FIVA conference and my first Context Chapter

Being a Distance Learning student has its advantages and disadvantages. Facebook groups, mailing lists et. al. can’t make up for the lack of a participating in live debates. But that is the price one has to pay if he’s going to chase his dreams.

This was put into sharp focus on Friday evening. Usually I am not in touch with the Hungarian classic car community. There are a lot of different reasons for that, but I don’t want to go into details. However when the Hungarian arm of FIVA, the international classic vehicle organisation invited me to be a speaker at a conference which was to be a part of the general assembly meeting in Budapest, I became quite excited. I am told to be a good speaker with an enthusiasm for the subject. And talking in front of an international audience, who knows and appreciates automotive history was a very nice opportunity for me. So on Friday evening I held my presentation on the history of the Hungarian automotive industry in front of 130 attendees from about 60 countries. It was very well received and afterwards I enjoyed some very nice conversations and even had to sign my book, Cars made in Hungary a couple of times 🙂

I am also making good progress on my Context Chapter. Having said that there’s only a tiny problem: after agonising for two days, I scrapped the content structure of the whole paper. Together with my Professor we devised four sections each to be 2000-word long. Well, eventually it fell apart. By that time I’ve written around 5000 words of a 8000-word long paper. The decision did not came easily, but I feel it had to be made. I hope to finish this paper by next weekend and then I will show it to my Professor. I will keep you posted on how it was received.

And last but not least, I’d like to introduce you Henry Austin Clark, jr. He was a car collector, a museum owner and a savior of automotive history. Upon his death his collection of motoring literature which weighed around 25 tons (!) was sent to an American museum. Just for the record: his my role model.