After dwelling in Eastern Europe’s bizarre post-Communist galaxy for more than eight years now, I’ve observed a ton of radical changes in this region over that span of time.

In my case, Czech Prague has disturbingly evolved from a city of mystery and intrigue — one with an ominously dark brooding aspect, albeit with an unsettling checkered past — into a ho-hum sleepy mitteleuropaische burg which doubles as a transit point for all and and sundry who seem to exist here in a sort of transitional bubble. The only people who seem to have anything to do with the Praguers are the Praguers themselves. Even other Czechs seem to resent their big city cousins terribly, perhaps quite normal for most countries. Prague is populated by locals and others who are pushing westward from Europe’s post-Soviet, post-Bloc East in search of a more permissive European environment in which to fulfill lifelong dreams or hatch their mendacious schemes for lucre. There are also those hailing from the wealthy West in search of a post-collegiate drunken, drugged-out adventure and those reviled washouts, castaways from societies where they just couldn’t make the grade. Losers by any other name.

Alas, Eastern Europe – and in my particular case, the hapless, bumbling, drunk, and extraordinarily corrupt Czech Republic – is not the People’s Republic. The Czech Republic – not in dog’s years — couldn’t ever boast of China’s expansive possibilities or come anywhere close to promising China’s seemingly endless opportunities for advancement.

So let’s draft a brief outline of the typical profiles of the ones who formerly flocked to these landlocked shores during the Golden City’s heyday, those wild post-Wall Fall 1990s:

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This came through the pipe today courtesy of Hurting the feelings of the Chinese people. It got me thinking, what else are they using “bases” in Eastern Europe for?

I attended this photo exhibit last night by Lubomir Kotek. Highly recommended for some late-’80s shots of life in the Former Czechoslovakia. All Bloc-heads and Commie-philes will enjoy the bleak Socialist-era photos on display and Prague’s ever-present scaffolding and constructions in the then-hardline Communist  nation. Amazing stuff.

It’s great to be back in Prague again after a long stint abroad and on the road. China and Romania were superb, as always, but there’s nothing quite like home…I think?

A couple of interesting interactions upon my return to the Czech lands that bear mentioning here, stuff that had me scratching my head whether it was just me or was it the place in which I found myself that was causing such things to happen? So for the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been mentally parsing out what (or, more appropriately, who) is the common denominator in all these cases.

So let’s have a closer look at these, shall we?

Apartment Hunting:

I’ve been on the slow lookout for a new apartment for a couple of months now. Over that period, I’ve been cultivating relationships with local property agents and landlords, promising to take as much time as possible before signing a new lease so I’m not forced into a pressure decision by landing something not as close to my liking as possible.

I have no qualms, unlike several of my colleagues, of working with local agents. In general, I think agents render a service that’s for the most part helpful to renters. That is, if they’re doing their job properly and well and aren’t johnny-come-lately sorts, there’s a value-add to their service. But I’ve also had experiences — during some recent agency interactions — with agents who seem to have succeeded in landing their jobs simply because they could string together a few barely comprehensible English phrases (the default expatriate lingo here).

To me, for an agent to do their job well, they must maintain good relationships with a roster of property owners so they can suggest appropriate properties off the top of their heads for serious buyers and renters. Drop of the phone kind of access. Landlords enjoy working with agents because the latter do all of those necesary triage that will eventually lead to a rental or sale. Since property owners can’t be bothered with the incessant phone calls and false promises which is the miserable reality of the rental market, agencies deserves ample compensation for ferrying prospective renters and buyers around town in the hopes of a deal. In an ideal scenario, agents know the right questions to pose and have the necessarily procedures in place to separate the true renters from the ones who are perpetually “just looking.” The chaff, in other words.

All of this comes under the rubric of “service.”

Look, I don’t mind paying for an extra month in fees — the standard agency ding — if a job is done well and I can walk away satisfied. It’s not a matter of money, as I can quite afford to pay. However, like most practical types, just because I have it doesn’t mean I’m simply forking it over to some agent because “that’s simply the way things are done in Prague.”

Several agents I’ve recently held meetings with think their fee is simply coming to them…just because. When their service doesn’t meet my expectations, I find myself openly asking them: “so what am I getting for the money besides a few clicks of your mouse and a couple of emails and phone calls?” If you drive me around town, then you might have an argument, but if you ask me to meet you, then why do you deserve a full month in fees just for placing a couple of calls? That’s what you call service? With Prague agency fees running anywhere between 500 to 1000 euros a pop — higher for luxurious addresses — where do you get off being flip or acting gruff with me as I ask for justification? Wouldn’t you do the same thing?

Again, I don’t want to undermine the value of a fee. Agencies indeed have overheads and the Prague market is fiercely competitive, triply so under crisis conditions. Some expatriates can also be downright nasty with agents, treating local Czech professionals (mostly women, admittedly, although there are several males operating in this space too) like hired hands, playing off several agencies at once in their relentless search for the absolute lowest rent. All told, this horse trading results in a rather jaded housing market, creating a sort of love-hate pas-a-deux between locals and foreigners with the former’s resentment growing knowing how expats are basically their bread and butter. Few Czechs have either the inclination or the disposable funds for an extra 800 euros on rental fees –  especially given how they can crack open a newspaper or browse a few onlines listings in the vernacular — so agents need expats to meet their monthly sales targets.

When I got back to town this past Monday, I contacted the two agents I’d been texting and emailing with all the way from China and Bucharest.

One young “student-y” girl who was previously quite gung-ho to have me as her client texts me to tell me she’s leaving her agency permanently. When I’d asked why, she replied that she was jumping ship for a better position elsewhere, and I immediately speculated on how badly the financial crisis was beginning to cripple Prague’s economy. One week before during our China-Czech Republic text/email exchange, everything was hunky-dory. The apartment I’d visited during October and liked was still available for a two-year rental, and there was hardly any hint of trouble. One week later, she was gone. Here today, gone tomorrow. Call it a premontion, though I suspected there might eventually be trouble with this agent the very day I’d met her, given that her business card was one of those standard issue impersonal jobs bearing an info@… email address. Her news that she was cutting loose didn’t shock me as much as it caused me to say “I told you so.”

I took it as a sign that this was to be the end of the line with my agency search. While the girl assured me that “her colleagues” would still be able to assist me, by then my heart wasn’t in it.

The silver lining: I’ve now switched tacks and am working with a private landlord directly. My new (hopeful) place is a gorgeous converted wine cellar with an adjoining terrace and parquet floors. It’s being readied for residence and our lease will be signed shorty. I found it after posting my own internet listing and by working the phones. Perhaps I should my new landlord ask for a month’s discount as part of my “agency fee?” Don’t I deserve it for pressing “send” a few times and for dialling a few phone numbers?

And then there was this…

Restaurant Service:

I’m a man about town and like most cafe denizens, I tend to complete a fair amount of work in restaurants and bistros. Something about the presence of other bodies sharing a communal space — interacting and breathing as one unit — somehow helps to jog my memory and boost my creativity. I’ve even completed books in cafes!

There’s a cafe I’ve been patronizing for years here in the centre of Prague. I must have spent tens of thousands of Czech crowns in food and beverage charges between myself and my colleagues over the years, witnessing more staff turnover at this place than some of the girls presently working there have even held down jobs.

Yesterday, I reach this place at my usual appointed hour, beelining for my favourite seat, but something was out of place. There were too many bodies present, abnormal for that hour of the day. I quickly learned that a corporate event — for which there was no signage — was underway.

The floor manager, normally an affable chap, barked at me that the place was closed. I glanced at my watch, looking at the early morning hour, and then looked back up at him to acknowledge what he had just told me, clearly displeased. I left shaking my head, alarmed at how he’d spoken to me so dismissively given that I’m one of his ten best regulars, but chalking it up to locals just being their usual local oblivious self-absorbed selves.

I wasn’t offended so much as I was aghast that a) a private affair was being held on a busy weekday business morning and b) the guy didn’t smile as he informed me the place (not his, by the way) was closed. Was he being too familiar, I wondered? If so, then perhaps I wouldn’t have to pay my bill the next time because we were just friends? Bet you that wouldn’t make him smile.

So my takeaways from these two interactions were as follows:

** Prague property agents render poor service for the high rates they are typically paid. They think their fee is simply their due, a kind of “taxation without representation,” as far as I’m concerned. I’ve even mentioned this to several agents in the past, but it doesn’t register. They somehow can’t comprehend the concept of the value proposition…yet. Why should I pay for something I don’t receive, I ask? Give me some service, and I’ll gladly compensate you. Treat me like a number — or worse, like your idiotic foreign mealticket — and I’ll tell you to take a hike, quick.

** Even after twenty years following the dismantling of the Czech Communist system and the frequent arrival of foreign tourists and businesspeople to the Czech capital, Prague Czechs continue to behave unacceptably in the service industry. In a competitive market, the money is automatically not coming to you, dear locals. If you give me poor service, I will walk and you will lose my business (and more, because I will tell all my friends and colleagues how bad you are at the click of a mouse).

** Give excellent service, and I will return to your place of business — day after day. Rest assured that I will spend all of my money there because you are doing something your peers haven’t the inclination nor the ability to do.

Yep, to survive in this town, you gotta grow a thick skin…

I’ve really been enjoying Honza’s daily Prague snaps. I thought it was time to give the man some props.

Vanguard Journalism’s new season is upon us…and Adrian Baschuk clocks this one out of the park in this latest Cuba documentary.

Mr. Erik Best of the Fleet Sheet normally cops to having the so-called “final word,” yet something I’d recently read in his October 21, 2009 “Final Word” e-dispatch entitled “Back to basics” got me pondering the last line in his thought of the day:

A better outcome to the [financial] crisis than a new world order would be a back-to-basics movement that revives the obsolete notions of fairness, honesty and hard work.

Moving on from that clever bit of woven wisdom, I made an executive decision that today’s final word rests with Yours Truly, not the eminent Mr. Best, as I parse out those final three fragments of Erik’s words as they relate to life in the Czech Republic’s HLAVNÍ MĚSTO. Of course, I welcome any and all feedback from you, as per usual.

Thoughts On Fairness:

Is it possible to be fair in a place like Prague? Have the bitter abusive lessons of our urinated-upon past been so ingrained into the culture and the attitudes of the locals that it’s nearly impossible to imagine an outcome where our society suddenly behaves equitably towards one another?

How can we possibly think about being fair when the actions of our non-clerical leadership cause us to look like the laughing stock of “New” Europe? When we’re given the conch shell of pan-European diplomacy for half a year, yet we don’t have the inner-fortitude to make it to the end of our allotted 6-month gift term? Or how about this zinger: how an inexplicably chronically overweight (is it glandular, Mr. Paroubek?) prime minister connives to undermine his taller, eminently better-looking, richer, and better with XX Chromosomal Units opposite number, drawing and quartering him behind the astonished gaze of our Brussels conferes while the rest of Europe waits with bated breath what will eventually befall us here in our Central European statelet?

Let’s come down a notch from the rarefied air of higher office. So how about fairness as it concerns the Czech hoi-polloi? How do locals treat each other in our nation’s largest city?

On balance, I’d say Czech interpersonal relationships can be better. Am I too pollyannaish to think that a day might soon come when our jealous backstabbing peers would revel in our personal successes? That, say, if I’m surging in my chosen field of professional or personal endeavour that those who are closely observing (ostre sledovali) me — like my so-called “friends” and colleagues — will loudly laud my various efforts, rather than conspiring to tear me down to stomp all over me, taking no prisoners and walking over dead bodies?

Hrm…

Perhaps I am in fact slightly “Prague-jaded,” given how I’ve had a mixed bag of experiences in this burg. Still, I continue to find it amusing how some here prefer to maintain their relationships on a more adversarial tip, relishing opportunities to have endless shoutfest go’s at hapless Magistrat bureaucrats or, even better, the chance to put the anxiety-ridden shakedown on yet another local employee/student/subordinate because that’s “the way things have always been here, so why should I act any different?”

Hrm…

Thoughts On Honesty:

A toughie, because anything I may write here about how dishonesty reins supreme in Prague Town might be equally applied to a host of other nations, cities, and environments. I’ll avoid slagging off on the Golden City, per se, because  although I’m of the opinion that mild criticism is healthy, baseless critiques land the critic and those who are the object of the former’s censure nowhere fast.

Nevertheless, I find we could make a heck of a lot of improvement on the honesty front. If only I had 50 hellers for the number of times I’ve heard young Czechs tell me — in Czech, of course — that “nejak bojim se o cizincu“/”I am somehow scared of foreigners” — I could cash those obsolete pieces of pressed tin in for some crown notes, my friends. Notes!

I find that the honesty proposition here has a different radically application to those hailing from outside our nation, something that has a staying power which defies logical explanation.

This is no idle armchair observation! I know on good information that there exists a double-standard against non-Czechs in the CR, because I’ve lived with Czech roomates in the past — not to mention having dated Czech XX Chromosomal Units before as well, my favourite — and on many occasions was flatly told epithets like:

• “I never tell foreigners the truth. I just tell them things they want to hear, usually nonsense, because it helps me get what I really want.”
• “I don’t care about other languages (read: English) because foreigners are usually stupid, and besides, I’m not going to be living anywhere else anyways in life other than in the cesky bordel so what’s the point in making an effort?”
• “There’s no way a foreigner is cleverer than a Czech. No way in hell.”

I realize the above lines read patently ludicrious — and if I were told these myself over a chilly half-litre of beer chat I’d concur — but seeing as I’ve heard these all myself you can take my word for it. Honest. This is the raw felt Czech daily reality.

I propose that were our society — our Czech society, that is — to employ a more honest approach in interpersonal dealings…not in business, where one of course is compelled to behave honestly otherwise I’ll cease doing business with you and besmirch your reputation to my personal network and colleagues with no chance of recovery (just kidding!)…we’d all be a lot better off for it.

The perennial — and oftentimes false — stereotypes about “Eastern Europeans” being untrustworthy crooks with handy access to easy-come-easy-go dirty cash would come to a final resounding end. I look forward to that day, don’t you? (One proviso to the above: as concerning Romanians, the Eastern European stereotype still applies).

Thoughts On Hard Work:

Yet another toughie…not just any sort of work, but hard work. In summary:

Czechs have:

• tremendous technical prowess. What I have previously referred to as being “Czechnical.”
• the mysterious physical fortitude to somehow commence their working day at obscenely early morning hours (those drill bits sometimes sound off at 6am and I’m still convinced that there’s a huge time savings from the typical cultural avoidance of a morning shower).
• burdensome social pressures to conform, ergo, they don’t have the tendency towards sloth, slacker-type attitudes given their fear of social ostracism due to remaining unemployed (“You don’t have a job, Honzo?! How can this be? Everyone does! It doesn’t matter what sort of job, just a job…Comrade?).
• once a job is started, it normally gets completed.
• pride. Do not mess with a Czech person’s pride on pain of suffering…your suffering, actually.

I’m going to get crucified in the comments section…again…for saying so, still I think Czechs working outside most MNCs and corporations can expend a heck of a lot energy than they presently wish to. Full stop. Think about it what you will…

You need examples? Well head out onto the streets of Prague during one of your end-of-week celebratory benders (every weekend is a cause for celebration in Prague), say, on a Friday night, to observe just how reticent the cops are to break up the rare Prague fisticuffs or in enforcing a measure of decorum in the City Centre, like silencing a group of druken British/Irish/Scottish stag travellers who are cruising for a punitive spanking. I’ve leaned against walls waiting for late night trams with my colleagues marvelling jaw-agape at how Prague “beat cops,” the police who patrol the streets by foot, are reluctant to tell visiting British rowdies to cool off, or else…this kind of stuff would never happen in other European cities (egs. Copenhagen, Brussels, or even in their native London, Glasgow, or Edinburgh).

I realize in the cops’ case it’s a matter of how paltry they’re getting paid, but for a Prague police officer who still lives with his parents or in one of those inherited panelak (panel) apartments which cost 3,000 CZK/month to rent from the City (approximately 115 EUR) or were inherited from the former “all-knowing” State for free, how bad is a 20,000 CZK/month (770 EUR/month) salary? What the heck is a cop going to spend it on that it’s apparently “not enough?” Cops don’t travel…so why can’t they enforce the law at the rate at which they’re being compensated? What do they need? A few beers, some food, and the occasional trip to the Eastern Colony (read: Slovakia) or to Croatia’s Adriatic Coast (aka “the Czech beach”) can be more than adequately covered on that amount of public tax money.

Personally, I’d like to see a lot less of the following here:

• drinky-poos at 11am on a Tues. workday.
• short Friday workdays ending somewhere around, um, 10:45am (so that drinky-poos can promptly commence at 11am stat).
• kvetchy complaints about how those who really want to excel in the globalized economy “work too hard,” are “chasing after America,” or “take no time for themselves.” This is our modern form of “Communist thought” which dogs the marketplace of ideas…still.
• complaints about one’s lack of linguistic abilities (just learn whichever language you need and get on with it! Stop the navel-gazing!).

I want to see young people excited about entrepreneurship — truly the only way to thrive in today’s chaotic economic times — aspiring to do greater things than serving at the foot of the next “fearless leader,” even if that leader is a foreigner with deep pockets. I want to see less breaks, and more concerted efforts when sitting in front of the computer, and more harnessing of the intelligence, grit, and strength which is the inheritance of this truly survivalist race at the heart of Europe.

To Conclude:

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, your final word of the day. Sometimes, I just have to have the final word.

Fondly,
ADM

DISCLAIMER: I do not work for the Fleet Sheet, nor for Erik Best, nor for the FS Final Word, and Erik Best did not authorize the above editorial. But this indeed is your Final Word of the day.

Aren’t long lost friends just great?

Well last evening here in Toronto was another one of those stellar nights where hot food, hearty brew, and some damn fine conversation intersect to create some of life’s truly memorable moments. I had the good fortune of rendez-vousing with a wonderful old flame of mine, Julie Fernandez (@Julie Fernandez Carrasco on Facebook), as we spent the night catching up on what’s been happening over the past six years of our lives.

Jules has since become a successful custom jewellery designer in the Beaches area of Toronto, capably running Vernissage Jewellery with her dad, Pepe, while becoming someting of a maven in her field. Julie’s always been this way, which made her such a success in her former career as an bank officer at the CIBC bank. Given our time constraints, we couldn’t possibly discuss everything we’d wanted to, but I got a good sense the business is keeping Julie on her toes. In her words, it remains an area of high challenge for her as she continues to carve out her niche in a heavily male-dominated industry. Julie’s travel schedule remains full, her work is all-consuming in that way most idealize, and moreover, she’s successful at what she does. And the neighbourhood fits her to a “tee.” The Beaches can be best described as a comfortable lakeside remove from the bustling metropolis which is today’s Toronto, populated in the main by older folks who made the Lake Ontario area their home during the forties and fifties. The quarter has since gentrified somewhat and has become slightly more trendy and hipster, but it maintains a healthy business community and the neighbourhood preserves the quaint charm characteristic of most “bedroom communities” while lying a mere hop-skip-and-a-jump away from Toronto’s downtown core, Canada’s largest.

Back around the time we went our separate ways, I moved (returned) to Europe,  opting to hang my hat over in the Czech capital, a place that’s been home over four significant and personally gratifying years.

Our conversation weaved in and out of the familar Toronto subjects. Given the multicultural explosion which defines the 21st-century megacity, we chatted about what it’s like living in a town which is decidedly not purely “Canadian,” yet somehow cleaves to a flavour of its former “Anglo-Saxon puritan” self despite the exotic proliferation of peoples who now call Toronto home. Julie spoke — as she had in former times — about her native Chile, and what life continues to be like for her as the consummate “insider-outsider,” a feeling I know only too well from my own scribblings, chronicled in the 2006 award-winning We Are the New Bohemians: The Post-Communist Collection, my second work of fiction. Amazingly, Julie continued to describe herself (as I recall her doing) as a castaway Chilean stuck in a “gringo world,” a reluctant gringo (i.e. American foreigner) of sorts who at once isn’t quite Chilean, yet isn’t quite gringo either. A brainy, independent, very charismatic latina not quite stuck in a white world, unable to fully commit to the local culture, detaching herself from her true cultural self, yet paradoxically not entirely acceptable to her own Chilean folk. The Chinese have a handy shorthand for these sorts of people: ABCs/BBCs (American Born Chinese or British Born Chinese). As they’ve been returning to China as the PRC economy heated up, they’ve become known as “returning turtles.” I only wish I had a similar expression for it on the Chilean end. Julie?

Then we got to talking about Prague, and about how well I’ve absorbed into the local scene. I divested Julie of some of her not-altogether wrong impressions about Czechs and Czech culture, though she asked a wickedly good set of pertinent questions which really got me thinking about my future in the Czech Republic, things like:

• how well I speak and understand Czech.
• whether I respect Czech culture and identify with it.
• whether there’s something about Czech culture I’ve latched onto and admire.
• whether I can see myself residing there over the indefinite future.

Admittedly, I didn’t have adequate enough — at least to my mind — responses for all her great questions, though I can safely say I’m quite knowledgeable about all these areas on a technical (read: disengaged) level, if you follow my reasoning.

Basically, what Julie was driving at was whether there would ever come a time when I’d simply “dive in?” Like an aerial dogfight, would I ever engage my adversary and pursue, pursue, pursue? Whether I’d cease acting like the proverbial expatriate, what with one’s expatriate habits and characteristic expat detachment, essentially how expats behave the world over, from China to the Czech Republic to Chile.

To be sure, I am better than most expats in the critical areas. For one, I speak and write better Czech than do some foreigners who have been living in the republic for twice the amount of time that I have. It shocks me how men (especially) wed to Czech women are clueless when it comes to the Czech langauge. How despite obvious pronounciation challenges — yes, spoken Czech remains inscrutable for those easily tongue-tied — the vernacular continues to elude certain foreigners. As for my reading comprehension — if I may back-pat for just a moment — I can safely say it’s superb, and I write Czech relatively well for someone who doesn’t use the language as part of his day-to-day work duties. Moreover, given my rigorous travel schedule across Europe, it shocks even me that I maintain a semblance of Czech language comprehension for someone who is not a native speaker nor is wed to a Czech citizen. Just to sum up the language issue — the best way to wrangle down a language is to be in a committed relationship with a local. For true mastery, in my experience, a deft combination of immersion, a good ear, and compulsion are truly necessary in order to be a good speaker of tongues. Of course, I’d mentioned the sublimely talented Andreea Manea to Julie as an example of someone who possesses such skills, with her Spanish, French, English, and native Romanian (with passable Italian and rudimentary Greek) as examples of a divinely-inspired finely-tuned ear.

As for the Czech cultural issue, I have made it a personal crusade to bone up on as much as I can about the Czech national saga — ranging from historical tomes (my favourites) to Czech novels and Czech and Czechoslovak films — so that I can safely hold down a conversation with Prague locals about their nation without seeming like a disinterested tourist. I note that this isn’t what’s lacking in Prague amongst the English-speaking foreign community, at least from what I can glean as part of my occasional hobnobbing around prominent expat haunts. Most foreign residents I’ve spoken to have a good grasp of where the Czech nation has been, and where it’s going. However, I’m still convinced that the true yardstick of success in any foreign posting is having a local “fixer,” anything from a business partner to a romantic interest or husband/wife, who can attend to the most niggling things about life in a strange country or who might pave the way forward. I have had professional dealings with people like this who defer all official responsibilities to their Czech spouses, which in my estimation is quite shameless and ignorant. You know, someone who can call the electricity company when there’s a problem with the latest invoice, for instance, or someone who can crack the whip on a better price on stock for sale. Personally, I haven’t resorted to such measures and have opted to go my own way in many instances, labouring thorugh the occasional conversational flubs and boondoggles in order to be understood, convinced as I am that this is the sole way to learn. Prague, alas, is not Beirut or Karachi or Beijing. It remains a modern EU nation which — I believe — is on the cusp of something huge. It is easy to get around for those who choose to embrace it, and the Czech Republic — despite its many many many detractors — can and will do some truly great things…if only the nation can overcome its persistent also-ran underdog self-image, one which chronically dogs the 10.5 million strong Middle European statelet still.

My ultimate takeaway from my meetup with Julie was this: indeed it’s been four captivating years since I moved to Prague, but have I really “dove in” to the place? Have I severed those comfortable bonds which have kept me firmly tethered to my old ways of doing things, those old mannerisms which are no longer of any use in the new society which is my home?

Ah, there’s the rub….

I still don’t have answers for these things, as I continue to struggle over the seeming efficacy of shedding old skin to permit the growth of the new. I remain of the stubborn opinion that our planet is not the hot-cold globe of former times. We are no longer dwelling in a 20th-century universe of stark opposites: of Cold War foes, of hard and fast ideological rules which threaten to polarize the universe into two embittered camps — one left, the other right, one “Communist,” the other “capitalist” — which stare at each other across a fierce divide to keep us divided and divorced from each other at all bloody costs. In other words, I can safely maintain my individuality in a sometimes hostile, sometimes unforgiving environment because this world of today isn’t all about “countries” anymore. Borders have since been obliterated and rendered meaningless. This “old-new” world is everyone’s personal playground, provided one has the necessary equipment to get into the game (another dialogue entirely).

So do I have to dive in? Or is the fact that I choose to remain my own man firmly paint me as a social misfit, diametrically opposed to a melding with the mainstream, a persistent gadfly, critical, absrasive type who prefers to pine and snipe and grouse like a petulant child as opposed to just — in the words of President Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech — “unclenching my fist” — and merging with the liberating slipstream of the Czech day-to-day?

Thank you again, Julie Fernandez, for a night rife with engaging points of departure…