You know what “phishing” is, right?  Ah, ah, ah!  Not all of you know or this wouldn’t still be the number one tool for hackers engaged in electronic fraud.  If you’ll allow me… Phishing is when an ill-intentioned person tries to trick you into giving them personal information that can…

After numerous consecutive weeks of freakish cold and snowy greyness, the likes of which would have made the hardest Viking sob, Iasi is going through a week-long bout of unseasonable warmth.  The sun is out, the snow and ice are all but gone and I have the windows open.  Though…

If you were thinking that buying a car in Romania is a weeks-long ordeal of vague paper-intensive obligations and expensive bureaucratic appeasement, then I compliment you on your astuteness.  I bought my car two weeks ago and I’m still nowhere near officially completing the transaction.  Once you have the car,…

I got the car washed inside and out yesterday.  It’s a vast improvement.  Prior to this, just a few moments in the car infused one’s clothes and hair in the odour of petrol, oil and dirt, that lasted for days, which was not lending any credibility to my appearance when…

Some of you may have noticed that my spelling (and when I remember, my vocab) is not in God Blessed American English, but the Queen’s English.  This is not because I have privately decided to affect an English writing style (and accent, a la Madonna).  Indeed, I am under contract…

Canvassing the region of Moldavia, February 10th through the 13th. I got back from a short, but intense research trip around the region of Moldavia Monday night.  Four very, very trying days.  It was deathly cold, and I’m from Minnesota, so I know what genuine deathly cold feels like.  There…

Dear readers, Please note the date of this post. The information was accurate (by my estimation of the situation) at the time of posting. I’m well aware that much of it is no longer true. Snapshot social commentary nearly always loses relevance and accuracy over time. Things change. That’s how…

This was the ‘About Me’ post for the former incarnation of this blog ‘Every Notable Patch of Grass in Romania’, which was retired when my Lonely Planet assignment wound down and I prepared to abandon my post in Romania for travel and the culinary delights of Italy Well, in truth,…

Here’s a bullet point list with random facts about me for you busy, information-byte-inclined people with precious little time to read about how neat I am: • My full name is Leif Even Pettersen. ‘Leif’ sounds like the word ‘life’. ‘Even’ sounds like the name ‘Evan’. ‘Pettersen’ is with the…