I am currently in a weird situation. I received an invitation to TIFF Cluj, and I was excited to take part in the event. After three days, it turns out that going to Cluj is not such a good idea anymore. God knows why; I do not think Cluj has more ferocious monsters than other cities in Romania. But anyway, apparently it is not a good idea to go and see the films, the train trip is viewed as an inappropriate option (why is the train inappropriate?), the bad wolves will eat me alive in Cluj, and so on and so forth.

I am amazed at how quickly people change their minds. Someone launches an invitation, and that should be it. Shut up if you are going to change your mind. This current approach of changing one’s opinion halfway through is a health killer. Danger is everywhere, even within one’s family. Why can’t people stick to their initial point of view? They give you something to be excited about and then do their best to kill that excitement. Why go through the trouble of inviting someone if you are going to ruin everything by taking it back in the middle of things? It makes no sense.

I truly believe that changing one’s mind is a pure luxury. If you cannot find solid reasons for the change, it looks unserious and fishy. At this point, I am at home with two main points of view: one is to stay at home, because only God knows what people actually intend when they invite you to something; the other is to go alone by train and expect a harsh reception when I return home. Mind-blowing, and it is just a film festival, not foreign policy.

Family is expected to help; but, on the other hand, if you need to be advised on every issue in one’s life by friends and family, it is a very serious sign of uncertainty. Ambigous persons are pure poison. I find it a sign of maturity when a woman or a man pays attention to the final stage of an endeavor. The opposite is antisocial and antireproductive behavior and will definitely kill the species.

I think it has to do with language, because something bad has happened to the Romanian language; more precisely, there is an epidemic of cursing. Bad words and bad behavior make love and trips impossible. Although we are French speakers and French was taught in school for decades during communism, we do not behave like the French. Our words sound harsh and unloving, and the grammar mistakes made at a very high level of administration can break one’s heart without any violence or cheating. It can be called administrative love, and it is tolerable only during the 8+ hours at work. It is not Oxford English either, because Jane Austen managed create a funny and loving language for personal conversation. I dare not mention Yes, Minister! and Yes, Prime Minister! – Such an approach seems unattainable from the Romanian perspective.

I personally believe that if one does not love their language, that person is not capable of love at all. Is there any love left inside families, or is there only intense annoyance and routine? And, of course, there are the attention seekers. We are hunted by the biggest attention hunters in the world, so please do not make the mistake of thinking that nobody is watching you. Everybody is watching everybody.

Everybody is watching everybody. What would life be without family internal competition? The one between brothers is particular because, as far as I have noticed, it is like driving a car on the highway at maximum speed with one flat tire. You might overtake the other, but you might also lose your life on the road. Of course, all this happens under the eyes of the parent or parents, who consider it a personal glory to see their children destroy themselves in pursuit of their love and recognition. It is like Romeo and Juliet, who both die in the end because each of them thinks the other was more appreciated by the parents. Smart parents do not make their children vulnerable out of fear of losing control over them. Loving parents never judge their children and loving children never test their parents.

Only in families is there the expectation, upon reaching maturity, to be accepted as you are. Appraisal at work has nothing to do with love; it has to do with competition and money. Love is an emotion, and it is blind. Work is pure competition, and it involves high skills and ferocious ambition and, most of all, the desire to be the best in the room, even if nobody likes you. If work does not offer the grounds for that competition, it will move to the family level, and competition inside the family is like trying to be successful in high business while wanting to keep forever the legal status of an LLC with a sole associate, even if your turnover at the end of the year amounts to billions.

I have a hotel in Mamaia where I enjoy staying, but every time I go there, I cannot avoid thinking again and again that, if the owner had not argued with the owner of the nearby hotel, who was very close to him, the first one would have bought it and made a successful business out of the two. But because of a violent verbal dispute, they did not close the deal, and now both hotels, which I do not think are currently in use, are underrated. Good business is far removed from emotion. You do not abandon a deal just because the other person is upsetting you; such a situation shows that the asset in question is more valuable than people commonly believe.

But how are business and law supposed to work together, and what is business law really? Law deals with situations that bring uncertainty in order to stabilize and secure society, while business handles risk and action and wants to live by the principle that time is money. Law means waiting, so it does not quite keep pace with change. By and large, business is not interested in legal issues; it only wants things to happen according to its wishes, and it does not want to wait for the time needed to change the law. Business moves at full speed, while law is about safety, and safety means slowing down.

On the other hand, law cannot exist without money, and its coercive power depends a lot nowadays on financing. Well, well, we have a new actor in this connection between business and law, and that is the world of finance. The finance world is curious but mute, and it wants supreme glory, just like the other two. Globalization has made it impossible to exist and live on planet Earth without financial help. If one is not the best communicator in the world and cannot get costs covered by other people, it is impossible to deal with large sums of money without financial help.

And who is the censor and bridge builder of the finance world? Technology, more precisely, the Excel program. Only Excel knows what budget a country has or what interest must be paid, because it sums up financial data. One zero less or one zero more can change many lives on the planet. I do not know how to use this program, and my requests to learn through training have remained unanswered. So, the last time I needed to calculate something, please imagine the situation as follows: I had to put together serious numbers, but I did not know how to use Excel, so I asked colleagues of mine to double-check my results. The consequence was that I appeared unprofessional for exposing my lack of knowledge to others and for asking for help, so, in the final chapter, I simply abandoned the collaboration because it was definitely destroying my professional reputation, and I did the math myself with a pen and a piece of paper. That is life.

At the end of the day, I did my best to do my job, but I am not supposed to let myself be humiliated in a job that despises collaboration between employees. Every time I look at numbers, such as Romania’s budget or figures in general, I smile because I think of myself some time ago and of the fact that many things have become extremely relative, especially figures. As I previously mentioned, the test of a billion is to walk on the street just like someone in debt and not feel scared.

I have not told you who my favorite billionaire is, at least in Romania. It is nea Marin Juvete from Oltenia, from the film Nea Marin miliardar, because he is the only one able to use both communism and capitalism to achieve his goal, and in a very funny way too. I am quite interested in the knowledge and the pure essence of his wisdom, and also in that of Brâncuși. That is why I am curious to find out who recently bought Danaide at the auction in New York.

I personally believe that the Romanian state should have bought it, because it is highly representative of Brâncuși’s work, and the Romanian Art Museum in Bucharest does not have a statement piece by Brâncuși to exhibit, while Danaide is such a work. I am hoping that the sculpture will come to Bucharest for an exhibition, because it is too beautiful not to be admired in public. And I think the work shines even more when it stays, even for a while, in the native country of its author.