30. 06.

The Czech Lost Art of Healing...Soon to Be Found?

Another Cheshire cat smile graced my Eastern Slavic lips at dawn as sat down over a cup of Italian espresso in an allegedly Russian-owned cafe as I was being served by a Slovak waitress in our apparently all-Czech capital.

No matter.

Such a quilt-like "Czech" experience only added to my fulsome glee after reading the following article (and associated bonus sections) in MfD's (for my foreign readers, that's "Mlada Fronta Dnes" = Today's Brave Young Front) Monday edition.

In a single sentence -- this is the reason I enjoy dwelling in this country.

Dear non-Prague, non-Czech based readers: did you know there's always a new development underway?

What I admire most about my co-citizens in this most latter-day of Greek city-states (yes, Prague is often not indicative of life in Cesko) is how we're always willing to step up to the plate and improve our skills. We want to improve...and quickly. We step into the breach, mightily, as we slowly recapture that fighting Czechoslovak spirit which should have been our due in September 1938. Our grunts possessed mighty sacks of venom, and they weren't afraid to show anyone.

Quick content summary: the Czech Medical Chamber (CLK) has introduced a series of 6-month long "sensitivity training" courses for several hundred doctors from across the wide expanse of our CR, part of its master plan of improving doctor-patient relations. The article describes how poor patient communication techniques -- anything from flippantly dealing with aggressive, irate, or terribly drunk patients, to learning how to properly deliver bad news to patient's families and relatives, not aloofly -- is a direct inheritance from Our Old System (aka "socialism with the devil's horns"). What the CLK's course will attempts to radically alter -- through role-playing, primarily -- is the sometimes-haughty attitude doctors have towards their patients, especially when patients begin to challenge their know-how.

A fabulous read as I digested my morning cuppa and scone.

Personally, I've never had a single negative interaction at any Prague hospital I've had the misfortune of visiting.

The couple of times I've actually had a dire need to visit "Na Homolce" -- and on both occasions I arrived rather late in the night -- the triage nurses and attending physicians were positively heavenly. In fact, on both occasions they were also female, much to the surprise of the misogynist detractors at this blog who would still wish to prevent the blossoming of the Age of Aquarius in our nation-state. Who would choose to keep our XX Chromosomal Units permanently thunderstruck.

I like the direction things are going in over here. Do you?

I've opined about this before, in fact, about how the medication-diagnosis pas a deux isn't the only dynamic afoot in the healing process.

Kind words emanating from a knowledgeable, gracious physician often act as a soothing balm, as Nobel Prize-winning heart specialist Dr. Bernard Lown ably described in his best-selling tome, THE LOST ART OF HEALING. Doctoring in the Maimonidean spirit, as it were.

For those patients entering the twilight of their lives, I ::: shudder ::: at the thought how some of them will have to brook the roiling currents of our Prague hospital nightshifts...what with some of our doctors still hunt-and-pecking up their diagnoses on '70s-era typewriters, handing off endless slips of paper to each other as part of an endless ream of circle-jerk paper-chasing.

Look, I know -- save the rebukes, haters...I've heard all about it, and I'm not reprimanding, m'kay? I, too, realize we're in an Emerging Situation; yet rather than thrust all our Czech reforming attentions on things which have an exclusively macroeconomic bent, why don't we instead pump massive streams of dosh towards our institutions of higher medical practice? Very much like Cuba -- a net exporter of physicians across the world -- why can we not rather become mavens in one particular area of expertise? Just like the Old Days (the Sixties), when we were a centre of excellence in production of (Tatra) T3 red-and-cream tram cars, produced in the humble 'hood of Smichov (Praha 5)? A new kind of COMECON? Amen.

Hear, hear to the Czech Medical Chamber. Another step in the right direction. Another reassertion of our National Sovereignty. Another chunk of festering oxidation hacked off the inert rusty colossus which is our Hussite Heritage. Amen.

May our fighting spirit be revived again in Our Days and Our Time. Amen (and in case you were wondering, that's the neutral non-religious sort of "amen." I hardly wish to offend the >70% of my readers who don't believe in the Higher Classifier of All Matter and Things).

ADM...outtie for now.

27. 06.

Guide to Emasculating Your Children

Are we seriously undermining the more male qualities of our school-age children in the Czech Republic?

It's a question which was amply dealt with in today's splendid edition of Lidove noviny (in Czech, "the people's newspaper") about the percentage splits between XX and XY Chromosomal Units teaching and holding down managerial positions the Czech educational system.

For those who wish to read the original article, have a gander at pA3 in today's broadsheet or touch this if you're based abroad and have a grasp of the Czech vernacular (hello to all former Czechoslovaks, exiles from big bad Communism, all 1938ers, honourary Czechs and Slovaks, and to all their progeny -- dobry den!).

What I didn't really get a sense of from the grab-bag of articles on offer were perhaps some of the reasons why men are reluctant to get their hands dirty with Cesko's (don't you just love that nickname?) school network.

1) No money...no honey: Whilst this isn't a particularly masculine problem, it's a known fact that lower Czech pay grades in the educational system produce strong repulsive fields that continue to keep Czech (and Slovak) males at least 3 football pitches in distance away from our nation's primary, elementary, and secondary schools. You'd think that with the more masculine penchant for spartan lifestyles and frugal lifestyles, contrasted with the more feminine "tendency" to lavishly spend on various preening articles and other close-fitting cotton body huggers (surely to attract the tongue-wagging local male), that the hue and cry would rise up from Eve rather than Adam's side. But no matter, you get the picture.

2) Extraordinarily gradual career trajectory: When dealing with the preciously delicate nature of our nation's youth, there isn't that same opportunity to hack, slash, and obliterate your rivals as there exists in the present-day Czech realm of cerny byznys. As such, men -- despite their otherwise stellar qualifications for same -- aren't afforded the same opportunities in educational fields to make those same gigantic, unheralded leaps forward in the Czech business universe. Ergo, they shy away from the teaching trade. Pity.

3) Who wants to be grabbed by the short 'n curlies?: With the plethora of female colleagues proliferating in our Czech primary and secondary schools, most male teachers would feel intimidated at being so massively outnumbered. Especially with some of those matronly battleaxes (read: former KSC stalwarts) from the hammer and sickle tricolour period, I don't know of too many idealistic men -- even if they hail from more rural areas -- who have the brass cojones to take on some of these hardened babicky (= grannies).

4) Red-era peer pressure: Mass social conformity (not including those exceptions to the rule = dissidents like our winsome former President Havel) is one of our nation's sad legacies of the former regime. As such, it takes a young bloke of upstanding, staunch inner-fortitude to step into the breach and absorb the persistent accustions which inevitably be levelled against him about being in the minority. With only 27% of males teaching in our schools (versus a whopping 8 out of 10 XX-chromosomal units, egad!), the iron-walled resistance to the long-benched, gambac-guzzling, football-lazing, female-disrespecting crowd is not a characteristic embodied by most impressionably young male teachers on the make. Still with me?

5) Inability to properly filter criticism: The societal ridicule a young Czech male will face as a result of his resolute choice to remain an elementary school teacher will rain down so forcefully upon his head that I fear the dire consequences of those not built to deal with this humiliation. My thinking? It'll take a man of such Ghandi-like inner-fortitude to withstand the daily jibes -- not to mention the confidence-flagellating caustic asides his parents and grandparents will issue forth from weekend and holiday visits to his village -- that the growth rates for male teachers shall continue to stagnate.


I'm not going to expect any miracles on this front soon, and neither should you. However, here's a lost of advantages from having more males in the school system, as I see it. The mere fact that our Education Minister is a strapping young man, Ondrej Liska/Andre Fox, bodes well for the immediate future, provided he doesn't get gobbled up by the fatcats on the Lesser Side and sucked into the ODS/CSSD vortex of maniupulation:

** having male teachers early on during their formentive years will offer Czech young females a different side of the male character other than the authoritarian one they typically receive at home.
** if the young man in question doesn't isolate merely his "feminine qualities," he might succeed in shedding light on more "masculine" literary subjects for his student during the course of a Czech literature lesson.
** more men on school staffs will give female teachers less time to concentrate on being catty with their peers, avoiding the strife which several careerist Slovak imports to our Czech school system usually bring.
** a greater number of male teachers in our schools serves as a "stat jacker" (= statistics booster). It'll be useful when the time comes for EU handouts. We'll earn a larger share, which our politicians will "spend wisely."
** having more robust male teachers will ultimately knuckle down on the pernicious (and hopeless!) stereotype some citizens continue to harbour about the virility of the male teacher, thereby modernizing Czech society.


The bottom line?

More male teachers will bring in more money for Cesko from Europe and will be better for our students.

Is there a better result than that?


I wish you the most glorious of weekends,
Vamos a la playa,
ADM

26. 06.

Czech Morality in a G.odless World

My sincerest thanks go out to reader @Dzarda for suggesting the following theme for today, and I hope to do the man justice.

Let us begin...

So it isn't a tightly-held national secret that more than 7 out of 10 Czechs allegedly do not believe in the existence of the Higher Power. What is commonly and alternatively referred to as G.od.

He. She. It. The Almighty. The Man Upstairs. The Big Hand. Murphy. Jayzus. J-Rock. Et cetera.

The reasons for this are manifold and a cogent review of the pained history of this beautiful and jilted Land would lead any G.od-fearing Czech or Slovak individual (although less so given the strong influence of the Roman Catholic and Ruthenian churches in that country) to sincerely doubt the existence of the deity in heaven -- or anywhere. One who/which could gracefully slip into the workings of society -- deus ex machina-style -- to extract a nation and its glorious people from a calamitous fate and the jaws of imminent defeat.

Personally, I don't engage many Czechs in the context of a religious parley. Those sorts of discussions are highly-frowned upon amongst most locals I've come to know well, and I dare the non-Czech, non-Slovak man, woman, or adolescent to challenge one of their fellow Bohemian or Moravian co-citizens with a direct frontal attack about the reasons for the paucity of their (capital-b) Beliefs in G.od. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Yet I still have several personal examples of the "religion-morality-sin" complex that you might be interested in knowing about.

For those of you who don't know me personally, I frankly admit I'm the furthest thing from a shy guy.

I've been known throughout my time in this city to approach all sorts of different Czechs and non- -- especially VIPs and Members of (Czech) Parliament -- to ask them point-blank questions about things I'm really curious about, or to tell them about things that trouble me as a "non-Czech Czech," even to request an official interview. This was one of the primary methodologies I'd adopted in approaching the viceregal of my native country, Her Excellency Madame Jean of Canada, during her time in Prague last year during Forum2000 (I was her official Prague delegate guide, ps).

But this extends to non-VIPs as well.

I go up to all manner of total strangers on the Prague streets and haven't the slightest hesitation in distributing my business cards or asking people for their contact details -- for all manner of purposes, personal and professional alike, if I'm interested. I've met some of the finest Czechs in chance encounters on the street. Made some of the most compelling friendships and even had some of the most steamy love affairs, if I'm to disclose fully. All in good fun. All mutually-satisfying. All honourable.

But in response to @Dzarda's recent comment to me from my previous blogpost:

Dzarda napsal(a):
Hey Adam and thanks for your reply. Although I disagree that too simple = not meaty enough, I believe that "v jednoduchosti je krása" and besides that I don´t eat meat :-))). However, to make it simple, I guess, it just woudn´t be you, so your offer is a great solution - respect. :-) The first thing that struck my mind was that I would be very interested to know how you, as a non-czech czech, see the reasons for so many atheists in CZ. If that seems a little bit interesting, will be greatly looking forward to your view. Take care amigo :-)
26.06.2008 09:31:27


kindly allow me to highlight a baffling case of what I can only refer to as "confused morality" which I'll in turn put the question to my fellow readers.

Continuing to build my case, I've often asked my younger (and single) colleagues and associates: "How do you meet people?"

Their answers have been a hodge-podge of harrumphed excuses and half-measures which, admittedly, I find obscure in the extreme. I don't grasp how in 2008 with the ubiquitous influence of the internet how people can still doggedly hold onto the failed shy methods of the past? Czech bashfulness in many cases is a sharp-toothed, hairy opportunity-slayer. In other cases it's potentially life-threatening; that is, when someone's life is at stake but someone prefers to leave well enough alone by engaging in what I like to term "Ostrich Creep."

When I talk to some of my female colleagues, their answers trouble me even more. And it's in their answers where I find the most pernicious effect of our atheistic tendencies, to respond to you directly, @Dzarda.

I'm positive many non-Czech Czechs can empathize with what I'm about to describe, and I'd be curious for the Czech take on this so I encourage you to leave comments below (note: vulgar ad hominem attacks against me or anyone else will be promptly deleted. So if anyone begins digressing from the main throughline, please know this in advance).

We all know how shameful it is for the over-25 year-old (an average estimate, ps) Czech male or female to be without a mate.

Whether Iinside or outside the institution of marriage -- these semantic differences are entirely irrelevant -- it's the equivalent to receiving a societal boot in the teeth when someone is sans partenaire. To be able to say that one merely has a girl- or boyfriend is the a priori baseline for most locals, regardless of whether that relationship is reciprocally-edifying, regardless of what future direction the relationship is supposed to take. Regardless if the partner is their ideal version of a life companion.

Being on the persistent hunt for a "second" mate is a frowned-upon, yet somehow strangely commonplace, phenomena in our country, I've found. The supposed shame from doing so flies rocket-like out the window when the target "second fiddle" is of foreign-extraction. Allow me to cite what I mean.

** a Czech man presently dating a Czech woman, yet who falls under the harpie-like seduction of a non-Czech woman. He chooses to do the morally-objectionable and dates both the present woman and the new woman simultaneously. With luck, neither discovers the existence of the other.

** a Czech female is in a so-called "serious relationship" with an acceptable Czech partner (someone she can bring home to babicka in her village or neighbourhood, someone whom Granny can eat "ox eyes" cookies with and drink coffee on Sunday monrning) yet who isn't her ideal version of XY chromosomal material (use your imagination here). Such a woman might therefore still be on the lookout for her better half, and this generally defaults to someone from outside the Czech national circle. For all "normal" activities -- there's Czech Man, let's name him Honza. For all that "wild, malevolent" stuff (again, use your fertile imaginations here, readers), there's the foreigner, John. This way, she can keep above-board and gain the best of both worlds.

Get me?

In both of the above-noted cases, there is a serious breach of the commitment bond. It's clear to any objective third-party observer that something is indeed stinky. But I can't tell you how often in the past I've been approached by (or approached) seemingly eligible young females, enjoyed a coffee or a beverage with them only to have them tell me at the end of the date/meeting that they're already involved with someone.

Question: so why agree to take the coffee then? Huh? ! I'm used to it now, but years ago it used to shock me. The understanding in most parts of the world is that if you've already agreed to a meeting, the expectation is that you're in a position to do so. This applies to both men and women alike. Agreed?

So what, then, is the connection to the "religion-morality-sin" complex?

In my opinion, it all has to do with the lack of a rigid moral, or honour, code. Belief in G.od means belief in consequences. Call it karma, energy, mojo, juice, whatever...but if you do someone wrong, it comes back to bite you back. It's just the way it goes. When you don't believe in G.od, you don't believe in consequences, sin, wrongdoing. You don't believe that there's a limited (not just one) number of correct ways to treat people -- what Hillel referred to in the second century BCE -- in response to one of his ardent students as to the correct way to study -- as "that which is hateful to you, do not do unto others. The rest is merely commentary. No go and get busy."

Clearly, you might find my linking of these two phenomena seemingly illogical.

Yet peering in more closely, you'll readily see the connections, that at least 7 out of 10 Czechs don't care about so-called "consequences." They're willing to go on record as saying so, seven times in ten.

So my question back to you is as follows: if the overwhelming majority of Czechs don't have a moral compass and if there can be no fallout from one's actions because one doesn't believe in a god-delivered punishment, then why adhere to staid, quasi-religious morality plays?

Why bother with silly terms like "relationship," "monogamy," "loyalty," "honour," "marriage" and the like?

The street-level proof demonstrates that this is entirely pointless for our Czech society. That it exists is bizarre in the extreme. Of course, there are exceptions to my bold statements. But not many, from what I can glean using an outsider's perspective.

So what do you think?

24. 06.

"Neanderthal-avoid" via Czech Social Networking Tools

You already know me as that guy who stops you cold in your tracks on the street, pleading, beckoning, or plaintively asking if you know all about those popular social media tools (aka "Web2.0") sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, or Facebook.

I'm that same kat who asks you what you're doing here in Cesko to leapfrog the inertia of our local bureaucracies and the manoeverings of our legions of stodgy gatekeepers who bar your rising up swiftly through the Czech ranks. The same apes who would prefer to keep you permanently servile to the Masters, who apparently have all of the right answers, all the time. These are the same, mostly older, women and men who could give a right two-poops about your otherwise novel ideas on how to business process improve or how to render even better customer service, thereby jacking up their bottom line.

Your ideas suck, they say, period. Improvements, they scoff...who needs yours.

Aha, I sense an opportunity! Do you?

So I ask the question again -- what are you doing, friend, to break through the tall barriers obstructing your path?

What social networking tools are you presently leveraging in order to network outside those traditional, inefficient channels? And have you been successful in building the kind of social network you deserve working outside of the Mainstream?

Who actually likes bureaucracy? Yet despite all of the complaints you'll generally hear about that same Czech bureaucracy, how many young people actually dare to do something about it? Hardly any whom I know personally. How many dare to suggest ways of using social networking tools as a means of creating nodes and contacts in ways which go above and beyond the same-old, same-old? I only know of a handful.

Allow me to introduce 3 new tools which I use on a daily basis to advance Our Czech Cause.

Utterz

You have something to say...then just utter it!

One of the few true Web2.0 finds which permits you to combine voice, pics, video, and text all from the same interface window -- with cross-posting capability to all of your other popular social networking sites like Twitter (explained below), Pownce, Blip.tv (plus several others). Whatever you post up at utterz.com goes careening onto your famous sites ten minutes later. Major upside with utterz.com? Now you can dial in your "utter" locally, at +420-246-019-060. I make a habit of "uttering" at least once a day, sometimes more, depending on how vigorous was my battle with the bureaucrats or how chatty I feel.

For an example of what an "utter" sounds like, touch this.


Twitter

Twitter is part of the popular "microblogging" trend presently happening on the dub-dub-dub.

The gist is to encapsulate what you're currently doing in the span of only 140 characters or less. "Tweet" as often as you like. If your tweets are savvy enough, you can amass a nice following relatively quickly -- not to mention learning a whackload of things as you go along. I've managed to glean hundreds of tech tips, a bevy of URL referrals, and you can even squizz breaking stories from certain parts of the globe via your Twitter contacts, very often faster than from mainstream media channels or traditional blogs.

Most Czechs will have already heard about Twitter because it's been around for the better part of a year. I've even got several Czechs on my list, who tweet in their vernacular. Have a look...

And -- time permitting (at 2:03 minutes) -- for your entertainment (wait until the Czech version of this comes out):




Wahooa

Wahooa is a new Prague-based, mostly American-run social advocacy initiative which will highlight a contentious Prague "social reform" campaign per week, throughout the entire summer. It's apparently been designed as a way to cast a discomfiting beacon on some of the more pernicious social problems plaguing our capital that the mainstream Czech media simply refuses to cover.

I suspect the reasons why mainstream Czech channels generally refuse to cover such issues ranges from:

** Czech media organs coming under the aegis of people with chummy ties to the ruling Parliamentary oligarchs and former Communists -- sorry, ahem...dissidents.
** apathy on the part of Czech citizens for issues generally deemed to be lost causes of Pyrrhic victories (not true, in my opinion).
** genuine schadenfreude on the part of the local Czech population for their fellow citizens (just have a read through today's Blesk [a Prague tabloid, for my US-based readers] and you'll see exactly what I mean).

I love Wahooa's tagline: "Evolution is nigh." Conjures up all manner of primate-like thoughts. Dig the logo, too.

~~~~

Enjoy the new toys, but remember to play safe.

I wish for you the very best of things,
ADM

18. 06.

Would you pay for my stuff?

Yes or no would suffice please. :-)

16. 06.

Overdoing it on Czech youth obesity -- puh-leeze!

Cover story in "Today's Brave Young Front" (Mlada Fronta Dnes/MfD) has the left-leaning Social Democratic-kowtowing broadsheet shilling ad infinitum about how our Czech youth are suffering from statistically-high levels of obesity in our fair mitteleuropaische republic. Every fifth pupil in primary school apparently suffers from a weight problem -- according to the cross-country straw poll conducted last week by MfD's galloping reporters -- every tenth suffers from obesity-creep.

Disturbing stats, to be sure...

However, rather than overwhelm (or dazzle?) you with a copious ream of relevant and not-so-relevant numbers, comparing and contrasting the relative caloric contents of the tens of sugary, chemically-induced brands on sale in refrigerated automatic vending machines in our nation's schools, I prefer to highlight the way dietician Alexandra Moravcova (Buh bless her!), of Prague's Vseobecne fakultni nemonice (roughly translated -- and kindly assist me readers if I've got this incorrectly -- Prague's "Public Faculty Hospital") likens the weight problem in Cesko.

In response to a reporter's textbook question as to how a parent should measure their childrens' risk exposure to becoming overwhelmingly fat, she wittily responds: "Have a look at your child's appearance. If your kid's visually overweight, that's a pretty good sign." (Jerry Lewis as Sinatra's straight man couldn't have uttered it any better!).

As a journo, I didn't appreciate the way MfD covered this story, though. Here's why.

First, it's not like the youth or societal weight problem in Cesko is disproportionately higher than in the rest of the EU. In fact, I'd claim it's just about even, or better, and I'm quite certain the stats would bear this out as well (just compare with the numbers in the UK, for example. I remember watching ALL OR NOTHING, starring the talented Tim Spall -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286261/ -- and watching aghast at what's considered the LCD = lowest-common denominator for bodyweight in Britain).

Second, what the article was critically lacking, IMO, was some semblance of comparative stats for the rest of the continent.

Boom, boom.

If I'm to use Pani Moravcova's "visual test" to gauge whether our nation's youth are fit as fiddles or hefty as hippopotamii, then a quick walkabout and navel-gaze on our nation's capital's streets bears out that we're not a bad-looking bunch (and that's an understatement -- yum!), and we all know what I mean.

What's also more than a bit offputting was the fact that this made front-page news in Prague, compared to, say, the Lisbon Treaty's rejection on the part of the Irish population. Lookit, I'm not nearly as savvy here politically to know why the latter didn't appear. Given that Wenceslas Klaus is perennially against it and his ODS was strongly endorsing, you'd figure a CSSD-tilting rag would give the accord more than a cursory glance -- pA7 in today's MfD. Six feet under, in news-speak.

Yet again, our media shills stories like the US military goes through M16 rifle magazines in Iraq. Rather than save spent mags for another go, grunts in the US Army stomp on them and grab a fresh set from the ever-present supply truck.

Sometimes, it seems, the US military's activities find their cognate in the Czech media.

Wishing you the very best of things,
ADM

13. 06.

Return to me, my son...

Hopeful news emerging from the Czech press today about the drastic increase in the number of Czech plumbers, carpenters, and au pairs returning to Cesko after extended stints abroad in more prosperous, more democratic EU nation-states.

A perplexing statistic -- which, in fact, made me go back and ponder precisely *what* some of our Czech and Slovak confreres are doing out in there in lands further to the West -- was rife with humour.

One Czech man quoted in the MfD (Mlata Fronta Dnes article I'd read -- and for our foreign readers, it translates roughly into "Brave Young Front," which, again in the Czech(oslovak) historical context, totally makes sense) -- who worked at a German abattoir over approximately eight years, recently returned home, earned just a single 50 eurocent pay raise over his entire time there. Since the MfD reporter in question furnished no additional details, my imagination ran amok: exactly why this man chose *not* to switch jobs earlier, given how they so meagrely respected his slicing and dicing talents, is beyond me. A statement about Czech assertiveness in the workplace, perhaps? I guess, in the best of Habsburgian Teutonic traditions, and in the words of one of my Romanian colleagues, Czechs, like their German cousins, believe that everyone has a boss.

Though none of this is neither here nor there. The wherewithal and total lack of confidence of the majority of of our underachieving Czech youngsters is not the point of my post.

What is, however, of issue here is the case of expatriates, and the reasons why expatriates continue to arrive in the Czech lands in 2008 and beyond. Moreover, what keeps them here?

::: BUZZ!!! :::

Give up? Survey says: "It's the economy, stupid!" (a Clinton-esque turn of phrase).

While Goldfinger-style opportunity-seeking still abounds, these days it has less to do with the dirty "byznys" of the early-'90s perpetrated most by our neighbours from the East who took due advantage of our society's near-total lack of respect for Czech administrative and judicial structures on the part of our local society.

These days, corporate and other entrepreneurial investments are generally (and this is really being generous!) "cleaner." Formal career postings the presently lure expatriates over to our fair lands offer much more in the way of professional advancement and higher remuneration, much more than they'd ever earn in their Western backwaters (egs. Iowa, Ohio, Saskatchewan) from whence they hail.

In the latter half of the new century's first decade, Westerners moving to the Czech capital now have to aggressively compete with not only their own sort, but now they're faced with the additional challenge from an upwardly-mobile young Czech business set who can do the job as good as they can -- in many cases even better than the average carpetbagging Western shlockmeister manipulated by colonial dreams of grandeur. And this, my friends, is precisely what the Czech engineers of our accession into the EU back in the late nineties partly envisioned...and partly *couldn't* envision. (Once you let the cat out of the bag, it's always hard to predict where things will end up).

Another word about statistics: while the common perception is that the number of Czechs working abroad in the EU is extraordinarily high, the facts tell a different story.

For our readers from abroad -- had you realized that the absolute number of Czech citizens working abroad doesn't exceed 80,000 persons? Okay, give or take another 20,000 or so young Czechs who live in crowded slum-style attic apartments in provincial British or Irish dungholes, smoking cheap cigarettes, commiserating in small Czech and Slovak coffee klatches, candoodling together -- boyfriend and girlfriend, that is, after long hard days at the office without showering, eating 3 square meals a day at Mickey D's in a way even Mr. SuperSize Me -- Morgan Spurlock himself -- would be poppa-proud of, and frequently doing very little during their non-work hours but criticize the failings of British or Irish (or, fill in with your favourite Western EU Bete Noire's name) society at large. And don't giggle! I know someone who was a part of this failed Czech wave of British work flight, and she told me that's what she and her comrades used to do. She left with high hopes. Came back like a sad-sack loser with her tail between her legs. Even her "friends" and parents told her so.

So this basically means it's mostly much ado about nothing! The media has apparently blown the entire emigration agenda totally out of proportion, making it out to be larger than it actually is. What's 80,000 citizens in reality?

Spittle in a bucket. Not many people, to be frank.

What's patently clear is the Czech economy is on fire. Ablaze, even. Euro, euro, where art thou?

In the immortal words of Joe Pesci: fuggedaboudit!

06. 06.

Introducing Loren Feldman to Cesko

To all my detractors, comments, says Loren, are hardly conversation. ;-)

05. 06.

Even non-Communists enjoyed the Bad Old Days

Ho-hum...let's have a look over the past couple of weeks' news-y goodies...

** our PM and Transport Minister have been gliding about the wild blue yonder like pashas on posh private galleons as they dart hither-and-yon across the Mediterranean -- Rebicek with his family and those J&T poobahs in tow, dollars and high-class hookers joining the party, Topolanek with his mistress who walks over dead bodies to get to the man holding the nation's highest office. (Mark my words -- I'll say the same thing about Paroubek and his Slovakian man-killer when he gets the electoral nod come 2009).

** our two poor emaciated "Johns" who said "namaste" after going foodless for 21 days, this after failing to secure the Ghandi-esque salt riot-y results they avidly sought to engender by their current fast against Missile Defence's radar base (aka "hitting a bullet with a another bullet") in Brdy.

** (as per page A3 of this morning's MfD) Czechs -- yet again -- demonstrate their abiding penchant for "Ostrich Creep," afraid of venturing beyond their own chatas (country shacks of beer and love), with nearly 29% of Czechs (of 606 polled by the Median agency) preferring Croatia, the rest a delectable combo of Slovakia, other destinations abroad, or plainly preferring to stay home in the CR, afraid of their own shadows.

** reporters from the country's largest news agencies succeeded in secreting themselves inside our nation's top hospital ICUs and surgical wards, to rifle through Czech patients' medical charts like oversexed juvenilles in search of the next acid trip (sorry, I might be dating myself here).

** the on-again, off-again war with the current head of the Czech Health Ministry over whether Czech employees should be paid for the first 3 days of official sick leave...or not. You want my suggestion? If Specimen Employee A causes her/his own sickness; as in, if s/he goes out the night before, gets drunk or eats bad carbo-rich unnutricious food (egs. knedliky, svickova, veprova polevka), rather than not being paid for the first 3 days of sick leave -- such irresponsible recalcitrant employees should instead pay their employers for being such children.

Etc.

~~~~

Today's post, however, had more to do with the things we should miss about the Bad Old Days.

Even so-called "non-Communist dissidents" (btw, one man's dissident is another man's former, ahem, card-carrying Czechoslovak Communist Party [KSC] member) enjoyed the slower, quieter times under the Hammer & Sickle, and here are some reasons why. This, of course, comes courtesy of one of my dear friends who used to work for the StB (Statni bezpecnost, or "State Security Services," for all of my readers abroad), and who drives me to the airport when I fly far away from our fair republic on business trips.

1) More time to read. People were smarter, in a way, theoretically-speaking because they had more time to sit on their bums to read. Czechoslovaks could cite theories, ideas, and various acceptable works of art because they had time to read real bound books. You know, those same ones Czechs still cover in wax paper or other home-made dust jackets and use sticky tabs to bookmark their last gander into its various pages with.

2) More time for love. Compare the '70s and '80s Czechoslovak birth rates to today's. How many Husakovy deti (n.b. children born during the Gustav Husak normalization-era, when grey was the colour and despair was the overwhelming feeling on our cobbled laneways). Basically, sex was about the only parketa where Czechs and Slovaks (when they weren't at church expiating themselves for their sins or for hating Czechs) could experiment.

3) Other human virtues could be cultivated, instead of crass consumerism. When the profit motive didn't reign supreme and when people didn't evaluate you strictly for how much you could contribute to their bottom line, we behaved better towards each other. We cared about our neighbours more, even if we couldn't exactly tell who was reporting on our movements and activities to the Authorities. No matter, though, because in 1983's Czechoslovakia, the world was going to hell in a handbasket, pronto.

4) Anti-Americanism and America-bashing had a real ring of sincerity to it. Unlike today's situation when Praguers, Czechs, and other Central Europeans, more generally, have dug in their calloused argumentative heels against the USA and its Allies, yet strangely bite the same hand which feeds them. Note to all US-haters: expatriates, former Czechoslovak exiles from Komanco-times (note to my non-Czech readers, "Komanco" reads as "Commancho" in English, which is a euphemistic term used by young Czechs in the modern era to describe the Communist times, or who choose to be politically-correct) and other Westerners alike were and are the primary change agents who brought (and bring) all your wonderful consumerism to our fair republic today. Don't knock your meal ticket! It's gauche and crass.

5) Existentialism, irony, and biting self-hatred served a useful purpose during the '70s and '80s. When you felt like doing yourself in with a straight razor during Komanco, you were making a genuine statement of tragic Shakespearean proportions. And it was real, because as I've mentioned, who would've thunk it during the early eighties that Wall Fall would have occurred, Gorby would have been elected Soviet head honcho, all that glasnost and perestroika, that Mandela would've been released, or the advent of our poet-president? Who?!

So, as you can readily see (or hear), though Czechoslovak-flavoured Communism had its nasty share of:

** show trials.
** Stalinist-inspired insanity.
** forced labour exiles to Jachymov to toil endlessly in the uranium mines.
** stool pigeoning on your neighbours in exchange for privileges and Tuzex coupons.
** consumer goods shortages.
** female-supplied sexual services for hard currency to be spent at the Tuzex shop.
** expenses for running hot water for showers.

...there were considerable advantages as well.

02. 06.

A new kind of "citizen journalism" in Prague

Dial +420 246 019 060

Well, before you do that, I suggest you have a squizz at Utterz.com to discover for yourself the latest citizen journalism craze to hit the Prague streets ever since the advent of the mobile telephone in our fair republic.

First it was email.

Then it was webblogs, more commonly referred to as "blogs."

In both cases, the uptake was rather slow and most people found it cumbersomely odd to use email as a means of regularly staying in touch. We all remember those days: "Can I send you an email?" The inevitable reply: "Sorry, I don't use email to stay in touch." Blogs were even more macabre as a means of archiving thoughts on a given handful of key topics, for that matter.

But our citizens quickly took these two killer technologies up. Czechs, in their perennial capacity for being open to new technologies and their tendency for "consumer trial," in the marketing sense of the term.

Now there's a new kid on the block and it's called Utterz.

No, not some kind of Czech code for the word Úterý (Tuesday), what with the transposing of the "z" and "y" keys on the Czech keyboard (cheers to Ivana for pointing this out!), but utterance, as in vyrok, as in the ability to pick up your mobile phone, dial in the above 9 digits, and plainly comment about something going on at your given coordinates, the instant it happens.

I for one have been "uttering" a lot lately.

One of my pet theories is that Utterz.com will be precisely the thing that brings candidate NATO (and newly-democratic) nations like Ukraine and Georgia into the full-on Western fold. When a citizen can become his/her own anchorperson, leapfrogging the traditional journalistic chain of command to supply news about a given happening to the world in less than five minutes, you know another one of those "colour" revolutions is on the horizon. I originally uttered about it here.

I didn't agree with bloggi's reply to that utter, which basically refuted my findings, with bloggi claiming that with greater citizen surveillance on the part of these nations' secret services -- not to mention incursions by Russian cloak and dagger types into the domestic affairs of these former Soviet satellite republics -- fewer people be inclined to use cellphones as a way to get information out about injustices occurring in their society.

Here's a thought: How effective would state police and goons have been in the various scrums of 2004's Ukraine during its Orange Revolution?

Imagine people being able to dial in their reflections from street level, camped out in Kyiv's Independence Square in pup tents, protesting hard for their man Yushchenko? Imagine these same people armed with cellphones, reporting on the spot to Ukrainian relatives abroad who would then convey this fresh information onward to Western media services, bypassing the standard channels?

I encourage our locals to make greater use of this new tool for the simple reason that it's a great conversation starter. The rawer, the better, goes my vote.

There's more than enough to protest about in Cesko these days. You'll need to graft on more fingers and toes, as you'll likely lose count enumerating using the traditional methods.

Wishing you the best of things,
ADM


ps the access number again is +420 246 019 060