HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Just a quick note to say "THANK YOU!!!!!" for all the birthday wishes I have received. Emails, skype calls, text messages, e-cards and good old snail-mail birthday cards - all letting me know that I AM LOVED!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

All smiles,

Maylia

Coming soon: A post about our weekend away.

Black Humour - Czech Style

There is a famous Czech artist named David Cerny. Cerny (pronounced like "chair-knee") means "black" in Czech, which is appropriate as his artwork definitely falls in the "black humour" category. If you are avid blog-readers, you have already seen some of his work...those freaky babies on the TV tower in Zizkov, near our old flat.

Anyway, as you are aware, the EU presidency currently resides with the Czech Republic. The president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who is well-known to be anti-EU, commissioned Mr. Cerny to create a work of art depicting the European Union. Cerny was paid by the EU and a large corporation and said that he would be using artists from each of the countries to create his piece, which would show each country and what best-typifies them.

It comes as little surprise to those who know Cerny's work that the unveiling in Brussels did not go over well. In fact, Cerny and some friends (not the league of international artists he claimed were assisting him) created something that mocked each of the EU nations. Bulgaria, for example, was depicted as a Turkish squat toilet. (The Bulgarians complained enough that this portion of the exhibit was covered while the work was on display in Brussels.) By the way, Mr. Cerny returned the money, insisting that he never had any plans to keep it and only took the payment to make the unveiling more legitimate and real. He also defends his piece, saying that stereotypes must be confronted in order for barriers to be broken down and that he believes the EU must be strong enough to laugh at itself. You can read his description of the piece on his website.

Anyway, since it wasn't a big hit in Brussels, Entropa was returned to the Czech Republic and is currently on display at the new DOX gallery. We met up with Karen and kids there today. Very cool space and very interesting to see the piece of art that caused so much commotion.

Here are some pics of Entropa: the entire piece plus closer views of Denmark and Poland.

Here's Karen leading the troupe: Roman, Ella, Sasha, and Mattias.

And the kids have fun on the cafe terrace:

Mattias: What? What's Wrong?

Parenting can be hard on the patience. Sometimes very hard.

Sometimes as parents we just need a break from it all.

So, we took one.

Mattias and Ella seemed to be playing nice together, so we figured no reason to rush them right to bath-time, right? After dinner, Maylia and I both went to bedroom, crashed on the bed and took a rest.

Sure, we heard some noises, some banging or whatever, but we were content that we didn't hear any crying from either of them. No crying, so all is well enough.

Then we realized we had been talking for a good 30 minutes, plus there were far fewer sounds coming from the living room. So, we finally come out...

"Sweet Mother of ....!" "What the ...!!"

We found Mattias and Ella each double-fisted with markers. Mattias was standing on top of one of their wooden chairs, next to Ella. Both coloring away at the living room wall.

Actually, Maylia and I were surprisingly low-key about it.

Sure, we emphasized how bad, how oh so bad an idea this was. But maybe the same half hour break that enabled the graffiti artists also was break enough to handle it with a super calm reaction. Maylia and I took turns walking away for the chance to laugh at how ridiculous our living room wall looks.

The cleaning crew went to work soon afterwards, with almost as much eagerness as the coloring. Still, one thing is clear - I will be painting the living room this summer, likely two coats.

Goings On

No much big news here. Our highlights:

• Ella and dad made muffins. Added 6 times the milk we needed by accident. Oops. So we "just added" another 6 times everything else. We have a lot of muffins now.
• Healthy kids? Mattias has a bit of a cold. He's fine, just the sniffles and a cough.
• Ella, who used to demand the stroller, now is suddenly walking everywhere. Yesterday she and mom were out and about...Ella walked ~3 miles. (Used to not like walking 30 feet)
• Mattias' is trying to talk a lot more. His words (that we understand) are ball, truck, plane, water, milk, Ella!!, door, outside, bug, crying, Kristyna and book.
• A few weeks ago, we all went to a local park kids' event. Ella got to try out roller blades and a scooter. We may get her a scooter, but the skates are right out for another year.
• Mattias is starting to really enjoy flipping through the hard page books.

And for some pictures...

Jeff's Not Having a Great Week/Month/Season

It's tax season. I shouldn't have to say any more than that. But I will.

No one likes filing taxes. But to file multiple times is painful. Every year, such a pain.
How many different taxes do I file? Five - count them, five.
There are the 2 personal returns, one each to the Czech Republic and the US.
Then we our 2 corporate returns* to the Czech Republic and US.
* Yes, we maintain a shell corporation (LLC in the US, an s.r.o. here). We had to create an s.r.o. to permit buying property as non-EU citizens. Seems some laws were made just to complicate the American dream when an American lives elsewhere.

How is Czech tax reporting? Swift (31st March deadline) and relatively painless. Speaking positively, it's surprisingly straightforward. That said, paying is paying, which is no fun, no matter how straightforward it is.
Uncle Sam is not so swift. We have until June 15th to report all income, bank accounts and livelihood from abroad. How kind of Uncle Sam. And straightforward, Uncle Sam is not, but many reading this already know that.

If you're still counting, remember I said five tax filings? The fifth? - the f'ing FBAR form.
The FBAR is a US form, for Americans to detail all banking and investing balances for all foreign accounts. This means, if you have money in a foreign bank, you file the FBAR.
For the mega-rich, the form is meant to investigate offshore accounts, i.e. tax havens. Penalties are some of the harshest in tax code, starting with 5 years jail and/or $250,000 fines.
But for the average American expat, this form is unjust, raising suspicions where there needn't be. Is the FBAR really mandatory? Apparently Obama thinks so. The FBAR has been in the news a lot lately. So, yeah, we file this one, too.

Oh, and as if tax forms aren't enough, earlier this week Jeff lost all data on a 1TB hard drive (that's one thousand GB). Hardware fickleness turned into data corruption, which turned into -*poof*- gone. Several hundred DVDs worth of files are "there" but unreadable. All I can do is shrug and turn on the radio.

All in all, not a good time lately.