Archive for January of 2008
Climate change
January 27, 2008
I have recently relocated from cold and dry Budapest winter weather to cold and wet Edinburgh winter weather. Most practicalities are sorted out and now I am looking for a new flat from Kirkcaldy. We'll see how it turns out.
Something good in Hungarian taxation
January 14, 2008
Previously I have been complaining about Hungarian tax system. But I have forgotten to mention one pretty interesting feature. It is one percent - 1%.
The idea of this 1% is that you can choose where one percent of taxable income goes. It can be NGO, for example children hospital, animal shelter or something similar. I am do not know exact rules and it is voluntary to choose receiver. In case you do not pick any organization then government decides where it should go. At least I have been told so.
The side effect is that organizations are competing fiercely with each other to get this one percent. This can be seen in TV and street advertising, flyers and so on. Naturally 3F principle applies here as well as member of such organizations are approaching friends, family and fools. I can imagine that some organizations take big risks with their campaigns in order to secure enough funding for next term.
Despite all the side effects I find this good. I can imagine that some people would be happy to choose that 1% go to local healthcare or police as they would know that it wont be used to something totally different. And maybe it would put some pressure on certain organizations to do their job well.
The idea of this 1% is that you can choose where one percent of taxable income goes. It can be NGO, for example children hospital, animal shelter or something similar. I am do not know exact rules and it is voluntary to choose receiver. In case you do not pick any organization then government decides where it should go. At least I have been told so.
The side effect is that organizations are competing fiercely with each other to get this one percent. This can be seen in TV and street advertising, flyers and so on. Naturally 3F principle applies here as well as member of such organizations are approaching friends, family and fools. I can imagine that some organizations take big risks with their campaigns in order to secure enough funding for next term.
Despite all the side effects I find this good. I can imagine that some people would be happy to choose that 1% go to local healthcare or police as they would know that it wont be used to something totally different. And maybe it would put some pressure on certain organizations to do their job well.
Something new in Budapest fast food market
January 08, 2008
There is now a nice addition to kebab and Chinese food. Well, there is also a fast food Mexican restaurant but I found it disappointing. This new restaurant is about pasta and it is called 'I PRIMI'. I have no clue why it is written with capitals - maybe it has something to do with Italian mentality.
It is located in the Blaha Lujza's Kaiser super market and it is nothing too fancy. But at least cheese filled tortellini was ok and with 849 forint it was not too expensive. The restaurant has also a web page but it is plain horrible and I feel sorry for the one who paid for that.
It is located in the Blaha Lujza's Kaiser super market and it is nothing too fancy. But at least cheese filled tortellini was ok and with 849 forint it was not too expensive. The restaurant has also a web page but it is plain horrible and I feel sorry for the one who paid for that.
Leaving Hungary
January 06, 2008
Little by little I am moving closer to the day when I am leaving Hungary behind. The next location would be in the UK. There are many reasons for this relocation and I might cover them later. But now I will try to wrap up some of my thoughts from past years.
I visited Hungary first time almost three years ago when I had my job interviews. Hungary was rather unknown country for me before I met Dóra and even after spending time with her I was not sure how the country would look like. I based my initial expectations on my experiences from Poland and I think those were not that far off. While spending some days in Budapest I did not find any major issues preventing me from moving there.
After interviews I got some job offers, I graduated and I moved in to Hungary. But I had to wait my work permit and that was annoying time for me. I was staying at Dóra's home in Miskolc and it was good way to learn Hungarian life style and to visit surrounding areas. But I was a guest there and I felt awkward to spend weeks in somebody else's home. It was a safe place with helpful people around me but on the other hand I was stuck and bored there as I could not come and go freely.
Eventually the work permit was issued so I could start working and we also found a nice flat to live in Budapest. I was lucky to have friendly landlord with good English skills. Naturally there were some issues with the flat as it was brand new and I was the first one living in it. But I did not really think about changing it as the location was good and the rent was affordable.
During the first months I was keeping track on all possible expenses in order to find out how much I can spend and save. It turned out that due excessive income taxation I wasn't going to be forint millionaire right away. I think income followed half-half-half rule. First half went away in taxation, after that rent and other compulsory fixed expenses (water, electricity, Internet and BKV monthly pass) took half of net income. Finally my other living expenses like food took half of the remainder and I barely managed to save 1/8 of my gross income.
With this income I was still able to visit Finland twice a year and do also some other traveling. What I did not do was partying and eating out. Also I was pretty careful whenever money was involved and this led to some tensions. I tried to follow principle not to buy anything that I could not take with me in case of new relocation. So no extra furniture to the already furnished flat or such.
As mentioned before I did some traveling in addition to trips to Finland. I went with Dóra to various locations in Hungary and we also visited Switzerland, Czech and Romania. I have plenty of good memories from all of them. Another international aspect was created by numerous visitors staying in the flat. Most of them were AIESEC people and Hotel Pepez's guest book received several entries.
But I also spent time alone in Budapest because Dóra was still studying in Miskolc. Of course we visited each other during the weekends but that was not always possible. That forced me to figure out some ways to spend evenings and days by myself. But I found it to be quite difficult to try out new things. There were many reasons for this. Without decent Hungarian language I was not able to find out information and I ended up doing same activities. Simple thing as finding and actually using a swimming pool took way too long. And because I wanted to be independent I was hesitating to ask for a help from Hungarians I knew. Sounds stupid now.
Learning Hungarian was in my mind in the beginning and I ordered study books before leaving Finland. Unfortunately the relation between Finnish and Hungarian is almost non existent and only the grammar shares some principles. It became clear for me that I would need some professional help so I started to take lessons. After some initial progress my learning stopped. I was spending three months in Zürich and after that my workplace started German lessons which took my interest. Because I was able to survive everyday tasks with my very basic Hungarian there was no force to push me back to my Hungarian studies.
Contrary to some lack of action on my own free time I had pretty good time at work. When I joined the company I got assigned to a new project with small development team. It was built on interesting technologies like Struts, Spring and Hibernate. I had very little previous knowledge so it was really hectic learning by doing. Luckily there were great senior developers in the team who guided me through initial difficulties and gave me precious feedback. During the following years I took part in numerous projects and used various technologies. I experienced joys of writing new code and horrors of exploring legacy code. As I became more experienced my tasks also changed to be more challenging and I progressed from junior developer towards senior level.
I think my time in Hungary has been pretty good time but not perfect. There are couple things I would have done differently but mostly I am happy with my decisions and I simply can not change whole country. Despite relocating again I am not going to close Hungary from my mind. I am going to visit it with Dóra and I will not throw my language books away. Hopefully I will be lucky enough to be able to keep those good memories rest of my life.
I visited Hungary first time almost three years ago when I had my job interviews. Hungary was rather unknown country for me before I met Dóra and even after spending time with her I was not sure how the country would look like. I based my initial expectations on my experiences from Poland and I think those were not that far off. While spending some days in Budapest I did not find any major issues preventing me from moving there.
After interviews I got some job offers, I graduated and I moved in to Hungary. But I had to wait my work permit and that was annoying time for me. I was staying at Dóra's home in Miskolc and it was good way to learn Hungarian life style and to visit surrounding areas. But I was a guest there and I felt awkward to spend weeks in somebody else's home. It was a safe place with helpful people around me but on the other hand I was stuck and bored there as I could not come and go freely.
Eventually the work permit was issued so I could start working and we also found a nice flat to live in Budapest. I was lucky to have friendly landlord with good English skills. Naturally there were some issues with the flat as it was brand new and I was the first one living in it. But I did not really think about changing it as the location was good and the rent was affordable.
During the first months I was keeping track on all possible expenses in order to find out how much I can spend and save. It turned out that due excessive income taxation I wasn't going to be forint millionaire right away. I think income followed half-half-half rule. First half went away in taxation, after that rent and other compulsory fixed expenses (water, electricity, Internet and BKV monthly pass) took half of net income. Finally my other living expenses like food took half of the remainder and I barely managed to save 1/8 of my gross income.
With this income I was still able to visit Finland twice a year and do also some other traveling. What I did not do was partying and eating out. Also I was pretty careful whenever money was involved and this led to some tensions. I tried to follow principle not to buy anything that I could not take with me in case of new relocation. So no extra furniture to the already furnished flat or such.
As mentioned before I did some traveling in addition to trips to Finland. I went with Dóra to various locations in Hungary and we also visited Switzerland, Czech and Romania. I have plenty of good memories from all of them. Another international aspect was created by numerous visitors staying in the flat. Most of them were AIESEC people and Hotel Pepez's guest book received several entries.
But I also spent time alone in Budapest because Dóra was still studying in Miskolc. Of course we visited each other during the weekends but that was not always possible. That forced me to figure out some ways to spend evenings and days by myself. But I found it to be quite difficult to try out new things. There were many reasons for this. Without decent Hungarian language I was not able to find out information and I ended up doing same activities. Simple thing as finding and actually using a swimming pool took way too long. And because I wanted to be independent I was hesitating to ask for a help from Hungarians I knew. Sounds stupid now.
Learning Hungarian was in my mind in the beginning and I ordered study books before leaving Finland. Unfortunately the relation between Finnish and Hungarian is almost non existent and only the grammar shares some principles. It became clear for me that I would need some professional help so I started to take lessons. After some initial progress my learning stopped. I was spending three months in Zürich and after that my workplace started German lessons which took my interest. Because I was able to survive everyday tasks with my very basic Hungarian there was no force to push me back to my Hungarian studies.
Contrary to some lack of action on my own free time I had pretty good time at work. When I joined the company I got assigned to a new project with small development team. It was built on interesting technologies like Struts, Spring and Hibernate. I had very little previous knowledge so it was really hectic learning by doing. Luckily there were great senior developers in the team who guided me through initial difficulties and gave me precious feedback. During the following years I took part in numerous projects and used various technologies. I experienced joys of writing new code and horrors of exploring legacy code. As I became more experienced my tasks also changed to be more challenging and I progressed from junior developer towards senior level.
I think my time in Hungary has been pretty good time but not perfect. There are couple things I would have done differently but mostly I am happy with my decisions and I simply can not change whole country. Despite relocating again I am not going to close Hungary from my mind. I am going to visit it with Dóra and I will not throw my language books away. Hopefully I will be lucky enough to be able to keep those good memories rest of my life.