People are partying outdoors in Finland next to a lake and burning bonfires. But I am here. I decided to feel home sick today. Weather is rainy here, Dóra is not here and I am thinking how awful this must be.

But I don't really feel home sick. Maybe I should drink some more to get the feeling. Nah, that would lead to terrible hang over tomorrow and it is not worth of it. I am not suffering here and I am staying voluntarily.

So, cheers for that and ...

Hyvää juhannusta!

I have been reading some business and economy related websites recently. At the same time Hungary is having a big budget deficit. Therefore the government is about to raise some taxes and introduce new ones. As a result of these HUF has lost its value and the mid rate for EUR is almost 280 now. This is a big change because the HUF-EUR rate used to be around 250:1.

How does this affect me personally? I believe that the basic everyday costs wont change soon but all import products will most likely receive some changes to their prices. Luckily I do not have urgent need to change money to euros because I still have finnish euro account with enough balance.

But for tourists this is good news. Hungary just suddenly became over 10% cheaper for traveller coming from outside Hungary. Anyways, these currency rates tend to change and most likely HUF will gain some of its value back after a while. But because it helps tourism and hungarian export industry it might take longer than just a week or two.

Working remotetly has been in topics lately. The idea is that you can work where ever you feel like without need to sit eight or more hours in the office. Who wouldn't like to work from home or nearby working room without need to sit in trafic.

It is also easy to see problems with this type of working. You cannot get hands on help from your colleague, you have to be independent and able to meet deadlines without close control. So called silent knowledge is also more difficult to transfer if people are not meeting every day at coffee room. But despite those issues I still believe remote working will increase.

I found by accident an interesing company called Artlogic (www.artlogic.com). It operates in the USA and its stuff is scattered around the country. However, they claim to be doing pretty well. I can only guess the success factors of such company but one main point catching my attention was that they are consentrating only to most challenging projects. This naturally requires that their staff is really good but on the other hand they do not get bored to do same tasks all the time.

Basicly, in order to run company like that you would need persons who:
- Can work without close control and support. This means significant experience.
- Can find information and solve problems on their own.
- Understand what responsibility and deadlines are
- Realize when they need external help from other people so they don't sit on the problem until it burns them.
- Have also other life than work.

Anyways, this is a topic to which I will return later on.

So the world championship of football started. I am not too much interested in that sport but it provides nice excuse to find a nice park to sit on the grass and to watch the game from a big screen. This of course happens only if the weather is good and beer is available. The situation feels little bit like a finnish rock festival except the alcohol selling and controlling is more liberal.

Yesterday guys at work decided to go and see the Germany vs Costa Rica and I joined them. We went to a park behind Mammut shopping center. I think that park is called Millennium park or something similar. Even though it wasn't Hungary playing at that point the match managed to gather crowd. After the match ended we had some food at the area but I did not feel like watching forthcoming match. Weather was getting cold so the whole thing just turned meaningless.

Previously I thought about writing here about my opinion about tv. But I read the case of finnish 7-päivää magazine. Who are those people reading that rumor magazine in first place? I have seen it at hair dressers only but that profession is well known about the interest to other people's business. Anyways, this time my rant does not have anything to do with Hungary.

Also, I simply can't understand how people can be addicted to reality shows and such. I guess I happen to be somehow different then because I don't see anything interesting in following somebody else's life from tv. Actually, the current way how tv content is pushed to people is making me sick. Stupid quizes, pervert reality shows, news with blood and guts from Midlle East, soap, american mass produced movies.

Ah, I would rather pay per view. Quality documents, good movies and others which interest me. And when I want to see it. The most annoying thing is that you have to watch it when it comes from the tv. There are VCRs but people are not using them. Luckily user friendly video storaging boxes have arrived so you can store your daily dose of soap in it and watch it later. But for me it is not enough. I would like to have a list of available content with preview and user reviews. If I see something that appeals to me I fetch it and I pay for it. Simple.

But this would (hopefully) kill a lot of nonsense from tv...