Thursday, November 09, 2006

"Alfa Roma"

Recently, my husband had to go to the airport - one of the few occasions when he needs a taxi. As usual, he called his favourite taxi company. It is known as "1 Dollar Taxi" and isn't among the biggest in the industry.
And as usual, my mother in-law was angry. "Why did he call them again? There are only Gypsy drivers working there; in fact, the company is named "Alfa Roma". Some time they'll drive him to some remote place and rob him."
("Roma" is the politically correct term for "Gypsy".)
As a matter of fact my husband, despite his habit to go to the airport late, has never (yet) missed a plane. Besides, I feel there is something wrong with my mother in-law's logic. After we demand the Gypsies to work, it isn't very honest to boycott them when they do. So these days, when I needed a taxi and saw a "1 Dollar" approaching, I raised my hand.
The taxi was quite good. The company may hire Gypsy drivers (and I think it is good if it does) but that particular driver was white. And while on the outside of the car was written the popular name "1 Dollar Taxi", inside there was a label with the official name of the company. It was "Alfa Romeo" with some additional letters.
I don't know why. Possibly they have some agreement with the auto producer.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

The aftermath of the elections

As expected, the current President Georgi Parvanov won a second term. He had 75.9% of votes at the second round, his rival Volen Siderov collected only 24.1%.
Yesterday, my husband commented while watching the news, "Now, when Parvanov was re-elected, everything goes on as expected. A Russian company is appointed to build the second nuclear plant and Bogomil Raynov was decorated with a medal."
I've mentioned in my previous post the tendency of Mr. Parvanov to decorate nasty people. Bogomil Raynov is a writer who used to be very well positioned during the Commnist era, in fact he was close friend of Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of dictator Todor Zhivkov. Older generations remember that when Bogomil was young, he publicly renounced his father, writer Nikolay Raynov, in order to boost his career.