Don't be late we gotta skate

Last week, I finally had a chance to tryout my skates on the Vienna ice. After the Christmas market has been removed after the new year, now there has been settled a gigantic skating place - even bigger than Lido in Riga. Fun thing about it is that there are many lanes that are connecting the main pools, so that you don't have to just go in rounds and circles but you can go on the track around the park like in a race lane or smthn. And the site is spectacular as well - on the Ratsplatz. Those pics are taken from an Austrian site that post picture from public places and events.



My course mates Natalia (in front), Oana(behind) and Nhung made me a good company.

zuppā

Wie man verdoppelt den Preis von Kartoffeln? Umbennent sie als Erdaepfel.

Somewhat a clumsy studying anthem

Thrust your instincts,
Pull your senses;
Whip the excuses,
Strip the complaints.

Never the case when it's not the case

You're asking for commitment while I'm somewhere in between

Oh what a fun!

Rainy, early city run

multiple meanings and disambiguation

For other meanings of "life", see Life (disambiguation)

Hipocrisy-extinguisher

So do you want me to be fair or polite?

On battles and wars

They say you can't tell the players without a scorecard. Then again, sometimes you can't tell the winners even with a box score.

Dzelzsceļa tilts

Sorry, just couldn't resist posting another Rīga's photo. This one from the Riga daily picture blog.

Making a promise is such a tempting thing.

Rīga no skābbarības torņa

On bargaining

Your life is worth nothing more than the creepiest creep you'd give it away for.

Not necessarily a bad thing

I'm subject to being an object

I want my friends to be egoists

Whilst roughly simplifying

Life is like a plane - it eventually lands or crashes.

On latvian roads

Latvian roads are very fly! Literally!

Basketball columnist's tip

Perhaps it's good to remember that sometimes the best move may be no move at all.

Ramuma

As I was about to restart my studies, got totally derailed by a song, heard on the radio. At first I thought - what a genuine and beautiful song; afterwards - heck, it's in Lithuanian! It was some listeners choice broadcast where they play everything-whatever the listeners have advised/sent. They didn't name the artist, but luckily the multiple repetition of the song name in it made it possible to look it up and google it out :).

The lyrics are poetic, but the same time abstract and fundamental enough that it takes little effort to see the resemblances with the Latvian, so I couldn't resist translating it in a quite literal manner. Kinda - read between the lines :)!

Tarp traukinių bėgių aguona žydėsiu,
  Starp traucošamies vilcieniem magone ziedēšu,
Akliems mašinistams skirsiu dainas
  Aklajiem mašīnistiem atšķiršu dziesmas
Giedosiu, giedosiu, giedosiu, giedosiu,
  Dziedāšu, dziedāšu, dziedāšu, dziedāšu,
Nors jie niekada nesupras.
  Kaut arī tiem nekad nesaprast.

Tarp traukinių bėgių aguona žydėsiu,
  Starp traucošamies vilcieniem magone ziedēšu,
Ramybėje saugosiu kates numuštas.
  Rāmībā saudzēšu kaķus nomušītus.
Linguosiu, linguosiu, linguosiu, linguosiu,
  Līgošos, līgošos, līgošos, līgošos,
Kol rudeniai plyšaus ir verks į balas.
  Kamēr rudens plīsīs un raudās pārtopot purvājā.

Kai ateis mano mirtelė,
  Kā atnāks mana nāvīte
Ramuma ramuma ramu
  Rāmībā, rāmībā, rāmībā
ramuma ramuma ramu
ramuma ramuma-a...

Daydreaming

  Just took a nap, and as it frequently happens in those 5 minute naps, you experience some dense dream - not the one with a story line, but with some sort of intense action. The one that is close to throwing you out of the bed once you awake. Like just now - dreaming of running and eating some meaty stuff from folly in a wind and apparently being quite drunk, as I started to spin in an accelerating pace and the tearing off particles of folly were falling off and flying around. My reality check woke me up before eventually I was about to hit the ground. Before that I managed to get concerned about the garbaging the environment with the uncontrollable folly scatters. Yeah think green :)!
  Ok actually the story isn't about that. I was just pondering where is that fine line between the observations of your ˈconsciousness and subˈconsciousness and ultimately - whether our brain realizes when does that switch happens - does the picture always match the sound? Can we for sure say that at no point our subˈconsciousness doesn't take a driver seat when we are awake? It's no wonder that many people claim seeing or hearing things when being tired, exhausted, or in some unrest mental state - their subconsciousness just takes the lead as the ˈconsciousness can't take the load no more.

Lebensmittel - lifedrugs

Hey, there's too much life in your sugar!

Asking for an extra credit?

The job is harder when you don't know how to do it

Sometimes you better be lucky than good

Life's back-to-backs

Hey, stop the tape, I've already seen the movie!

_

"I wish I had more time to work on it" = "I wish i didn't do everything else but this"

perspective

Jealousy is a drive when turned the right direction

options

You mean well by leaving the doors open when you leave, but what if they don't want that choice?

Nice smiley :)

set

Yeah, of course I have a new year's resolution - not to give in on creeps. Worthwhile or none.

īzī

Easy life? The one without a choice.

So I left you with the girls that came your way

One of my past revelations - Magic Numbers - today just ran into my mind to lookup for some vids. At first it seems like some cheesy Christian rock, but then you get totally hooked.

My point of view is usually somewhere outside my brain

Annoyance

When listening once again to people that beef on everything, you just want to tell them - if you can't make anything your way then just suck up on it!

Instant Latvian hero-celebrity

A latvian guy Jānis Krūms just became an instant celebrity-hero as being the one who helped in rescuing passengers of an airplane that miraculously crash-landed without any victims in Hudson river in New York last afternoon. The airplane apparently shortly after taking off flew into a flock of geese and got some of them in both of the engines that made them stop almost simultaneously.
What got the guy on the news is the photo he took and posted. It has been republished by many media around USA now:

Here's an interview with that Latvian guy. It's funny how the interviewer adjusted her pronunciation of his name from a mediocre American-like to a decent almost correct one - pronouncing the vowels long where she should have.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm MP-Complete - Mess Complete

They're bloody everywhere!

P.S. Stolen from Benjamin's album :)

Ultimate teasers

When at last you're keeping it real and overlooking no-nos, your dreams start to hit on you.

Läti Disko

You know, sometimes you get your poison back - our northern neighbors have made a song about the crisis in Latvia, reading the translation in Latvian it's surprising to see how much they get to hear about the consequences of the crisis and the actions the gov is taking, for example, VAT increase and the cut on bureaucrat salaries :). Though some parts like going short even of tins and repeated usage of handkerchiefs are a bit of a stretch :).
The softest rhymes in the song go like:
If you're doing bad
And you're about to complain,
Then take a look at latvians,
they are doing way much worse

Disbeliever's strike back

When the life throws you into the snow and tries to kiss you all over your face, you kick its ass, bury it in the snow, dump it and run away, run your ass off.

Life is a language in which being fluent has nothing to do with comprehension.

3 the most common parrots in Canberra

As I've mentioned for multiple times, the first thing that you notice there in Australia in environment around you is the amount of the wildlife around you - in particular - birds. Of course there are many more, but those are the ones you're likely to run into every single day, not trying much. The most common bird is megpie - a vicious, raven sized bird that attacks the pedestrians and cyclists in order to protect their children in the nest, here's the warning. And taking pictures of megpies would be like taking pictures of pigeons - so I have none :).
Parrots tend to hang around the driveways and green zones in city's suburbs. This one is cool cos they are all with heads and hair up.

Those ones are at my house where I lived in - the most regular guests at the surroundings.

Those are the largest parrots in Australia - about at the size of a chicken - the Latvians I met in Sydney said that they do the most of the damage when their lemons are coming to ripe - just bite in all of them and throw them to the ground.

And here are some of the other birds and bugs I ran into when having the camera with me.

Speech still is silver

It's kinda hard when you start talking while not conducting the directions of your speech, but the same time not being able to float around the topic and get away being a bit sloppy on it. Your utterance eventually hangs up on a confusing halting point where you don't know what you actually meant and the listeners don't know how to react on you incomprehensible sequences of utterances.

Perpendicularities

Person who expresses a true interest about the other person, makes a step closer to the self exploration.

Heading to the magic 100

As I stepped on the scales couple of days ago, I couldn't believe eyes, seeing the number 96,5 kg - beating my previous record by 6kg. It's not like I hadn't observed the changes in my frame - less muscles - more fat, but I didn't expect anything that extreme - since the September it's 7kg up and I guess - counting. Likely it's a consequence of halting the most of my physic activities and exercising when going to aussie, but on the other hand it could be a part of something bigger - like a steady change of the body structure aka maturization - smthn like growing of the body hair on the chest :D. So I may just need to build up on that, since the 90 mark is already outshone by far, now just working it the right way. No it's not that the most popular new years resolution to start to exercise the new year - that was the plan ever since I went in a more passive mode.

Electric feel

Quite awkward I had missed out on the Electric feel for that long, balancing on a fence between disco legacy and "the new sound". Named the album of the year by mtv2, so I had to remark this somehow :).
Since I pulled myself together for posting on music, then I gotta mention being a bit blown by an aussie jazzy prodigy Gabriella Cilmi - maybe not that much the music (which nevertheless is great), but appearance already as a complete artist, standing her own ground at the age of 16. I wonder whether they use the word sanctuary outside the Australia referring to the place to keep the animals :).

Sterile state of mind is even worse than tamed indie.

Just for now

Hey, everybody needs a Christmas eve post. This one - on a more realistic side of the Christmas (check with the lyrics :)

You give colors to my nothing and now I want to wear it too

On Vienna's weather

Wet snow is the worst substance that ever comes from the sky apart from birds' s... and falling bricks

My plant - in memoriam

A couple of days arriving from Australia, I noticed that my plan doesn't look good - actually it had started to rotten - it definitely didn't like the extreme change of climate and returning to the winter. In spite of my tries there was no way how could i save it. So let this be a retrospective commemorative gallery. I ought to contribute somehow, cos the plant was always there - going around the half globe and back. In fact the aussie spring gave a real boost in it's growth. I doubt to have another one soon, cos it's too sad to watch it fade away. Anyway it's been one of the best gifts I've received lately and I hope that some of the guys who are going to find it under the christmas tree don't read this post :).
Here it is in my palm in late September. The first moment i had realized that those 2 small leaves there in the middle are new.

Here it's in Canberra, at the house I lived in. Surroundings is a typical Canberra suburb.

At the beach of Kioloa.

At the banks of the ocean...

In Sydney airport - the Sydney skyscrapers are in the distant background.

Comprehension grasp

If I don't sprinkle words around your collar, it doesn't mean that I don't have some under my sleeve. So don't rush stating me to be putting you into the opposite ditch. I know, I know that's the name of the game, but it's not mine - when you start - I call the time-out.

An overwhelming feeling

Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one here without a life plan.

Sometimes I feel like a portable rollercoaster

The matter of do

When you don't do what you have to do and when you have to do, then you have to do it when you want to do what you want to do, but then you don't do what you have to do, because you don't do what you have to do and then you never do what you want to do and never do what you have to do.

The effect of a new toy

We'll see what happens next, but I guess I know the paths - the sweet points are all the same.

Some tend to get it wrong

The fact that I speak their language is my prerogative, not theirs.

On rats

The right commander in chief

I guess that the most ridiculous fact about crisis in Latvia in particular is that the surname of the finance minister in charge is Slaughter (Slakteris). He is always there when the time comes - a while ago he was the minister of agriculture - nice switch btw - that's Latvia :).

On physics

The colder the weather, the faster the bicycle goes

wallabies

My last weekdays of stay in Australia I spent in a Australian university camping near the ocean in a place called Kioloa, where the guys from research center were giving talks. So I got a chance to wander around a bit. As I was taking some pictures around the camping, I met a local worker who took me up a hill where kangaroos and wallabies hang around, from there there was a nice view to the ocean as well and according to him - it is a good place for watching the whales - regretfully at that time he couldn't spot one. Of course my main source of interest was to see some wallabies, as I hadn't seen one in the wild and I got lucky... trice :).
So here is some teenager wallabie

This one has already grown up

They call them the red-neck wallabies, not because they live in country side, but because of the red neck. As it can be seen in the picture the fur quite differs from the one of kangaroo.

There is one hiding under the big tree...

And here's a muscle-kangaroo for comparison :).

The whole album here

Ok, now I know!

Powered by Southpark

Can't surf

On the morning of leaving Gold Coast, I took the second surfing lesson of my life - I did quite a bit better - almost managed to stand up properly, but still my clumsiness and lack of coordination played the major role almost all the way :). I enjoyed this lesson much more than the first one in Sydney - the weather was much better and the instructors were more useful. Anyway it was one of my top amusements during my stay in aussie.
And here are some pics...
Practice makes awesome!

Here we go...


Almost did it, though completely at the shore :)


Golden advice - you better watch your back while surfing...

Cos someone may take a hit on you :D

Wet, wet, wet

It's a bit nerdy beginner's board, but anyway... :)


And here's the full story

Pelican

During our touristing around the aussie resort called Gold Coast, we stayed overnight on a boat-house, so it was a nice opportunity to fish and to watch somebody else fishing... like pelican. The guy who hosted us, said that occasionally there turn up dolphins to fish as well. Regretfully that didn't happen during our stay.
Ok here's the pelican - seagulls give him lots of credit of knowing where the fishes are.

Fishing in action :)

And here's the panorama of Gold Coast. I was too eager to go for a swim, so meanwhile my mate took some s***load of pictures over an hour being up there on the top of a 100-stories tall skyscraper. Though bad thing about those skyscrapers is that in afternoon they overshadow the beach, so that it's a bit gloomy there, if you don't find a place on a rare sunny stretch.
View to the China side:

View to the Sydney side:

clumsy back-to-back

Second day in a row I spilled my jeans while stirring my daily load of espresso. I wonder when shall that end - when I'll run out of clean jeans or when I'll get rid of the habit of stirring while not looking what I'm stirring :).

Roo meal

Good for you - good for environment - no matter how ridiculous at the first moment it might seem while considering eating kangaroos, though having another look their arguments seem quite fair - kangaroos are part of natural fauna here; less grass is consumed to get 1 kg of meat as their organism processes the flora of natural habitat more effectively than the other domestic animals brought here do; as well they don't have such greenhouse gas emissions (or whatever that was); and it's 98% fat free (in aussie they write the fat all the time from the other end - not "only 2% fat" but rather "98% fat free"). Of course they keep and raise them in farms not hunt in the wild :).
I had to try sausages "Kanga Banga" as well :).

Input ----------------------> Output

The taste is like something between beef and goose - quite pleasant and enjoyable.

Like Frankie said :)

Once you screw it up again, you can always say: "I did it my way!", but what does it tell about your ways then?

Kangaroos

When visiting Tidbinbilla national reserve near Canberra, our two sources of curiosity were of course koalas and kangaroos in their natural habitat, our desperate tries to spot a koala somewhere up the trees resulted with disappointment - none of 20 people guided by 2 reserve rangers could spot one of 7 in 7ha reservoir over one hour. So we had to see some kangaroos at least - though not that hard to do here as I've spotted some in outskirts of the city.
Those precautions animals during the heat at daytime usually can be found hiding in the shadows of trees.

They kinda never walk...

Managed to spot the baby-kangaroo? :)

There were couple of emus as well, in the very background there is another kangaroo and a flock of parrots as well.

They don't like my company, much :(

And another vid

Kings of leon revamp

I'm still a big fan of their early stuff, but hadn't been impressed by them lately, but I guess this tops it all. I hope they won't go too commercial :). Unfortunately there are no embeddings allowed for the official vid of Sex on fire and I just got rid of that embedded creepy one.

koalas <3

Once you enter Sydney zoo, you got welcomed by bunch of koalas - I guess they got it right, what's the main purpose of visiting zoo in aussie :). Anyway at first I spotted one (down there on the vid) and couldn't take off my eyes for minutes thinking: "how cute is that ?"; only after a while I saw that family with a baby koala and a lone one on another tree.
baby-koala with sleepy koala-mama

baby-koala-mama shows some acrobatics

Later afternoon there was a bird show representing the birds of Australia - doing some tricks and demos and stuff. Of course this pic is not that much about the show than the panorama from there.

And here's the can't-take-eyes-off-object

koala 2

And here is the vid with the koala family

Latvijai 90

As Latvia celebrates 90th anniversary today, a couple of Riga's sites and buildings have got wrapped into some national motives by lights. Quite disappointing to miss out on it.
National pattern

This one is just great...

And just the flag on tv building...


P.S. Pictures are stolen from a social networking site - no Copyrights were respected :).

Hi, Martins

See you in 2 weeks!

Cheers,
Life

don't blame the game

You may want to blame the player if you don't have a game of your own

Noskaņai

Mazliet pamainīju savu ādiņu par godu Latvijas 90gadei nākamnedēļ ;). Pats esmu gandrīz vai cik vien tālu vien var būt, bet nu jā. Gan jau drīz salāpīšu beidzot savu slinkumu un ielikšu kādu bildīti ar ķenguriem un koalām, bet nu pagaidām ir jau 2 naktī un esmu aizsēdējies NICTA ofisā - šausmīgs slinkums tenterēt mājās - beigu galā miegs tomēr mani pievārēs šeit vai te. Laiks gan tāds, ka pa dienu negribas līst laukā - plus trīsdesmit un gaisa nav - labi, ka pēc 2 nedēļām ļepatoju atpakaļ uz eiropu - šitas laiks nav priekš manis, lai tie oziji slēpjas aiz savām platmaļu cepurēm un sanskrīniem - ledusskapī man patīk labāk, ļoti. Bet nu tie viļņi goldenkoustā bija neaprakstāmi - tā dēļ vien bija vērts palidināties, ūdens gan sāļš pēc suņa. Jā, un ja tiešām kādu bezgalīgi ziņkārība moka, kas te rakstīts, tad labā ziņa ir tāda, ka jau laiciņu gūgltransleits ir latviski arīdzen ;).

Te dziesmiņa par iedegšanos ;).

Jā, un Šļūka kārtējo reizi nav varējis saturēt savu sarkasmu :)

Need to get perfect

Traumhaus

My Leben ist hell