Last Sunday (after mindlessly playing jade Empire for almost 24 hours) I decided to take my broken geekish shell of a human outside for a little sun bathe, to recharge my batteries and rest my eyes. Since I live near City Mall I thought at first to go on a short walk till the Progresul Market to see if I can still get a few apples (sunday, 4 ‘o clock, you’d wish :P). Of course there was nobody there, but since it was all nice and sunny and I’ve been way too stuck in my chair at home, I decided to go on and meet my neighbourhood.

Two words: veeeeeery educative.

Looking at my lifestyle and especially my colleagues’ habits I realised that people working in advertising, the ones responsible for making all of us loosen our purse eventually, tend to loose it by far. I was amazed at many not-so important details at first. For once, I never knew people can build their own balconies on blocks that were never meant to have such things. It was fascinating to see what normal people do, people that have a normal, most of the time boring badly-paid job etc. The smells, the music, the voices, their faces, it was all like a new city for me. It’s fascinating how easily it is to just walk 2 or 3 km away from the central areas in Bucharest and feel as if you’ve arrived in a whole different town, with different customs, people and so on.

It’s so easy to become as if from another planet. Too bad we work most of the time thinking that we know what most people think, when in reality we are just as far from the truth just as anybody else, caught up in our techie slangs, jokes and stories. Who are we working for in the end ? Not for them, that would be a lie. For the customers ? But they are even farther from reality than us, creatives. In the end, what is our purpose? But the ethics of our job is a very delicate subject, one that is better left alone.

Final advice: take a walk, go a little farther from in front of your home shop, look carefully and you’ll see something different. THAT is just a small piece of the real world. Enjoy it’s complexity.

Hope I’ll be able to take a few photos of those fascinating balconies :)