Cav's Place

An argument I had this week made me first plan to write a post on that topic today, but that’d have been very difficult even if I’d be in a good mood for a change, because I can’t say that I’ve ever thought about the point I was making in that manner before and it certainly isn’t a point that I’d normally be trying to make. It was simply a matter of seeing a now-former friend post a link, throwing something entirely hypothetical her way, largely just to start a conversation, exchanging a few messages that seemed to be quite nice, and then finding myself accused of blaming the victim though I was talking about something entirely different. Then she and the two friends who had joined in appeared to get too angry to even notice my explanation, dug in their heels and even started throwing insults, so I dug in mine even harder and fought back, the difference being that they were growing increasingly angrier and frustrated while I was just midly amused by the whole thing, as it always happens when somebody gets angry in a debate.
Either way, the start of that argument actually made me feel quite energized, as the moment those friends of hers stepped in I felt some of my old “bloodlust” return. Then, by the next evening, some “combat fatigue” had set in as a result of arguing with a friend, particularly under such circumstances, but it was perfectly obvious by then that this could have no other conclusion, so I recovered somewhat and just went through the motions until the end, when the insults started piling up and I gave up toying with it and replied in kind. That resulted in me being blocked right away, but I’ll add it to the growing list of blocks and bans which I could even consider badges of honor, as they resulted from trying to debate with people who obviously can’t handle such a thing and angering those who can’t tolerate rational arguments when they clash with what they believe to be true.

Otherwise, felt quite ill for about a day and a half or so, after something probably entered my bloodstream when I bled at some point, but eventually the fever broke and I managed to get some good sleep, waking up drenched in cold sweat but otherwise quite fine, so I guess my body took care of whatever it was, though I imagine that the fact that the heat wave finally ended had something to do with me recovering when I did as well.
Actually, meant to go for a longer walk today, to take advantage of the cool weather, but it rained for a while and I was feeling around rock bottom again, so I just went out very briefly, just to say that I did go out this week as well, and then came back… And can’t say that I’ve done anything since, unless you consider getting utterly trashed in Battle for Wesnoth yet again, to the point that I truly can’t find any possible solution to continue in that campaign anymore, as doing something.

As for my story… For the first time in a very long time, I even fell behind on my own plan of at least putting something in there, regardless of how bad it is, so that’s not going anywhere either… Then again, nothing is.

As anyone who’s interested would already know by now, Curiosity has successfully landed on Mars. What’s more, during those first few minutes after touchdown, when it could use Mars Odyssey to relay the data to Earth, it has even sent a couple of small pictures (first, second), showing its shadow and the terrain just around itself and causing all NASA sites that carried any information about it to promptly crash under the strain of the generated traffic. More data should be coming around this time, as the Odyssey will make another pass over it.

The mission itself will take a long time to actually get going, because it’s meant to last for at least about two Earth years but all systems have been designed and successfully tested to function for at least three times that long and the power supply should last for well over a decade. Of course, that doesn’t sound like quite so much when you factor in the fact that Opportunity has been functioning for over eight and a half years, but its primary mission was only supposed to last for about three months, so the results started coming in very quickly because they had to collect as much data as they could while they were reasonably certain that there won’t be any problems.
In fact, what I saw in the press conference just now was that they have a very long checklist that they’ll need to go through in order to ensure the health of such a complex rover and for the next few weeks we’ll probably be getting nothing but the results of tests, which may even stretch on for the next few months, and the base of the target mountain will probably only be reached after about a year. Still, even those test results may mean something, as in order to test the systems they’ll have to be analyzing something, so let’s see what happens… And let’s hope that the nuclear generator Curiosity carries won’t end up damaging another planet as well, because I’m still very uneasy about using something like that and would have really wanted them to find another solution.

Yesterday was scheduled something which was supposed to be somewhere between a protest and a public debate, the debate part being that which interested me, because the “hardcore” group which generally gather at the Fountain in University Square had announced that they were going to present their proposed solutions and also ask any other participants to add their own to the list as well instead of doing nothing but saying who and what they don’t want. So, seeing as I’ve been asking all protesters to come up with solutions all along, I wrote down an overview of the electoral reform I have in mind, which would be my primary request from the current politicians and also my main requirement before I could see any calls for resignation, impeachment and so on as being able to solve anything, and went, wondering if anything will come out of it. Unfortunately, as it could have been somewhat expected, nothing did, at least not before I left, because the gendarmes weren’t about to allow it.

If I include myself despite wandering around instead of sitting with the rest, ten of us were waiting around the metro station entrance when three gendarmes showed up and asked for identification, which made me become even more edgy and eventually wander off for a while. By the time I returned, the three were gone, but two returned soon after and continued debating with the organizer of the event, apparently quite casually, before said organizer led the rest of us to the location where the event was actually supposed to take place, with the gendarmes in tow but taking their time.
Once there, a few guys took to waving the flag they had brought and unrolling the one large banner they had, which was just a call to discuss and debate, without mentioning any specific issues or names. However, that was obviously too much for the gendarmes, who immediately crossed the street to pester the organizer again. Or, more exactly, those two merely pestered him, but then two others came, along with one of those trucks used for arrests, shouting at the poor guy from some 30 centimeters away through a loudspeaker and saying that we had to clear the area because it was an unauthorized gathering and we were supposedly blocking the road and disturbing the passersby, even though we were just a few people leaning against the fence, some even standing on it and therefore taking up no space whatsoever on the sidewalk, and generally being quiet with the exception of the organizer who kept trying to talk to them, while they were standing right on the bicycle lane and shouting through a loudspeaker.
Still, most of us did scatter a little after what appeared to be a final warning and watched from a few meters away as a few guys were still trying to discuss the matter with the gendarmes, until they decided to give up as well, with the organizer apparently leaving the banner there and leading us away while waving the flag and asking out loud what law will they claim he’ll be breaking next if he’ll simply wander through the city waving the country’s flag. The gendarmes were also still following us as well, but we also seemed to have grown slightly in number, with some five or so people added to the group, at least one being a passerby who had apparently decided to join in for a while after witnessing the gendarmes’ behavior.
But that was pretty much the end of it for me. The group seemed to have split, I tried to keep up with the six who were in front, but soon they noticed that the others appeared to have stopped and stopped as well while I kept going. I meant to get back to them, but was already quite edgy because of the whole situation and one guy had also suggested to the organizer that we should go to some sort of bar or restaurant nearby where a lot of people seemed to be and see if we can gather some more from there, and I was really not keen on that. So I kept going, all the way to the University Square, had a look around there as well, then went all the way back to the original location before giving up completely after failing to spot the group again but spotting a couple of cars belonging to the gendarmerie waiting behind trees, possibly just in order to quickly react in case the group would have tried to return.

Now I’m left with that overview of the electoral reform I have in mind, written down and printed out, so at least I finally did that thanks to this… But it’s not like it was of any use, seeing as I didn’t even show it to anyone while there and feel too edgy to even post it anywhere or send it to any of the organizers now. So, in the end, I more or less just wandered around for a couple of hours on a hot summer day without accomplishing anything… Though you can say that I at least attempted to take part in my first protest, or event, on political and social themes, seeing as I have so far avoided all of these, both because I couldn’t join in when I didn’t see actual solutions being brought forward, or at least none that I could actually support, and because these situations with the gendarmes are a given whenever something like this is announced.

Otherwise, today and for the next two days the temperatures are supposed to approach 40°C in the shade again, possibly even going slightly over that value on Tuesday, so I’ll be watching my computer’s temperatures carefully again, especially since it claimed to have very briefly overheated two or three more times even after I tried to clean it inside… And I’ll see whether I can just go on a couple of hours of sleep and wake up around 8 AM, if not even earlier, tomorrow to follow any announcements regarding Curiosity‘s landing.

Today I should have written something about a conclusion, even if only a temporary one, to our political crisis, seeing as our Constitutional Court was supposed to rule on the validity of the referendum. However, I must limit myself to just a simple update, because the Constitutional Court instead announced that it’ll delay its decision until September 12 due to supposedly receiving conflicting information regarding the total number of voters, requesting updated information regarding the voter lists by August 31. Crin Antonescu will remain interim president until then.

To summarize what happened, on Sunday we had a referendum to impeach our current president, Traian Basescu, after he was suspended by the Parliament, which is currently controlled by his opponents, USL. According to the official results, 87.52% of votes were in favor of impeachment, but the turnout was only 46.24% after Basescu and PDL asked their supporters not to vote. As a result, Basescu should normally return to office regardless of the results of the vote, because the law states that the referendum is only valid if the turnout exceeds 50% of the total number of voters present on the lists.
However, USL and their supporters now claim that the referendum should, in fact, be valid because last year’s census showed that Romania’s population has dropped significantly and therefore the lists are outdated and the required turnout has actually been achieved, and they have sent documentation supporting their claim to the Constitutional Court. Yet, even according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there are no other lists and the only confirmed total number of voters is the one specified before the referendum. It may not accurately reflect the data from the most recent census, but the full results of that are only supposed to be made public in late 2013 or even early 2014, not to mention that the current leaders of USL have been quoted at the time as saying that the census was so poorly organized and there have been so many errors that it could never be used to even determine the number of Romanians left.

Meanwhile, while PDL is asking for the government to resign and for Basescu to be reinstated immediately, some leaders of USL are looking beyond the Constitutional Court’s decision and suggesting that a second referendum should be organized, which I always believed to be a probable scenario in case the turnout won’t be reached, as they’re not going to give up before they gain full control of the country and squash anybody who may stand in their way. At the same time, the Parliament did recently grant itself the right to determine the validity of the referendum and, while prime minister Victor Ponta has stated that he will abide by the Constitutional Court’s ruling, Crin Antonescu has repeatedly stated that the only acceptable outcome is Basescu’s impeachment or resignation, according to the vote of the majority.
Antonescu’s stance is mirrored by many others, be they politicians, activists or regular citizens, with the politicians and many regular citizens saying that Basescu should be impeached regardless of the turnout and the activists and the other regular citizens generally saying that, while the low turnout should rule out impeachment, the only acceptable outcome is his resignation, because the majority should decide. However, all of these seem to forget about the 2009 referendum, when the parties that currently make up USL were calling for a boycott but which was actually valid, having a 50.95% turnout. Then, 72.31% voted in favor of switching to a unicameral Parliament and 83.31%, which actually means over 360000 people more than those who voted in favor of impeachment on Sunday, voted in favor of limiting the number of members of the Parliament to a maximum of 300. However, nobody except PDL and Basescu, who has repeatedly offered his resignation in exchange for modifying the Constitution according to the results of that referendum and also reducing the president’s term back to four years, seems to have much of a problem with completely ignoring that majority…

About two weeks ago, my grandpa died. I’m talking about my mother’s adoptive father, who therefore wasn’t even a blood relative but nevertheless was the only one that I ever saw as my grandpa, seeing as my mother’s real father died young, so long before I was born, and my father’s father, who died in 2010, was a dreadful drunkard that I never wanted to have anything to do with. More importantly, he was in fact the only relative that I actually respected and considered that I ever learned something useful from.
I certainly haven’t seen him after 2003, and in fact most likely not since 2001, if not even 2000, since that’s when I was first allowed to completely avoid family gatherings or any other such events and, unless I’m forgetting something, also the last time I saw any relative other than my parents, completely tearing myself away from everyone else because I generally didn’t want anything to do with them anymore and from him because I couldn’t readily see him without going there and therefore bumping into others as well. However, I guess that only serves to allow me to remember him as he was, without having memories created during the final years of his life soil that image, seeing as even in 2006, when I got thrown back here, I was hearing things that made it quite clear that he was on his way to becoming merely a shadow of his former self.

But let me leave what I heard about the man he became during these final years aside, especially since I constantly made a point of not hearing anything about him during this time. Instead, let me focus on the man he used to be: A man who helped and inspired nearly everyone he ever came in contact with; a man who, until these final years, would not bow down to anyone or anything while at the same time not trying to make anyone bow down to him; a man who earned the respect of everyone whose opinion could in any way be considered relevant without ever demanding it… A man who deserved to die as he lived, either while helping someone or while working on something that someone of his age would normally shy away from, and not as a lost old man, frail, sad and bitter after years of suffering, without even being told exactly what his condition was and after being tricked by the other relatives into accepting treatments that made him drag on for a while longer because everyone knew that, if he’d have been told exactly how things stood, he’d have said that he lived long enough already and rejected such continued disgrace.

Actually, without including any of the work he did into it, I could probably summarize his attitude and the influence he had on others into three mental images:
He was the man who, particularly on birthdays, instead of a typical “happy birthday” or of a more common reply to being wished such a thing, would say “may what I wish for you happen to me and what you wish for me happen to you” and then watch to see who seemed upset. I believe that I can safely say that this is probably what inspired me to come up with the things I say on such occasions as well, even if they’re not in the same vein.
He was also the man who always prayed while standing, never kneeling. When I was confused by it when I was little and asked grandma why did he do that, she told me, in a very sad voice, that it meant that “he thinks he’s bigger than God”. However, over time I understood this to be his way of avoiding conflict with her over the issue while at the same time showing that he’ll never bow down and quietly stating that he wasn’t sure that such a being existed. As a result, seeing as, even if it was never expressed in so many words, that was my first contact with such an opinion, it probably was what led me to start analyzing the matter of religion on my own from a very young age instead of just accepting everything that was shoved down my throat about it.
Perhaps most of all, he was the man who, at one point during the Revolution, dismissed all of grandma’s attempts to stop him by simply repeating that we were running out and he had to make sure that we won’t risk starving if it’ll drag on and went to get some food. When he returned with what he had gotten, he was moving as if in a dream, was staring at a fixed point in space and appeared to have a red mark across his nose. After setting everything down in the kitchen, the first words he said in reply to grandma’s desperate attempts to find out what happened were “I’m only alive because I sneezed”, eventually explaining how he was walking down the street and at one point a bullet grazed his nose just as he had stopped to sneeze. And yet, in spite of that, he got what he went out to get, brought everything back and, most notably, even though so many got “revolutionist certificates” and some are still enjoying the benefits granted by them without ever setting foot on the street during those days, made a point of not applying for one because, in his words, if I remember correctly, “I went out there to feed my family, not to fight”.

On top of that, he was always busy with something, truly enjoyed what he did and was actually good at almost anything he set his mind on. People often told him to “leave something for others to do too” while he did his best to repair any broken appliances or other electronic equipment that anyone he knew had even without being asked, do the labor-intensive jobs around the house or garden, including fixing the roof or climbing on ladders to pick fruit well into his 70s and perhaps even early 80s, or go to friends to help them with what they needed. Despite having worked in printing and therefore having retired many years before the normal retirement age due to the toxic environment, he also held on to a part-time job as something of a consultant until he was around 70. I never knew exactly where he worked then, but I knew that he was going once per week to train employees on using equipment and at times even being called in to solve problems that nobody else seemed to figure out the solution for, until he resigned because he said that the young employees were starting to learn to use the modern equipment faster than he did and therefore he wouldn’t be useful anymore.

Unfortunately, as I said, age eventually caught up with him and by 2006 I heard that he was going blind and was falling on the street or even around the house. I heard that once, when he was told that he shouldn’t keep going out on his own because he’ll fall, he replied by saying: “Yes, I’ll fall. And then I’ll pick myself back up, brush myself off and keep going. And then maybe I’ll fall again, and I’ll pick myself back up again, and still do what I must do.” So his determination appeared to still be there even years after the problems started, but his body couldn’t keep up anymore and that was taking a serious toll on his mind as well. In fact, at some point I accidentally saw a picture of him on dad’s computer when I was using it to try to fix something and I’m still trying to erase that image of a fat old man, still at the head of the table but looking sad and lost, from my mind.
When other problems started becoming worse and worse, what I happened to hear being said about him made me try even harder to avoid hearing anything about him anymore. Eventually, despite having always almost completely refused to have anything to do with doctors, he had to give in and allow himself to be taken to a hospital some two years ago. A large tumor was removed from his abdomen and tests revealed that it was cancer but, as I stated above, I heard that he wasn’t even told exactly why he was going into surgery and the full truth was kept from him afterwards as well in order to have him accept the treatments. Heard that my dad saw him crying and begging for the pain to end while visiting him in hospital and was shocked that this man who had pushed through everything and hardly ever complained had ended up in such a state.
Worse, what I still heard during these years seemed to indicate that his mind was going as well, with people saying that you couldn’t get along with him anymore, he wouldn’t discuss anything, was increasingly bitter and demanding and eventually, during the final six months or so, when he was almost completely bedridden, often tended to just lie there with his back towards anyone who happened to be around and not show any interest in anything anymore, simply waiting for the end.

A man like he was shouldn’t have ended up in such a state. He should have died some ten years ago, while he was still strong, or at least some five years ago, when he still had his dignity. Or, at the very least, he should have been allowed to ask for and be granted a quick and painless death two years ago, but of course that’s still illegal for reasons that make absolutely no logical sense.
But at least it’s over now and he’s free of the pain and of the indignity of it all. And, even if the man he used to be no longer existed within his body or his mind during his final years, it will be that man who will live on in the memory of all those whose lives he touched.

For that reason, I think it’d be appropriate to end this on a more cheerful note, with a memory from an otherwise typically dreadful family gathering, probably either his birthday or name day, when I guess he was around 70: While everybody was eating and chatting away, we suddenly notice him slip under the table without a word. Everybody is looking around in confusion for a moment until my uncle, who was in the best position to see exactly what was going on, starts laughing and we all realize that grandpa was doing pushups. Uncle’s reaction after he managed to stop laughing for a moment? “Gramps, the missus left a long time ago.”

Sorry, but I’ll keep comments off for this one.