"... Normally in central Europe, it is easier to raise taxes than cut spending, so the eventual spending cuts may be smaller. Hungary also remains highly vulnerable to emerging-market fatigue in its currency and stockmarkets (although this week's riots seem not to have unsettled investors much). But the most important question about the programme is not whether it will work—given a chance, it will—but whether voters will accept it.

Before the election, the government clearly did not believe that they would. Now Hungarians are waking up to discover that they have been lied to for years. That is hardly the best way to reconcile them to austerity. Perhaps the best that can be said is that Mr Gyurcsany is at last being brutally frank in confronting problems that he (and the opposition) long pretended did not exist. He is gambling that his majority will hold together long enough for his austerity programme to start working, for the economy to recover and for his party to be re-elected again. (As he put it, “they can go ahead and rally in front of parliament...It's no big deal if we lose some support. We'll get it back.”)

A lot is riding on this gamble: not just Hungary's economy, but the adoption of the euro by new members and the very reputation of central Europe (now somewhat besmirched by the waywardness of Poland's rulers, the thuggery of Slovakia's and the non-existence of a Czech government). Given a choice between being honest with voters and winning an election, Mr Gyurcsany picked the second—as most politicians would. Given a choice between tough decisions and muddling through, he has now opted, unusually, for the first. Mr Gyurcsany is doing the right thing in the wrong way. Unfortunately for him, this week he was found out. "

Recently I was asked to stay longer in Switzerland due tight schedule in the ongoing project. It was easy decision as Dóra will be in Romania during that time anyways. So, I will stay till 17th November.

In practice that means I will have more time for sightseeing. So far I have visited Zurich, Seengen, Lenzburg, Bern, Fribourg and some neighboring areas of Zurich. I will go to Luzern next weekend and I also have plans for Geneve and Lausanne. But after those I have no decisions yet.

Maybe I go somehow over mountains. I saw advertisement about train connection going up and down along mountains towards south. Or I could take a look to neighboring countries. Italy, Austria, Germany or France. Oh, and Liechtenstein.

Busy day in international politics. In the morning the hot topic was nightly riots in Hungary because of the leaked audio recording in which prime minister stated they have lied to get elected again. Then afternoon brought news from Thailand as the military coup happened.

Both events came more or less from nowhere but they take longer time to settle down. I know nothing about Thailand but Hungary's case is more closer to me. Last election result was really tight and support for the government has been declining after numerous tax and benefit reforms. Now this latest event is not really helping the situation... or who knows.

Let's speculate a little bit:

A. Leak was done by someone who does not favor government. The aim is to force PM to resign.

B. Leak was done on purpose by government in order to make it clear that reforms are needed.

And outcomes could be:

1. Riots cool down, PM continues and reforms take place as planned.
2. Riots continue, PM resigns and someone from government takes place.
3. Riots continue, PM resigns and someone from opposition takes place.
4. Riots continue, government forced to have early parliament elections.

In any case I hope the situation calms down and issue is solved one way or another. This event does help world to know that Hungary exists but the message is pretty bad. On the other hand, would you be surprised to hear lie and politics in same sentence?

Today I made a day trip to Bern which is the capital of Switzerland. It is smaller than Zurich, though. I met a company colleague there and he guided me through sights of that nice city. We also had chats about every day life, IT and so on. One thing got my attention while we were talking about how there is a lot of discussion about moving jobs to China and India.

His opinion was that it isn't that big issue in Switzerland because swiss companies somehow favor companies using swiss labor. Also the real benefits of outsourcing have turned out to be marginal. I think there are maybe two different motivators to move IT-development to developing country. First is the cost saving and the other one is lack of skilled people in domestic labor market.

The lower cost of software development is not really as simple matter as it seems. Skilled professionals know their value and when there is demand for such skills salaries tend to raise. Naturally it takes time to catch up but this affects anyways. Language, culture and working style differences are affecting as well being physically far away. Setting up an ad-hoc meeting is impossible so details need to be specified beforehand. However, several companies are investing on this and apparently some of them are getting some extra under the line because of this.

But I haven't seen too many articles describing how offsourcing has changed life in the target country. Even though the salary is low in wester scale but it is way above average there. It also brings a lot of know-how. I am rather curious to see what is the role of South-America and Africa in this offsourcing.

For example, Kenya is taking action to improve its Internet connection. Setting up an industrial factory takes years and requires plenty of capital. However, developing software is totally different. Workstations are cheap, it is possible to use free software tools and it requires some bright minds with education. I have no clue what is the potential hiding there as Africa is not just one war ridden, hungry and AIDS carrying country. Maybe offsourcing is something that helps to improve life there.

I was lucky enough to get a free weekend visit to Budapest from Zurich. I arrived on Friday afternoon and I had to leave on Sunday noon. But despite to short time I enjoyed. I spent all that time with Dóra whom I haven't seen for around five weeks and we also had our two-year-together anniversary. Next time we will see in Romania somewhere October or November... Another month or two but time flies.