Uber in Bucharest

I saw it all over the news yesterday: Uber launched its service in Bucharest. People are debating now if this is a good choice or not, so here is what information I found so far from a client's perspective.

Good points:

- Uber drivers are required to have a clean judiciary history and clean traffic violations history; cars should be newer than 10 years and insured; 

- from the application you can see the driver's photo, his rating and the registration number of the car;

- once you set your start point and the end point you get an estimated fee for the trip you plan to do;

- the payment is done automatically from your card and you don't ever tip the driver;
- you can rate the drivers, but the driver can rate you too, so behave :)

Questionable points:

- I would have liked Uber to ask also for the maintenance records of the car; you may have a newer car, but if you never check your brakes... This may be an issue in Romania where I still see many cars on the street which do not look well maintained; I think regular taxi drivers are required by law to check their car every 6 months, so even if they skip some tests the basic systems of the car should be in reasonable state;

- you have to put all your card details in the application (including CVV2 code) and they store in their database; this leaves you exposed in case their database is ever hacked; somebody mentioned that card companies say it is forbidden for a trader to store the CVV2 code of your card;

- I'm not sure what happens if you are stuck in traffic, do they have a waiting fee like regular taxis?

- can you change the route from the one computed by the application? for example if you know a less congested one;

- I understand Uber takes a cut from the fee (5%-20%); do they pay taxes in Romania for their profits? do the drivers pay taxes for the money they make? If the drivers have to file by themselves a form to the tax authorities to declare this income I'm sure nobody will ever pay taxes on the money they get;
- the minimum fee is 6 RON and if you cancel an order before getting into the car you will still pay the minimum fee;
 - for now the reported fees are slightly bigger then the ones of regular taxis, but the price may decrease as more drivers join the system; and supposedly you get a better service;

Two more issues you have to pay attention to: if there are big events like soccer games or rock concerts the fees will probably increase because Uber has an algoritm which automatically increases the fee if the demand is high in a particular area like in this case. Make sure you put the correct destination address; if you put another city by mistake you may end up with a $900 bill like in this case.

Overall I think the idea of the Uber service is good, but let's see how the execution looks like. I don't like that the number of taxi licenses are limited by the local authorities, this interferes with the free market for no good reason. But some regulation is needed in this area in order to make people feel safe when they take a ride in the city.

Update: I found out that they also have a waiting fee, similar to the one that taxis have;

Re-build this city

Bucharest was badly damaged during the communist era. Entire neighbourhoods were demolished to make room for working class apartment buildings and the likes of "House of the People". Unfortunately this trend continued after the revolution, so high office buildings were built in house areas, next to beautiful churches. Houses classified as monuments (and thus forbidden to be demolished) are left to crumble and fall by their "nouveau riche" owners who just want to build another apartment or office building. When I found out (see the full story here) about this building

... I thought that maybe there is a hope to re-build this city. Since I went to Barcelona to see Gaudi's work and I also saw an exhibition about Hundertwasser in Budapest a few years ago, I will definitely go to Siriu street to see this beautiful building.

And the winner is...

Costi Rogozanu.
Out of the blogs I read during the presidential election campaign I consider the one of Costi the most objective (detached from either contending part) and with good humor.

Other contenders:
Teodor Tita
Alin Fumurescu
Doc@Hotnews
Tolo

I hope that more and more people will practice critical thinking relative to what happens in our society. And maybe this type of ideas will rule one day.

Timeout

Usually I don't like shopping, especially for cloth since I find it very hard to find something I really like. So I was happy one or two years ago when I found a chain where I could find stuff I like at reasonable prices. I got jeans, shirts and T-shirts (e.g. Run Like Hell) from Timeout, but the crisis stroke again and this retailer went out of business. All their shops in Bucharest were closed and so I'll have to ramble again through countless stores to find something to buy. Luckily my Merrell shoes bought in Delaware six years ago are still in very good shape and I also run 3-4 km in park every now and then so I should be able to go for a shopping session when I will really need it :)

Future cars

Today we have diesel and petrol cars and a few hybrids, the most successful being Toyota Prius. As this industry is build on inoculation of the idea of having a personal vehicle, unless some catastrophic event (natural or economical) happens I don't see that many people giving up their beloved cars no matter how good the public transport will be.
So what will be the future of cars? Among the alternatives to oil based propelled cars the hype is nowadays on electric cars. Some estimates are saying that by 2020 10% of new sales will be electric cars, others estimate the adoption rate will be much slower to only 1-2% of new sales. At least one big company (Renault) is betting on the first estimate and plans to launch a full range of electric cars in a few years. The main drawbacks for electric cars at this moment are the cost of batteries (most of them use lithium which is not that abundant) and the infrastructure for recharging them. See the full story here.
As for myself, I hope the next car I buy will be at least a hybrid one.

Things people would like to do

I read recently a kind of survey about what would various (young) people want to do in their free time if they had the means. What puzzled me was that most of the answers were in two categories:
- doing some kind of extreme (or at least exotic) sport like skiing, scuba diving, horse riding, paragliding, motorcycling;
- going to a more or less exotic place like Africa, South America, Asia or an exotic island;

So, basically, all these people are looking around for is a new sensation: adrenaline, visual and more.
I'm kind of tired of looking again and again for this next new sensation. I would like instead to have a couple of hours each week in which to lay in bed and look at the ceiling of the room (or even better at the sky) and re-imagine the world, each time in a different way. Cause if you can imagine it in your head then it is real, isn't it? (For music it is scientifically proven to be this way as Oliver Sacks describes in his book Musicophilia, but more on this later.)

Doing as much good as you can around you

A couple of days ago I read an interview with Gabriel Liiceanu. It is mostly about the state of the Romanian society and it has a part I like a lot. I will try to translate it here:

Question: Do you think, Mr. Liiceanu, that the progress of this country depends in any measure on the political elite? Can we still consider that the president of this country represents a force that determines in any way the social progress? And I ask you these questions because there was no other president than Traian Basescu with more good intentions and determination for the social progress.

Answer: "For a long time I asked these questions in the same manner as you and, having the tendency to think pessimistic, I thought that, indeed, there is not much hope. Years passed and I realized it is not productive to think in such radical terms. I start to think that the <> that you talk about is done mostly not by the <> of the good, but by decreasing the chances of evil. I'll always think that I'll have to chose between a smaller evil and a bigger evil and that is enough in order to achieve progress in an invisible way. And I tell to myself: Basescu didn't manage to do much, but maybe he didn't have a majority in Parliament to support him, maybe he didn't have a government to work with. Maybe after the next elections there will be better people in the Parliament, etc. And when I am desperate, like you, I think on the following: 1. that I live the miracle to have escaped the communism's nightmare (which I couldn't imagine as possible before 1990) and 2. that from 1990 till now there have been some big advances in a couple of areas.
We have nothing else to do but to struggle all of us, there is no refuge. It is enough if each of us is doing his best wherever he is. And to persuade the people around him that they have a choice between a smaller evil and a bigger evil. That's what I think we can do: as much good as we can around us. If the number of people who think this way will increase then the our society will progress irrespective of one political figure or another."

What stroke me in this part is the same argument that I heard a long time ago. Our philosophy teacher (Mr. Marica) used to challenge us in class in a Socratic way. And one day he asked one of our colleagues what would he do in life. My colleague answered that if he would be the leader of Romania he would change this and that, but for now there is nothing he could do. To this our professor replied that it is not productive to think this way. We should always think of the best we can do now, instead of dreaming on a distant future or relying on another person who has power for things to change.

You know, maybe my philosophy teacher and Mr. Liiceanu went to the same school :)

Keeping a promise

I'm always amazed on how things work in our society. Imagine you are traveling to a city in a foreign country. So you go to a website and make reservations for plane and hotel. And all you have is a piece of paper where it says that on the day X, at hour Y a plane will take off and you will be allowed to board on that plane. And then in that foreign city you go at the hotel with another piece of paper and they will just let you sleep and eat there. This is really the magic of the modern society, the fact that people learned to respect a contract, even if they never got in touch with their partner. Of course, it is not flawless, and it varies wildly by country and the type of business you are doing, but it is still amazing IMHO.

On the other hand, apart for the B2B, is the P2P promise land where you have no written contracts, but you have expectations. You have expectations even if there is no promise made and others have expectations from you too. And when you fail to meet the expectations or, even worse, you fail to keep a promise you made disaster strikes. And it can be very bad, as you don't loose some money, you loose the trust of others. I remember one such occasion when me and a group of friends organized something funny. But on the day we were supposed to do it I missed it. It was not like I ruined all the surprise, they did it without me anyway and it was fine. But then I was told this: how do you expect somebody to trust you again since you didn't do even this simple thing? I was only puzzled and amused at that moment and only later I realized how tough that was...

Is there a conclusion here? Only that I appreciate when the promises are kept, I know how hard is to do it.

P.S. Last Saturday I saw "Eduard the third" by Shakespeare at TNB. This particular play of Shakespeare is not one of his masterpieces, but most of the drama there was in characters that had to choose between different promises they made explicit or implicit: fidelity to your husband or serving the king's wishes, fidelity to your father or to your best friend and so on.

Cu dus si intors

I write this blog in English (because I want to practice and also because I have a lot of friends who don't speak Romanian and they might read it some day, if they don't already do). I read, write and speak English almost every day. I often use English words when I talk in Romanian and many times I just say whole phrases in English although I am talking in Romanian to somebody. And yet, it is so far away to be "The language" I speak. I like to play with words a lot, I like to coin phrases with two meanings (depending on the listener's knowledge), I like the twisted meanings from hard crossword puzzles (I don't remember most of them, but there is one that somehow got stuck in my head: se pune greu la cale - lest), but I don't remember doing ever such things English (btw, if you ever notice that at me let me know :)). So definitely, Romanian is my language.
And what was I saying in the title? That was my busy status at one point on messenger (Romanian has diacritics too, which most of the time I don't use when I write on the computer).

Blogging is hard

I have a couple of things I want to blog about, but it's getting harder to find the time and the mood to write them down. I'll just make a brief list so at least I don't forget about them and hopefully I'll come back to each of them later:
- more about Egypt and maybe some more pictures;
- more about "Letters to my son", a very beautiful book indeed;
- some articles from The Economist about the planetary ocean and what mankind is doing to it;
- the paper about the carbon tax proposed by Stiglitz;
- the account I got for Google Apps and the release of Python 3.0; maybe I'll trick myself into learning this programming language, you never know :)

Body of ideas

I noticed I have this habit of not mentioning the names of the persons when I tell a story or talk about something. I somehow feel it is not the exact person who was the subject of the story that matters, but the story itself with the meaning it has for me. It is the same when I say a quote, many times I forget who initially said it, it is never my intention to become a fan of somebody who said something interesting, what matters is the idea she/he expressed. Any idea in fact becomes "open source" once it was uttered to the world. I think it is a body of ideas we are always talking about, isn't it, buddy?

City FM

City FM is probably the only radio station in Bucharest where you can listen Iron Maiden at 8 o'clock in the morning. One of their jingles sounds like this: "Hey, pelican, did anybody say you are not allowed to listen rock music in the morning?" They totally rock most of my mornings :)

Vacation

It's official, I'm on vacation! Each day felt just longer and longer for the last two weeks (am I missing something?). Although it's only a week I hope to come back with some more energy.

BBC in Romanian is gone

Yesterday was the last broadcast of BBC in Romanian. This was one of the iconic radio stations in Romania (starting 69 years ago) during the WW II and the communist era. This was also my favorite news source in the 90ties and the place where I first learned about what market economy means and what was wrong in our country in those days. They will put up online an archive with many of their broadcasts here. Good bye BBC in Romanian, I will never forget you!

Down but not out

I spent the last three days in bed having a severe flu. I still have some fever, but it's getting better, so probably I'll go back to work on Monday. Meanwhile, I managed to finish the fifth book of Harry Potter series and I started the sixth one, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". It is very entertaining and I think this is the best book of the series so far.

The first program usually one writes is one that prints "Hello world!". So, here I am:
Hello world!