Living only (luckily !) 11 years in communism, I have deep engraved in my brain the memory of a universal kind of shoe, produced in China or other communist countries, that we used to call it “tenisi” because somehow it was intended maybe to be used as a sport equipment for playing tennis. But people were using it all over, especially the young ones. It was this kind of design :

After 1990 one of the most intense feeling of happiness was that finally I could not see anymore all over the place this “horrible” shoe. We got Nike and Adidas brands, we got Italian loafers , we got Spanish espadrilles and so on…ahhh life was finally beautiful in the shoe department of our liberated new lives….

I moved about 4 years ago in Amsterdam and than everything all of a sudden turned back 20 years. The new all over the place shoes to be seen is a copy of the old “tenisi”, this time branded under the name Converse…..Almost got a panic attack when I saw it all over the streets, but soon I started to adjust and not to look anymore at people’s shoes…except when I was traveling in Spain, Italy, Portugal or Romania….

Late this February reading the monthly issue of Monocle I saw a whole article about Jack Purcell shoes, images exactly like the Converse ones I see every day in Amsterdam, and as the ones I saw back in Romania before 1990.

I go deep into the text and I realize slowly that actually Jack Purcell was a Canadian badminton world champion which already in 1935 designed those kind of shoes for the B.F. Goodrich company. And only 35 years later, beginning of the 70′s the Converse company is buying the trademark rights and starts producing them. Probably or for sure, the copies we used to wear all day long in Romania or other eastern-block countries were not part of any trademark right contract, but just simply manufactured using a design-like pattern.

I realized suddenly that for almost 30 years I lived in a kind of general lie, associating that shoe with the communism and poverty, with Chinese copies, when in fact it is a light shoe, originated almost 75 years ago in Canada. No communism, no copy, no poverty. Just a brand made by the man who actually won badminton championships.

What do I do ? Do I stick with my memory ? Do I refuse the real facts ? Do I keep being moral, stable, constant to my ideas from the last 30 years ? Or do I accept the truth and I begin acting normal as I should be, recognizing my intolerance or lack of information ?

Well, this is the picture I took today with the shoes I just bought and proudly wear :

No comment….
Non-dentist readers might now jump to the last paragraph. Dentists and especially endodontists should follow further :

Since 2002 I was absorbing like a sponge knowledge and information about endodontic techniques from different online websites, forums, going to week-end courses, buying DVD’s. listening “BIG” names in the endodontic field, and the uttermost stress I always had doing endodontic treatment, even in vital cases, was like : were you patent ? did you get to length ? how many lateral canals have you filled ? I used to first dream about these kind of results, than I finally managed to get them constantly in the last 4-5 years: vital case, all the way to radiographic length prepared, filled with apical puff and 1 or more lateral canals. Extremely proud. Endo was fun ! Life was dolce !

After almost 3 years of post-graduate study in Endodontology, reading lot of books and thousand and thousand of pages of endodontic literature, I was shocked to see that the evidence is contrary to what I believed in. To what I did struggle the last 9 years to achieve. No, vital cases should not be instrumented to length. No, radiographically visible lateral canals filled with sealer or guttapercha don’t mean ideal cleaning and for sure are not necessary to obtain success, especially in vital cases. Basically, keeping it short 2 mm is the best way to go to get highest chance of success in such cases.

What do I do ? Do I change ? Do I forget all my work in the last 9 years ? All my dreams ? All the happy moments I got every time I was puffing or laterally filling a vital case ? Or I am a special conservator, respecting my principles, sticking with the “tradition”, albeit yes it is my or our “tradition” ? Do I leave my group, my party ? If I finish 2 mm short every vital case I might get a better outcome for my patients, I might be again happy in the intellectual drawer of my brain, but I will not be able anymore to show any of my cases in front of my friends “puffers” and “patency-like” from all over the world. No more “nice looking” vital cases on the radiograph, no more being part of the “schilderian” party…Do I accept this and I FREE MY MIND ??? Well….this is my last pulpitic case I did:

Well is spring again, sun again, and finally after so many years is good to have a FREE MIND, accepting your mistakes and being able to change in what you believed for such a loooong time….

Lunch at Luden... with nice talks about Bucharest and Romania with Christian…

DVD  remembering Steaua Bucuresti games in 1986, how they won in Finnland and managed to get into semifinals of Champions League…

And Robert Plant – 29 Palms…

As with any reform made by a government it is easy and predictable: anyway we have a limited amount of money. If we want to cover more population with it, the only way to do it is to lower the “per capita” benefit. In other words, those who pay more for the federal government will get a lower quality healtchare than now, because those who until now didn’t have at at all any healthcare will get some sort of protection.

Congressman Mike Rogers reminded about Lincoln statement, one which I like so much (click it HERE) .

Any guess, which one is which ? What are the names of the 2 parks ? Shouldn’t be too difficult.

Important is that even if so far away one from another, there will always be similar things. If you know where to search for.

It was a funny feeling for first time to see a game played on Santiago Bernabeu and not to be stressed that the Madridistas are loosing it. Just because the game was so intense and top quality.

Watch the goals, which with the exception of first one from Raul, were all good candidates for Golazos:

Notice the red arrow.

But oh God, how true is this !!!