A star is born

         (Originally posted on April 30, 2007 - 12:59)

         On the stage of the National Opera tonight (April, 29th) was Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, my favorite opera.
         I have seen two performances of this opera last year at the ONB and they were both terrible. The singers were making very silly mistakes like stepping out of tempo and missing the entrances of the songs. They recovered in the fourth act but then it was way too late. 

         Because of those bad performances I was apprehensive about tonight, even though the singers (with the exception of Vicetiu Taranu and Paul Basacopol) were different. But I had a very good reason to see it tonight for on the role of the Countess was a friend of mine. I haven't had the opportunity to see her singing before because she had just debuted.

         So I went with no big expectation for the production but to see my friend sing. I was anxious because the Countess doesn't sing until the second act. But in this production of the National Opera, she makes a kind of silent cameo appearance in the first act. In the moment that she appeared at the door of the set she struck me with her presence, her elegant and imponent figure.

         The second act starts with Porgi Amor, one of the most beautiful Mozart arias. On this production, in a silly attempt of modernism, the countess is portrayed as a maniac-depressive, Prozac addicted woman. But even this and the fact that she had to sing laying down on a couch detracted from the sheer beauty of her interpretation. Her voice is steady and strong but also soft and poetically lyrical, all in the right places. Her pronunciation is clear and intelligible and has no accents. Her theatrical performance is natural and captivating.

         In the trio "Susanna, or via, sortite" even though she was flanked by two more experienced singers, her voice soared above them, so high that it hit me up there in the balcony, making my chest resonate. Acoustically and emotionally.

         And then there was the two connected pieces E Susanna Non Vien/Dove Sono. In the first part, the anxiousness of the Countess wondering about the success of their plans against the unfaithful and jealous Count is evident in her facial expression and in how well she builds up the tension to an unbearable level... Until she releases it in the second part, so sweet, so warmly shared in a delicate duet with the clarinet.

         Then the astounding fourth act and the climax of the whole opera: "Contessa, perdono". The Countess hears her husband offering her tender words for the first time in years just because he thinks she's someone else. And in a voice of pure forgiveness that wraps the theater in a warm blanket, she sings "Più docile io sono, e dico di sì." conferring on the Count and on everybody else in there, perfect absolution. That was the voice of Mozart on Earth, singing through this young lady. 

          The entire cast and the whole performance was perfect tonight but she 
received the most thunderous applause I've ever seen in the National Opera.

 
         Tonight I went to see a friend sing. But instead I saw something else.
        Tonight I witnessed the birth of a star.
And this star is called Elisabeta Marin.

         Make sure you remember this name because you will hear it many times, associated with the name of great composers, great operas and great conductors in the future. And I do hope this future is near. And I really hope that the direction (I'm trying to avoid the use of any reference related to southern Italian families here) of the National Opera doesn't spoil her career, because I heard that they are reluctant to cast Elisabeta under the excuse that she is "too young".

         Helloooo? What's going on here? What is more important to the arts? Talent or age? I take talent anytime. And she has talent way beyond her years. How can you refuse to cast Elisabeta under such a lame excuse as age and yet you cast untalented uninspired insipid veterans that I refuse to name here but I'll give you a hint: His name starts with "Ga" and ends with "briel Nastase". 

         And there are obvious cases where a young age is an advantage: I am tired of seeing sopranos in their late 40s portraying Madama Butterfly. She's supposed to be in "L'età dei giuochii e dei confetti"!!
Did you get my hint? No? Then let me make it clear: I want Elisabeta Marin singing Madama Butterfly in the next season!! And I am sure I am not the only one!! Get it?

         You claim that she's too young and has no experience. How is she going to get experience if you don't give her a chance?
Didn't you hear the glorious applause that she got tonight? Doesn't that mean anything to you? It means that we the public love her and we want more!

         You hold the future of this young lady in your hands. It's a valuable future. 

        Don't destroy it. 
        Encourage it!

        If your aim is to make the National Opera more popular and frequented then please, give this young lady a chance, let her shine and I promise you that she will not disappoint you. She will make us all proud. The National Opera will have the public that it needs and we, the public will have the star that we love. It's a win/win scenario. No one looses, everybody wins.

       Dear Elisabeta, 




        You are the brightest star in the Romanian musical firmament.
         Thank you for this wonderful evening. You made me proud of being your friend and you made everybody else happy just by being there.
        I can't wait to see you on stage again. And I'll go anywhere you sing. I mean... When you start singing at La Scala and the Metropolitan it will be difficult for me, but I’ll do my best.
     And I am very happy that we've found each other again.

Never say never again

         (Originally posted on Apr 25, 2007 - 00:15) 
 

         A long time ago (yep another of those old stories), when I was 15 I used to skateboard. And I was not bad at it. Long hair, dressed in red and yellow and doing crazy things like hitch hiking several Km out of the city and skateboarding back to the city on the interstate road (Me and 2 friends got caught by the highway patrol twice) and constructing a 2.5 m tall half-pipe in my backyard... Lots of fun. 

When I turned 16 I kinda outgrown my skateboard fever and abandoned it for a guitar and I thought I would never go back. And I certainly never imagined that 25 years later I would do it again.
Until yesterday. 


         A friend of mine invited me to go roller skate in the park with some friends. I told her I don't know how to roller skate. That didn't stop her. She said she doesn't know either and she just got her rollers and is going to try for the first time so we could do it together. Hmmm... I knew she wasn't going to let me off the hook easily, so I had to think fast. And it went on these lines: If I get some roller skates it may be fun and it will be good to go out and enjoy the fresh air... IF I learn how to skate. And that was a huge IF. Otherwise the only fun would be that of the people watching me get a mouthful of asphalt every time I get on my feet. It was Saturday evening. Damn. No way I could go buy some rollers and have a crash course till tomorrow. And I certainly wasn't going to go buy the rollers on Sunday and put them on my feet for the first time in a crowded Herastrau!

         So I decided to take the path of less resistance. I told her that maybe I could consider the hint of a possibility of perhaps getting myself a skateboard instead of rollers because I used to skateboard when I was a kid, so who knows... maybe I could, perhaps, you know... kinda... try it again. She said bine. I thought she would probably forget it the next day. 

         In that same evening I had the birthday party of another dear friend of mine to attend. I didn't drink much, just some beer and some champagne. And a frappuccino to be able to walk home safely. I mean, I wasn't even dizzy but I took the coffee thing just in case. No, really.

         Next day I woke up at 11:00 with a headache the size of Belgium. I checked the damage report: 

         Dehydration level, 45%. 
         Recall of previous evening, 2%! 
         Embarrassment factor, 91%!! 

         Whoah!! I didn't know the frappuccino was THAT strong!! Oooo I knew I shouldn't have taken it... erm... :-D 

         I stumbled to the kitchen and made myself a big coffee. Stumble to the living room. Sat in front of the computer. Log in on Yahoo msgr to tune LAUNCHcast on Classic Rock because I wasn't in conditions to choose mp3s. As soon as Y! Msgr logs in, up pops a msg: "I really hope that right now you're getting ready to go buy a skateboard" Ooooo I had forgotten about it! (No wonder, with a recall level of 2%!) But apparently she hadn't! So I put on my poker face (which wasn't necessary because we weren't on webcam. But come on! I was in deep mahmurish mode! I wasn't thinking clearly. Or at all.) and told her, sure I just got dressed to leave and I was going to ask you what time we meet at the park. She said we meet in 120 minutes. But I swear it sounded like "you have 88 minutes to live, doc. Tic-tac, tic-tac" with the digitally muffled voice and all.

         So off I went to Carrefour, carrying my Belgium sized headache. I found the section with the roller skates but... no skateboards... Oh dear... What to do? It was such a nice day for the race outside... But jogging after my friend on rollers doesn't sound good... She said she's going to try the rollers for the first time. Oh what the hell... Be brave. I'll get myself some rollers and try it for the first time too. 

         Ok. I've decided. Let's find a nice one that fits me. 
         Now that's when Murphy's Law rules, right? If it looks nice, it's expensive. If it looks right and the price is right you can't find the right size. The only ones that fits your size, either you wouldn't get yourself caught dead wearing it or are so cheap that they would break just by looking hard at them.

         And in my case it was even worse. I chose one. Good looks. Good price. They have all numbers. What can go wrong? Well, my shoes are 42. I tried 42: Too tight. 43: Still tight. 44: STILL tight! 45: too big!!. Huh? Helloooo? Is there a 44.5 somewhere? No, of course not. I give up. 

         I'll either stay home or jog around. Stay home, most likely.
         Then I was browsing other sports gear. Tennis rackets, ping-pong rackets, baseball bats, skateboards, golf putters... Stai... Skateboards?? There they were, among rackets and clubs and bats. Well maybe here they use it for something else than skating... Then I overheard this comment from two kids checking the baseball bats: "Hey, these are good for smashing cars!" Yep. No wonder I thought the skateboards were in the wrong place. Maybe they use them for swatting bikers off their bikes or something like that.

         So I got the board. A fair cry from the custom assembled one that I had 25 years ago, with Tracker Trucks axles and Sims (Pure Juice!) wheels and a beautiful mahogany board, but I thought that for the moment it would do. 

         Well, it would have to do.
         Off to the park. 

         I met the gang at Herastrau. My friend was not the only one trying the rollers for the first time. I felt better. I was not going to be the only one embarrassing myself.

         So, after 25 years I was skateboarding again. I was quite rusty and the skateboard that I got wasn't performing its duties properly. It wasn't turning as well as it should. But I guess you get what you pay for. 

         As for my friend, she got proficient in her skating surprisingly fast. Now if I decide to switch to rollers I'll have a lot to catch up. 

         I also played something that I've never done before: Badminton.
Now that's a weird sport. I mean, I used to play tennis when I was young so I feel like all the physics of badminton is wrong. The air resistance of the bird is too big and that of the racket is too small. And the dynamics of it is also wrong. You hit the bird hard and yet it flies too slow. And because there's no bouncing on the ground you have to move yourself faster to keep the bird in the air. But after I got used to it, it was fun. 

         And then there's the day after.
         Ooooo... There's a big price to pay for moving like that after 25 years without practicing any sport. I feel pains in muscles that I didn't know existed. Actually I feel like my muscle pains start 2 meters from my body.
And I received a threat from my friend: We're going again next weekend and the next and this is going to become our regular activity. In her own words: 

         "You will wish it will rain in the weekends!"
         Oh dear.
         I guess it's no pain, no gain, right? 

Tell me why I don't like Mondays...

         (Originally posted on Apr 23, 2007 - 07:50) 

         Another Crash moment today. (For those who don't know what I mean, I am referring to the movie Crash. I use to call the racist problems that I face in my everyday life "Crash moments") 

         Every month I have to pay my rent at the ING Bank in Eroilor. For some mysterious reasons I can only pay it at Eroilor agency. And I have to deposit it in dollars. 

         I had most of the rent money already in dollars but I need 5 dollars more. So this morning I went to an exchange booth down on Stefan Cel Mare. The one where I usually exchange was still closed so I went to the next one which is just a few meters around the corner. 

         When I arrived there, there were two old men inside the 0.7x0.7m booth so I just waited outside. And waited... and waited... They saw me there waiting but just ignored me. And they were talking to the girl inside the booth and smoking (in that very confined space). And I waited... A lady came after me and asked me if I am waiting for long and I said yes, for a few minutes. She waited a while. got impatient and opened the door and asked if they are going to take long. Only then they finally "realized" that the people waiting outside are customers. Duuh! What would we be doing standing at the door of an exchange booth? And it turned out that the two men were security guards of the exchange company, not customers, and they were there just chatting with the exchange girl. By the time they came out of the booth the lady who was behind me had given up and left. I should have done the same... 

         I finally enter the booth, told the girl that I wanted to buy 5 dollars. She asked me for my ID. She took it, looked at it, fliped it, looked at it again, flipped it again and started entering the date in the computer. When she came to the ID number she got confused because the number format is different from the normal buletin. Then she gave me the ID back and said: "We can't sell dollars to you."

         I asked why and she said: "Because you're foreigner"
         Then I said "What is this? Racism?" to which she answers "No! It's not racism. I just can't sell dollars to foreigners, only to Romanian citizens"

         Hellooooo?
         I asked her "Why not?" And she says "this is the rule".
         I insisted: "What is the reason why you can't sell to foreigners?"
         "No reason, it's just the rule"
         "And it is NOT racism?"
         "No! It's the rule!" 

         So, isn't this racism? You don't have to believe me. The American Heritage Dictionary, for example gives this definition to Racism: "Discrimination or prejudice based on race." And the WorldNet online dictionary gives us this one: "discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of another race "

         I don't know about you but "I can't sell dollars to you because you're foreigner" and "I can't sell dollars to foreigners, only to Romanian citizens" sounds like discrimination to me and the specification "you are foreigner" and "only to Romanian Citizens" suggests that this discrimination is based on racial difference, no? I tried to argue but it was like trying to reason with a cassette player stuck on "it's the rule" loop. 

         By the time I gave up the other exchange house was open. This is the exchange booth where I usually do my business and the lady who used to be there knows me by name. But this time it was another one so just in case I asked her if she sells to foreigners and she said "Of course!!" And I tried to explain what happened at the booth next door and she didn't even let me finish, saying that she knows because this problem happens everyday in that booth.

         So I asked for 5 dollars. And in the most rigamarolish way, she announces me that "In the chapter of dollars I am sorry to tell you that I have only these:" and she showed me some bills of 100s, 50s and 20s and of course no 5s. 

         By then the banks were already open so I went to the Transylvania bank, asked for the fiver. The lady tells me it will cost me "o suta doispe". I may not be an expert in Romanian language but I am very sure that this means "112". So I put 120 on the counter. The lady looks at the money, looks at me and wait. When she realizes I am not going to take any more money out of my wallet she looks indignated and tells me in a raised voice: "Am zis O SUTA DOISPE!!", to which I ask "Si cat am dat??" She looks at the money on the counter again. Her eyes open in such a way that you can read "oops!" behind the pupils and without blinking, without hesitating, without the normal "I'm sorry. My mistake" she shoots: "Pai, e o suta douazeci si patru!! (124)". 

         Huh? Hellooooo? I don't see how that was MY mistake (I mean, besides moving to Romania. Don't get me started on it!) so I don't see why should I be yelled at!

         I finally got my fiver. I took the metro to Eroilor. In the train, in front of me there was a lady. She opened her bag, pulled out a bunch of official looking documents and forms. Checked them against her mental list, put them in a big envelope. Then she opened a supermarket bag, pulled a big red slab of Elita Coffee, rolled the envelope around it and put the package in her bag.

         I don't know who I hate more: the officials who demand spaga or the idiots who offer them. Both. But maybe the second a little more. And then I had recollections of the many times that I had to go to Hungary to get my romanian visa because I refused to be part of this spaga mafia. 

         Mondays are always Mondays. But some Mondays are more Mondays than others.

         "I want to shoo... ooot the whole day DOWN!!" 

 

In the eye of the beholder

         (Originally posted on Apr 15, 2007 - 14:39)

         Humans are inherently unsatisfied with what they have.
But some cases are harder for me to understand than others.
Like why do some beautiful women believe they are not beautiful and try to change themselves? 

         Women always say "If you want to love me, you have to love me as I am!" And yet they don't love themselves and they are always trying to change something.
         There is this girl. She's so beautiful. And yet she believes that she must change her hair, that she's too fat and she wishes she had longer legs.
Why?
         Can't you see how perfect you are?
         You don't need to change your hair. It is not only beautiful, it is fantastic! I wonder how it would feel to bury my face on those golden curls. But I would be more than happy just by having the privilege to touch them. 

          You are not fat. It's not the weight or the height that counts. It is how you fill the space that you occupy, it is your presence, It is the way you move: That is poetry in motion. It is how you make everybody around you feel good just by being in the same place as you.Your legs are so perfect and you don't need a tan. Your white skin is so delicate, so soft. And I know I made an embarrassing blunder when I mistook the color of your eyes. But I'm sincere when I say that yours are the sweetest eyes that I've ever seen. 

         I know I agreed with you when you said we are both entitled to have different opinions. But my opinion is that you are perfectly beautiful because your beauty is natural. And it's not worth changing anything because if you change anything you would still be beautiful, but then it would be a more artificial, man-made, synthetic beauty.

         If beauty is in the eye of the beholder then I wish you could see yourself through my eyes and realize how beautiful you are, as you are. 

 

Taxi Driver

         (Originally posted  on Apr 14, 2007 - 07:50)

 

         I've had many problems with taxi drivers in this country, but we're not going to talk about this. Maybe another time, but not today.
Today I'm going to tell you a few amusing stories that happened to me while riding taxis. 

         The first one happened to me a few years ago. I lived in Ploiesti and worked in Bucharest. I used to do some hard naveting with the maxi-taxi everyday and I would arrive back in Plo around 22:30 ~ 23:00 in the evening at Gara de Sud. Going home from Gara de Sud by bus would take me another 30 or 40 minutes because I would have to take one to downtown and a second one from downtown to home, so I used to ride taxis. One night when I arrived at Gara de Sud there was only one taxi parked in front of the station. One battered, rusty, way past retirement, disgustingly green Mercedes. The driver, an old, fat, dark skin gypsy. Well, it was late and it was the only cab in the parking lot, so I guess I didn't have much choice. He had the radio on and soon after we left the station it started playing Stand By Me. I started mumbling the song. The driver noticed and turned the volume up. And in the refrain he joined in and we both rode all the way home singing.
Totally surreal. 

         The second story happened a few weeks ago. I was going downtown to meet some friends at the karaoke bar. I took a cab here at Stefan Cel Mare. The driver was a young, early 30s guy. As soon as we left I noticed the strange music playing in the car. Surprise, surprise: Japanese music. J-Pop. Japanese silly pop music, sung by silly Japanese teenage girls. I was curious. I asked him if he really usually listen to Japanese music. He asked me how did I know it is Japanese. Well, I didn't say "duuh!" because I know that most people in this country believe that any Asian must be Chinese. So I told him that I am Japanese. And he told me that he's been to Japan for 3 months a few years ago. 

         The last one happened a couple of days ago. A friend of mine invited me to her place. I took a cab here on Stefan Cel Mare. The driver was a gypsy, mid 30s. He was listening to manele when I boarded the car but he switched it off and turned on the radio. Then on the radio it started playing George Michael - Careless Whisper. And the driver started singing along. 

         It's a pity that most taxi drivers are not like these. On the contrary, these are very rare cases. Maybe one day I will tell you the other side of riding taxis in Romania. The horror stories. But not today. Today I'm feeling good. 

Start me up! - Breaking news

(Originally posted on  Apr 14, 2007 04:42)

         I got it!!
         My ticket for the concert!!
         After two weeks of agonizing uncertainty, against overloaded servers, backstabbing friends and uncooperating ticket salesmen, I finally got it!!

         Now I have to wait 3 more months praying for Keith Richards not to do anything stupid until the concert.

Retrocausality, positronic androids and transdimensional gypsies

Android Evolution

         (Originally posted on  Apr 11, 2007 04:49)

         One of the worst problems I have in this country is ... Wait, let me put on my flame retardant clothes because I know I'll be flamed for saying this... Racism. I know most of you will not believe it or will simply refuse to believe it, but it is true. 

         In Bucharest the problem is not so bad that I can't go out in the streets, but in Ploiesti it was. I couldn't go out in the streets without being mocked or verbally insulted in one form or another, invariably involving racism. And in the extreme cases I was even physically threatened. 

         And some of my "friends" who don't believe or who refuse to believe that this can happen tried to explain to me that it doesn't really happen, that there's no such thing as racism or xenophobia in this utopic country. Yeah, right. And I am Mickey Mouse's pet hamster. 

         So they tried to concot the most absurd excuses as to why do I have the "illusion" that these things happen. And of all the most fantastic ones, the most used is that it's all my fault. Let me point out that this theory was presented to me by my supposed "friends". You see, it seems to be fashionable these days for friends to show support to other friends by trying to convince that whatever bad things happen to you it’s either a lie or it's all your own fault. With friends like these, eh? 

         Anyway, their theory is that people mock or insult me on the streets because I do not like to be mocked or insulted.

         Huh?
         Helloooo??
         Am I missing something??

         I do not assume that people are idiots. Why? Because I do not like it done to me. Even though obviously someone is doing it ... well, you know... the other cheek and all.
         Soooooo, assuming that these "friends" are in possession of fairly stable mental faculties, how do we explain the fact that I am being insulted because I do not like to be insulted? 

         I've been mulling over this for quite some time. Time enough to come up with some theories.

First of all, let's make a few conventions:

A = Foreigner person who does not accept being racially insulted
B = Person who racially insults A
PhF = Philosopher "Friend"

A is walking on the streets.
A enters the visual field of B.
B verbally assaults A with racial expletives. 

         If you consider the possibility that B may be racist or xenophobe, the explanation to this situation is quite straightforward and you may even point out that the very fact that B is verbally assaulting A with racist expletives is good evidence that B is indeed racist or xenophobe. 

         However, PhF categorically dismiss this possibility, postulating that "this sort of things (racism and xenophobia) do not exist in my country".
After arbitrarily postulating the non-existence of racism and xenophobia in this country, PhF is now faced with the daunting task of offering A an explanation to B's acts that supports her own postulate against A's more simple explanation. 

         Relegating Occam's Razor to the dark depths of the lowest drawer of the last cupboard of her mind and now brandishing a Chatton's Anti-Razor, or perhaps more appropriately a Cabtree's Bludgeon (which is expressed as: "No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated." Although I believe that the use of the terms "intellect" and "coherent" in this particular case is highly dubious, to say the least), PhF contrives the theory that B's acts, namely his racial insults towards A, are a direct consequence of the fact that A repudiates such insults. 

         So what we have here is a phenomenon that reverses causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause. Such phenomenon is, of course, called Retrocausality.
         Now, seriously, can what happens in the future affect the present, and can the present affect the past? 

         When we examine two related events, isn't the cause, by its own definition, the one that has to precede the effect?
Common sense tells us that influencing the past is impossible -- what's done is done, right? 

         Established physics does not generally accept retrocausality. A number of theories allowing retrocausality have been proposed by respected scientists, including Feynman, Wheeler and Tomonaga. However, these theories allow only for particles or photons or even positrons to travel back in time, confining them to the realm of Quantum Electrodynamics and no one so far has come up with an acceptable enough experiment that proves these theories and in general, models appearing to permit retrocausality or time travel to occur are often thought to possess mathematical artifacts or to simply be conceptually flawed. 

         Now even if we grant the PhFs a very generously huge benefit of doubt and allow for retrocausality to be possible, we still have to account for the mechanism by which the information that A repudiates racial insults reaches B's knowledge. Could this information be encrypted into positrons and then beamed back to the past and then incorporated into B's brain without causing matter/antimatter annihilation? Maybe, if we employ an even bigger Cabtree Bludgeon and theorize that B is an incredibly advanced android with a positronic brain contained by an incredibly stable electromagnetic field that isolates it from contact to ordinary matter. 

         Well, if we start swinging Cabtree Bludgeons like class D science fiction movies then why not using parallel universes too, eh?

         The concept of parallel universes is sometimes conjectured to allow for a continual splitting of possible worldlines into many different alternative realities. This would mean that B is a time traveler and every time he disturbs the time-space continuum he enters a different parallel universe, possessing the knowledge of A's disapproval for B's insults and hoping that in the next parallel universe A still disapproves of B's insults. Whew! 

         Come on people, let's get serious.
         Let me give you a real life example. The last time I was racially insulted on the streets happened about a week ago. I was on my way home from the office and when I entered the visual field of two gypsies pulling a cart full of scrap metal they instantly started yelling "china" at me. I instinctively allowed them a glimpse of a digital display (also known as "giving them the finger"Smiley, which caused them to change their verbal assault from "china" to substandard impersonations of Bruce Lee. 

         Let me point out that this behavior is not exclusive of gypsies. Oh no. I got this kind of reaction from people of all walks of life. From kids to students, taxi drivers, housewives, shopkeepers, policemen. Once, in Ploiesti I was walking on the streets and in the opposite direction came a woman in her early 40s with a baby on her arms. In the moment she saw me she started yelling "China, china, china china..." for the entire duration of the encounter. I was walking pretty fast so I could even hear the Doppler Effect on the chant! It sounded like "china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china, china..." 

         But for the sake of simplicity, let's keep with the current example.
         Now let's still pour copious amounts of doubt benefit on PhF's theories and invoke Arthur C. Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

         Then I ask you: If you were a robotics genius able to construct positronic androids so advanced that they are indistinguishable from ordinary human beings and capable of receiving a positronic stream of data from the future that allow them to influence the causality of events, would you make them look and act like metal scavenger gypsy morons??
Or do you believe that metal scavenger gypsies are transdimensional time travelers? 

         Now let's order another truck full of benefit of doubt and still consider that all this is possible. We are then left with the question: Why??
Or, to use more precise scientific terms: "Why the fuck???"
What is the purpose of all this?? Why would a robotics genius construct a gypsy-like android capable of receiving positronic data stream about the future? For what purpose? 

         To give foreigners the “illusion” of a xenophobic country so that PhFs can exercise their exotic retrocausal quantum electrodynamics theories?
Are PhFs hiring positronic robotics geniuses just to be able to humiliate foreigners? 

         If so, is the income offered by PhFs bigger than using their positronic androids to tune their positron data stream into lottery results than into offended foreigners? 

         Come on people, let's get serious.
Allow me to unsheathe my own Occam's Razor and slash some corners here.
Tell me (and be honest!) which proposition you think is more likely:

1 - Racism and xenophobia DO NOT exist in this advanced and utopic country but science and technology are so far advanced that roboticists can produce positronic androids capable of receiving transtemporal positronic data streams containing information about the future, disrupting the time-space continuum and reversing causality.

2 - Racism and xenophobia DO NOT exist in this advanced and utopic country but some citizens are capable of transdimensional time-travel jumping from one parallel universe to the next with the purpose of insulting foreigners with an unknown reason but NOT because of racism or xenophobia.

2 - Racism and xenophobia DO exist in this country. There are racists and xenophobes in this country who are perhaps frustrated by the fact that other countries may be more advanced than their glorious one and they need an escape goat to vent their frustrations. And/or they are simply too irrational and territorial that they instinctively feel that foreigners are invading their territories and, enslaved by their own instinct, bark to protect their territories. And they also probably pee around their houses to mark their territories.

         Occam's Razor principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

         Some people often oversimplify this statement as: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." It is a gross oversimplification but it's easier to understand and in the case at hand it fits properly. 

         So now that you have your Occam's Razor in hands, tell me: Isn't easier to believe that some people in this country are racists than to believe that there are crazy roboticists in conspiracy with amateur quantum electrodynamic physicists or transdimensional time-travel capable people? 

         I know which ones to Occam-nize. Do you?