Photos taken by Raoul Pop
At this morning’s breakfast, we had fresh strawberries from our garden. It was the first ripe batch this season, picked just minutes before we ate them. No artificial ripeners or chemicals used in our garden, I can tell you that!
Forgive the inferior quality of the photos; they were taken with my mobile phone, a Nokia X3-02. (If you’re thinking about getting it for its 5 megapixel camera, don’t.)
When I think of shaving razors currently on the market, I think of cartoon fights where everyone pulls out a bigger gun. Razor companies are constantly trying to outdo each other with more blades. If it’s not the blades, then it’s a “microcomb”, or a vibrating handle… which brings all sorts of other imagery to mind, the kind that has nothing to do with shaving, unless you’re into weird fetishes.
It’s the same kind of approach that software companies use these days. Their code gets so bloated, because they never take the time to clean it up, that all they can hope for is that hardware manufacturers can throw more RAM and MHz at the problem so they don’t have to optimize their code. Apple took a different approach with the Snow Leopard operating system: they took almost a year to clean it up, throwing out the junk. That’s why I admire Apple.
On the other hand, companies like Gillette and their competitors lost sight of the art of shaving and figured everyone was a nitwit who couldn’t learn to shave properly and couldn’t take care of their razor, so they overdesigned their razors for the lowest common denominator. In the process, the razor became a plastic toy, not a tool, a crappy little thing you throw away instead of something you respect and maintain, because it keeps you looking civilized.
Because it became a throw-away toy, their profit margins increased. Because the razors no longer lasted a lifetime, they could sell more of them. You just look down the line of razor models from the Gillette over the years, and you’ll see they get more and more plasticky, with less metal parts. If they have metal in them, it’s not in the head (certainly not where the cartridges attach to the handle); that part needs to be plastic so it breaks after a while.
Don't let its flashy looks fool you. It just can't compare to a good safety razor.
The cartridges have started to cost more as well. A pack of eight cartridges for the Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor (the latest flashy gimmick from Gillette) runs about $30 at Amazon. That’s $3.75 per cartridge, and from my experience, they last about 3-4 shaves. By contrast, a pack of 60 assorted safety razor blades costs $18. That’s 30 cents per blade, and they last about 6-7 shaves. (By the way, I’d recommend that pack for those learning to shave with a safety razor, because it’ll let you try different brands to see which blades work best for your face.)
The real deal.
They also polluted the environment with all that disposable plastic crap. Now you throw away the razor, not just the blades. And the blades aren’t just steel, which is perfectly recyclable, but they’re plastic and metal, which is annoyingly difficult to recycle, because you need to separate the two materials from each other, and it’s just not worth the trouble.
It’s such a shame. I used to admire Gillette about 10 years ago, before I got disappointed with all the stuff they’re doing these days. I still shave with a classic Gillette Safety Razor, pictured below. I still keep my grandfather’s Gillette Heavy Duty Safety Razor, and plan to use that when my own breaks down. Things used to be simple and beautiful. Where did they go wrong?
The classic Gillette safety razor.
If you’d like to learn how to shave properly, check out my wet shaving guide. And there’s also a video, embedded below.
Image of ProGlide Razor courtesy of Gillette. Image of Merkur Heavy Duty Safety Razor courtesy of Wikipedia.
On a side street in Dumbraveni, Romania, in a neighborhood full of gypsies, you’ll find the city’s old Roman-Catholic church. It’s over 1,000 years old, and it’s not being properly maintained, as is the case with many of Romania’s historic buildings. Looking at the building itself, it’s hard to believe it’s stood there for a millenium, but there it is. Sure, there are architectural details which date the building, but it’s not imposing, certainly nothing of the scale of the Armenian-Catholic church just a few blocks away from it.
When we got there, it was locked up. The front door — now made of iron — was bolted. The sign marking it as an historic monument was torn. The back doors were nailed shut, and so were the windows. One of the doors was even walled in.
I walked around the building, trying to avoid human feces that marked the grass courtyard, and noticed that even though the cellar doors were nailed shut, I could pry one of them ajar and squeeze through.
My sense of adventure got the better of me, and I went ahead. I grabbed a little LED flashlight from the car, and headed inside. It was clear the vaults underneath the church had been looted and vandalized, numerous times. There were countless footsteps in the sand, and trash left there by hooligans. Important architectural details, like the columns you see in one of the photos, were either shattered and on the floor, or downright missing.
The grave you see below, one of several built into the supporting walls of the vaults, has been desecrated, along with others. If you look carefully, you’ll see human bones among the rubble.
There was an iron door with intricate relief work, which leads to an inner sanctum. It was bolted shut, and I could see a serious amount of time has passed since it was opened.
There is a lower level to the vaults, partially uncovered here. I’m not sure if the walls below are stable enough for someone to go inside. I would have doubts about venturing there.
The intricate design of the mold on the vault walls is a possible indication that they were painted once.
There you have it. I’m not sure of this church’s fate. No caretaker was in sight when I was there, nor were there visible signs that the church was being cared for.
I recently bought an Apple Battery Charger. It’s a diminutive device that charges two batteries at a time, within a few hours, and it comes neatly packaged in a paper box that can be easily opened. It does NOT come in that filthy plastic packaging that cuts you when you try to open it and takes up extra space. It comes in a rectangular package that can be stacked perfectly in boxes, taking up less space during shipping, storage and on retail shelves.
Now why can’t other companies do this? Why can’t they have smart design, instead of wasteful, stressful design? Have you taken a look at your battery charger lately? I have four other battery chargers from three different companies, and none of them are as well designed and thought out as the Apple battery charger.
It is clear to me that a lot of thought went into the design of the charger and of its packaging, much more thought than has ever gone into the design of another battery charger on the market. Somehow, Apple was able to fit the charger and six batteries into that little box.
Not only that, but there’s even a bit of empty space left inside, which was thoughtfully filled with a fold of the paper package, to ensure a snug fit for the batteries. Look through the round opening in the middle wall to see the top of the paper fold.
Did I mention the Apple Battery Charger works on both 120V and 220V current? How many other battery chargers do this? I brought a few chargers with me from the States, and they’re useless to me in Romania without a converter. Similarly, I bought a charger here, and it’d be useless to me back in the States, because it only runs on 220V current.
Once again I have to ask — why can’t other companies do this? I can’t help but admit out loud that almost anything else on the market appears crude when compared to Apple. It’s fascinating how much of an anomaly Apple is when you look at it this way.
Having already visited about twenty-five fortified churches in Southern Transilvania, I can say that one of the most underrated fortified churches in this region is the one in Curci. It’s sad that it’s so, because it is quite beautiful, both on the outside and on the inside. Its outside is truly picturesque and its inside, though white-washed, as is the case with most reformed churches, still shows remnants of its more colorful gothic past, with green men on its walls and ceilings and murals hidden beneath multiple coats of lime paint.
When we visited in the spring of 2011, its caretaker told me no one had visited it for over 5 months. How can anyone miss a church like this one? It is a truly beautiful place.
Curciu, also known as CriČ™ in Romanian, Kiertš or Kirtsch in German and KĂĽkĂĽllĹ‘kĹ‘rös, SzászkĹ‘rös, and KĹ‘rös in Hungarian (that’s right, three separate names), is an old Dacian settlement that was once called “La Fântâni”, itself built over yet older settlements from the bronze and iron age (source). It is first mentioned in written documents in 1332, and we also find it in court documents in 1337 alongside the name of a Saxon, Petro de Keuruz, who was called to testify as a witness about a legal matter. Curciu is also the place where my grandfather on my mother’s side was born.
The construction of the Saxon church was completed in the first half of the 14th century and took about 50 years. A lot of river rocks were used in its walls, as you’ll see in the photographs. The structure underwent modifications in 1425-1430, when the choir loft was added and again sometime in the 1450s. The church’s organ was built in 1844 by Wilhelm Maetz and it is still intact and undamaged to this day.
It isn’t a big church, but there are so many interesting architectural details that clearly point out a master at work. When you look at it as a whole (its chosen location, its perspective from all points of view, the way the architect chose to express the various functions of the building and the spaces used), it is a thing of wonder. It made me want to explore every little nook and cranny, and come back to it in the future.
If you’d like to visit this church, the village of Curciu is about 12 km away from Medias. You’ll need to take a paved country road toward the village of Darlos, pass through it, and follow the sign toward Curci.u Once there, you’ll need to ask around for the way to the caretaker’s house, who will then give you a personal tour of the domain.
Enjoy the photographs!
Raoul Pop 