those who advocate behaviors that will harm the cause is, and here I’m obviously also including the better known activists who are switching to that side due to being discontent with what we have achieved by being focused and reasonable. This will be a long fight and the politicians are experts at stalling, dissipating the energy of those who challenge them and generally getting things their way while we are not, so, contrary to what many are saying, we do need to be organized and focused, and to look for and work with any allies we can get, no matter who they are or where they are found.

Eight years since she left, just about now, and this time it catches me in the middle of something that doesn’t quite let me mope and whimper around as much as I’d feel like. After another break, spanning the past three days, I even went back to the usual protest location for a while this evening, though I whimpered on the way, kept thinking I really shouldn’t be out at this time and, albeit in part also due to the fact that I was among people again, was about to sit down on the pavement and break down completely by the time I got back. Probably shouldn’t be trying to add something more to my story tonight either, after I’ll write this, but I didn’t do so earlier today, so I’ll have to, even if it’ll only be a quick paragraph and not mark the end of this chapter, which I at some point hoped I’ll finish no later than tonight.
I’m guessing this will be something of a delayed impact, hitting me even harder than it normally would, which is saying something, next week. The fact that I just happened to stumble upon some more things these days, quite by accident, definitely isn’t helping either. It may come to something later, or it may spell disaster, or it may simply be yet another thing to worry about and be worn down by; I have no idea at the moment and tonight I can’t even think about it. In a week or two, I’ll see if there’s anything left of me to deal with this as well.

I guess that’s it for now. If this would be a regular personal post, there would be more to say, but I’m not mixing anything else with this. Even if, from the point of view of our relationship and that of my reasons to still keep some hope alive, other days were clearly more important, from the point of view of its direct impact, both at the time and as a memory… It’s the day I died.