welcome to alecdean.com

greetings everyone…

whew… it’s been awhile since i’ve written… the truth is that i have been too busy with work to blog lately… our little company has been doing quite well… we aren’t profitable yet, but we are on the right track and new business has been steadily coming our way… we just finished two new websites for two of our clients… check them out below:

Saracco International is an american owned and operated construction contracting and consulting company here in budapest…

Donnelly KFT is an irish owned architechture and real estate investment company also here in budapest…

anyway, jason is having fun here and is doing well at work with us… he is in charge of our “search engine optimization” service as well as contributing to our design services… his business card design was recently chosen by one of our newest clients… more on this later…

jason is also moving out this weekend into his new flat down the street… we have the usual shopping run planned for the weekend… ikea, tesco, dm, etc…

last friday, we had a dinner party and i cooked tacos for 14 people… it was a ton of work, but with edit and jason’s help, i pulled it off… it was great to have something at our house except for the clean up…. i now realize that the way to go is to schedule the maid to come on the day after the party…

oh… also, 3 weeks ago, we took a weekend trip to szombathely… here are the pics…

in other news, we just put in a request to my mom for some baby guide books… why? because edit’s clock is ticking and i’m pretty much ready too… this means that sometime around the middle of next year, we are going to start the kid project…. we’ll probably wait until after my cousin’s, jenny’s, wedding down in the virgin islands… yeah… that’s a big trip… we’ll be gone for a month way down there in the islands… nothing but golf, rays, snorkeling, sand, sea, baby making, and those fruity cocktails with little umbrellas for 1 month next may…. ahhh…

i’m going to try to update this thing about 2 times per week from now on… sorry for the hiatus…

-alec

well… jason is here… so far, we are trying to juggle his arrival with our business duties… hopefully, we can start looking for apartments for him in the next few days… in the meantime, jason is catching up with a few old friends… man, i never knew how happy shoes could be… just look at them… i mean are those some happy shoes or what?

together again: 1 man… 2 shoes…

-alec

houston resident, jason malone, has decided to “up and move to budapest” after some encouragement from his favorite pair of white sneakers…

jason

in july, jason and his shoes took a trip from houston to budapest for the nuptuals of alec and edit… at the end of the trip, in a surprising move, the shoes decided to stay on in budapest… jason returned to his daily life in texas, but as he came down from the high of budapest, something was missing… in his own words, jason was heard saying, “… i don’t know… it’s like something is missing…” in an attempt to console jason there were postcards and phone calls from his shoes… but, for a man still lingering in the afterglow of bootypest, this only made things worse…

jason’s shoes

then it happened. one night late. on the dark highway. jason received a call from his shoes… he could bearly understand them over the party in background, but they were screaming in succession about how jason could quit his job and move to budapest… about how they would find a job together… about how everything would be better… in a pivotal moment, jason quelled the feverous tempo of the conversation with one question, “have you got my back?” he asked of his shoes… they said, “no we’ve got your feet… edit and alec got your back… now jack-knife that thing and get over here”… so in a single week of dizzying action, jason quit his job, ended his relationship, sold his car, sold his motorcycle, rented his apartment, and bought a ticket to budapest… in just a few days, he will arrive to budapest to back to his shoes… when asked if he thinks he is making a smart decision, jason said, “i don’t know… but i trust my shoes… and i think together we can get through anything”… the international reunion on tuesday, is supposed to gain local media coverage as a cute little slice of life type story…

-alec

here we are in day three of the protests… yesterday, mszp opponents peacefully united around the parliment building… kolbász was shared, folk songs were sung, and people chanted for the resign of gyurcsány (pronounced (basically) “j00r’-ch ahh n” for all you news reporters out there)… meanwhile the hungarista or nazi/skinheads slept in and rejuvenated themselves for another night of, huh huh, destroying stuff… edit and i just missed the riots by about 30 minutes… we got home, turned on the t.v., and they were in blaha lujza tér… part of me says, “hey kid, grab your camera and get in the mix”, but the other half says, “edit, can you grab me a ’snapple’ from the fridge?”… even though it’s obvious that nothing of political consequence will come out of gyurcsány’s leaked tapes, it feels like the rioting will go on for a few more nights… especially, since most of the rioter’s don’t even know why they are on the streets… when polled last night, 78% said that they heard that sziget festival was cancelled next year…

stragglers from sziget fest take to the streets

3 revelers keeping their shaved heads warm

white trash

-alec

	meet MSZP a progressive hungarian political party promoting a non-socialist agenda and overall globalization
	four years ago, this man, gyurcsány férenc, and his political party, MSZP, were elected into in hungary… because much of the masses fear change, gyurcsány férenc and company have been slow to make changes… but, because of NOT changing, hungary’s economic situation has severly worsened… so, with the threat of economic problems pushing MSZP on one side and with fearful hungarians on the other, gyurcsány, called for a private meeting…
	pep talk… with his team circled ’round… gyurcsány gave a stern pep talk in which he told the truth… he told his constituants that they had made none of the changes that were needed to help the hungarian economy… he said that to say to the people otherwise was a lie… he said that essentially they had lied about things in order to get recently reelected… this is all true… MSZP has not made the progress that is needed but, the devil is in the details… basically, it was safer for their party to make mild reform and misrepresent the state of the economy than it was to face the wrath of hungarian socialists/nationalists…
	this is a backstabber… someone leaked gyurcsány’s private speach to the media…
	these are the opposition parties…
	enter the spin doctors
	and soundbytes
	opposition parties + spin doctors + soundbytes = angry masses…
	this is mtv (magyar television) they were attacked last night by angry masses wanting to read messages on the airwaves…

-alec

it didn’t take long for edit and i to get into legal trouble… this story is a perfect example of the well oiled machine that is hungary… we moved into our new office in april… we didn’t really do too much working there because of the wedding… the wedding was taking all of our time and we maybe used the office about 6 times until july… in late july, the gas man came for a meter reading… he said something was wrong with the meter and he would have to come back to fix it… little did we know that gas company was planning on making us pay for the new meter and all of the free gas that we had stolen since we moved in… that’s right, they accused us of breaking the meter and stealing gas… apparently in hungary you are guilty until proven innocent, because we have to go to court not so that they can prove we did it, but so that we can prove we didn’t… it’s really quite kafka-esque… stolen gas…. ridiculous…

-alec

béla, a topic of past journals and a neighbor in our building, has passed away… we were informed of this last thursday as we packed our bags and prepared to head down for a quiet weekend together at edit’s balaton house… a notice was posted on the thumbtack board above the building’s mailboxes… béla’s only surviving family member is young viktor, the guy who left blood all over our stairs following a drunken outburst involving his fist and a window… there was no mention of why béla died… i guess the combination of not having legs and drinking probably did him in at the mediocre age of 53… i am still surprised… he didn’t seem sick… i greeted him as always, just a few days before he died… but, i guess he’s rolled on, even though his wheelchair ramp still stands at the building entrance… we’ll see for how long…

-alec