Bogdan Coman’s blog

This summer we went bike touring for two weeks in Southern Ontario, between the three great lakes, Ontario, Erie and Huron. Obviously, we biked for ourselves, but in the same time we tried to dedicate the entire tour, of ~750km, to the victims of child abuse, religion and states.

This was a credit card tour, as we slept in B&Bs or hotels (when no B&Bs were available) and most of the time we didn’t prepare our own food, but went to restaurants or pubs.

After discussing with our hosts about our tour and about our views, we’ve used to make them an offer that sounded like this: We can pay you in cash and we add an extra $20 for the room, if you don’t cut us a receipt and if you don’t declare anything to the tax agency/government, but you keep all this money for yourself. The reactions we got to this offer were priceless. As the rooms were between $90 - $140, usually they were looking to a gain of 100%, as the government’s taxing ~40% of the income.

What was even more interesting to us was not to hear for a single time that this isn’t correct because all those money should be use for pensions, education, poor people or hospitals. Not a single time we heard the words “illegal” or “unjust” in regards to our offer. A nice statistics to have would be… how many of those people will go to vote next time, to support the nanny state and the “social contract”? Of course, it’s not hard to guess… probably as many as went last time

During the tour we had the chance to talk to three couples of teachers, all of them over 50 years old. Actually one of the men isn’t a teacher, but a school bus driver. With each couple we approached the violent behavior in children subject, and we used to learn out that “even if we banned all the gun toys in the kindergarten, the children invented weapons out of anything“, “it’s government’s fault the children are so violent, because it doesn’t strictly regulate the violent video games and movies“, “there’s no other way to impose yourself in front of the children, but to show them who the boss is“.

No matter which kind of city we were in, small or big, most of the people don’t want to be told they are in charge of their lives. It’s not them who take the decisions… it’s god, or jesus, or the government, or the mayor, or the mother, or the father, or the children, or the wife, or the neighbor, or the weather… anybody else but themselves.

During this tour we met many enjoyable people and we found wonderful places were we would like to live later on. Here are some images, enjoy:

This gets better and better. Going forward, having fun, enjoying life…

Thanks Honey! Love You Too!

Tonight we went with Miorlau (our 7 years old cat) to the animal clinic, as he was showing the symptoms of an urinary obstruction. When I called the clinic to book for an appointment, they said: “You know we have to see Miorlau today, right?”… thing that I was hoping to hear, as we knew a cat can’t live more than 48 hours like this, as essentially it will be poisoned to death.

Once there, after the consultation the doctor said that he’s going to put Miorlau under the worst case scenario and follow all the necessary steps to make him well, which usually means 3 days in the hospital.

What we did next was to ask for a cost estimation, which they provide us with. The total cost was of $2193, which could go higher in case there are complications! We asked for two minutes to discuss about it, as tonight we were having serious problems to pay the required 50% down payment in advance, in order for the clinic to start the treatment… the second day it could be too late.

Pretty much sucks to see that someone close to you depends on how much you afford to pay to fix the problem, but it can happen, this is why psychologically (and not only) you’ll have to be prepared all the time for cases like this. Once you are prepared, you’ll be able to take the best decision.

We managed to pay for the treatment and left the cat there. Two hours ago we got a call from the doctor, Miorlau is fine, he peed a lot in the doctor’s hand (no blood in the urine) after some injections and some pills. They found out what the problem is, are taking care of it and they said that tomorrow we will probably be able to take him back home.

For Miorlau, we (me, Cata and Deb) were the Gods tonight, and his Gods decided he’s going to live, lucky guy
What about you reader? Do you have any Gods around you? In case you’ll need it, can you be your own God?

I have two black cats. My wife used them with canned food every morning, between 6:30 and 7:30, when she wakes up. I didn’t know the cats can read the time, but around 6:30 they start to make noise, if my wife doesn’t wake up till 7 o’clock, things start to get serious/personal. When they get serious, the cats are doing one of the following three things, without repeating the same one in two consecutive mornings:
- Mirolau (the oldest one) goes to the litter box and starts to cry as loud as he can;
- Megan (she’s younger, but fatter ) jumps into the bed and starts to grab my wife’s feet, even if sometimes she’s confusing them with mine…
- both of them start to play by running back and forth from our bedroom to the kitchen.

There are times (very few) when I get upset because I can’t get back to sleep, so I jump from the bed and run after them, both of them trying to get to the other bedroom and to hide under the bed. I never took them out from under there as I prefer for them to believe that’s the “safe spot”. If by mistake I catch one, I’m taking it in bed with us… I don’t know why, but they hate that! This is when they know life sucks and they will get food very late that day, and they can’t do anything about that.

Now, by alternating their wake up call role, I consider them as being in a very smart risk sharing agreement… as we can never get upset on just one of them, so we have to evenly love/hate them in the same time

I just found out that the first key that’s wiping off from my keyboard is “C”. Now, what does this mean?
- I’m fast?
- I’m lazy?
- I’m not creative?
- My forefinger rests on the wrong key?
- My forefinger sweats a lot?
- A B C D …
- It’s a cheap keyboard?
- All of the above;
- Nothing.

I scored 26 on the “Mensa Workout” test. What is this making me believe? Well, I believe my math got rusty and so far it was one of my biggest pleasures in life. This winter I’m going to review some of my old copybooks. Repetita iuvant.

Your score was 26 out of 30. That is an excellent score—you would have a very strong chance of passing the Mensa test and joining Mensa.

Please note that the Mensa Workout is NOT the official Mensa test, and your score will not qualify or disqualify you for membership.

Starting with tonight, for the rest of my life, I will look just like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”… or like Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, depends of the budget.

My charming and extraordinary wife created for me the following video for our today’s wedding anniversary
The background song, “Praying for time” by George Michael, has the lyrics I like the most. The three black cats in the video are: Michael (12 years old), Miorlau (7) and Megan (1).

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