A funny little movie on learning languages After my being quoted by Tony Barber in his blog (shameless blushing!) and then also in the Financial Times (and creating a fuss in the Romanian blogosphere as A bloggers didn’t know who the “mysterious Romanian blogger” is), I started giving the tryad blogging - European affairs - multilinguism more thought. I shared this with some of the participants at the launch event in Brussels and also with fellow Romanian bloggers. In countries where English is not a native tongue, there is a fairly influential blogosphere that blogs in its own...

... gratuitous Thinker pic I’m officially a th!nker. Yes, today was the jam-packed launch of Th!nk About It, and I am feeling utterly inadequate. First of all, I am among 70 or so bloggers/journalists for whom English is their second, third or even fourth language, watching in awe as they converse on the finer points of EU bureaucracy and the specific definition of the blogosphere. Secondly, I am a relative Johnny-come-lately to the blogging fraternity compared to a room brimming with techies who are seemingly so attached to their online presences, Twitter-feeds, and Facebook pokes, that...

... gratuitous sprouts image This afternoon, I was delighted to be Brussels bound (once again). Boarding the Eurostar gravy train, I can tell you that it wasn’t just because I was going on a foreign jaunt - when I would be otherwise beginning term and getting my nose down to the City grindstone. I am here (courtesy of the European Journalism Centre) because I have been accepted on to “Th!nk about it” - the first ever Europe-wide blogging competition, which is being launched - with competitors from across the continent - tomorrow in the Belgian capital. It provides a chance to engage with...

Bruxelles la Moche Brussels and I have a love/hate relationship in the sense that I love to hate it and whenever I get a chance to visit Europe’s bureaucratic capital this love-to-hate-you relationship is rekindled. I’ve tried long and hard to give the city a chance but it has just about as much charm as a village lady all dolled up for festa night. More often than not I get to town by train…it’s as though a guided tour of the human body were to start from the backside. You travel through the entrails and uglier sides of the city quietly hoping that it will, at some point,...

Eighty one bloggers from twenty seven member states and I, apparently, get to post the first item. I wonder, what is it that I should start out with? How does one even kick-off a competition like this? Should it be my first (real) post, an anecdote from times past, some linkbait or maybe even all three? I think that the best way to start out this competition is by getting to know one another, so consider this post an invitation to fill out your profile, to leave a comment and to introduce yourself by sharing, with the rest of us, where you hail from and where you tweet / Qik / Flickr and what-not. Get...