White Tiger’s Lair

I found a funny quote when doing research for bio-plastic project today.  As the cost of oil affects the cost of feedstock in traditional plastic there was a market forecast in the article from Jan. or Feb. 2005

“World crude oil prices should peak in 2005 at approximately $43/bbl. Followed by a decline in pricing to approximately $32/bbl in 2008. Natural gas prices are also reaching their peak in the +$6.00Mmbtu range. We should expect to see a decline starting in 2006 to pricing levels in the +$5.00Mmbtu range by 2008.

California Film Extruders & Converters Ass’n

Oil price Oct. 25 2007,  price on the spot market $90.35/bbl and Natural gas 6.98  (http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/) so much for a $43 peak and $32 by now.

I think it is time i face the truth, i am and always will be …  a geek.   Yeah, Ok I had been a bit geeky though school and into later years, but I thought I had gotten it all out of my system by the time I went to business school.  Two things have recently proved to me that it is a curse that will stay with me for life. 

First, I was at a networking meeting not too long ago, and one of the other participants asked me “What software solution could help PV”.  Immediately monitoring of PV systems came to mind, currently most systems only monitor aggregate output of the entire system at the inverter.   This means there is no notification if a panel is stolen or something is broken on only part of the system unless it significantly lowers the entire system efficiency below normal for extended time (a week or so).  It turned into a lively discussion and the next thing I know it is 2 hours later, myself, the software person and another person who works with RFID had devised an active monitoring system built into the PV casings that use simple web based software, common sensors and active RFID tags to monitor the output of each panel in the system, aggregate performance independent of the inverter and provide real time notification (and alarm) for theft or removal.  Is any of it really possible and more importantly marketable, I don’t know, but I have not had so much fun in months.

Today was the final straw that shattered my delusion of non-geekyness.  I was working on automating some reports.  As I will be leaving my current job soon I want to leave things tidy and easy to maintain.  I was having a few troubles with some stubborn formulas but when I finally got the countifs (and coutif) and sumifs formulas working properly I jumped up to tell my coworkers, to which I got blank stares, so I tried again this time “zählenoders”  still nothing.  Ok so I explained how this nice little function means I could delete one of the intermediate tables and it cut the formula down to only ½ a line.  Oh yeah, no doubt about it, I am a geek….

God forbid someone gets me started talking about Solar Powered Desalination systems (the topic I am spending my time with this week).

Day 4:

Lovely day spent walking through the hills above Brasov enjoying the fine weather.

Day 5:

My friend Amy would absolutely kill me if I went to Transylvania and did not go to “Dracula’s Castle”. SO we set out to find a tour, which we did after several tries for about 60 Lei each. But previous experience had showed us to have back up plans so we also found a public bus (4 Lei each). In the end we decided to just take the public bus on Sunday morning to Bran. As we were formulating this plan on Saturday afternoon, he insisted that we not take the word of the article I read on the internet but actually go to the bus station and look at the schedule. Turns out that was a good idea as the cab Sunday morning was another adventure. First the meter was not working, “no problem my friend, where you go? Autogara II 7Lei 8Lei, no problem my friend”(it was 4 when we took the cab there the night before), so we agreed on 5 Lei and off we went, 5 minutes later we arrive at the wrong bus station (which we only know because we went there the night before). “Oh Autogara 2, 8 Lei, hotel, here, there too far, 8 Lei” At this point I was all for getting out and finding a different cab, but he showed me the time (less then 10 minutes left to get our bus), so we paid off the cab driver and were on our way again. Once there the bus was easy to find, no problems getting tickets, it was an old dirty bus, but that was pretty much to be expected at that point. It takes about 40 min for the 30km ride.

The mountains of Romanian are absolutely beautiful in fall when all the leaves are changing, the scenery was an awesome sight. Following the crowds of tourist we get up to the castle and take the tour through it, it is a smaller castle then I had imagined and completely restored, far too many other tourist to make it really enjoyable. In an open field below the castle between the mountain and a stream was a farmers festival. There were horses, cows and sheep being bought and sold and all along the perimeter were families who set up tables and had homemade cheese and meet that had hunted over the summer for sale. Being as the cheese had probably never even been refrigerated and the meat was laying in giant heaps on the tables I wasn’t about to eat that, but I did buy a polenta ball that they made in front of me and then put on the BBQ. There were so many people there with their grills that the smoke was almost unbearable. We took our apples and my polenta and sat by the river and watched the stray dogs. There are tons of stray dogs everywhere in Romania, often in packs of 3-5 with a few puppies in there. We tried to walk out of town to get away from the ever growing crows and cards on the narrow street, but they people (and sometimes cows) just kept coming. Eventually we found a little market that was also a bus stop and waited the hour for our bus back to Braov.

Day 6: Time to go home

We knew from experience to plan ahead. Since our flight was at 16:04 out of Sibiu , 150km away, we bought our train tickets from Brasov to Sibiu 2 days early, and to make doubly sure there would be no problems we choose the earlier train (6:18am) Arriving at 11 ish so that we could make it to the airport In plenty of time. We got up on time, got out the door, there was a cab waiting to take us to the train station, we were there by 6 am, plenty of time. Find our track, no problem. There was another train waiting on the same track going to Bucharest 5 min before ours. No problem. 6:15 we here the train whistle the train for Bucharest leaves, as the same time at the other end of the track we see a train going the other direction, it was our train to Sibiu on the same track, leaving early! SHIT!!! We run after it, we are not even close. Ok plan B as in bus, but the next bus doesn’t leave until 9:30 and not one is sure how long it takes 4 maybe 5 hours. Which means any problems and we would miss our flight. Ok plan C as in Taxi Cab, after talking to 3 taxies we had a rough guess of 110-150 km, 1.5 – 2 hours, 250-300 Lei. Ok a lot more expensive then the train but we really did not want to risk it, so we found a guy and negotiated 250 for the trip, he drove like a bat out of hell and it still took 3 hours. There is a A LOT of roadwork going on and every 3-4 km it went to one lane so we had to stop and let oncoming traffic by. The ride was an experience, along the way we saw many horse drawn carts on the roads, people working in the fields, the traditional hay in large stacks drying and chickens on the side of the road, people selling potatoes and onions on the street and of course many more stray dogs. Even with the taxi ride it still ended up being cheaper than renting the car for 3 days and we did not have to try and deal with the crazy crazy traffic, so it worked out in the end.

We made it to town with a little time to spare so was sat in the main platz with a bag of absolutely disgusting crackers I bought and fed the pigeons. We tried to feed the dogs too but they were not interested in the stuff. The airport was fairly straight forward, we bought up candy bars with the last of the Romanian money, watched as they tagged our bags, hopping they understood, his goes to Munich, mine all the way to Berlin. got on our little prop engine plane and headed back. By day 5 He had given his cold to me and he was fine, so here I sit wrapped up in blankets at 2 in the afternoon on Reunification day writing this very long post =)

Warning—long post  =)

Me a few months ago: I want to go someplace adventurous and exotic like Bulgaria or Romania.

Mein Fruend: They are in the EU, only an American would call them exotic. But we can go to Hermanstadt, it has a German mayor.

So we booked our tickets and last week headed out to Sibiu, Romania.  We wanted to be flexible and play it somewhat by ear so we only booked the first two nights hotel and the rental car from Germany, we decided the rest we would do in Romania.  We learned that when Traveling in Eastern Europe flexibility is key and well as having a backup plan and a backup backup plan.

 
Day 1: Arrival

I felt fairly comfortable going to Romania and did not worry about amenities or infrastructure too much, after all I was flying Lufthansa into the intl airport.  In Munich changing planes to a prop engine plane had me a little surprised, but hey I have flow on those to South Carolina, no problem…  The plane doing a u-turn on the runway after landing to get to the “gate” should have told me something.  The line of people lined up at the fence about 10 feet from the plan also could have been a clue, still, walking off the plane into the 1 room airport (not 1 room in the airport, the airport itself was 1 room) was still a bit of a shocker.  Waiting at the customs booth for 2 guys to hand carry all the bags into a storage room off to the side that turned out to be baggage claim with a door to the outside, that was it, no stores, no money exchange, no signs, no rental car booths (where the hell was our rental car), nada.

So, finding and ATM we pulled out some Romanian Lei and waited for a taxi (it is an international airport surely there are taxis), and waited and waited, about 30 min later we got our taxi and were on our way to the hotel.

The hotel was decent and we spent the rest of the evening pleasantly strolling through the old town and sitting in a café.  As an entertaining side note to those who speak German, the traditional dish in Sibiu is a cordon blue type disk called “Muschi” (yes yes, many jokes have already been said)

Day 2:

Mein Fruend gets a cold, we spend the morning wandering around, sitting in the sun, and relaxing (the town is not all that big, so there was not that much to cover).  We stumbled upon a large fruit and vegi market.  It was amazing, right our of a tourist book, old ladies in traditional dress sitting on huge sacks of potatoes with little scales in front of them to weigh the produce.  It reminded me a lot of the markets in china, though a bit cleaner and more organized.  For lunch we sat in a little outdoor restaurant at the foot of the old city walls, there was a load speaker playing traditional music and as we were sitting there a family of what looked like gypsies walked by.  The food, well most everything, there is very cheap, we have very nice full course meals with drinks and deserts always under 50 Lei or about 17 Euro total.

In the afternoon while he slept I went shopping in the “mall” which turned out to be a 3 story building with maybe 150 stalls each selling their own goods, one for clothes, one for school supplies, jewelry, etc. again very much like the markets in china except there were prices clearly market when made me feel safer buying things.

Day 3:

We had reserved a rental car from Germany for the 3-5 days.  It was a bit strange that they asked to be paid in Euro with a 300 Euro cash deposit, but we thought that we would give it a try.  On getting to the airport and seeing no rental counter (we were supposed to pick the car up at the airport) we were a little concerned.  In the tourist office in town they told us that that company was very good and there would be no problem.  Just to be sure we asked them to call the company and confirm our reservation for 10am and to meet us at the hotel instead of the airport.  Sure no problem, all is fine, then as we are walking around town we see the “office” of the rental car company, it is a sign on a boarded up building, more lingering doubts… so 10 am Friday rolls around and no car, at 10:30 our hotel calls the company, they say there will be there at noon, ok we walk around town a bit come back, by 12:15 still no car, we call again and are told “oh you have to wait, we don’t know how long, but you have to wait”.

No go, decided we really don’t trust them (if they are this bad to get the car how are we going to get our deposit back at the end) so we opt for alternative transportation to Brasov.  I have been spoiled in Germany with the train system, it is expensive but there are many trains that run sometimes on time and it is fairly reliable.  The train station in Sibiu it two wood shacks with two large posters showing the train schedule, no international office, English speaking employees or even signs here. Eventually we manage to buy our tickets, opting to spend the extra 2 Euro each for 1^st class.  The next stop the Lufthansa travel agent in town to get a Hotel in Brasov for that night (again like with most things there, must be paid in cash in advance).

Going back to the hotel about 3 hours later to get our bags, there was our rental car, we quickly got our backs and walked past without saying a word.  The train ride was actually quite pleasant and we saw a lot of the country, in many ways it was like looking back in time 70 years.  Being as he was still pretty sick it is also probably good we did not try to drive on Romanian roads as we would find out later.  Aside from the taxi driver getting lost between the train station and our hotel is was a nice 3 2 hour trip and on arriving at the hotel there were no problems for a change, everything was as it should be, the room turned out to be quite nice, and the young guy at reception even spoke some English. 

I decided to take a walk and explore the town while he slept, this would have been find, except for the fact that I got a little lost, and then it started getting dark, not wanting to be caught out alone after dark in a strange town/country I started walking faster (ja ja so it was faster in the wrong direction).  I had the card for the hotel so I started looking for a cab to take me back, unfortunately I was not in the main part of town and there were no cabs to be found.  Eventually I figured out my way and about 2 blocks from the Hotel who should I see but my boyfriend walking down the street.  Now, being male he didn’t say “hey I was worried about you, you were gone a long time and it got dark and you were alone in an unfamiliar town”, no no of course not, he starts off with “you have the key to the room and no it is there unlocked with all our stuff in it.”  Gee, thanks… of course eventually we got to why he was really upset, because he woke up and I hadn’t come back and he was worried, but men seem to have a hard time getting to the point sometimes.

Day 4: (to be continued…)